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Stewart, Brent

University of British Columbia

Mind matters, especially to our moral psychology. How much it matters, though, depends entirely on how many minds we perceive. In this thesis, I propose an account of mind perception that casts the widest possible net. This view, which I call Subjective Panpsychism, claims that humans perceive all objects to have a mind. For Subjective Panpsychism, what varies is not whether an object is perceived to have a mind but how much it is perceived to have. Across 12 studies, I apply this perspective to three different topics in moral psychology. In Chapter 2, I look at how Subjective Panpsychism can potentially help make progress in understanding the issue of (apparently) victimless moral transgressions, such as flag burning, by highlighting the role of perceiving the mind of the flag, the nation and the idea of loyalty in forming such moral intuitions. In Chapter 3, I look at how perceiving the mind of beauty can help us better understand how perceptions of beauty confer moral worth. Lastly, in Chapter 4, I turn the Subjective Panpsychist perspective inward to the case of emotions - and specifically - jealousy; here, I aim to show how perceiving the mind of jealousy could potentially help regulate the behavioural effects of the green-eyed monster. Across these studies, I find broad, relatively consistent support for the utility of Subjective Panpsychism.

Text

2023-08-31

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/85746

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/