Panpsychism

What if consciousness isn’t produced by complex brains but is instead a fundamental feature of reality, like mass or electric charge?

What if even elementary particles have some primitive form of experience, and your rich conscious life is built from these micro-experiences the way a beach is built from grains of sand?

This is panpsychism (from Greek pan = all, psyche = mind/soul)—the view that consciousness or mind-like qualities are universal and primordial features of the physical world.

The core claim

Panpsychism holds that:

Consciousness is fundamental, not emergent from non-conscious matter
All physical entities have an experiential aspect, however primitive
Complex consciousness (like yours) is built from these micro-experiences

Note: Panpsychism doesn’t claim that electrons have beliefs, emotions, or self-awareness. The experience at the micro-level might be incredibly simple—perhaps just a bare “feels-like-something-ness” without content.

Why take panpsychism seriously?

Panpsychism might sound absurd—rocks are conscious? But it’s gaining serious attention from philosophers and scientists. Here’s why:

The hard problem of consciousness

We can’t explain how non-conscious matter produces consciousness. How do neurons (which seem to be unconscious mechanisms) create the rich inner world of experience?

The emergence problem: If matter is fundamentally unconscious, how does consciousness emerge from it? It would be like pulling a rabbit from a hat that contains no rabbit—getting something from nothing.

Panpsychist solution: Consciousness doesn’t emerge from nothing. It was there all along, in proto-form. Complex consciousness is combined from micro-consciousness, not created from non-consciousness.

The continuity of nature

Evolution and physics show continuity across scales. Atoms combine into molecules, molecules into cells, cells into organisms. Properties at higher levels connect to properties at lower levels.

If consciousness exists only in complex brains but nowhere else in nature, it’s a unique exception—appearing ex nihilo at some threshold of complexity. This seems inelegant.

Panpsychism makes consciousness continuous across nature, just varying in degree and complexity.

Intrinsic nature of matter

Physics describes matter’s relational properties—how things interact, their mass, charge, spin. But what is matter intrinsically, in itself?

The structure-and-dynamics problem: Physics tells us the structure and behavior of reality but not what reality is fundamentally. Equations describe relationships, not intrinsic nature.

Panpsychist proposal: The intrinsic nature of matter is experiential. What we describe physically from the outside is, from the inside, experience. Consciousness is what physical stuff is, not what it does.

Avoiding dualism

Dualism (mind and matter are separate substances) faces the interaction problem: How do mental and physical causally interact if they’re fundamentally different?

Physicalism (everything is physical) faces the hard problem: How does subjective experience arise from objective processes?

Panpsychism potentially avoids both problems: There’s only one kind of stuff, but it has both physical and mental aspects. Consciousness and physics are two ways of describing the same reality—inside and outside views.

Types of panpsychism

Panpsychism comes in several flavors:

Constitutive panpsychism

Claim: Macro-consciousness (like yours) is constituted by micro-consciousness. Your experience is built from the experiences of your neurons, atoms, or quarks, the way a wall is built from bricks.

Challenge: The combination problem—how do micro-experiences combine into macro-experiences? Why don’t you experience your individual neurons’ experiences separately?

Emergent panpsychism

Claim: Micro-entities have proto-conscious properties. When organized in certain ways (like brains), genuinely new conscious properties emerge—but they emerge from already-experiential matter, not from wholly non-experiential matter.

Advantage: Allows emergence while avoiding the “something from nothing” problem.

Cosmopsychism

Claim: The universe as a whole is conscious. Individual consciousnesses are fragments or aspects of cosmic consciousness, not built from micro-consciousnesses.

Analogy: Your conscious self has many parts (perception, memory, emotion) that aren’t individually conscious in the same way. Similarly, we might be parts of a cosmic mind.

Advantage: Avoids the combination problem—we don’t need to explain how micro-minds combine into macro-minds.

The combination problem

This is panpsychism’s biggest challenge: How do micro-experiences combine into macro-experiences?

When many conscious particles form a brain, why is there one unified consciousness (yours), not billions of separate micro-consciousnesses?

Analogies to physical combination don’t help:

Masses combine by addition: 10kg + 10kg = 20kg
But experiences don’t add: My experience + your experience ≠ one combined experience
When neurons work together, they create one conscious field, not separate experiences

Proposed solutions:

1. Special combination laws: Perhaps there are psycho-physical laws governing how experiences combine, analogous to physical laws governing how masses combine.

2. Top-down causation: Higher-level conscious wholes constrain lower-level parts, creating unity.

3. Deny the problem: Maybe micro-experiences do exist separately, and what we call “unified consciousness” is an illusion—there isn’t really one experiencer.

4. Cosmopsychism: Avoid combination by starting with cosmic consciousness and deriving individual minds from it (de-combination rather than combination).

None of these solutions is entirely satisfying, which is why the combination problem remains panpsychism’s Achilles heel.

Panpsychism and physics

Some find support for panpsychism in modern physics:

Quantum mechanics and observation

The measurement problem in quantum mechanics involves the role of observation in collapsing wave functions. Some interpretations suggest consciousness plays a fundamental role in quantum mechanics.

If consciousness is needed to explain quantum behavior, and quantum mechanics is fundamental, perhaps consciousness is fundamental too.

Caution: This is controversial. Most physicists don’t think consciousness causes wave function collapse. But the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness remains mysterious.

Information theory

Integrated Information Theory (IIT), developed by neuroscientist Giulio Tononi, proposes that consciousness is identical to integrated information (Φ, phi). Any system with sufficient integrated information is conscious—potentially including simple physical systems.

While IIT doesn’t require panpsychism, it’s compatible with it: if even simple systems can have non-zero Φ, they have primitive consciousness.

The dual-aspect view

Physics describes reality’s extrinsic properties (how things relate to each other). Consciousness is reality’s intrinsic property (what things are in themselves).

Analogy: A coin has two sides—heads and tails. They’re not separate entities; they’re aspects of one coin. Similarly, mind and matter are two aspects of one reality.

Implications if panpsychism is true

If consciousness is fundamental, it changes everything:

Ethical implications

Do all entities deserve moral consideration? If consciousness exists at all scales, where do we draw the ethical line? This might support:

Deep ecology and environmental ethics
Rights for AI systems (if they integrate information)
More cautious approach to manipulating matter

The nature of death

If consciousness is fundamental rather than produced by brains, what happens when brains die? Does micro-consciousness persist in dispersed atoms?

Panpsychism doesn’t necessarily imply personal survival, but it suggests consciousness itself doesn’t cease to exist—only specific organizations of it.

Unity with nature

Panpsychism supports a view of humans as continuous with nature. We’re not unique consciousnesses in an unconscious universe—we’re expressions of the universe’s fundamental nature.

The meaning of evolution

Evolution didn’t create consciousness—it created increasingly sophisticated forms of consciousness. It organized pre-existing experiential matter into complex patterns.

Criticisms of panpsychism

“This is just woo-woo mysticism”

Response: Panpsychism is taken seriously by mainstream philosophers (David Chalmers, Galen Strawson, Philip Goff) and scientists (Christof Koch, Giulio Tononi). It’s a genuine philosophical hypothesis, not New Age fantasy.

“It’s unfalsifiable”

Response: True, we can’t currently test whether electrons have experience. But physicalism is also hard to prove—we can’t definitively show that consciousness doesn’t go deeper than brains.

“It multiplies mysteries”

Response: Yes, it trades the emergence problem for the combination problem. But perhaps the combination problem is more tractable than explaining consciousness arising from wholly non-conscious matter.

“Occam’s Razor—simplest explanation is best”

Response: Is it really simpler to claim matter is fundamentally unconscious, then somehow produces consciousness at one scale? Panpsychism is ontologically simpler—one kind of stuff—even if it faces explanatory challenges.

Living with uncertainty

We don’t know if panpsychism is true. The nature of consciousness remains deeply mysterious.

But panpsychism offers a way to take consciousness seriously as a fundamental feature of reality, not an accidental byproduct of neural complexity.

From a universal perspective, panpsychism encourages:

Respect for nature: If everything has experiential aspects, the universe isn’t dead matter—it’s alive with awareness at all scales
Humility about consciousness: We don’t understand it even in ourselves, much less in others
Openness to mystery: Reality may be far stranger than common sense suggests

Whether or not panpsychism is literally true, contemplating it expands our sense of what’s possible and deepens our wonder at existence.

Further exploration

Key books:

Consciousness and Fundamental Reality by Philip Goff
Galileo’s Error by Philip Goff (accessible introduction)
The Conscious Mind by David Chalmers (discusses panpsychism as option)

Scientific approaches:

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) - Giulio Tononi
Research on consciousness in “simple” organisms

Related topics:

The hard problem - Why panpsychism appeals
What is consciousness? - The basics
Collective consciousness - How micro combines into macro?

Practice:

Spend time in nature contemplating the possibility that everything has experiential aspects
What would it change if rocks, rivers, and trees had primitive awareness?