1. Introduction

Though far from the philosophical and scientific orthodoxy, the theory of panpsychism has a very storied history among the philosophical community and should be considered a far more serious proposal than it previously has been. Despite panpsychists often being described offhandedly as "those people who believe rocks can think¹", or some similar phrase, the theory has, in the past, been defended by legendary figures in philosophy such as Spinoza, Leibniz, Alfred North Whitehead, and the father of psychology, William James. Given that panpsychism is such a broad topic with such a wide range of different forms and viewpoints, I will not be able to offer a full defense of the theory in its entirety. Instead, I will be laying out some of the most popular formulations of panpsychism and will show how the seemingly radical proposal is compatible with our real intuitive notions about the world. It is my goal by the end of this paper to convince you, not necessarily that panpsychism is true (though that would be nice), but that its ad hoc dismissal by the scientific and philosophical community has been largely unfounded.

1. What is Panpsychism?

2.1

Panpsychism, narrowly defined, is the theory that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, meaning that it is "built into" the material world rather than emerging from it or being some totally separate entity. By this, I do not necessarily mean that cells or quarks or some sufficiently small particle are conscious in this way; rather, I am saying that consciousness (or some kind of proto-conscious phenomena) is a fundamental part of the world in the same way that time, causality, or extension might be, according to some people. In this way, panpsychism can be viewed as almost a middle ground between the more popular and orthodox theories of physicalism and dualism. Dualism is the view most famously advanced by Descartes in his Meditations on First Philosophy², which states that physical matter and the matter of consciousness are entirely separate entities. Physicalism is the theory that states that there is a mechanical and physical explanation for conscious phenomena. Essentially, this is the view that states that only things like neurons and the physical structures of the brain can sculpt consciousness. Panpsychism seems to take some of the most plausible elements of both of these theories and builds an idea that feels intuitively appealing, especially in the face of some very salient issues with physicalism in particular. The most prominent with physicalism being the "hard problem" of consciousness³, which panpsychism avoids almost entirely. The hard problem of consciousness is simply the issue of how a phenomenological conscious experience can arise from entirely physical means. This issue is different from the "easy problem" (also from David Chalmers), which is just to offer an explanation for motor functions or perception. The hard problem asks not what neurons fire to produce my perception of the color red, but what the color of red is like to me in a qualitative sense.

2.2

Panpsychism is a theory that comes in a few distinct forms; though in the later sections of this paper, I will largely focus on the view known as Russellian Monism, it seems relevant at this time to show the breadth of different viewpoints addressed in panpsychism. These differences arise largely because of the "combination problem" for panpsychism. The combination problem is not a problem of how conscious experience arises in general (like the hard problem) but rather how a complex consciousness can arrive from the comparably far simpler consciousness that leads to its existence, assuming such elements exist in the first place. Very simply put, the combination problem asks, "How do these small consciousnesses combine to create a single cohesive macro consciousness?" There are a number of ways for panpsychists to tackle this problem, and the three views I present below by no means represent the full breadth of different panpsychist viewpoints.

Additionally, it must be stated that the three theories I put forth in the following section differ drastically in what entities they consider to be conscious (that is to say, possess conscious traits). They range from being theories that posit the entire universe as being a conscious entity to only the combination of a number of entities. This is to illustrate that panpsychism does not (necessarily) mean that absolutely everything is a conscious being in and of itself. The topic of degrees of consciousness for something will be the subject of significant discussion in sections 3 and 4, but it bears noting here that consciousness for a panpsychist does not necessarily equal thought or intelligence.

2.3

The most prominent and commonly held form of panpsychism is known as micropsychism, the view can be attributed very closely to Leibniz⁴ (though his answer to the combination problem is a bit different from modern panpsychists). For this paper, I will be using the more contemporary views advanced by Luke Roelofs⁵ to explain micropsychism. Micropsychism is the view that fundamental entities of the world (quarks or monads or whatever your choice of smallest, most fundamental thing is) contain some degree of conscious experience. Under this view, complex consciousnesses like the one experienced by humans are the byproduct of a number of smaller, less complex consciousnesses combining. By this I mean to say that the larger consciousness of something is just the sum total of its smaller conscious parts. To envision this, imagine a house made out of wooden blocks wherein the structure of the house is the composite of all the smaller entities that are the wooden blocks, which are their own separate structures and entities. In much the same way, consciousness can be envisioned as the combination of the properties of all of its smaller conscious experiences while respecting the fact that those conscious experiences are unique things in themselves.

An interesting variation of the above theory is known as cosmopsychism, which, as the name suggests, states that the entire universe is conscious. Cosmopsychism has one of the most interesting answers to the combination problem, as this view requires you to ask yourself not "how can microconsciousnesses combine?" but rather "how can a single macro consciousness divide?" Cosmopsychism as a theory has its roots in the thoughts and metaphysics advanced by Spinoza⁶ though his view differs considerably from what has become the modern interpretation of cosmopsychism. Very simply, according to Spinoza, there is only one substance, that being god, and that one substance possesses both physical and mental attributes. This means that everything in nature possesses a single sort of consciousness, though not necessarily as a single conscious subject. Though Spinoza's thoughts are close to those of modern cosmopsychists, they differ in a few ways, the crux of this distinction being the actual conscious experience that the universe contains within itself. For a modern cosmopsychist, the entire universe has a combined consciousness that has real experiential ability, while for Spinoza, the god that has the property of consciousness largely only has it to the extent that it can think rationally, rather than experientially like a human can. Additionally, Spinoza thinks that since there is only one substance, consciousness can not be divided. For a modern cosmopsychist, this seems to be a directly incoherent notion, as it seems obvious that there are at least some things in the world that exhibit a degree of consciousness, if even very slightly.

The last form of panpsychism that I will discuss here is Russellian Monism, which, despite not originating as a form of panpsychism, has, in recent years, become probably the most prominent and publicly accepted form of the theory. Though this theory borrows its name from Bertrand Russel (who was not a panpsychist), it has been most famously defended by Galen Strawson⁷. In Russellian Monism, particles have a physical structure and a mental nature. Within this theory, physics can explain what exactly particles do, but not what they are, or in other words, what their nature is. These mental natures of particles have the ability to combine into a single, full, unified consciousness; however, they are not subjects in and of themselves. Consciousness, in this view, is more like a sandcastle than a block house. By which I mean that rather than conscious elements being like the blocks of a block house and being separable (like micropsychism), they are akin to the grains of sand in a sand castle, wherein they are nearly indistinct on their own but can combine to make an entire sandcastle.

(3) So Are Rocks Conscious?

3.1

Yes and no

3.2

It is a more interesting question than just that, though, consciousness, for a panpsychist, is more about having a conscious experience than merely possessing the kind of building blocks that can combine into a consciousness. By which I mean, if to be conscious is just to possess some amount of matter, then everything is conscious, but there is clearly a degree of complexity lost if consciousness is merely a threshold (ie. is something conscious) rather than a spectrum (ie. how conscious is that thing). Were you to ask a micropsychist the above question, they would be forced to say yes. As, despite a rock's seeming inability to think, because it possesses an amount of matter within itself, it would be conscious. Though, of course, this consciousness looks very different from the kind that can be enjoyed and experienced by humans. Rocks, as I'm sure is clear, cannot think, cannot move on their own, and cannot have any kind of desire or goal (nor have the means to achieve one even if they have one)⁸. The experience of being a rock seems almost to be a state of non-experience since, as far as you (the rock) can tell, nothing is happening, or has happened, or will happen, and even if things do happen, you will have no way of telling or reflecting upon what exactly has happened. These paradoxical nonconscious-conscious beings that are rocks lead panpsychists to think that consciousness must be expressed in terms of some degree of things that a being does.

3.3

In this way, the view reaches something like the Integrated Information Theory (IIT)⁹ as proposed by Giulio Tononi (who, it must be noted, is also not a panpsychist). IIT states that the degree to which something is conscious can be expressed in terms of the information a system possesses and the degree to which it is able to integrate said information (as its name suggests). A being with a higher degree of integrated information, which is expressed with the quantifier Φ, is said to have a higher level and more complex consciousness than a being with a lower Φ. At this point, it is probably worth defining what exactly information and the ability to integrate it are.

Information:

By information, Tononi does not mean data or knowledge or something of the like; rather, information in this theory is about how a system's current state can rule out causes of that state and constrain the possible states that could flow from it. Imagine a turtle; while the turtle may have some degree of environmental constraints on its potential causes and effects (ie. hunger, location, etc.), a significant amount of the constraining is done by the turtle itself. Contrast this with the turtle's shell, which has very little to do with its past and future states, meaning that it possesses a much lower amount of information when compared to the turtle itself. This imbalance of information means that the turtle potentially has a much higher Φ than its shell.

Integration:

Integration, very simply, means the degree to which a given system can not be reduced into smaller parts. In other words, the system must be unified. This means that a system under IIT must be more than just the sum of its parts in order to have any degree of Φ. To illustrate this, imagine a picture taken by a digital camera. While there is a huge amount of information, since the individual diodes on a camera do not impact each other, the system as a whole has a Φ of zero. Contrast this with a brain, which cannot be broken up into different systems without a huge loss of conscious function (imagine if your consciousness for your senses of hearing, vision, and balance were suddenly separated), this means that the system as a whole has a Φ above zero. If something can be divided into smaller structures without losing some important functionality, it always has a Φ of zero.

The Exclusion Postulate:

The exclusion postulate just states that a consciousness must have a higher Φ than that of any system of which it is a part or any system contained within it. This means that the brain must have a higher Φ than that of the body or that of any specific group of neurons contained within it. This exclusion postulate leads to sympathies towards cosmopsychism, as it is fairly hard to say that an individual brain could have a higher Φ than that of the entire universe if you accept that the two cannot be divided.

3.4

It is now time to address the above question, given the new knowledge of IIT. It seems clear that a rock cannot be conscious as it possesses neither the relevant information nor integration to have a Φ very high above zero (if it is above zero at all). So this would mean, pretty decisively, that panpsychists who subscribe to integrated information theory do not, on the whole, believe that rocks have feelings.

(4) Consciousness in Terms of Capacity

4.1

It is important to note that consciousness under this theory can be described in terms of the ability to have conscious experiences and not mere intelligence. Anil Seth (also also not a panpsychist) states in his book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, "not only can consciousness exist without much intelligence ... but intelligence can exist without consciousness too"¹⁰. For a panpsychist, consciousness is not the ability to think rationally or reflect upon actions or anything of the sort; it means simply possessing the requisite material makeup and a Φ above zero¹¹. This does not, however, mean that every consciousness is the same or to the same extent; in fact, there can be massive differences in the consciousnesses of different beings. For example, a plant would be conscious as it contains information about itself and its information can not be meaningfully divided, meaning it has an above zero Φ. Additionally, because it contains the material elements for consciousness, it would have some kind of consciousness (though the actual scope of its consciousness would be only very slightly above that of a rock). It is worth noting that the degree of consciousness is also not tied to the size (meaning the amount of matter/protoconscious elements) contained within an agent. The largest organism on earth (a single specimen of the mushroom Armillaria solidipes that spans 4 square miles) can hardly be said to have a higher Φ than that of a Marmoset (the smallest monkey in the world). So if consciousness is not tied to something's intelligence or the amount of matter contained within it, then what can make something more conscious?

To have a higher Φ and therefore be more conscious a being must have the capacity to do some act that generates higher information. Additionally, the more complex a system is, the higher its Φ can be. A light switch that can only be on or off has a lower degree of information than a switchboard with hundreds of different possibilities. This fact makes it such that birds are not likely more conscious than humans since they can see infrared light, therefore having a higher degree of options for their brains to decide between. Though it is outside the scope of this paper, it is also worth noting that something like an elephant (which has many times the number of neurons of a human) does not have a higher Φ than a human because of the way said neurons are distributed throughout its brain and the specific types of neurons in its head. This means that the degree of consciousness or Φ something exhibits is based both on the physical structures that a being contains, as well as how those structures interact with the being as a whole.

4.2

It should also be noted that there are a lot of things that, given the panpsychist lens, can not be ad hoc eliminated from the pool of potential conscious entities. As I mentioned earlier, plants possess some kind of consciousness, but it is fairly minimal. For borderline cases like this, it might be useful to consider not if an entity is conscious, but what its states of consciousness might look like. An interesting case for a panpsychist to consider would be something like a magnet. William James very briefly touches on the existence and phenomenology of magnetism in his lecture entitled The Reality of the Unseen¹² by stating that, though an iron rod can not feel or sense specifically what is happening to it, there is a profound impact on the iron rod when a magnetic field acts upon it. Though it does not seem to think or have any degree of Φ, there is some kind of experience that it is like to have magnetism acting upon you. This kind of idea makes it such that nearly anything that might possess a degree of experiential property can be conscious if we accept that there can be something that it is like to be that thing. This magnetic field theory leaves open some pretty interesting implications, such as beings like the sun possibly being conscious under some interpretations of panpsychism¹³. This can be understood largely because of the experiential interactions and the process of the production of magnetic fields (something largely outside the scope of this paper). This view does require someone to accept something like cosmopsychism, but the implications are nonetheless interesting enough that they bear mentioning here. So perhaps, if we accept James's and Sheldrake's proposal, consciousness might not even be tied to Φ and more based on potential experience¹⁴.

4.3

Ultimately, I find these kinds of experiential accounts of consciousness to be pretty unconvincing for a few reasons. Firstly, it seems very difficult to say that there is a way to seemingly experience without experiencing in the way that James and Sheldrake suggest there is. For the iron rod to be impacted by a magnetic field, it must have some possible way of telling when and (perhaps more importantly) if it is being acted upon. This brings us back to consciousness in terms of capacity; if an entity has no capacity to sense the way in which its present and future states might be shaped, it seems largely irrelevant if they are. For instance, from the perspective of an observer on earth, it seems to make largely no difference to us if a 4th dimensional being who we will never interact with (who I will henceforth call Jerry) chooses to wear a red shirt or a blue one on a given day¹⁵. It does not seem to affect our conscious perception if something unknowable by us occurs. If Jerry were to somehow make his presence (and chosen shirt color) known to us through some means humans possess, then this detail would be a relevant part of our consciousness. However, in his unrevealed state, Jerry makes no impact whatsoever upon my Φ or my experience in this sense. So even if we accept that the sensation of a magnetic field could make something conscious, there is no way to sense a magnetic field in order to make something conscious. It also seems extremely irrelevant to say that something with a Φ of zero (like the sun or an iron rod) is conscious, since there is nothing it is like to experience life as those types of things. From the Russelian Monism perspective, this proposal seems entirely too broad and contradictory to describe the relevant states of consciousness in our world.

(5) The Real Plausibility of Panpsychism

5.1

Enough beating around the bush, it is time to weigh the real possibility of a panpsychist world when considering what we consider to be intuitive or "real" in the world. Firstly, as I hope I have reiterated (probably at nauseum throughout this work), panpsychism is not the theory that says rocks or tables or other nonliving things have feelings and thoughts. There is nothing that it is like being a rock or a table, as they have a Φ of zero. It must also be noted that panpsychism as a theory avoids appealing to metaphysically weighty notions like a completely separate type of matter that is "conscious stuff" or the rise of conscious experience entirely through cellular motion. Additionally, even though a larger scope of things might be conscious for a panpsychist than for a physicalist, since there is a gradient of things that are conscious and a variety of different ways consciousness might look, we can say that there is some kind of line of "relevantly conscious"¹⁶. Further, it allows for an easier explanation of the consciousness exhibited by organisms like jellyfish, which don't have a centralized brain, and octopus and leeches, which have multiple brains. In fact, with physicalism, it may be more difficult to explain the combination of minds within these creatures than for a panpsychist.

5.2

At this point, I leave it up to the reader entirely to decide if the proposal I have outlined in this paper seems plausible on its own merits. Even if you do not accept this proposal, I hope that you can see that given how well panpsychism maps onto our intuitive notions of the world, its ad hoc dismissal for a long period of time seems entirely unfair.

Notes:

¹ A slight misnomer, which I plan to address at a later point in the paper

² Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

³ As coined by David Chalmers

⁴ Leibniz, Monadology

⁵ Luke Roelofs, Can we Sum Subjects? Evaluating Panpsychism's Hard Problem

⁶ Spinoza, Ethics (book 2 in particular)

⁷ Strawson, Mind and Being: The Primacy of Panpsychism

⁸ It seems like a very sad experience after reflecting upon it

⁹ Giulio Tononi, An Information Integration Theory of Consciousness

¹⁰ Anil Seth, Being You, A New Science of Consciousness

¹¹ Not exactly a high bar

¹² James, The Reality of the Unseen

¹³ Rupert Sheldrake, Is the Sun Conscious

¹⁴ This belief would probably have some interesting implications for whether AI (or perhaps the computer it's hosted on) are conscious, but such a debate is far outside the scope of this work.

¹⁵ Assuming 4th dimensional beings like Jerry wear shirts

¹⁶ Probably meaning having a Φ above some threshold