From a scientific perspective, the human mind is an unexplained and perhaps unexplainable mystery. Mind that may exist elsewhere in nature is scientifically unintelligible and methodologically superfluous. Modern analytic philosophy generally concurs with the scientific outlook that nonhuman minds are incomprehensible or irrelevant. It furthermore accepts uncritically the scientific view that matter is intrinsically non-experiential. Both science and modern philosophy, therefore, generally find no credibility in panpsychist theories.
As I stated early in this book, virtually all present-day naturalistic theories of mind are forms of emergentism, arguing that mind is a rare and unique phenomenon that arises only in highly specialized circumstances. The standard versions of emergentism—including the identity theory, functionalism, and various forms of behaviorism—attribute mind to only those structures that have achieved sufficient biological or functional complexity.1 They are, however, generally at a loss to explain either the criterion for this emergence or how the qualities of mind or consciousness are linked to such complexity. Emergentism, in all its forms, is thus profoundly incomplete at present. This fact alone suggests that panpsychist theories deserve greater attention.
The failings of emergentism constitute what might be called a negative argument on behalf of panpsychism. Yet there are many positive arguments, some from within the realm of science. Numerous scientist-philosophers (including Gilbert, Kepler, Leibniz, LaMettrie, Herder, Fechner, Haeckel, Mach, and Teilhard) found grounds for panpsychism in the fields of physics, chemistry, and biology. Their arguments were based not only on rationalism but also on empirical evidence and evolutionary principles. It is helpful to briefly retrace some of these older scientific arguments in order to set the context for the more recent developments.
Scientific arguments are traditionally based on a combination of empirical evidence and so-called scientific reasoning. Given a conjecture or proposed theory, evidence is sought that can confirm it. This raises two questions long known to philosophers of science: What counts as evidence? What qualifies as scientific reasoning? It is clear that any observed data about the world can be interpreted in many ways and may count for or against widely divergent theories. Scientific reasoning is roughly defined as a logical and empirically based process that leads to positive theories about some aspect of reality, and ideally to the truth about the world. Applying similar reasoning to issues of philosophy of mind has led some thinkers to panpsychist conclusions.
Consider Thales’ evidence: that a magnet has a psyche because it can move metallic objects. He held to a theory of mind in which psyche was the source and cause of motion. On that definition, it is clear that a magnet must be ensouled. It was, then, a rational process that led Thales to consider whether psyche was shared only by humans, animals, and certain rocks (such as those from Magnesia) or was a universal property that was manifest in all objects by degrees.2 We don’t fully know Thales’ rationale, but we know that he ultimately concluded that “all things are full of gods” and thus that panpsychism was true.
Anaximenes noted the commonly observed fact that living, ensouled beings must breathe, and that loss of breath was a fairly certain indication of loss of psyche. Furthermore, breath, in the form of air (pneuma), seemed to surround and permeate all things. Thus, a reasonable “scientific” conclusion was that psyche was present everywhere, in all things.
Plato saw psyche as the principal source of motion and, like Thales, held that where there was evident power of motion the presence of a soul had to be inferred. He observed the regular motions of the heavens and concluded that only a world-soul could regulate such motions with orderly precision. As to the psyche itself, Plato stated the obvious: that it cannot be directly observed and is thus “perceptible by reason alone”—that is, on the basis of ultimate metaphysical principles.
Aristotle was confronted with the puzzling phenomenon of spontaneous generation of life out of heaps of decaying matter. To make sense of such generation, he was compelled to postulate a soul-like pneuma as pervasive in the physical world. Pneuma, as the earthly life-principle, was the analogue of the heavenly ether, which was thought to animate the stars and other celestial bodies. Only the ether could account for the appearance of life from a non-living substrate. Aristotle was wrong about spontaneous generation, but his methodology was logical and plausibly scientific.
Centuries later, Gilbert’s study of magnets in the late 1500s considered two different empirical results. The first was his observation that a magnet can magnetize a previously nonmagnetic piece of metal. For him, this “power to confer power” was evidence of a magnet’s psyche-like ability. Second, Gilbert documented the consistency and orderliness of the magnetic force: the repulsion of like poles, the attraction of opposite poles, inverse-square action with respect to distance, and so on. He saw this as evidence of “reason” in the magnet—a disputable but putatively scientific conclusion if one assumes that the psyche acts in an intelligent and orderly manner, much as Plato had assumed. The jump to panpsychism required additional presumptions, such as “whatever is in the effect is in the cause.” Gilbert showed that the Earth was a large magnet, then rightly determined that magnetism was thereby bestowed on individual rocks. Since the Earth granted its magnetic psyche to the magnet, and (evidently) the animal psyche to humans and animals, it was reasonable to generalize that all Earthly things were endowed with a kind of animation.
Like Plato and Gilbert, Kepler saw soul as the motive force behind the planets—at least until 1621, when he decided that the rational orderliness of planetary motion was indicative of a corporeal, non-psychic force. Newton viewed gravity as an occult quality, something perhaps lifelike in nature. As I noted earlier, his theory of universal attraction had implicit panpsychist overtones. He understood that gravity could be quantified, but this did not explain its basis or its origin.
In the mid to late 1600s, various new scientific technologies began to emerge, some of which supported panpsychist theories. Leeuwenhoek’s work with the microscope revealed tiny “animalcules” in ordinary water—a startling discovery that impressed a number of thinkers, including Spinoza, Leibniz, and LaMettrie. Suddenly there was indisputable empirical proof of life and sentience in the smallest portions of nature. Later discoveries of the cellular nature of plants and animals, and of the ubiquitous presence of microorganisms, only furthered this belief.
Fechner’s work in the mid 1800s relied less on empirical data than on a scientific form of argumentation by analogy. He observed the functional similarities between animals and plants, and concluded that plants were animate. He then considered the Earth as a system, arguing that its internal dynamics and sentient components supported such notions as an Earth-soul. Empirical evidence of the Earth’s ability to self-regulate did not appear until about 100 years later, with the work of Wright and Lovelock.
Advances in physics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries moved toward unification of physical forces. More important, with the dynamist and energeticist theories, even matter itself was seen as an ethereal, quasi-spiritual entity. This “spiritualization” of matter—in a scientific context—was important to the panpsychist theories of Priestley, Schelling, Herder, Lossky, and the early Schiller.
Darwin’s theory of evolution (1859) initiated a series of new scientific arguments. Even before On the Origin of Species, the early anticipations of Maupertuis, LaMettrie, and Diderot suggested that an evolutionary perspective would entail some form of panpsychism. After Darwin, it became evident that all life shared a common ancestry, and that conscious humans had no claim to ontological uniqueness. This was further supported by chemical analyses that showed human bodies to be composed of the same elements that existed in other life forms, in the Earth, and even throughout space. These scientific facts supported the Continuity arguments of Haeckel, Spencer, James, Teilhard, and others. Evolution was not empirical per se, but empirical evidence supported it and indirectly served as a form of confirmation for certain panpsychist theories.
Into the twentieth century, further developments in physics, biology, and mathematics were presented as scientific evidence in favor of panpsychist claims. The equation of mass and energy furthered the notion that the underlying nature of matter was something vaguely spirit-like. Quantum mechanics emerged as an accepted theory of atomic and subatomic particles; its bizarre, indeterminate implications led a number of scientists to panpsychist conclusions, beginning with John Haldane in 1932 and continuing with Jeans, Sherrington, Wright, Rensch, Walker, Cochran, Dyson, Bohm, and Hameroff. More recently, concepts in mathematical analysis, especially cybernetics, state-space analysis, and chaos theory, have been employed on behalf of panpsychism.
To many scientists of the early twentieth century, panpsychism was uncomfortably close to the recently discredited theory of vitalism. As a result, they largely avoided discussing it. But there were exceptions. The first notable scientist to tentatively put forth panpsychist views was the British astronomer Arthur Eddington, who concludes his book Space, Time and Gravitation (1920) with the observation that physics only addresses the surface structure of matter and energy and doesn’t have anything to say about the inner content of reality. Arguing roughly in the manner of Schopenhauer, Eddington claims that the inner content of reality must be like the inner content of the human, i.e., consciousness:
In regard to the nature of things, this knowledge [of relativity] is only an empty shell—a form of symbols. It is knowledge of structural form and not knowledge of content. All through the physical world runs that unknown content, which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness. Here is a hint of aspects deep within the world of physics, and yet unattainable by the methods of physics. (200)
This somewhat vague passage can be read either as a form of pure idealism or, in the manner of Schopenhauer, as a panpsychic idealism.3
Eddington’s 1928 book The Nature of the Physical World contains a section titled “Mind-Stuff” in which Eddington, explicitly acknowledging the views of Clifford, bluntly states:
The universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind … . To put the conclusion crudely—the stuff of the world is mind-stuff. … The mind-stuff of the world is something more general than our individual conscious minds; but we may think of its nature as not altogether foreign to feelings in our consciousness … . (276)
Again we are lacking in details, but the statement seems to support a panpsychist form of idealism.
Eddington’s quasi-panpsychism appeared for a third time in 1939, leaning more toward conventional idealism and arguing that physics “abolishes all dualism of consciousness and matter” (150). Dualism, he claimed, contains a logical inconsistency: “Dualism depends on the belief that we find in the external world something of a nature incommensurable with what we find in consciousness.” Since physics shows that all reality is structurally the same, it must all be commensurate with consciousness—that is, it must be of the nature of a mental sensation:
Although the statement that the universe is of the nature of “a thought or sensation in a universal Mind” is open to criticism, it does at least avoid this logical confusion. It is, I think, true in the sense that it is a logical consequence of the form of thought which formulates our knowledge as a description of the universe. (151)
Eddington’s reference to a universal Mind is somewhat Berkelian—matter as consciousness only with respect to an observing mind, not as a mind in itself. His argumentation comes across as a bit confused, but his intention seems to be to argue that the unified view of physics supports a belief that the content of mental reality is comparable and even equivalent to the content of mind.
The biologist John (J. B. S.) Haldane speculated on mind in nature in the early 1930s, and he addressed the thorny problem of the emergence of life and mind from inanimate matter: “It is clear that aggregates of a certain kind do manifest qualities which we cannot observe in their components.” (1932: 113) This is an important and subtle observation; Haldane doesn’t say that emergent qualities do not exist in their components, but rather that we cannot see them there. The problem is epistemological, not ontological. In fact, if consciousness were not present in matter, that would imply a theory of strong emergence that is fundamentally anti-scientific. Such emergence is “radically opposed to the spirit of science, which has always attempted to explain the complex in terms of the simple.” Haldane rejected this thesis, and hence was driven to the conclusion that life and mind exist to some degree everywhere:
We do not find obvious evidence of life or mind in so-called inert matter, and we naturally study them most easily where they are most completely manifested; but if the scientific point of view is correct, we shall ultimately find them, at least in rudimentary form, all through the universe. (113)
Two years later Haldane offered thoughts on the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics. In “Quantum Mechanics as a Basis for Philosophy” (1934) he proposes that mind is a “resonance phenomenon” that is associated with the wave-like aspect of atomic particles. This is a reasonable assertion, he claims, because the characteristics of mind are comparable to those of atomic particles: Both arise from dynamical systems, both exhibit a continuity and wholeness, both are at once localized yet spatially diffused. For example, the wave nature of an electron allows it to penetrate through an insulating barrier; this is the so-called tunneling effect. Haldane interprets this as a primitive variety of “purposive behavior.” He offers the suggestion that “man also has a ‘wave system’ which enables him to act with reference to distant or future events, this system being his mind” (89). Anywhere this resonance phenomenon occurs, there we must accept the presence of mind. He speculates that this may happen even inside stars:
It is not inconceivable that in such [stellar] systems resonance phenomena of the complexity of life and mind might occur. … It is conceivable that the interior of stars may shelter minds vastly superior to our own, though presumably incapable of communication with us. (97)
Haldane had previously cited Plato, and one cannot help but suspect that he had Plato’s “star-souls” in mind.4
The physicist and astronomer Sir James Jeans was likewise drawn to philosophical speculations on mind. Like Eddington, he saw evidence for mind as present throughout nature, concluding that a form of idealism must be true: “the universe can be best pictured … as consisting of pure thought” (1932: 168). Jeans was clear that this conception undermines the mechanistic worldview: “[T]he universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter.” (186) In a later work he arrived at a strongly Berkelian idealism (or “mentalism”), arguing that the new physics provides three substantial reasons for seeing reality as “wholly mental”: (1) Electromagnetic fields fail to qualify as objective, and hence are effectively “not real at all; they are mere mental constructs of our own” (1942: 200). (2) The reality of the theories of physics is essentially mathematical, and therefore essentially mental. (3) As Haldane suggested, the wave-particle duality implies a view in which “the ingredients of the particle-picture are material, those of the wave-picture mental. … The final picture consists wholly of waves, and its ingredients are wholly mental constructs.” (202) Jeans’ philosophical reasoning thus pushed him toward a strong idealism, one that would seem compatible with a form of panpsychism.
In the early 1940s three notable British biologists ventured theories with panpsychist dispositions. Sir Charles Scott Sherrington was known for his research on the physiology of the brain, but in Man on His Nature (1941) he delved into mind-brain philosophy. Sherrington argued, much like Bruno, for a dual-aspect theory of reality, one consisting of mind and energy: “[O]ur world resolves itself into energy and mind. These two concepts … divide, and between them comprise, our world.” (348) He was agnostic about interaction between these two realms, stating that we are left with
acceptance of energy and mind as a working biological unity although we cannot describe the how of that unity. … The evolution of one is of necessity the evolution of the other. There is no causal relation between them; they are both inseparably one. Their correlation is unity. (351–352).
One consequence of this view is that the animate blends seamlessly into the inanimate: “We have difficulty in assigning the lower limit of the mental. It may therefore be that its distribution extends to all organisms, and even further.” (354) In other words, “it is as though the elementary mental had never been wanting” (266)—that is, present in all matter throughout the history of evolution.
The second of the three men was Wilfred Agar. A follower of Whitehead’s process philosophy, Agar was attracted to Whitehead’s concept of the “philosophy of the organism,” and he sought a biological theory of the living organism that would correspond to Whitehead’s philosophy. Agar’s central thesis was that organisms are both percipient subjects and composed of elements—cells—that are themselves percipient; living cells “must also be regarded as feeling, perceiving, subjects” (1943: 8). The logic continues down the chain of being: “A cell, though a subject, must probably also be considered a nexus of living sub-agents.” (11)5
Agar asserted that “Whitehead’s system essentially involves a form of panpsychism” (66), and his analysis demonstrated a deeper philosophical awareness than the other scientists discussed. He accepted most aspects of Whitehead’s process philosophy but disagreed on the nature of consciousness. Whitehead saw consciousness as a special and limited case of the more general phenomenon of feeling or experiencing, whereas Agar believed that
the more satisfying hypothesis is that … all experience is in its degree conscious. … We must ascribe consciousness to every living agent, such as a plant cell or bacterium, and even (if the continuity of nature is not to be broken) to an electron. (91)
Agar’s panpsychism is thus more literal and more far-reaching than Whitehead’s, adopting a universalized conception of consciousness.
The third of the biologists was Sir Julian Huxley. Arguing, like the others, that physics and evolution have demonstrated the underlying unity of nature, Huxley embraced a strongly monist perspective that established a deep link between mind and matter. He then adopted a dual-aspect Spinozist ontology: “there exists one world stuff, which reveals material or mental properties according to the point of view” (1942: 140). The material was reality “from the outside”; the mental was “from within.” If we accept the continuity of mind and matter that science imposes,
then mind or something of the nature as mind must exist throughout the entire universe. This is, I believe, the truth. We may never be able to prove it, but it is the most economical hypothesis: it fits the facts much more simply … than one-sided idealism or one-sided materialism.
This is among the clearer and more unambiguous panpsychist statements of the early-twentieth-century scientists.
In fact the arguments of Huxley and the others mentioned above so closely link panpsychism with the scientific worldview that one is inclined to see panpsychism not as a usurper of mechanism but rather as a logical extension of it. All but the most dogmatic critic must allow for at least the possibility that matter itself possesses a mind-like dimension or aspect. On the one hand, such a quality of matter may ultimately be deemed “objective” in some empirical sense, and thus confirmable through the methodologies of science—though perhaps in dramatically revised form. If such is the case, then science may eventually reach a conclusion that undermines its own original mechanistic presumptions.
On the other hand, perhaps something of a Kuhnian paradigm shift will be required before widespread acceptance of panpsychism occurs; this indeed seems to be the more likely alternative. In such a case, the very same physical phenomena will be viewed in a new light—as possessing (perhaps) both mechanical and mental aspects. The mind-like aspects of matter, though, would seem to have no conventional scientific consequences, and hence such a shift would appear to be unlike those which have occurred in the past few centuries of Western thought. One would have to go back to the origins of the mechanistic worldview itself, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to find a comparable shift in thinking.
In “Gene and Organism” (1953), the zoologist Sewall Wright, then president of the American Society of Naturalists, takes up Whitehead’s and Agar’s proposal that the concept of the organism should apply to all structures of matter. He defines an organism as any structure in which interrelated parts communicate and cohere in a persistent and self-regulatory manner. He then notes that the concept applies not only to plants and animals, but to human society, and even—anticipating Gaia theory—to the Earth’s biosystem as a whole:
[T]he entire array of plants and animals and peripherally the soil and waters of a given region [constitute] an interdependent self-regulatory system, with considerable persistence. … Since regions [of the earth] are connected, the entire biota and peripherally the surface of the earth form one great organism. (7)
This is one of the few acknowledgments since the time of Fechner that the Earth may be considered as a single organic entity. Furthermore, says Wright, not only the Earth, but the solar system and the universe as a whole each qualify as organisms. At the other end of the scale, atoms and molecules are to be considered organisms; subatomic particles are questionable—not having parts, as he believes—but he feels that their “vibratory character” and persistence put them in the same general category.
As to the question of mind, Wright again invokes an argument by non-emergence, showing that mind must exist both in single-celled organisms and in their constituent parts: “If we are not at some point to postulate the abrupt origin of mind, mind must be traced to the genes, which presumably means to nucleo-protein molecules.” (13) This has implications for humans because it entails that “our own apparently unified stream of consciousness is somehow a fusion of the minds of the cells” of our bodies. Wright ultimately concurs with Eddington and Jeans that “the essential nature of all reality is that of mind” (16), though he does acknowledge that his is more of a pluralistic idealism: “reality consists primarily of a multiplicity of minds”—a critical issue from the panpsychist perspective.
Wright continued to elaborate on his panpsychist views over the subsequent 20 years. In an article published in The Monist in 1964, for example, he explicitly argues for “dual-aspect or monistic panpsychism.” He presents a hierarchy of mind in which each level in the chain of being is enminded, and participates in higher-order mind: “The very fact of interaction, at any level, implies … that minds are not entirely private. … They [also] exist as components of a more comprehensive mind.” (1964: 284) In a contribution to Cobb and Griffin’s 1977 compilation Mind in Nature, titled “Panpsychism and Science,” he reiterates the same themes and, with admirable clarity, places even more emphasis on the problem of emergence: “Emergence of mind from no mind at all is sheer magic.” (1977: 82) Wright asserts that dual-aspect panpsychism is the only logically consistent position.
Several other scientists began speaking out on panpsychism in the 1960s and the 1970s. In The Nature of Life (1961), C. H. Waddington discusses approvingly the ideas of Haldane mentioned above. Once again citing evolutionary continuity, Waddington asks:
Are we not forced to conclude that even in the simplest inanimate things there is something which belongs to the same realm of being as self-awareness? … Something must go on in the simplest inanimate things which can be described in the same language as would be used to describe our self-awareness. (121)
The biologist Bernhard Rensch published about half a dozen pieces arguing for a panpsychic theory of mind. In Evolution above the Species Level (1960) he reiterates the evolutionist line that “because of [a] lack of any serious evolutionary gap” one cannot limit mental abilities to the higher organisms. The evolutionary ancestry of living organisms represents a “gapless series of phylogenetic transformations” (334) in which at no point can we logically envision the sudden appearance of psychic abilities; “it is not very probable that in the continuous process of transformation entirely new laws of psychic parallelism [i.e. a mental aspect of things] should have suddenly emerged.” On Rensch’s view, the defining mental characteristic is sensation; he attributes it not only to all animals but also to plants, owing to the blurring of categories at the micro-organismal level. Even the gap between living and non-living systems is illusory:
Here again it is difficult to assume a sudden origin of first psychic elements somewhere in this gradual ascent from nonliving to living systems. It would not be impossible to ascribe “psychic” components to the realm of inorganic systems … . (352)
This “hylopsychic” view, Rensch claims, is supported by cognition theory and atomic physics. He concludes that “a hylopsychic concept is well in accord with many findings and facts of the natural sciences, and … is possibly the most suitable basis for a universal philosophy” (355).
In 1971 Rensch began referring to his system as panpsychistic identism. He generalized the conventional identity theory of mind, attributing “protopsychical” qualities to all levels of material organization, and asserting that “all ‘matter’ is protopsychical in character” (298). Here Rensch begins to treat the subject more systematically. He offers ten nominal facts in support of his thesis: (1) The only reality of which we are aware is that of “experienced phenomena.” (2) Dualism is obviously false, and mind and body are an indivisible unity—a fact supported by numerous thinkers throughout history. (3) Phylogenetic development is gapless, and there is no point at which any psychical element could suddenly emerge. (4) The same process occurs in individual development, i.e., from single-celled egg to fetus to person. (5) Sudden emergence of an interactive psychic quality would violate the conservation of energy, or at least introduce an inconsistency in it. (6) Life is rare throughout the universe, and to conjecture the sudden appearance of mind is “more hypothetical” than to presume it present from the beginning. (7) Matter is really just “complexes of energy,” and hence amenable to mind-like qualities. (8) Human consciousness arises from chemo-physical brain processes, and thus it is reasonable to believe that the “molecules, atoms, and elementary particles involved are protopsychical in character.” (9) Fetal cell tissue is capable of developing into any organ, including the brain, and hence all cells have the ability to yield mind. (10) “It is impossible to point to any fact which would prove that matter is not protopsychical in character.” (299–301) Such facts, individually, may not be compelling, but for Rensch the overall picture clearly supports a form of panpsychism.
In a 1972 article titled “Spinoza’s Identity Theory and Modern Biophilosophy” Rensch compares his views to those of Spinoza, in whom he found the philosophical basis for panpsychistic identism. Then in 1977 Rensch presented five arguments for his system; four of these were reiterations from 1971, and to these he added the fact that since DNA molecules can transmit inherited psychic characteristics from generation to generation, the molecules themselves must naturally have a protopsychic nature.
Rensch’s work is notable because he sought detailed empirical, scientific evidence of a panpsychist universe. This, however, is arguably an impossible task, in light of the intrinsic nature of mental experience and the apparent causal closure of the physical world.6 Perhaps the only such route to panpsychism can be through a detailed understanding of the physiology of human consciousness. If, for example, a basis for our mental experience can be found in certain objective yet universal criteria (such as the quantum collapse theory of Hameroff and Penrose; see below), that could conceivably serve as an objective basis for panpsychism. Apart from such approaches, one is left largely with analogical and metaphysical arguments.
Gregory Bateson researched and wrote on an impressively wide range of subjects, including biology, anthropology, psychology, cybernetic theory, and natural philosophy. A contrarian to the trend of increasing specialization, he was uniquely qualified to comment on the interconnection between nature and mind. His vision of ecological philosophy and the relationship between organic wholes was a predecessor to the more fully developed eco-philosophies of Henryk Skolimowski, Arne Naess, and other environmental philosophers. And his awareness of the importance of concepts such as energy, feedback, and information led to new arguments for panpsychism, anticipating later developments in chaos theory and non-linear dynamics.7
Bateson’s inquiry into mind and nature initially brought him to a qualified version of panpsychism, though he seems to have ultimately abandoned it—for reasons that are not entirely clear. His first investigations in this area occurred in 1968. In an article titled “Conscious Purpose vs. Nature,” he expresses—like many other scientist-philosophers of the time—a belief that “the study of evolution might provide an explanation of mind” (35). Bateson’s first notable point is that the mind is essentially a natural phenomenon, bound up with the complexity of matter. He cites approvingly Lamarck’s view that “mental process must always have a physical representation” (36). Furthermore, he asserts that “wherever in the Universe we encounter [a certain degree] of complexity, we are dealing with mental phenomena.” In an attempt to elaborate this issue, Bateson observes that complex dynamic systems involve a process of feedback through which they are self-corrective. Examples of natural self-corrective systems include the individual organism, a society of organisms, and the self-sustaining ecosystem. All these levels of organization embody comparable system dynamics, and—by implication—should exhibit qualities of mind. To use his example, a forest ecosystem such as an “oak wood” is fundamentally like an individual organism, reflecting mind from within its bodily, material structure. Bateson refers to this kind of embodiment as “total mind”: “This entity [i.e. the individual organism] is similar to the oak wood and its controls are represented in the total mind, which is perhaps only a reflection of the total body.” (40) But he drops the matter there, only later following up on the implications.
Bateson’s 1972 compilation Steps to an Ecology of Mind includes the above-mentioned article and a number of other relevant pieces. Preeminent among these is “Form, Substance, and Difference,” originally published in 1970. It was in this article that Bateson first presented his famous but vague definition of information as “difference which makes a difference” (1970: 7). He attempts to relate the phenomenon of mind to feedback systems of energy circulation, deciding that it is “pure difference” that matters the most. He is emphatic that it is the circular feedback system itself that is important—that it is in precisely such a system that we observe what can rightly be called mind. On this point he is quite explicit:
The elementary cybernetic system with its messages in circuit is, in fact, the simplest unit of mind … . More complicated systems are perhaps more worthy to be called mental systems, but essentially this is what we are talking about. The unit which shows the characteristic of trial and error will be legitimately called a mental system. … We get a picture, then, of mind as synonymous with cybernetic system … . (1972: 459–460)
Notably, cybernetic feedback systems are ubiquitous in nature. They exist at all levels of organization, from molecular to galactic—anywhere parts interact and persistent structures appear. Therefore, cybernetic mind must be present throughout the universe. That, in fact, is Bateson’s conclusion: “we know that within Mind in the widest sense there will be a hierarchy of subsystems, any one of which we can call an individual mind.” His elaboration makes clear that such a conception of mind extends not only to small cybernetic systems but also to large-scale ones:
It means, you see, that I now localize something which I am calling “Mind” immanent in the large biological system—the ecosystem. Or, if I draw the system boundaries at a different level, then mind is immanent in the total evolution structure.
The individual mind is immanent but not only in the body. It is immanent also in pathways and messages outside the body; and there is a larger Mind of which the individual mind is only a subsystem. This larger Mind is comparable to God and is perhaps what some people mean by “God,” but it is still immanent in the total interconnected social system and planetary ecology.
It is not just a universal Mind, but mind at all levels of existence—true pluralistic panpsychism.8
Still, Bateson qualifies his view. The only exceptions for him are the fundamental atomic particles (“atomies”). These particles, being without parts, lack the dynamic feedback interrelationships that he sees as necessary for the process of mind. One of his footnotes is illuminating:
I do not agree with Samuel Butler, Whitehead, or Teilhard de Chardin that it follows from this mental character of the macroscopic world that the single atomies must have mental character or potentiality. I see the mental as a function only of complex relationship. (465)
He repeats the same view in his most philosophical work, Mind and Nature (1979: 103): “I do not believe that single subatomic particles are ‘minds’ in my sense because I do believe that mental process is always a sequence of interactions between parts. The explanation of mental phenomena must always reside in the organization and interaction of multiple parts.” But this is a relatively minor issue, and it doesn’t substantially affect Bateson’s generally panpsychist outlook.9
It is in Mind and Nature, however, that Bateson seems to back away from the panpsychist implications of his earlier writings—though, oddly, maintaining the same theory of mind, with presumably the same consequences. Mind still exists in the interrelationship and interaction between dynamic parts. But now this is only a necessary, not a sufficient condition for mind. He lays out six somewhat cryptic criteria for complex systems to possess mind, noting that any system meeting them must be designated as possessing mind.10 The criteria are very general and would seem to apply to any dynamic system whatsoever. Yet he excludes not only (as before) subatomic particles, but other physical systems too:
There are, of course, many systems which are made of many parts, ranging from galaxies to sand dunes to toy locomotives. Far be it from me to suggest that all of these are minds or contain minds or engage in mental process. The … galaxy may become part of the mental system which includes the astronomer and his telescope. But the objects do not become thinking subsystems in those larger minds. The [six] criteria are useful only in combination. (1979: 104)
This puzzling statement is potentially inconsistent with Bateson’s own standards. If the criteria are valid, they should be valid universally. They appear to occur in combination everywhere. He thus backs away from the logical implications of his own theory—implications he had accepted only a few years earlier. Whether he was ultimately able to construct a cohesive and consistent theory of mind remains an open question.
From the 1970s on, physicists became increasingly involved in the discussion about panpsychism. Evan Walker (1970), for example, argued that quantum processes in brain synapses account for a number of characteristics of consciousness, in particular its existence and non-physicality. He also remarks that, more generally, “consciousness may be associated with all quantum mechanical processes” (175). He closes the 1970 article with this observation:
[S]ince everything that occurs is ultimately the result of one or more quantum mechanical events, the universe is “inhabited” by an almost unlimited number of rather discrete conscious, usually nonthinking entities that are responsible for the detailed working of the universe.
It is a striking view, one that follows from Haldane’s related ideas of the 1930s.
Breaking from the evolutionary-continuity approach, Andrew Cochran (1971) argued for a similar perspective. In a rather ingenious argument, he observes that the elements of organic compounds—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen—have among the lowest atomic heat capacities, which corresponds to a high degree of “wave predominance” (as opposed to “particle predominance”), and hence are the most endowed with the qualities of consciousness. He suggests that “the quantum mechanical wave properties of matter are actually the conscious properties of matter,” and therefore “atoms and fundamental particles have a rudimentary degree of consciousness, volition, or self-activity” (236). These ideas would be reflected in the later work of David Bohm, Freeman Dyson, and other physicists.
Beginning in the early 1970s, the biologist Charles Birch wrote a series of essays (1971, 1972, 1974, 1994) and a book (1995) presenting a new interpretation of process philosophy, arguing for a panexperientialist form of panpsychism. His 1974 essay, for example, claims that panpsychism represents a form of evolutionary teleology in which the primordial psychic phenomena of atoms and molecules in the early universe foreshadowed the later appearance of mind and consciousness. And his 1994 speech presents six reasons for adopting the panexperientialist viewpoint: (1) Biology points away from crass mechanism. (2) The process view of true individuals as possessing experience makes intuitive sense. (3) Panexperientialism avoids the emergence category mistake. (4) The “doctrine of internal relations” suggests that true individuals possess unique experiential phenomena. (5) Computers and other mechanisms are not organisms, and thus are inherently limited in their ability to model consciousness. (6) The reality of subjectivity suggests that it has a fundamental place in the universe.
In Disturbing the Universe (1979), Freeman Dyson presents his views on a range of subjects, from physics and cosmology to politics and economics. In the penultimate chapter he examines mechanistic philosophy and the concept of the universe as a clockwork machine. He notes that, as one descends the ladder of complexity, things at first appear more mechanical, but then at the level of molecular physics this process reverses itself: “If we divide a DNA molecule into its component atoms, the atoms behave less mechanically than the molecule. If we divide an atom into nucleus and electrons, the electrons are less mechanical than the atom.” (248) At the quantum level the observer is intimately bound up with physical events, and thus “the laws [of physics] leave a place for mind in the description of every molecule” (249). The logical continuity of nature then presses us to accept that mind is present and active at all levels of existence:
In other words, mind is already inherent in every electron, and the processes of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call “chance” when they are made by electrons.
Dyson readily admitted that such a view is antithetical to conventional science. He cited Jacques Monod as typical of the conventional view, noting that Monod holds out “the deepest scorn” for such an “animist” conception of the world.11 But Dyson was unfazed. For him the “importance of mind in the scheme of things” is undeniable, whether one considers the role of mind in the electron or in a conception of the world-soul.
Chronologically speaking, Bohm’s writings of the 1980s were the next events of significance. I defer this discussion to the next section, which is dedicated to his work.
A brief word is warranted for Michael Lockwood’s 1989 book Mind, Brain, and the Quantum. Following the approach of Paul Churchland (discussed in chapter 9), Lockwood employs the methodology of phase-space analysis for his discussion of mind. He concludes that a form of the identity theory is true, one in which mind doesn’t reduce to matter but rather “represents the physical world as infused with intrinsic qualities which … constitute the basis of its causal powers and which include immediately introspectible qualities in their own right” (1989: 159).
Chalmers (1996), Seager (2001), and others have suggested that this view is in itself panpsychist. But Lockwood is very evasive in his terminology. At one point he argues for “a conception of the world as, in some sense, a sum of perspectives” (1989: 177), and later adds “I wish to argue that, in consciousness, that intrinsic nature makes itself manifest” (238). But it is not clear whether such a view qualifies as panpsychism, as he defines it. Other passages seem contradictory. He claims that consciousness comprises only a portion of these intrinsic qualities: “The qualities of which we are immediately aware, in consciousness, precisely are some at least of the intrinsic qualities … specifically, states and processes within our own brains.” (159) He then speaks negatively of the panpsychist view in his discussion of unsensed qualities: the “major advantage of holding that phenomenal qualities can exist unsensed” is that “it enables one to halt this slide into panpsychism” (170). And none of his later works suggests anything like an endorsement. If Lockwood’s position is a panpsychist one, it is a very tenuous and vague interpretation.
The most recent articulation of a scientific approach to panpsychism, again from quantum theory, was introduced by medical scientist Stuart Hameroff. Working in conjunction with mathematician Roger Penrose, Hameroff developed a theory of human consciousness that was centered on the coordinated collapse of superposed quantum conditions in the brain. Their various presentations of the theory (Hameroff 1994, Penrose 1994a, Hameroff and Penrose 1996, Hameroff 2009) indicate that quantum collapse might be associated with a “moment of experience” in the Whiteheadian sense. This, incidentally, is an interesting reversal of the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which consciousness causes quantum collapse. On the view of Hameroff and Penrose, precisely the opposite occurs: Collapse causes consciousness.
According to standard theory, atomic and sub-atomic particles appear to evolve into multiple simultaneous superposed states. When an act of measurement is performed, the condition of superposition collapses randomly into one of the states, which then appears as the actual state of the particle. At present there are conflicting views on whether reduction happens in reality or whether it is some kind of artificial or illusory phenomenon. Hameroff and Penrose take it as fact, and further suggest that it happens not merely upon measurement by a subjective observer but independently—as a spontaneous process that they call objective reduction (OR). They argue that certain microstructures of neurons—tubular skeletal structures called microtubules—serve as the sites for sustained quantum superposition. Microtubules also allow for a coordination between individual tubulin molecules that results in a large-scale “orchestrated OR” that may produce a unified, large-scale sense of consciousness. Large numbers of tubulin molecules coordinating their effects, and collapsing repeatedly on the order of every 0.5 to 5 milliseconds, are said to account for the apparently continuous stream of consciousness that we normally feel.
On the theory of Hameroff and Penrose, superposed states must be maintained until a quantum gravity threshold is reached; only at that point can OR, and thus conscious experience, take place. A system of fewer elements—fewer neurons, or fewer tubulin molecules—requires a longer, and therefore less likely, time in which to reach the threshold. Complex living organisms are ideal for the OR process, since they possess large numbers of quantum-coherent structures.
Hameroff and Penrose’s analysis is primarily focused on the brain and its neurons, but they emphasize that such a process could appear anywhere microtubules are present. Since they are universally present in all living cells, from animals to plants to one-celled life forms, all living beings would presumably experience some degree of consciousness. Fewer tubulin molecules, though, would imply a longer period of time between state collapses, and thus a longer time between moments of experience.12
Hameroff independently proceeded to further develop the philosophical implications of the OR theory, linking this process of quantum collapse to a realization of “proto-conscious” events occurring ubiquitously in the quantum realm (1998a, 1998b, 2009) and suggesting that “perhaps panpsychists are in some way correct and components of mental processes are fundamental, like mass, spin or charge” (1998a: 121). This would seem to be the logical extension of the Hameroff-Penrose theory, although Penrose seems reluctant to endorse it. He apparently holds that only certain collapse conditions, namely those occurring upon reaching a quantum gravity threshold, count as conscious; and yet it is hard to see what is ontologically unique, with respect to mind, about this particular mode of collapse. And even on this view, a panpsychist interpretation is still possible. Any physical system has at least a statistical likelihood of sustaining a superposed state until the critical threshold is reached. Even a single subatomic particle has a small but finite chance of sustaining superposition until OR occurs: “As OR could, in principle, occur ubiquitously within many types of inanimate media, it may seem to imply a form of panpsychism.” (Hameroff and Penrose 1996: 38) Indeed it is, with the qualification that the incidents of psyche are, for simple particles, extremely rare: “a single superposed electron would spontaneously reduce its state … only once in a period longer than the present age of the universe.” Other theoretical estimates indicate a somewhat more frequent occurrence, such as once every 10 million to 100 million years (Penrose 1994b: 332, 340). Still, a rare psychic event is psyche nonetheless.
Hameroff (1998b) adds that his theory “suggests that consciousness may involve a self-organizing quantum state reduction process occurring at the Planck scale [10–33 centimeters],” and that “in a panexperiential Platonic view consistent with modern physics, quantum spin networks encode proto-conscious ‘funda-mental’ experience.” With many ongoing developments in quantum theory in general, such a view of mind is likely to undergo continual refinement for the foreseeable future.
The final word in this section goes to John Wheeler. Along with Bateson and Bohm, he was among the first to suggest that information was a potential ultimate ground of reality—see his 1994 essay “It from Bit.” Wheeler’s acceptance of the quantum as a fundamental principle of the universe suggests that quantum collapses, driven by some kind of observer-process, are universally present. Given the speculative connection between quantum collapse and conscious observation, it is natural to consider the universe as filled with elemental conscious events. Wheeler suggests (1994: 307) that “we may someday have to enlarge the scope of what we mean by a ‘who’”—that is, a “who” as any observer or system that induces a quantum collapse. Observing minds could in principle be present even throughout the so-called inanimate realm. A few years before his death, he all but admitted as much: “I find it hard to draw a line between the conscious observer and the inanimate one.” (2002)
Like many other physicists, David Bohm (1917–1992) had a longstanding interest in developing the philosophical implications of quantum physics. He wrote numerous pieces on the philosophy of physics, and seems to have been especially interested in the process of mind. More than any other scientist-philosopher of the twentieth century, Bohm developed and openly endorsed a form of panpsychism that was grounded in fundamental physical laws—in his case, laws of quantum mechanics.
Bohm’s interest in panpsychism began as early as 1957. In his book Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, he made just one passing reference to the concept, in the midst of a discussion of his idea of strong emergence—that “new qualities and new laws” can appear because of the “universal process of becoming” (1957: 163) that dominates the universe. Bohm noted that processes of living matter do not fundamentally differ from those of non-living matter: “[W]hen one analyzes processes taking place in inanimate matter over long enough periods of time, one finds a similar behaviour [to living processes]. Only here the process is so much slower … .” Such a standpoint recalls the arguments of Royce, examined earlier in this volume.
Bohm edged closer to panpsychism in Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980). He states that quantum theory presents a fundamental challenge to mechanism because it exhibits radically discontinuous or quantized behavior, simultaneously wave-like and particle-like properties, and extreme non-locality (a phenomenon in which coupled particles form an instantaneous relationship over any distance whatsoever, leading to a form of communication that exceeds the speed of light). Indeed, he notes that the structure of the universe “is much more reminiscent of how the organs constituting living beings are related, than it is of how parts of a machine interact” (175).
Bohm goes on to argue for a form of neutral monism wherein “both inanimate matter and life [are comprehended] on the basis of a single ground, common to both” (193)—something he designates as the “implicate order.” Repeating his earlier observation, he comments that “even inanimate matter maintains itself in a continual process similar to the growth of plants.” In the same way that this common ground unites living and non-living, so too does it unite mind and non-mind: “the implicate order applies both to matter and to consciousness” (196). Bohm sees both sets of dualities as false and fundamentally mistaken. Consequently, he argues, there is a sense in which all matter is both alive and conscious. In his words, “in a wide range of … important respects, consciousness and matter in general are basically the same order (i.e. the implicate order as a whole)” (208).
Something approaching panpsychism is a natural consequence of such a view. Consider memory, for example. “The recurrence and stability of our own memory … is thus brought about as part of the very same process that sustains the recurrence and stability in the manifest order of matter in general.” The temporally persistent structures of mass-energy that we see around us reflect an ongoing process of recollection by the implicate order, and thus are aspects of mentality.
Bohm explained his theory in less technical terms in a 1982 interview in the journal ReVision, where he considered the possibility of a deeper ground underlying both the explicate and the implicate order. When asked if this ground is self-aware, he replied “Yes … since it contains both matter and mind, it would have in some sense to be aware.” (1982: 37) Repeating again his view that “thought and matter have a great similarity of order,” he stated that “in a way, nature is alive, as Whitehead would say, all the way to the depths. And intelligent. Thus it is both mental and material, as we are.” (39)
In March of 1985, Bohm gave an important speech at a meeting of the American Society for Psychical Research. Published under the title “A New Theory of the Relationship of Mind and Matter,”13 it combined a direct endorsement of panpsychism with Bohm’s first explicit use of the concept of participation as related to a new worldview. Beginning with the panpsychist aspect, there are several passages in which he clearly asserts that mind is found in all systems that contain “information content”—that is, in all dynamically coherent particles or subsystems. This new emphasis on information recalled the work of Bateson, though Bohm did not specifically cite him.
Recognizing that the term ‘information’ implies both a meaning and a consciousness able to perceive that meaning, Bohm notes first of all that, on his interpretation of quantum theory, all physical systems embody information. On his view, “the notion of information [is] something that need not belong only to human consciousness, but that may indeed be present, in some sense, even in inanimate systems of atoms and electrons” (1986: 124–125). Because of the “basic similarity between the quantum behavior of a system … and the behavior of mind” (130), Bohm argues that mind and matter are intimately connected at all levels of being:
[T]he mental and the material are two sides of one overall process. … There is one energy that is the basis of all reality. … There is never any real division between mental and material sides at any stage of the overall process. (129)
The conclusion is a pluralistic panpsychism that reaches up and down the ontological hierarchy:
I would suggest that both [mind and body] are essentially the same. … That which we experience as mind … will in a natural way ultimately reach the level of the wavefunction and of the “dance” of the particles. There is no unbridgeable gap or barrier between any of these levels. … It is implied that, in some sense, a rudimentary consciousness is present even at the level of particle physics. It would also be reasonable to suppose an indefinitely greater kind of consciousness that is universal and that pervades the entire process [of the universe]. (131)
For Bohm, this panpsychism fits together with a world described as fundamentally participatory in nature: “the basic notion is participation rather than interaction” (113). As he sees it, matter is participatory because of the quantum nature of atomic particles. These particles, even if one assumes them (as Bohm did) to be point-like entities, are seen to exist probabilistically: An electron in an atom has a high chance of existing in its so-called proper orbit, but it also has a non-zero chance of existing outside that orbit, across the room, or even across the universe. Each particle exists, in a very real sense, everywhere in the universe at once. Because of this, every particle is in contact with every other particle.14 All particles thus “dance” together, to a greater or lesser degree. We can clearly see this phenomenon in superconductivity—wherein “electrons are thus participating in a common action based on a common pool of information” (122)—or in non-local experiments. But even where it is not apparent, this interconnection is always present. Echoing a view as old as Anaxagoras, Bohm says “the whole of the universe is in some way enfolded in everything and … each thing is enfolded in the whole” (114).
On this view of reality, the objectivist stance of an observer dispassionately making observations is fundamentally inadequate. Interaction becomes participation:
[S]uch a complex process of participation evidently goes far beyond what is meant by a merely mechanical interaction. It is therefore not really correct to call what happens a measurement. … Rather, it is a mutual transformation of both systems … . (124)
Each system changes the other—an idea reaching back to Hartshorne, Schiller, and even Campanella. Bohm concludes, like Wheeler, that
the mechanical notion of an interactive universe is seen to be inadequate. It is in need of replacement by the notion of an objectively participative universe that includes our own participation as a special case. (126)
In 1990 Bohm reissued the 1986 article with substantial changes—confusingly, under the same title. In the new version he clarifies his philosophical terminology without abandoning his central view. He states, for example, that “quantum theory … implies that the particles of physics have certain primitive mind-like qualities … (though of course, they do not have consciousness)” (1990: 272). He is clearly refining his ideas, no longer being satisfied to attribute “rudimentary consciousness” to elementary particles.
For Bohm, then, participation occurs both within the material realm, down to the quantum level, and also between the processes of mind that occur at all levels of being. He describes “the essential mode of relationship of all these [levels of mind] as participation” (284), a fact that applies equally to the human scale and to the atomic scale: “For the human being, all of this implies a thoroughgoing wholeness, in which mental and physical sides participate very closely in each other.” Such an ontological outlook may be best described as a form of participatory panpsychism.
Bohm’s last significant philosophical work, co-written with Basil Hiley, was Undivided Universe (1993). Though primarily a technical work in quantum physics, it included a well-developed philosophical analysis that elaborated on earlier themes. The philosophical conclusions at the end of the book were taken largely verbatim from Bohm (1990) and so did not add anything substantially new.