Let me reiterate a point I made at the beginning of this book: Panpsychism is a meta-theory of mind, a theory about theories. It is a statement about theories of mind, not a theory of mind in itself. It claims only that all things, however defined, possess some mind-like quality; it says nothing, per se, about the nature of that mind, or of the specific relationship between matter and mind. This point lies behind many of the criticisms directed at panpsychist philosophies. The view that panpsychism “crumbles to nothing” (Humphrey) when pressed to do explanatory work is a consequence of the lack of an understanding of what it is. It doesn’t claim, and it has no obligation, to provide a positive theory of mind. Therefore it cannot be criticized on that account. Of course, a full and complete conception of the mind would do precisely that, and it should always be our ultimate goal. But arguments for panpsychism stand or fall on their own merits, whether or not accompanied by a detailed thesis of the mind. And I emphasize that any articulation of panpsychism, even if incomplete, has value in itself; any such view carries with it broad metaphysical and axiological implications.
Serious opposing arguments have been, historically, very rare. Perhaps the first philosophical counter-argument came from Thomas Aquinas circa 1260 AD. As I discussed in chapter 2, Aquinas argued against hylozoism by redefining the concept of life. For him life was the power of self-generating motion, something that only plants and animals possessed. Clearly, of course, one can rule out hylozoism or panpsychism by appropriate definition, but to do so is to avoid the issue by failing to address those lifelike or mind-like properties that may be shared by all things.
From Aquinas we must jump some 500 years to Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790). The passage cited in chapter 4 demonstrates that Kant ultimately rejected hylozoism. He claimed that “the possibility of living matter cannot even be thought; its concept involves a contradiction, because lifelessness (inertia) constitutes the essential character of matter.” Kant too dodged the issue, relying on the etymological definition of inertia as inactivity. He appears to have viewed matter’s inability to internally change its “quantity of motion” as indicative of a lack of vital power. As to something more akin to panpsychism, Kant’s suggestive comment in the Critique of Pure Reason leaves open—but unresolved—the possibility of a panpsychist ontology. One might therefore conclude that his opposition to hylozoism was stronger than his opposition to a form of panpsychism.
Apart from the few remarks cited above, one struggles to find cogent critiques of panpsychism from historical figures. Panpsychism was generally viewed sympathetically, and few saw a need to issue detailed criticisms. When they did, it was typically in the form of a passing condemnation or incidental disparaging comment. Even today, we frequently find trivial or inconsequential critiques that lack all pretense of serious argumentation. However, once we set aside the jokes, superficial remarks, and ad hominem attacks,1 we can distinguish at least seven serious counter-arguments to panpsychism: the combination problem, brute emergence, inconclusive analogy, supervenience, epiphenomenalism, and irrelevance. Below I offer a relatively detailed discussion of the first one—the combination problem—and then cite some representative views for the others.
For centuries it has been recognized that there is a potentially serious problem if one considers the possibility that mind exists simultaneously at both higher and lower scales of being. If, for example, the cells that make up an animal are presumed to be sentient or conscious in any fashion, how do the minds of the cells relate to, or perhaps constitute, the mind of the whole organism? If the lesser minds are distinct, why are we not aware of competing subjects within ourselves? If the lesser minds constitute or compose “our” mind, how, exactly, does that work? It seems impossible to imagine, for example, how a billion individually sentient neurons could ever add up to our complex but integrated mentality, or how those same neurons could yield the qualitative sensation of the smell of a rose or the taste of chocolate, or how they could give rise to a singular and unified sense of consciousness at all.
And there are other issues. Our neural cells, for example, are themselves composed of smaller structures, including molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles. Does each level of organization possess its own mind? If so, then any complex being is a nested hierarchy of vast mental complexity. Leibniz’s monadology proposed something very close to this view. Nietzsche also believed this to be the case; he held that “our body is but a social structure composed of many souls.”2 And furthermore, does the nesting process continue “upward” to higher orders of being, to a social mind, to a global mind, or to a cosmic mind? Is the universe a vast cosmopolis of enminded beings?
Needless to say, such a situation poses, if not a problem, then at least a very large question for any panpsychist. Perhaps the first to recognize the question, and to criticize panpsychism on the basis of it, was Ralph Cudworth. His magnum opus, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), attacked the materialist “hylozoick atheists” of the day, among whom Spinoza was the leading culprit:
[T]his hylozoick atheism was long since, and in the first emersion thereof, solidly confuted by the atomic atheists, after this manner: if matter as such had life, perception, and understanding belonging to it, then of necessity must every atom or smallish particle thereof, be a distinct percipient by itself. From whence it will follow that there could not possibly be any such men and animals as now are, compounded out of them, but every man and animal would be a heap of innumerable percipients, and have innumerable perceptions and intellections. Whereas it is plain that there is but one life and understanding, one soul or mind, one perceiver or thinker in everyone.
And to say that these innumerable particles of matter do all confederate together—that is to make every man and animal, to be a multitude or commonwealth of percipients and persons, as it were, clubbing together—is a thing so absurd and ridiculous, that one would wonder, the Hylozoists should not choose to recant that their fundamental error of the life of matter, than seek shelter and sanctuary for the same, under such a Proteus.
For though voluntary agents and persons, may many of them, resign up their wills to one, and by that means have all but as it were one artificial will, yet can they not possibly resign up their sense and understanding too, so as to have all but one artificial life, sense, and understanding. Much less could this be done by senseless atoms, or particles of matter supposed to be devoid of all consciousness or animality.3
Less than a century later, Denis Diderot acknowledged the problem but found it to be no real obstacle to establishing the existence of a collective mind. Referring to a swarm of bees, he wrote that “the cluster is a being, an individual, an animal of sorts.” Tight interaction—“continual action and reaction”—is sufficient to establish the unity of the collective mass. “It seems to me that contact, in itself, is enough.”4
In one of his early writings, Kant made a passing reference to the combination problem. Reflecting on Leibniz’s panpsychism, he wrote:
Everybody recognizes [that] even if a power of obscure conception [i.e. perception or intelligence] is conceded to … matter, it does not follow thence that matter itself possesses power of conception, because many substances of that kind, united into a whole, can yet never form a thinking unit. (1766/1900: 54)
The same thought recurs in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Anticipating a later and better-known statement by William James, Kant argues that material composites are possible and occur via simple aggregation, but that such aggregation is not possible with mental substances:
Every composite substance is an aggregate of several substances, and the action of a composite, or whatever inheres in it as thus composite, is an aggregate of several actions or accidents, distributed among the plurality of the substances … . But with thoughts, as internal accidents belonging to a thinking being, it is different. For suppose it be the composite that thinks: then every part of it would be a part of the thought, and only all of them taken together would contain the whole thought. But this cannot consistently be maintained. For representations (for instance, the single words of a verse), distributed among different beings, never make up a whole thought (a verse), and it is therefore impossible that a thought should inhere in what is essentially composite. It is therefore possible only in a single substance, which, not being an aggregate of many, is absolutely simple. (A352)
Mental combination, it seems, is impossible, on Kant’s view.
James is well known for addressing the combination problem, and for his evolving opinion of it. Early in his career, he viewed it as an insurmountable problem, at least for any “mind stuff” theory of consciousness. The very notion of lower-order mental subjects, or mind-atoms, compounding into more complex minds is, he says, “logically unintelligible” because such entities would have to combine upon some non-mental substrate.5 James’ mature thinking, however, reversed that view. In A Pluralistic Universe (1909) he dedicates an entire chapter to “the compounding of consciousness.” In it he recalls his earlier thinking with disdain: “Twelve thoughts, each of a single word, are not the self-same mental thing as one thought of the whole sentence. The higher thoughts, I insisted [earlier], are psychic units, not compounds … . The theory of combination, I was forced to conclude is thus untenable … .” (189) “For many years I held rigorously to this view,” he writes. Now, though, he realizes that it “is almost intolerable” and that it “makes the universe discontinuous.” (206) If analytic logic drives one to believe in isolated minds, “so much the worse for logic.” Hence James’ final view: “[T]he self-compounding of mind in its smaller and more accessible portions seems a certain fact … . Mental facts do function both singly and together, at once.” (292) Composition of minds is an evident truth; any so-called combination problem doesn’t exist.
But the issue retains force even today. Calling it the “derivation problem,” McGinn (2006) argues that, although physical or spatial combination yields many possibilities, “there is no analogous notion of combination for qualia,” and “you can’t put qualia end-to-end” (96). Thus, he says, “we cannot envisage a small number of experiential primitives yielding a rich variety of phenomenologies; we have to postulate richness all the way down, more or less.” And that, McGinn implies, is unacceptable. Lycan makes a similar point: High-level mental properties “must be a function of the mental properties inhering in their subjects’ ultimate components.” But we cannot even imagine how this might work:
In what way could … a mental aggregate consist of a host of smaller mentations? Is it that some of my ultimate components are experiencing some of those very same mental states, and when enough of them do, I myself do? Or are the mental state of my components little, primitive states that somehow together add up to macroscopic states such as the ones I am in? Either alternative is hard to imagine … . (2011: 362)
Perhaps so. But then again, all theories of mind and body yield outcomes that are currently “hard to imagine.” It is true that the panpsychist needs to explain the emergence of complex mind from simpler mind. But, as I stated earlier, this emergence problem is much more tractable than the miraculous, brute emergence of mind from no-mind. Our current concepts in physics, in fact, give us some models by which to conceive panpsychist emergence—for example, field theory, in which distinct fields combine, overlap, and sum up to larger, more complex fields. Dynamical systems theory, with its notions of deterministic chaos and attractor patterns, may also be useful here. And quantum physics may provide yet other options, including superposition. Any of these is preferable to imagining the unimaginable: mind, consciousness, and experience emerging from that which is utterly mindless.
Is brute emergence so inconceivable after all? To this most difficult question, Edwards (1972) has a “simple answer”—essentially, reductive materialism combined with epiphenomenalism. The strong or brute emergentist need simply claim that matter, at some sufficient level of complexity, causes the sudden appearance of mind, but that this same mind has no causal effect on the material substrate from which it arose. “Granting that awareness is not a physical phenomenon, it does not follow that it cannot be produced by conditions that are purely physical.” (Edwards 1972: 27) But Edwards doesn’t say what these special and unique conditions are. And his theory naturally implies that human minds are epiphenomenal as well—something that few philosophers seem willing to accept.
Popper (1977) also accepts brute emergence. Solidity, he says, radically emerges when a liquid is cooled. Hence radical emergence is no miracle at all. And when a child grows into a adult, its mind correspondingly grows in complexity, but this doesn’t imply that the food the child eats, and uses to build its brain, is itself enminded or proto-mental. The unminded food particles, when properly integrated into a nervous system, do in fact yield consciousness. Hence, once again, brute emergence is clearly possible. But of course, all this is just an assertion: It must happen, and therefore it does. This is question-begging to the extreme.
As I noted in chapter 9, Humphrey too accepts the thesis of radical emergence. Feedback loops, he says, have an all-or-nothing quality, and the nervous system is a kind of complex feedback loop. “Hence, we may guess that, as the sensory loops grew shorter in the course of evolution and their fidelity increased, there must have been a threshold where consciousness quite suddenly emerged.” (1992: 205–206) A “guess,” however, is not a rational argument. It would take much more theorizing, backed by considerable indirect empirical evidence, before such a thesis could be accepted.
Also known as the “not mental” objection, this is, in essence, a response to both the Continuity argument and the Russellian argument. It was first raised by Edwards; continuity panpsychists, he says, attempt to make a comparison between organic and inorganic things, but “the analogies are altogether inconclusive” (1972: 28). Edwards grants that such things as atomic structure, hierarchical organization, persistence, and laws of physics may be common to all material objects, but he argues that we have no reason to associate them with mental properties.
A similar argument is discussed by Seager (1995) and Lycan (2011), who cast it in terms of intrinsic natures. Lycan briefly cites two related objections. First, “what grounds the assumption that the ultimate constituents of the physical world must have intrinsic properties at all?” (360) Perhaps, Lycan suggests, extrinsic relationships and properties are all there are to such particles. Second, even if we decide that they must have some intrinsic nature, why should we assume that it is mental, or conscious? The reason, panpsychists would say, is that our own firsthand experience of reality suggests that intrinsic natures are experiential. Mind and experience are the most basic facts of human existence, and physicalism still must account for them. At present, it cannot do so. It is plausible that physicalism is inherently unable to account for mind and experience, since it has access only to the exterior of things—their properties and relationships. And yet we know, on the “inside,” that mind exists. Our inner nature certainly seems to be mental, and it is likely that the same holds for, at least, the higher animals. And since we cannot justify stopping anywhere along the phylogenetic chain, the logical conclusion is that all intrinsic natures are mental.
Edwards states that there can be no empirical evidence for panpsychism, and that therefore it is unverifiable and non-scientific. “It would probably be pointless,” he writes, “to try to ‘prove’ that panpsychism is a meaningless doctrine.” (1972: 28) McGinn (1999: 96–97) concurs, casting it in terms of a “no signs” objection: “regular matter gives no sign of having such mental states: things simply do not behave as if they are in pain or want a drink of water.” Furthermore,
physicists have discovered no reason to attribute sensations and thoughts to atoms and stars. They get on perfectly well without supposing matter in general to have mind ticking away inside it. If electrons have mental properties, these properties make no difference to the laws that govern electrons.
Elsewhere (2006: 94) McGinn reiterates the point: “Do the [experiential] properties of elementary particles (or molecules or cells) contribute to their causal properties? If so, how come physics (and chemistry and biology) never have to take account of their contribution?” Churchland (1997: 213) remarks that “modern atomism’s experimental and explanatory successes” are vast and well documented, whereas the success of panpsychism “is approximately zero.” Modern science can explain a wide range of physical phenomena: chemical elements, the formation of stars, evolution, and the functioning of the nervous system. “At present panpsychism can do none of these things. Not even one. … No pressing explanatory job exists for it to do.” And likewise for Lycan: “panpsychism’s most obvious liability is the absence of scientific evidence” (2011: 361).
In principle, this is little different than arguing that neuro-chemical transactions in the brain are sufficient to explain human behavior, and that we therefore have no need to posit the existence of a human mind.6 At a physical level, brain action can—theoretically—account for everything we do. In humans, it is unreasonable to demand “tests” or “signs” of subjectivity, yet it exists nonetheless. There is no compelling reason why the same could not hold for all objects in the universe.
McGinn asks “Are the [experiential] properties of particles supervenient on their non-[experiential] properties or not?” This is the standard view of reductive materialism—that mind supervenes on the brain. Either way that a panpsychist answers this question, says McGinn, he runs into trouble. If experiential properties are not supervenient, then two particles could be physically identical and yet have radically different experiential states. But this leads back to the “no signs” problem, and it suggests epiphenomenalism (see below). If particle minds do supervene on their physical properties, “it will be hard to avoid accepting that there is emergence there—that combining the [non-experiential] properties in that way gives rise to the [experiential] properties” (2006: 94–95).
But the panpsychist can reply that there is no true “giving rise” to experientiality at all; it is there all along. The emergence that does occur is the soft variety—that of complex mentality arising from simpler mentality. This much is acknowledged, but it is also a much more tractable theoretical problem than the brute emergence alternative. The supervenience relationship is arguably irrelevant for the panpsychist, particularly in its dual-aspect forms.
“A more worrying difficulty for the panpsychist,” according to Lycan (2011: 362), “is the threat of epiphenomenalism.” Physics is causally closed, and thus any putative atomic minds have no causal role to play. “They are brought into existence only to do nothing at all.” This is an a priori “no signs” problem—not only are there no signs of mentality, there can never be any such signs. The panpsychist, of course, can simply respond that epiphenomenalism holds for all minds, human and atom alike. This may be distasteful to some, but there is no logical problem in defending such a view. And it finds support in neurochemistry, which seems to have no need for a causal role for the mind.
Or—and this applies to the “not testable” objection as well—there may in fact be signs that we don’t yet recognize or acknowledge. Quantum indeterminacy may be one such sign; chaotic behavior in dynamical systems may be another. Or, as Royce pointed out long ago, the very slow nature of the signs may mislead us into thinking that they do not exist. Mind may have a causal role all throughout nature, and we may simply overlook the form and character of that causality.
Some ask, What’s the point of positing atomic minds if we do not, and cannot, have any conception whatsoever of what they are like? McGinn (2006: 95) raises a related question: “What kinds of [experiential] properties do particles have?” Presuming that atomic minds somehow contribute to or compose our high-level mental states, “they are going to have to be rich and wide-ranging: not just sensory states but also emotional states, conative states, and cognitive states.” But such things are inconceivable, he says. We cannot simply postulate their existence. “This is a game without rules and without consequences.” Lycan (2011: 363) makes a similar point: “What sorts of mental properties in particular do the smallest things have?” To presume the existence of sensory or intentional states is “ludicrous.” “How could [an atom] see, hear, or smell anything? What would be the contents of its beliefs or desires?”
But once again, we need not be able to characterize or relate to these other mental states in order to believe that they exist. This, of course, was Nagel’s point long ago (1974): that one need have no conception of what it is like to be a bat, and to echo-locate, in order to accept the very high likelihood that there is something it is like to be a bat. What is it like to be a rock, or an atom? Perhaps we can never know. Perhaps we are dealing with fundamental epistemological limitations. But this doesn’t preclude arguing that it may be like something, if unimaginably slight, to be such things.
In sum, these counter-arguments generally raise valid and important concerns, but none of them is insurmountable. In large part, they are calls for details. In order for panpsychism to be more widely accepted, philosophers will have to articulate a clear and complete theory of the mind and justify its universal extent. They will have to delineate precisely which objects are enminded, and in what way, and why. If the process philosophers, for example, seek to deny mentality to aggregates and artificially constructed objects, they will have to have a coherent and comprehensible story of how truly integrated beings come to be, and how this existence entails enmindedness. More generally, panpsychist philosophers will have to clearly demonstrate the philosophic payoff—conceptual, metaphysical, ethical—of accepting the validity of such a view.
Not that all this is a guarantee of success. Some critics seem to be terminally dissatisfied. Either they have ruled out panpsychism a priori, and therefore no case, no matter how compelling, can win them over, or they make outrageous and impossible demands of the thesis. A good example of the latter is Churchland, who closes his short critique as follows:
Unless panpsychism constructs genuinely explicit theoretical proposals and testable hypotheses, and unless it achieves some systematic successes in experimental predictions and technological control, it will continue to appear to be what it probably is—a theoretical hangover from a less knowledgeable time. (1997: 212)
Is it reasonable to demand of any theory (or meta-theory) of mind that it yield “testable hypotheses,” “experimental prediction,” and “technological control”? Surely not. Such things apply only to mechanistic conceptions; if these are prerequisites for acceptable solutions, the space of possibilities becomes absurdly small.
When it comes to the mind, we are faced with an array of difficult propositions. Every theory (or meta-theory) has significant, unresolved problems, open issues, or distasteful implications. This alone is striking, given that the mind is the one thing in this universe with which we are most intimately acquainted—precisely because we are that thing. Matter is much more poorly understood; we know something of its extrinsic, functional, and structural nature, but really nothing more. We presume that there is nothing mental about matter, but this is a baseless presumption. The alleged causal closure of physics says nothing against experiential matter. Matter can follow all its usual deterministic or quantum laws without infringing on experiential or even intentional qualities. Epiphenomenalism may hold after all. Or, as I have argued elsewhere, the causal closure of the physical may be mirrored by the causal closure of the mental (Skrbina 2014: 240). And there are other possibilities.
In this chapter and the preceding eight chapters I have attempted to demonstrate something of the breadth and depth of panpsychist thought over the past 2,600 years. In the process, I have identified several distinct arguments in support of panpsychism:
All objects exhibit certain powers or abilities that can plausibly be linked to noetic qualities.
A common principle or substance exists in all things. In humans, it accounts for our soul or mind, and thus by extrapolation it infers mind in all things. This can also be expressed as a rejection of the problem of “drawing a line” somewhere, non-arbitrarily, between enminded and supposedly mindless objects.
The ordered, complex, and relatively persistent nature of physical things suggests the presence of an inherent mentality.
It is inconceivable that mind should emerge from a world in which no mind existed; therefore mind always existed, in even the simplest of structures. Also expressed as ex nihilo nihil fit, or “nothing in the cause that is not in the effect.” Sometimes called the “genetic” argument.
God is mind and spirit, and God is omnipresent, therefore mind and spirit are present in all things. Or: All things participate in God and thus have a share in spirit.
The ability of living systems to feel and to experience derives from their dynamic sensitivity to their environment; this holds true for humans and, empirically, down to the simplest one-celled creatures. By extension, we know that all physical systems are dynamic and interactive, if only at the atomic level, and therefore all, to a corresponding degree, may be said to experience and feel.
Science describes only the external relations of things, and not how they may be on “the inside,” or intrinsically. Firsthand experience of our own bodies suggests that this interior is experiential, and thus mind-like. Continuity among all material objects implies that all have an experiential interior.
The seven arguments listed above constitute the traditional historical cases for panpsychism. In addition, recent philosophical analysis and inquiry has suggested at least five further arguments on its behalf:
Not a formal argument per se, but a potentially convincing claim nonetheless. Writers as diverse as Bruno, Clifford, Paulsen, and Hartshorne have cited the large number of major intellectuals throughout history who expressed intuitive or rational belief in some form of panpsychism. And in fact the whole of the present work makes this claim.
If the human mind is not to be considered an eternal mystery or a divine miracle, it must be fully, deeply, and rationally integrated into the natural world. No theory does this better than panpsychism.7
Needless to say, the nature of mind and its relation to the body is generally a very difficult problem, philosophically speaking. Every mind-body theory has major, unresolved problems. But panpsychism is arguably the least problematic, and hence the most plausible (meta-)view.
Directly attributable to Galen Strawson, who argues that there is, and can be, no evidence of non-mental reality, as assumed by conventional physicalism. Panpsychism, therefore, must serve as the default view of mind, unless and until compelling arguments to the contrary can be derived. This is a kind of “no signs” argument turned against the materialists; the panpsychist places the burden of proof on them to demonstrate that non-experiential matter exists.
Panpsychism has a number of beneficial consequences for ethics, the environment, and society generally. It is a positive, generous, and expansive approach to mind. Pragmatically it works to the benefit of all. And unlike (say) religious views, it is eminently rational. Again, not a formal analytic argument but it carries some weight, if only intuitively. Implicitly appealed to by thinkers as diverse as Plato, Campanella, Fechner, Paulsen, and James.
Despite these varied and diverse arguments, conventional materialists can still insist on a “common-sense” standpoint: Humans and certain higher animals are clearly conscious, aware, and enminded, and certain low-level organisms—plants, microbes, and so on—clearly are not (or, at least, these lower creatures act so mechanically that we have no good reason to attribute mind to them). Therefore, materialists say, there must be a dividing line in the organic world, a barrier of sorts, that separates the minded from the mindless. That seems a plausible view until we demand to know precisely where this putative line should be drawn. Clearly it will not suffice to say “somewhere,” and leave it at that. If it is to be a credible view, we need to know precisely where the line is to be drawn, and we must have a rational argument as to why it is to be drawn just there. This is an exceptionally difficult task. Not surprisingly, few philosophers have taken up this challenge.
But some have. Michael Tye tackles the issue head-on while holding to the standard view that “somewhere down the phylogenetic scale phenomenal consciousness ceases” (2000: 171). The Problem of Simple Minds, as Tye calls it, is the problem of finding the place to draw a line, and he believes that problem to be solvable. In his theory, mind resides only in entities that possess inner states displaying Poised, Abstract, Nonconceptual, Intentional Content (PANIC). Plants fail this test (“there is nothing it is like to be a venus flytrap or a morning glory”), as do paramecia (which give only “automatic responses, with no flexibility in behavior”). Nor do the lower insects qualify: “there is no clear reason to suppose that caterpillars are anything more than stimulus-response devices” (173). Fish, however, are different. They “do not typically react in a purely reflexive manner.” They learn by trial and error, and can remember their lessons for substantial periods of time. Fish have “a stored memory representation that has been acquired through the use of sense organs and is available for retrieval” (176), and thus possess inner mental states and are phenomenally conscious. Tye also argues that honey bees—regarded as higher-order insects—have memory-retention capabilities similar to those of fish, and thus are conscious: “honey bees, like fish, are phenomenally conscious: there is something it is like for them” (180).
As to the further line-drawing question regarding which insects are conscious and which are not, Tye defers: “Where exactly in the insect realm phenomenal consciousness ends I shall not try to say.” Whatever the shortcomings of his PANIC theory, Tye is at least willing to acknowledge that, on the standard emergentist view, a line-drawing exercise is demanded, and he makes a brave attempt at it.
When pressed for details, it is clear that the anti-panpsychists have a difficult task at hand. Perhaps the most consistent and parsimonious counterview is the hard-line case: that humans alone have minds and are ontologically unique (perhaps because of their evolutionary status, or their complex neurophysiology, or divine creation) and hence everything else in the cosmos is absolutely mindless. Schopenhauer briefly considered that alternative but declared that it “could be found only in a madhouse” (1819/1995: 37). René Descartes, John Eccles, and John Searle are among the few who attempt to defend such a claim. Apart from them, who will advocate such a view, and make a convincing claim of it?
The mechanistic worldview is deeply imbedded in our collective psyche. For several hundred years, the dominant orthodoxy has implicitly assumed that inanimate things, large or small, are fundamentally devoid of mental qualities. That view has become integrated into our science, our literature, and our arts. It has become incorporated into our deepest social values, and thus it is reflected in our collective actions. We treat nature as an impersonal thing or collection of things without spontaneity, without intrinsic value, and without rights of any kind. Natural resources, including plant and animal species, are generally seen as mindless and insentient objects, and thus as deserving no particular respect or moral consideration. With no deeper meaning or value, they exist solely to benefit us.
The great irony, of course, is that in harming nature we harm ourselves. As we deplete the soil, deforest the land, exterminate species, exhaust the seas, and warm the planet, we are paying a high and growing price. With an ever-growing human population, the situation may well turn catastrophic in the coming decades. All this suggests that our mechanistic worldview is in error: that, by treating nature as mindless, we engage in irrational and destructive behavior. Metaphysics has consequences.
The mechanistic worldview once liberated humanity from religious dogma. Now it appears to have outlived its usefulness. It has become its own dogma, more stifling and destructive than the one it usurped. We may be approaching one of those times in history when fundamental assumptions about the world change. Such changes have happened in the past. The Homeric Greeks came into prominence in a mytho-poetic age full of gods and mysteries, but then the first philosophers appeared, and they imposed an order, a logos, on the world, putting reason and rational thinking into a position of preeminence. As they did so, they incorporated many aspects of the older worldview—including the concept of panpsychism, as we have seen. After dominating Western civilization for about 700 years, the Greek logos was superseded by the Christian theological worldview. Once again, the older concepts were absorbed and reconceived in a new framework based on faith and revelation. The psyche of the world was now integrated into the notion of God, and God’s omnipresence ensured a spiritual dimension in all being.
The theological outlook held for several hundred years, until the Renaissance, when principles of reason and logic reasserted themselves once more—this time in a mechanistic and materialistic guise. Copernicus, Galileo, Hobbes, Descartes, and other thinkers articulated a cosmos of pure mechanical laws, devoid of mind and spirit, even as others—Bacon, Kepler, Newton, Leibniz—saw some reason for retaining a panpsychist universe. This new mechanistic worldview was not atheist; God still presided over the grand system, but he was removed from daily involvement. In like fashion, mind and spirit were drained from nature, leaving a cosmos of insentient particles and forces.
Today the mechanistic outlook has three main pillars. The first is that all non-living things, and most living ones, are utterly devoid of sentience and mind. The second is that reality is intrinsically objective, in the sense that a physical and mathematical description is possible for all that is real. The third pillar relates to the human psyche. In earlier times the soul was a God-given and eternal entity that mysteriously interacted with the body and the physical world. Later the soul was replaced by the mind—a mysterious product of organic processes that magically emerged at some point in evolution and that, as before, mysteriously interacted with the body and the physical world. As a consequence of these three pillars, humanity became radically estranged from nature. Humans alone retained intrinsic value, even as nature became commodified. Humans became cosmological misfits.
A successful worldview is one that transcends its predecessor by discarding certain outmoded aspects and building others into the foundation of a new, more integrated, more harmonious cosmological order. Panpsychism may be poised to fill this role. Its emphasis on mind and “spirit” is, in one sense, a return to the spiritual perspective on nature, in counterpoint to mechanistic materialism. But it is a secular spirituality, one that is compatible with a modern rational outlook. In this sense, panpsychism is fully consistent with modern science. Panpsychism has long been advocated by many scientists and other modern thinkers who, nonetheless, have found conventional science very useful in other areas of inquiry. Yet their larger worldview has rejected the fundamental mechanistic belief that lower animals, plants, and non-living material objects are mindless things. Clearly it has been possible for them to incorporate elements of a mechanistic approach to nature while maintaining a deeper view of all things as enminded or ensouled. And to the extent that they have developed positive new theories of mind, they have been able to create new visions of mind and matter and their interrelationship. This outlook strikes at the heart of mechanistic materialism, and thus holds out the promise of rewriting our view of the universe at large.
Several major thinkers were very explicit that they saw panpsychism as the foundation for a fundamentally new outlook on reality. Epicurus advocated an atomistic ontology and yet saw in the panpsychist atomic swerve the basis for human will, and hence for the very possibility of virtuous action. Francis of Assisi and Campanella advocated a theological form of panpsychism that demonstrated the presence of spirit in the world, and consequently served as a basis for moral action. Leibniz was an early contributor to the mechanistic worldview, but his quanta of the universe, the monads, were fundamentally mind-like entities. Newton was willing to consider the possibility that all matter was alive. LaMettrie was a notorious mechanist, but for him mechanism was no cause for concern; on the contrary, a properly vitalistic mechanism was a way of deeply integrating humanity into nature:
Whoever thinks in this way will be wise, just, and tranquil about his fate, and consequently happy. He will await death neither fearing nor desiring it; he will cherish life … ; he will be full of respect, gratitude, affection, and tenderness for nature in proportion to the love and benefits he has received from her; and, finally, happy to know nature and to witness the charming spectacle of the universe, he will certainly never suppress nature in himself or in others. (1747/1994: 75)
Fechner was another who saw panpsychism as the basis for a compassionate understanding of the world. As he said, it “decides many other questions and determines the whole outlook upon nature” (1848/1946: 163). James came to support “a general view of the world almost identical with Fechner’s” (1909/1996: 309), and argued that this “pluralistic panpsychic view of the universe … threatens to short-circuit” the cynical worldview of the mechanists, and to replace it with something greater, higher, and more sympathetic.
In the twentieth century, Bateson warned us of the consequences of the standard worldview. If, he said, you adopt the conventional objectivist materialist view of mind, then “you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit.” (1972: 462) Bateson lived at a time when the current ecological crisis was just becoming apparent. It was clear to him that this situation was rooted in a defective conception of mind. His outlook was shared by Plumwood, Mathews, and others who saw a subtle form of panpsychism as the foundation of a new, more compassionate, less confrontational environmental ethic.
One of the most poetic expressions of the virtues of the panpsychic worldview was also one of the earliest. Recall Empedocles’ beautiful fragment 110, in which panpsychism is seen as the key to revelations about the true nature of the world:
If thou shouldst plant these things in thy firm understanding and contemplate them with good will and unclouded attention, they will stand by thee for ever every one, and thou shalt gain many other things from them; … for know that all things have wisdom and a portion of thought.
Here Empedocles demonstrates a reverential, almost mystic belief in the power of the panpsychist worldview. It is, he suggests, simply the most enlightening and virtuous standpoint from which to view the cosmos. It is nothing less than the key to ultimate truth.
These beliefs of Empedocles, Fechner, James, Bateson, and others are striking; they suggest that panpsychism is the superior worldview because it leads to a more integrated, compassionate, and sympathetic cosmos. It is life-affirming and life-enhancing. It leads to positive, sustaining values for humanity. It stands in stark contrast to the cynical, isolating, manipulative values of mechanistic materialism. To the extent that these mechanistic values have contributed to our current environmental and social crises, panpsychist values may begin to reverse this process and heal the damage.
To judge the value of something as far-reaching and fundamental as a metaphysical worldview is a difficult prospect. It takes years, even centuries, for the full effects of a new worldview and its corresponding values to be realized. About 350 years passed before the negative effects of the mechanistic outlook became apparent. Thus, today we are likely to be unable to adequately judge the net worth of a panpsychist worldview. And yet the imperative of the present time calls for change. Mechanism is evidently profoundly defective; in any case, it will not last—something will take its place. This new Weltanschauung must, for our sake and the sake of the planet, be sustainable, holistic, and compassionate. The evidence is encouraging. Of the dozens of panpsychist thinkers examined in the present work, nearly every one has adopted an optimistic, life-affirming, and sympathetic perspective on the world.
Granting all this, the cynical materialist can still ask “Yes, but is it true?” If panpsychism is, in the end, just some happy delusion, we are surely not better off adopting it, or simply pretending it to be true. Agreed. Yet it must be emphasized that truth can be assessed only from within a given worldview. The standard materialist, being fundamentally committed to an anti-panpsychist view, has no unbiased standpoint from which to make a judgment. Thus any ruling of “unintelligible” or “false” is meaningless. Christians have long denounced animism and polytheism as untrue, accusing their adherents of living in a primitive cosmos of omnipresent spirits and ghosts. Likewise, materialists have accused Christians and other theologically minded individuals of buying into a “happy myth” that has no scientific basis. And of course others today blame the materialist mindset as the root cause of many of our present-day social and environmental problems. Objectivity, moral neutrality, and a fundamentally inanimate nature are mechanistic assumptions about the world—presumed but never proven. Mechanistic materialism can thus be seen, like the rest, as a happy myth, one that liberated humanity from stifling theology but which has now reached the end of its useful life.
The evolution of worldviews is one of the great stories of human culture. Worldviews are born, and they are liberating and visionary. They help to define what is true and what is good. They expand to encompass many aspects of society. They undergo gradual evolution and refinement. At some point they grow rigid and inflexible. Ultimately they become self-justifying, self-perpetuating, and finally, self-destructive. Materialism, and the accompanying analytical and logical philosophy, seems to have reached this terminal stage.
Panpsychism—ancient panpsychism—appears able to provide the foundation for a new worldview in a way that deeply addresses the root issues. It is easy to abuse dead, inanimate matter, or unconscious forms of life. The human who alone has mind, or in whom mind is a contradiction or unfathomable mystery, has no sense of being at home in the cosmos. Consequently he is likely to feel alienated, frightened, distressed, angry, or foolish. It need not be so. Philosophers have envisioned alternative views that have equal claim to validity. We as a civilization need only summon our collective wisdom and courage, learn the lessons of history, and transcend present ways of thinking. Thus has it always been so. Transcendence is in the nature of the cosmos, and only transcendent thinking can carry us forward along our great evolutionary journey.