Panpsychism

• 1. Panpsychism in History
• 2. Varieties
• 3. Arguments
• 4. Objections
• 5. References

First published May 23, 2001; revised May 13, 2022

Panpsychism is the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. The view has a long and venerable history in philosophical traditions of both East and West, and has recently enjoyed a revival in analytic philosophy. For its proponents, panpsychism offers an attractive middle way between physicalism and dualism. While dualism posits a split between mind and matter, and physicalism reduces mind to matter, panpsychism argues that consciousness is a basic feature of reality itself.

1. Panpsychism in the History of Western Philosophy

In ancient Greek thought, Thales proposed that “everything is full of gods,” implying a form of universal animation. Plato saw the cosmos as a living creature. The Stoics believed in a world soul infused with rationality. During the early modern era, Spinoza’s dual-aspect monism and Leibniz’s monads embodied panpsychic views. Later, figures like Schopenhauer, William James, and Whitehead revived the idea, culminating in process philosophy. The mid-20th century's analytic philosophy dismissed it, but panpsychism has resurged due to problems explaining consciousness via physicalism alone.

2. Varieties of Contemporary Panpsychism

Panpsychism today includes several distinct forms:

Constitutive vs. Emergent: Constitutive panpsychism holds that consciousness of complex beings arises from the consciousness of their parts. Emergentist panpsychism sees consciousness as emerging from but still grounded in basic experience.
Panpsychism vs. Panprotopsychism: Panprotopsychism posits that fundamental entities have potential mental properties that become consciousness in combination.
Micropsychism vs. Cosmopsychism: Micropsychism focuses on particles as mental, while cosmopsychism views the universe as a single conscious whole.
Russellian Monism: Suggests that physics describes structure, but the intrinsic nature of matter is experiential.

3. Arguments for Panpsychism

Anti-Emergence Argument: It seems incoherent for non-conscious particles to give rise to consciousness without already containing it in some form.
Intrinsic Nature Argument: Physics only explains how things behave—not what they are. Panpsychism fills this explanatory gap.
Continuity Argument: Evolution suggests a gradient of consciousness, not a sudden leap.
Solution to the Hard Problem: By making consciousness a fundamental property, it avoids the need to explain its "emergence" from matter.

4. Objections to Panpsychism

The Incredulous Stare: Critics find it absurd or counterintuitive to believe that rocks or atoms could have mental properties.
The Combination Problem: How do individual consciousnesses combine into a unified experience?
The Subject-Summing Problem: Why doesn’t a sand heap or galaxy have a mind if all its parts do?
Empirical Challenge: Panpsychism is hard to test. It risks becoming unfalsifiable.