Have you ever wondered if the sun, moon or stars have feelings? Or if the rocks, the trees or the clouds have thoughts? Or if the atoms, the electrons or the quarks have experiences? If so, you’re not alone.
Many philosophers throughout history have entertained the idea that everything in the universe has some form of consciousness, or a mind-like quality. This idea is called panpsychism, from the Greek words pan (all) and psyche (soul or spirit).
Panpsychism is one of the oldest philosophical theories, dating back to ancient Greece, where thinkers such as Thales, Plato and Spinoza proposed that all things have a soul or a mind.
Panpsychism was also popular in the 19th century, when philosophers such as William James, Alfred North Whitehead, and Bertrand Russell argued that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality.
However, panpsychism declined in the 20th century, when logical positivism and physicalism dominated philosophy of mind. Logical positivists claimed that only statements that can be verified by empirical observation are meaningful, while physicalists claimed that only physical entities and properties exist.
But in recent years, panpsychism has seen a resurgence of interest, thanks to the vexing problem of consciousness and developments in neuroscience, psychology and quantum physics. The difficult problem of consciousness is how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences, such as seeing colors, feeling emotions or having thoughts.
This problem seems to militate against a satisfactory explanation by physicalism, as there appears to be an explanatory gap between the objective facts about the brain and the subjective facts about consciousness.
Some philosophers have suggested that panpsychism may provide a solution to this problem, arguing that consciousness is not a product of complex physical systems, but rather a fundamental property of all physical entities.
One of the main arguments for panpsychism is based on the principle of simplicity or parsimony. This principle states that we should prefer simpler explanations to more complex ones, all else being equal.
Panpsychists claim that their view is simpler than physicalism because no additional ontological categories or explanatory mechanisms are needed to explain consciousness.
Instead, it assumes that consciousness is already present in all physical things, albeit in different degrees and forms. Panpsychists also claim that their view is simpler than dualism because it does not require non-physical substances or properties to explain consciousness. Instead, it assumes that consciousness is an intrinsic aspect of all physical things.
Another argument for panpsychism is based on the principle of continuity or naturalism. This principle states that we should avoid radical discontinuities or breaks in nature unless there is compelling evidence for them.
Panpsychists claim that their view respects this principle better than physicalism or dualism, because it does not assume that consciousness emerges suddenly or mysteriously from non-conscious matter at some point in evolution or complexity.
Instead, it assumes that consciousness is a gradual and natural characteristic of all matter, varying in degree and quality depending on its organization and structure.
Is there evidence of panpsychism?
According to Roy SmithComputer engineer, our understanding of matter and consciousness is far too mired in Cartesian dualism to even understand the structure of reality. If we want to understand the true meaning of panpsychism, we must completely cast off our belief in an external objective reality of matter ‘out there’.
Neuroscientists like Christof Koch embrace panpsychism because they have realized that it is virtually impossible for consciousness or subjective experiences to magically emerge from unconscious complex matter. They have adopted panpsychism as the only logical choice.
Unfortunately, they are still stuck in the materialistic belief in matter as a separate, external reality. Their panpsychism is really Materialism 2.0. The only way to truly understand panpsychism is through its most advanced development in AN Whitehead.
According to Whitehead, the true units of reality are not the materialist idea of random bits of brute matter floating in space, but in what Whitehead calls ‘occasions of experience’.
In other words, these moments of experience are the only “real” things that exist. Matter is merely a construct of our own mental apparatus. Whitehead claims that “I hold that these unities of existence, these experiences of experiences, are the really real things, which in their collective unity constitute the evolving universe that is ever rushing into creative progress.”
The entire universe and everything in it, including the brain, is a relationship between consciousness and unconsciousness. These represent two attracting poles that underlie everything: particles, atoms, stars, galaxies, people, etc.
Consciousness at one pole represents all future potentials and probabilities. It is known as the mental pole. At the other pole is the vacuum space, the unconscious matrix from which matter arises. The matter matrix has the characteristic of what we call the standard model in physics.
It is a rule established in consciousness that governs the formation of ‘things’ in the universe. This ‘stuff’ exists in a past relationship with the mental or consciousness pole.
The material pole is characterized by time and space. The mental pole does not exist in a spatial dimension, it simply ‘is’. The relationship between the material pole and the mental pole is only in the time dimension. In other words, matter follows spirit. Whatever the mind creates, matter follows. Whitehead calls these material forms ‘concretions’.
Whitehead derived his panpsychism from a thorough knowledge of quantum mechanics and intuition about existence. He was the brilliant mathematician who, with his student Bertrand Russell, wrote what is possibly the most important mathematics text, the Principia Mathematica, still in use today. He understood that quantum theory and experiments show us that consciousness is fundamental on the quantum scale.
When we make a quantum measurement, we collapse a probability wave into a particle, and this is how consciousness causes the concretion of forms. Consciousness produces waves in the matrix of vacuum space and the waves in turn disintegrate into concretions of shapes.
It takes a finite amount of time for waves to ‘wave’, so that the concretions appear in a prior relationship to the actual movement of consciousness. It is these concretions that give us the physical universe and its myriad forms.
So to answer the question we can say that the best ‘evidence we have for panpsychism comes from quantum mechanics. Of course, I have only briefly touched on the principles of Whitehead panpsychism, but we can see from this that we must completely change our clumsy materialist concept of brute matter existing objectively in external space as false.
To truly understand how consciousness interacts with matter, we must completely change our perspective to that of consciousness and its ‘occasions of experience’ as the only reality there is.
Panpsychism is not without challenges and objections
One of these is the combination problem: how do the microphenomenal experiences of simple physical entities combine to form the macrophenomenal experiences of complex physical entities? For example, how do the experiences of billions of neurons in the brain combine to create the unified experience of a human being? Or how do the experiences of trillions of atoms in a neuron shape the experience of a neuron?
Panpsychists have proposed various solutions to this problem, such as emergencyism (the idea that new levels of experience arise from lower levels), holism (the idea that higher levels of experience do not consist of lower levels), or neutral monism (the idea that there is a common substance that underlies both physical and mental aspects).
Another objection to panpsychism is the incredulous look: how can we seriously believe that everything has consciousness? Isn’t this just a fanciful or absurd idea? Panpsychists respond to this by pointing out that their position is not as implausible as it might seem at first glance.
They argue that we should not anthropomorphize or project our human-like qualities onto other things, but rather recognize that there are different types and degrees of consciousness. They also argue that we should not reject an idea just because it conflicts with our common sense or intuition, but rather examine it on its own merits and evidence.
How consciousness interacts
To understand how consciousness interacts with the human brain, we must refer to the quantum mind theory of consciousness, developed by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, which is based on the Whitehead model.
Consciousness communicates with the brain through quantum vibrations in microtubules of brain neurons. It is these quantum vibrations or waves of consciousness in microtubules in the brain that set up the quantum computer states of the dipole protein arrays that form the structure of microtubules, setting up the appropriate code for axon firing and other operations that control the body and brain. The name of this theory, which has experimental evidence, is Orch OR.
Panpsychism is an age-old idea that has regained popularity in modern times. It is a bold and radical theory that challenges our conventional views of reality and consciousness. It provides a simple and naturalistic account of how consciousness pervades everything in existence and also raises questions about the nature and origin of mind, matter and life.
