Energy and Experience: A New Psychophysical Framework for Measuring Mental States of Material Systems

This paper introduces a scientific framework for experimentally studying the psychological states of physical systems. The framework is an updated version of the psychophysical model of mind–matter relations that flourished in Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as endorsed by figures like Gustav Fechner, Ernst Mach and Albert Einstein. This updated framework proposes a set of ‘psychological properties’ of matter that parallel established physical properties such as energy, force and mass. Presented alongside these newly defined properties are a set of provisional principles and laws that may govern the behaviour of material systems from their internal or intrinsic perspective. These may parallel the familiar laws and principles governing the behaviour of systems from an external or extrinsic perspective. The framework provided here aims to promote a unified model of mind and matter of the kind envisaged by the original proponents of psychophysics in which energy and experience are parallel aspects of all natural processes.