In
philosophy of mind,
panpsychism is the view that mind or a mind-like aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality.
Panpsychism - Wikipedia
Who is with me on this?
Not sure what you're asking - you haven't expressed an opinion...
Personally, I don't find panpsychism a particularly interesting or useful idea - in my view, it ranks extremely low as a hypothesis for consciousness. It doesn't seem to explain consciousness, it just makes it universal, and it raises far more questions than it purports to answer. It seems like a kind of escapism - "we can't explain it so it must be fundamental", i.e. let's just make it a brute fact. It also seems to ignore the patterns and levels of consciousness we see around us (i.e. in living creatures).
My questions would be:
How does it help us understand consciousness? what, specifically, does it explain?
How is it testable? what evidence is there for it?
What predictions does it make?
Do fundamental particles have consciousness or awareness? If so, what does it mean for fundamental particles to have consciousness or awareness?
Does an atom have its own consciousness, or is it a collection of particle consciousnesses?
How does macro-scale consciousness emerge from fundamental consciousness?
Do rocks and tables have their own consciousness? if so, how? if not, why not?
Why are the observable correlates of consciousness only associated with biological brains?
Why does the richness of conscious experience appear to correlate to a particular sophistication of brain processing?
Philosopher
Philip Goff describes
a form of panpsychism whereby the properties of fundamental particles, such as charge and spin, are themselves expressions of consciousness - so that consciousness is not an ontological extra, the physical world as we know it is an expression of consciousness at a fundamental level. I wonder how he would answer the questions above (or
if he could answer them).
