Panpsychism: what is it, and philosophical theories that defend it?

What is panpsychism? Let's see what it consists of and which thinkers have been interested in it.

Since the dawn of philosophy, human beings have asked themselves several questions: to what extent is consciousness uniquely human? do other animals have consciousness? do even the simplest animals have consciousness? could rocks, water, grasses... all of these have consciousness?

Panpsychism is the set of philosophical doctrines in which it is defended that the conscience is not something exclusive of the human species, that other alive beings and, even, inanimate elements can have it or have subjective perceptions of the world that surrounds them.

• Related article, "How are psychology and philosophy similar?"

What is panpsychism?

The word panpsychism (from the Greek "pan", "everything, anything" and "psiché" "soul, mind") refers to the. set of philosophical doctrines in which it is held that it is not only people who have a conscience but also beings who have a consciousness.. That is to say, panpsychists believe that other forms of life or even objects that, at first sight we would call inanimate, can possess properly conscious qualities or have a subjective perception of the world around them.

It should be noted that panpsychist ideas are not all the same. There are those who defend the view that it is not only animals that, from a very anthropocentric perspective, could be classified as superior or that, thanks to their more or less large and developed brains, would be capable of harboring consciousness. This view of being conscious has also been related to insects, plants and even microorganisms. The most extensive and radical panpsychism defends the idea that subjective experience is ubiquitous: it is found in all things.

Historical background

In the following we will see briefly each period in which, in one way or another, panpsychist doctrines have been presented, their authors and what was their exact vision of the concept of consciousness in all, or almost all, things.

1. Classical Greece

Although they did not have a specific term to define the idea found in the concept of panpsychism, already from the time of Ancient Greece there was philosophizing about consciousness and subjective experience..

In times before the Socratic school, Thales of Miletus, who is considered the first philosopher, defended the idea that "everything was full of gods", that is, he had a pantheistic view of nature.

According to Thales, inside every object, every animal, every grain of sand, there was something with properties similar to what we understand as consciousness. This idea is considered one of the first panpsychist doctrines.

Years later, Plato, expounding his philosophy, defended the idea that all things, insofar as they are something and therefore exist, must have some property that can also be found in the mind and soul, things that, for him, also existed. The world, in Plato's view, was something with soul and intelligence, and that each element that composed it was also a living entity.

2. Renaissance

With the arrival of the Middle Ages, Greek philosophy fell into obscurity, as did many other Hellenic knowledge and contributions.

However, centuries later, thanks to the arrival of the light of the Renaissance, panpsychistic ideas managed to resurge and figures such as Gerolamo Cardano and figures such as Gerolamo Cardano, Giordano Bruno and Francesco Patrizi contributed with their visions. In fact, it is to the latter Italian philosopher that we owe the invention of the expression "panpsychism".

For Cardano the soul, which could well be understood as consciousness, was a fundamental part of the world, something that could not be separated from reality.

Giordano Bruno considered that nothing in this world could come without soul or without having a vital principle. Everything had to have an essence that, to a greater or lesser extent, was reminiscent of what we human beings identify as consciousness.

3. 17th century

Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz both presented panpsychist doctrines.

Spinoza speaks of reality as being made up of a single substance, which is eternal and which comes from a single source.which is eternal and which would be synonymous with God or the concept of Nature. We would all be a whole, something conscious but in its totality.

In contrast, Leibniz speaks of the idea that reality is made up of small, infinite and indivisible conscious units (monads) which are the fundamental structures of the universe, something like the atoms of consciousness.

4. Twentieth century

Arriving at the 20th century, the most outstanding figure of panpsychism is Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). In his ontology, he presented the idea that the basic nature of the world is made up of events and processes, which are created and destroyed. These processes are elementary events, which he calls "occasions" and are part of the idea of the mental. For him mental operations had an impact on the constitution of nature, they shaped reality.

Carl Jung argued that the psyche and matter were contained in the same world, and that they were in constant contact with each other. Psyche and matter are two different aspects of the same thing, as if they were part of the same coin.

Panpsychism today

With the advent of World War II the panpsychist doctrines were losing strength to logical positivism. However, they achieved a certain comeback in 1979 with the publication of the article "Panpsychism" by Thomas Nagel. Later, other authors, such as Galen Strawson with his 2006 article "Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism? Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism dared to approach the concept of panpsychism in a much more scientific way than ever before.

Today we have the idea that consciousness is one of the fundamental truths of human existence.. Each one of us is aware of what we feel, what we perceive. Perhaps we are not linguistically skilled enough to be able to express it, but we have a subjective perception of reality. Our consciousness is what we know in the most direct way possible, there is no way to separate ourselves from it.

However, just as it is much closer to us than the desk we work at, the glasses we wear, or the clothes we wear, it is also the aspect of ourselves as a species that remains the most mysterious to us. What is consciousness?

David Chalmers, an Australian analytical philosopher, has been talking about his panpsychist vision of reality, from a much more current perspective and with a language more appropriate to the century we are in if we compare it with Plato or Schopenhauer. In fact, he expounds it very extensively in his book The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (1996), in which he explains the need to understand to what extent it is not necessary to accept that other living beings, however basic they may be, can have consciousness..

In this book he talks about two problems that science faces when trying to understand human consciousness, which show that it is not possible to completely discard the idea of consciousness outside the human species. He calls these two problems the easy problem and the hard problem of consciousness:

The easy problem of consciousness

The easy problem of consciousness speaks of how science, especially the neurosciences, have tried to investigate about consciousness but establishing, a priori, the object of study that they want to approach. That is to say, they specify in each investigation an aspect related to the consciousness and describe it in an empirically observable way. Thus, we speak of consciousness as the ability to discriminate, categorize and react to a given stimulus, or to fix attention, to control behavior apostatically, and to control the behavior of a given person..

To better understand this idea, let's look at a rather descriptive example. Let's think about how humans see colors. Scientists know that the fact that we see something red, green or blue is due to the fact that objects with these colors emit light rays with different wavelengths.

When these rays enter the eye, they strike the cones, the cells specialized in distinguishing color. Depending on the wavelength, one or another type of cone will be activated. When activated, these cones send an electrical impulse that travels along the optic nerve to the areas of the brain responsible for processing color.

All this is a very brief explanation of the neurobiological correlates of color perception in the human eye, and could be tested by an experiment to distinguish objects with different color. could be tested by means of an experiment to distinguish objects with different color, neuroimaging techniques that show which areas are activated when doing this experiment.neuroimaging techniques that show which areas are activated when this activity is performed, etc. It is empirically demonstrable.

The difficult problem of consciousness

Chalmers states in his book that science is not prepared, and perhaps never will be, to demonstrate by means of empirical techniques how the experience of a specific stimulus occurs. We are not talking about how particular brain cells or areas are activated; we are talking about the subjective experience itself. subjective experience itself: how can it be registered?

When we think or perceive a stimulus, it is clear that we process it, as in the previous case of color, however there is a subjective aspect that cannot be explained in such a scientific way. How is it possible that we see the color green as a green color? Why that particular color? Why do we perceive just that color and not another one in front of a certain wavelength?

Not only human beings have consciousness

As we were commenting before, the idea of panpsychism, that is, that everything has consciousness or soul, implies that objects that at first glance do not seem at all something with a certain consciousness could have it in truth.

Today, and in the same line as with classical philosophers such as Leibniz, there are those who defend that each particle possesses a consciousness and, as a whole, can create more complex systems, as would be the case of human consciousness. Each particle has a minimum consciousness which, added to those of the others, generates a greater.

Until relatively recently, the idea that only human beings were capable of experiencing anything was quite widespread, both in science and in general culture. It was more or less accepted that other animal species, especially large primates or complex animals, could feel a subjective experience and be, to a greater or lesser extent, conscious. and be, to a greater or lesser extent, conscious.

However, the American neuroscientist Christof Koch considers that it does not make much sense to think that only humans and phylogenetically close animals can have consciousness is not as logical as one might think.

While he does not go to such a radical view as that a stone can feel when it is kicked, he does argue that, until proven otherwise, the idea that multicellular organisms cannot experience Pain or pleasure is not at all as crazy as one might think.

They may have an infinitely more vague sense of being alive than humans, but this does not mean that they do not feel it. Having smaller brains, or not even something that can be called a brain, their sense of being conscious will be less sophisticated than ours, but it will still be there. It would be a living being that would have its own way of feeling subjectively.

Another interesting case is that of plants. Stefano Mancuso, in his interesting book Sensibility and intelligence in the plant world exposes his research on the intelligent behavior of plants, to which he even grants consciousness.

While it is difficult to talk about the idea of plants being self-aware, his research group, based on their research, came to the conclusion that plants were far from being considered passive organisms: they must have some kind of consciousness, from which their intelligence would be drawn, in order to be able to adapt in the way they do.

Criticism of panpsychism

The major criticism of panpsychism, using terms inspired by the idea of the hard problem of consciousness, is the so-called "problem of combination". the so-called "problem of combination".How do these small particles with supposedly minuscule consciousnesses assemble to form a more complex consciousness?

Starting from the idea that our atoms are conscious particles and from their combination arises our human consciousness, more complex and, so to speak, "more self-conscious": what if we humans were like conscious particles? Is humanity, as a whole, a conscious superorganism? Is nature, as Spinoza said, a whole conscious substance? How do we make it so that we are doing something with higher consciousness, without us being aware of it?