It is not surprising that in a time of intensified ecological awareness a new appreciation of nature and the inanimate world arises. Two examples are panpsychism (the extension of consciousness to the cosmos) and deep incarnation (the idea that God was not only incarnated in human form but also in the non-human world). Consciousness studies flourish and are related to nature, the animal world and inorganic nature. A metaphysics of consciousness emerges, of which panpsychism is a good example. Panpsychism or panconsciousness or speculative realism endows all matter with a form of consciousness, energy and experience. The consciousness question is increasingly linked to the quantum world, which offers some option in bridging mind and reality, consciousness and matter. In this regard Kauffman’s notion of ‘triad’ is referred to as well as the implied idea of cosmic mind. This is related to the notion of ‘deep incarnation’ as introduced by Gregersen. Some analogical links are made between panpsychism and deep incarnation.
Panpsychism is reviving in the twenty-first century. This revival can be justified by, among other things, the ecological turn and developments in quantum research and particle physics.
Not all speculation is worthless and the difference between ‘soft’ speculation and scientific conjectures may often be a thin line, metaphorically expressed by the idea of a gap-filler (see the German
We know that consciousness needs a body to operate and mind cannot exist without brain. But panpsychism sees consciousness as typical of all matter, whether it has a brain or not, which in a way turns materialism on its head. Materialism in its strict sense reduces everything to matter.
Panpsychism can be seen as new animism or new materialism or speculative realism. It also fits into absolute idealism or what can be called panconsciousness. Bertrand Russell noted as long ago as 1925 that physics is no longer materialistic in the old seventeenth-century sense of the word, holding matter as permanent substance. The notion of force, for example, implies allowing particles of matter to interact with each other through void space without any material link (see Strawson
The notion of panpsychism seems to gain momentum and it is worth revisiting it as expression of the so-called Speculative Turn that seems to characterise the twenty-first century. Panpsychism must be seen against the background of new developments and how these feature in pseudo-science, religion, the New Age movement and popular culture. It is captured by the notion of a non-human turn, which describes developments from the last decades of the twentieth century. For Grusin (
Grusin (
Without pursuing these points the following can be added. Although some of the claims made may border on the fictitious, they presently enjoy attention:
With the latest developments in particle physics we have entered a new era where the distinction between physics and metaphysics (including religion) is not so clear any more. Science has to deal increasingly with metaphysical questions.
On the quantum level the double slit experiment has indicated the role of the conscious observer in determining the collapse of the wave function, which is determinative in grappling with the quantum world and is elaborated upon when we focus on Kauffman’s view below.
We know that autopoietic systems are operative in the biological sphere and physicists claim that the universe itself is self-explanatory. There is no need for a supernatural force to explain it. Nevertheless, the unfolding of the universe and the development of life on our planet are so fabulous that many cannot but posit a divine architect. Science rejects any intelligent designer. The universe itself has become intelligent, conscious and self-reflective in thinking human beings. The notion of consciousness is metaphorically transferred to the universe by panpsychism.
On an ecological level the planet earth is seen as one big living organism, Gaia. The geosphere, lithosphere (ground), hydrosphere, atmosphere, biosphere, stratosphere and noosphere all interact as part of this living organism. As a living organism there will be levels of awareness and consciousness that characterise the various spheres.
The universe is alive. On this level cosmic consciousness emerges. We know that human life consists of elements that were formed in the stars and that our planet and galaxy would not exist were it not for developments on a much larger and older universal scale. We are part of this history, which explains us. The information metaphor plays a crucial role in understanding this.
O’Murchu (
We know that energy and matter are reversible and that consciousness can be seen as a form of energy. Does this make consciousness and matter to some extent reversible? We know that all matter is imbued with information. If the information inherent in a specific kind of matter (the atomic and molecular structure) changes, then the matter will change as well.
On the level of human–animal interaction, research has indicated interconnectedness at various levels. Research on the great hominids can be singled out as a factor that contributed much to respect for all animals, and the development of animal rights in some countries. The new appreciation for environmental ethics and the development of a creaturely theology (see Deane-Drummond
On the level of health and medical research, humans may in future reprogram their genes to attain immortality. Artificial limbs may be linked to the brain to operate like normal organic limbs. We know that we share our genes to various degrees with other organisms and that all life on earth is related.
We will soon be able to develop supercomputers that will far exceed the human brain’s capacity. These supercomputers may eventually start to think for themselves, develop programmed emotions and reach a state of ‘mind’ similar to consciousness.
On a religious level the notion of ‘deep incarnation’ stresses the importance of God’s saving presence in nature. This importance elevates nature, along with humans, into the soteriological sphere of God’s saving and regenerating grace.
The notion of panentheism unifies all creation in God and this is not that different from the notion of consciousness as a unifying principle. The ubiquity of God implies, like the ubiquity of consciousness, the omnipresence of the mental. Panpsychism is in a sense a secular version of panentheism. ‘Everything is mind’, or in a different mode ‘everything is in God’. To be in God affects the dwellers and endows them with some form of awareness of ‘being in God’.
The speculative basis of most of these points cannot be denied. The question is whether science will eventually provide sufficient reasons and examples to ground such claims or to disprove them convincingly. Along with the increase of secularism there is a new interest in the value of nature and natural things, especially in the field of secular spirituality.
Panpsychism considers mind as fundamental to all things. Various versions of panpsychism have been articulated in the past by classical thinkers such as Spinoza, Leibniz, Fechner, Lotze, Pierce, James, Bergson, Whitehead, Hartshorne and Sprigge (see Basile
Before the science revolution mind and matter were not strictly separated. The notions of animism, vitalism (see Bergson [1859–1941] in Barnard (
The reformed notion of God’s
Hegel indicated that a mutual relation can exist between conscious human beings and inanimate matter. Humans learn from ‘inanimate, dead matter’ when they try to figure it out or study it. In the process of knowledge acquisition both parties change – the human investigator as well the investigated object, and this is similar to what happens between two intelligent human interlocutors. But this is once again seen from the side of the human subject. The inanimate object is ‘not aware’ of the change that has taken place through this experience. Or is it? Without going into any detail, we know that the ‘double slit’ experiment has proven sufficiently that a particle (photon and inanimate matter) responds to the observation of an observer, which changes its state from a wave to a particle.
Seager and Allen-Hermanson (
Thus, everything that could not be accounted for in terms of the interactions of simple material components was conveniently labelled a ‘secondary quality‘ inhabiting not the ‘real’ world but merely the conscious mind (the classical example is colour, which was banished from the world of matter and replaced with the mind mechanisms that make us experience colour). The mind was not to be trusted and physics would reveal how the world ‘actually’ is. The world was made safe for physics.
George Berkeley (1689–1753) denied that anything exists or could conceivably exist except insofar as it was consciously experienced. Berkeley’s notion of
Panpsychism had its greatest flourishing in the nineteenth century due to the prominence of idealism; panpsychism is a kind of new vitalism. Henri Bergson had his own version of panpsychism (Barnard
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) is the twentieth-century champion of panpsychist philosophy. He saw events (or items that are more event-like than thing-like) and the ongoing processes of their emergence and disappearance as the core feature of the world, rather than the traditional triad of matter, space and time. His panpsychism arises from the idea that the elementary events (occasions) that make up the world partake of mentality in terms of notions such as creativity, spontaneity and perception. For lifeless matter these functionings impede each other and average out to produce a negligible total effect. Whitehead’s panpsychism faces the same objections as any other version and stems from the same basic anti-emergentist intuition. With his emphasis on the vitality and spontaneity of nature, Whitehead represents a culmination of nineteenth-century panpsychist thinking, and (probably not coincidentally) its presentation was pretty much simultaneous with the culminating development of a robust and serious emergentism (Seager & Allen-Hermanson
After the publication of Whitehead’s panpsychist
The most prominent explicit defenders of panpsychism at the present time are Galen Strawson, David Griffin, David Ray Griffith, David Chalmers, Thomas Nagel, William Seager, David Skrbina, Keith Ward, Bernardo Kastrup and the late Timothy Sprigge. In Basile’s view it cannot be rejected as an historical anomaly (
Thomas Nagel sees panpsychism as ‘the view that the basic physical constituents of the universe have mental properties, whether or not they are part of living organisms’ (Shaviro
Timothy Sprigge independently came to the same conclusion as Thomas Nagel about the question of consciousness by arguing that there must be an answer to what it was like being her or it at that time (McHenry
Nagel’s article
These ideas influenced contemporary philosophers and cognitive scientists, who hold the following theses (Hacker
Shaviro (
‘What it is like to be a bat’ is not a Something: for it is not specifiable as a
In this regard Strawson’s panpsychism makes for him the most sense, as he considers mentality of some sort more certain than the existence of anything else, whether we call this mentality experience, consciousness, conscious experience, phenomenology, experiential ‘what-it’s-like-ness’, feeling, sensation or explicit conscious thought (Shaviro
But only a human can pose the question ‘what is it like to be a bat?’ We have no evidence that a bat wonders what it is like to be a bird or an aeroplane.
An important point to note is that it is our current concept of matter as that which is wholly and utterly non-experiential (non-conscious) which makes it impossible to understand how mind, the experiential and conscious, could emerge from it (see Basile
There is no physical evidence that inanimate objects are conscious. To allot consciousness to ‘dead’ matter implies a
The radical jump made by panpsychism is the formulation of a naturalised metaphysics where all objects of nature are themselves subjects of experience. Panpsychism is all about the extrapolation of consciousness (experience) to non-brain-dependent entities. This transcends the notion that consciousness is the direct and exclusive consequence of brain physicality. Inorganic matter, i.e. nature, is seen as alive to various degrees. This boils down to a naturalisation of mind and a mentalisation of nature (McHenry
there is good scientific evidence that
One possibility is to extend the notion of ‘experience’, as it is used by panpsychism, to such a level that it is not understood in terms of human perception. Human experience is impossible without our senses, and non-living matter is senseless as far as we know. Royce tries to make sense of this with his notion of apperceptive time. What we perceive as inorganic nature is not dead, ‘experienceless’ matter, but nature ‘alive’ in various degrees (see McHenry
To experience anything one needs the mediation and operation of one’s senses. How can inanimate matter sense anything without having senses? This is ‘possible’ through Whitehead’s understanding of
We attribute mind or soul to moving things and this entails experience, history, even memory. A rock is stationary and as such has no experience. But the molecules, atoms and other subatomic particles of which the rock consists are not devoid of experience. The resulting position can be called process philosophy’s version of ‘panexperientialism’, which is applicable to all individuals but not to all things whatsoever (Griffin
One could also think of Whitehead’s concept of causal efficacy as the basic mode of perception in nature:
A jellyfish advances and withdraws, and in so doing, exhibits some perception of causal relationships with the world beyond itself; a plant grows downwards to the damp earth, and upward towards the light. There is thus some direct reason for attributing dim, slow feelings of causal nexus, although we have no reason for ascription of the definite percepts in the mode of presentational immediacy … As we pass to the inorganic world, causation never for a moment seems to lose grip. (Whitehead quoted in McHenry
For Sprigge innumerable streams of experience exist independently of human and animal consciousness. The inanimate world is nothing but sentient experience (McHenry
Panpsychism depends to a large degree on the fact that we do not really know what consciousness is, how to define or explain it.
The moment consciousness becomes the ontological basis of the universe, the notions of design and teleology come into play. Keith Ward (
conscious personal life and the material structure of the universe fit together in a coherent way if we suppose that the physical universe has the purpose of producing personal consciousness as the natural realization of its inherent and original capacities. (p. 87)
This implies some form of intelligent design. How can the universe ‘act’, ‘plan’, ‘have in mind’? Ward explains:
Even the laws of nature exist for a reason, and the best reason is that they exist for the sake of desirable goals which the universe may realise. We are then to think of a primordial mind that can envisage and evaluate possible goals and bring them about intentionally. (Ward
Consciousness cannot be introduced into the universe as a foreign element. It emerges from the universe and may even be an inevitable ‘outcome’ in most universes, but to say that the universe has the forming of consciousness ‘in mind’ presupposes an intelligent designer behind all. There is a theory that material under the influence of entropy and increasing complexity drives towards the formation of organic material as an outcome of the movement of energy. A New Physics Theory of Life has proposed that life exists because the law of increasing entropy drives matter to acquire life-like physical properties.
An interesting point in panpsychism is that consciousness is not made up of particles that come together and are arranged in the right relation with the resultant emergence of consciousness. The particles are themselves bits of consciousness. Panpsychism cannot really cope with the problem of the unity of consciousness. If the thermostat is conscious, are its parts conscious as well? Is there a separate consciousness to each screw and molecule? If this is so, what is the unifying factor uniting these bits of consciousness to one unit (see Basile
A single ontology underlies the subjective information states in human minds and the objective information states of the physical world. Hence Chalmers’ slogan ‘Experience is information from the inside; physics is information from the outside’ (Holt
Galen Strawson is the son of the renowned analytical philosopher PF Strawson and one of the best present-day campaigners of panpsychism. He describes himself as a stuff monist, a materialist or physicalist. He believes that there is only one thing in concrete reality (in spacetime/universe) and that is consciousness (
He explains the basic tenets of panpsychism through the following well-known German distinctions:
The basic creed of panpsychism is that being is energy, process, quality, mind, and these are all encapsulated by spacetime (Strawson
Once the quantum world was accepted as key to reality it was adopted in all possible fields that saw a possibility of renewing their research efforts in terms of the quantum model. Conferences were held and books published on quantum biology, quantum pharmacology, quantum electronics, quantum fluids and solids, quantum gravity and so on. The quantum idiom is applied to consciousness, metaphysics, ethics (free will) (Suarez & Adams
The delayed-choice experiment of Wheeler, which involves a moving object that is given the choice to act like a particle or a wave, refers. Wheeler’s experiment asks at which point the object decides which way it will go. Common sense says the object is either wave-like or particle-like, independent of how we measure it. But quantum physics predicts that whether you observe wave-like behaviour (interference) or particle behaviour (no interference) depends only on how it is actually measured at the end of its journey. In a sense measurement creates reality that does not exist if you are not looking at it. If quantum reality is dependent on the observer, it implies that reality is linked to conscious observation (measurement). The question is whether it stops existing when not observed or measured. Is this true only on the quantum level, and do other rules come into play on higher (Newtonian macro) levels?
The hypothesis of a quantum mind and quantum consciousness has been around for some time without producing tangible evidence to work with. The reason for this is, according to Grace (
these are taken today as basic irreducible principles (axioms) of science. Paraphrasing Guilio Tononi, one could state that consciousness and free will undoubtedly exist, and must be a fundamental ingredient of any sound explanation of the world – as fundamental as energy and space-time. (pp. 2587–288)
A new panpsychist version of the quantum world has just been proposed by Stuart Kauffman (
The triad consists in actuals, possibles, and mind measuring possibles, to yield new-in-the-universe actuals. New actuals give rise acausally and instantaneously to new possibles for mind to measure, yielding again new actuals that yield new possibles for mind to measure. Here, nothing is. All is a becoming, all in status nascendi. The role of mind, with consciousness and perhaps free will, is to mediate measurement converting possibles to actuals. Quantum mechanics is about this triad on this view. (Kaufmann 2015:41)
This brings him to a kind of participatory panpsychism. Wherever measurement happens in the universe, via sets of entangled variables, consciousness happens. In this way mind and matter always interact. ‘If free will is involved, then the becoming universe depends upon intent.… We then live in a vastly participatory universe’ (Kauffman
One can argue that value is inherent in matter similar to the way that matter also contains information (e.g. its atomic structure). Humans attribute value to matter. On a physical level we distinguish, for example, the atomic weight and number. On the human plane, however, value is determined by what worth humans attribute to an element, be it gold, food or weapons. On this level value may be determined by availability and scarcity, market forces, etc. The question is whether one can distinguish matter itself from its worth and value. Does value ‘supervene’ on matter similar to the way mind ‘supervenes’ on brain? Similar distinctions have been made by Whitehead and Jung, who call the ultimate stuff of the world ‘energy’ (Jung) and ‘creativity’ (Whitehead). For them everything from electrons to the human psyche embodies this creative energy (Griffin
Humans stand in a very special relation to the matter they are composed of. We are part of the natural world we objectify. Humans themselves are ‘thinking matter’. Matter, and this includes all processes that developed over time, comes to ‘fruition’, to consciousness in humans. It is from this human conscious level that meaning is read back into matter in all various forms and figurations.
What does the
Theological concepts such as
The Christian God ‘fits’ well into the paradigm of idealism. God as bodiless spirit. Theron (
God the creator creates, understanding creation as a mode of free activity. God knows his creation in idea, i.e. as his thinking, and this reflective or self-aware thinking exhausts the content of any possible creation. For nothing can be thought of as being outside God. This is said when one says that God has no real relation to anything outside himself. (p. 179)
If God is a bodiless spirit and all that is exists in Him, then existence is non-material, spirit, idea in the mind of God! This line of thought is not so far removed from the panpsychist notion that everything is consciousness, experience. Back to Theron (2010):
It is in creating that the Trinity utters itself, the word being spoken himself, the Love being born, himself, act. There is no Trinity independently of this. So God speaks and becomes himself with the world as reaching back to him. The world is God’s mind and thoughts, his interior where he seeks and finds himself in love … That is why, also, idealism, absolute idealism, is the only truth, the only philosophy. (p. 180)
Concerning the incarnation Hegel said:
This incarnation of the Divine Being, its having essentially and directly the shape of self-consciousness, is the simple content of Absolute Religion … In this form of religion the Divine Being is, on that account, revealed. (quoted in Theron
This means that ‘in Jesus’ God became aware of himself from an opposite, human side. God becomes his own ‘
Gregersen considers the incarnation of God to extend beyond the incarnation in human flesh. It also concerns God’s creation.
Despite what the panpsychists might say, it is hard to put spirit into rocks. That God became flesh in the person of Jesus is already a startling claim, but at least persons – complex, fleshed beings who can think, love, do good and evil – might be the sort of vehicle in which God could become personally present. It is not so with crystals or dirt. (p. 256)
He admits that there is more than one level of indwelling and God can be immanent in dirt without being incarnate in it (Kauffman
Pursuing this argument, he says (Kauffman
Since God became material in Jesus, did Jesus thereby incarnate all matter, retroactively past, contemporarily present, prospectively future? … One cannot extrapolate from the particular bit (Jesus’ earthly body) to the global whole (Earth, all creation). This is unwarranted slippage. (p. 262)
Gregersen’s notion of ‘deep incarnation’ is the application of aspects of Christology such as incarnation and salvation to the world of nature, reflecting present-day ecological sentiments. We think differently today about nature, the world, the cosmos and our place in it than was the case during the peak of modernism. We realise our interrelatedness with nature; we look with different eyes at our ecologically sensitive planet, and against this background the natural world is filled with values previously reserved for humans.
Panpsychism endeavours to unite the universe in one grand consciousness. This relates all existence and existing things to each other in some way or another. Humans attach themselves to others (love, care), to things (sentiment), to places (
Humans seemingly favour unity. We want to relate events and ideas in schemata that make sense. Unity brings closure to isolated existence. We need it. We want things to be one or to be reducible to one basic element. The Greek cosmologists identified one element, such as water or fire or number, to explain everything. Panpsychism sets before us the choice of either consciousness or matter. It is in line with quantum theory to regard the whole cosmos as a web of interacting energies, of spatially and temporally located powers, says Ward (
Terms such as consciousness, energy and experience are not precisely interchangeable. Consciousness may be a form of energy but all energy is not conscious.
Consciousness is too complex a phenomenon to use generically. Human consciousness includes language ability and cognitive skills. It differs dramatically from animal consciousness and what can be called awareness in the case of lower organisms. Consciousness is ‘manifested’ differently in different individuals. To move from human consciousness to animal consciousness and to the forms of awareness that constitute lower organisms constitutes a huge leap. Crossing the border into the territory of lifeless matter brings us into the sphere of the speculative. But we do not consider our existence as speculative, and this would not have been possible without lifeless matter.
Panpsychism displays traces of vitalism, personification and anthropopathism.
The crucial question is: does ‘having a history’ equal ‘knowing’ your history (i.e. consciousness)? Does the particle that hops into existence and then collapses again, know or remember it? For Strawson, when it comes to experience, the having is the knowing (Strawson
Perhaps panpsychism must be valued positively in the light of the new ecological sentiments that have developed over the last decade. Deep ecology triggers deep incarnation, said John Haughey (quoted in Holmes Rolston III
We need to ask why some theologians want to extend God’s incarnation and grace beyond the human. The easy answer is that it makes us feel good. Holmes Rolston III (
With the ‘non-human turn’ we humans have entered a new phase of interaction with matter, i.e. our environment, our planet and its place in the cosmos. This entails a new kind of awareness that may prove to be vital to the future existence of the human species.
The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.
As I was finishing this article the first 2016 edition of the CTNS journal
Typical of the new emphasis on matter is that matter is not as easy to grasp as we thought. Clark (
And it is noteworthy that ‘Galen Strawson thinks that, within each person’s stream of consciousness, little transient selves constantly wink in and out of existence, none of them lasting for more than an hour or so’ (Holt
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN can advance philosophy. It raises new questions: what are the methods of acquiring knowledge, what is the role of models and how does the intricate relationship between theory, computer simulations and experimental data work (see Krämer
See Holt (
The
Internet traffic is both human and non-human. Technical mediation is non-human (see Grusin
See also
The content of consciousness depends on intact human physiology where all reality is mediated through our five senses. But the senses cannot be singled out as the only access to reality. Alva Noë (quoted in Aizawa
Strawson rejects ‘brute emergence’, which he says rests on scientific reductionism or what can be called ‘“smallism” – the view that all facts are determined by facts about the smallest things, those that exist at the lowest “level of ontology”’ (Shaviro
Epiphenomenalism accepts that consciousness emerges from matter, but denies that minds exist independent of matter.
Kauffman’s hypothesis (
There is transitive and intransitive consciousness. Intransitive consciousness simply denotes that you are awake (not asleep) or conscious (not comatose). Consciousness is to be awake and not asleep, aware and not unconscious, but consciousness is not equivalent to thinking. Hacker (
In this regard Strawson (
From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: the former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy, which could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attributes associated with life (Wolchover
For the analogy between consciousness and information and the way in which information transfer may take place on a quantum level, see Seager and Allen-Hermanson (
Kauffman follows CS Peirce in this regard, who argued that actuals and probables do obey the law of excluded middle; possibles do not (Kauffamn 2016:39, 2015:295). This leads to a new dualism (analogical to the wave–particle dualism). In this dualism,
See Lee (
Polkinghorne (
The term kenosis has been applied to non-human and even inanimate matter to indicate how lower physical systems support higher systems and how some forms of life serve others. In this way the human trait of altruism is anthropopatically conferred on natural processes and non-human forms of life, which comes close to the attribution of mind to non-human entities.