Panpsychism is perhaps the most fascinating of all the metaphysical belief systems that attempt to explain the ultimate reality. As with most ontologies there is more than one form of it. This page will be concerned with the monistic pantheist form, rather than the dualistic panentheist form. An accepted definition of panpsychism would be that all matter is in someway conscious or sentient.This does not mean that rocks can think. It does mean that the individual atoms in the rock feel or experience each other and are somehow connected to the entire universe.The explanation of panpsychism I liked best was by Christian de Quincey. He said, "If both mind and matter arereal, and are not separate substances, and neither can emerge or evolve from the other, then both matter and mind have always existed together, are coextensive, co-eternal and in some way, co-creative.
Panpsychism, variously called panexperientalism or radical materialism, proposes that matter (or physical energy) itself is intrinsically sentient or experiental, all the way down." (When de Quincey says, "all the way down," he means from the entire universe down through the sub atomic particles or waves.)
Panpsychism
rejects Materialism because it needs a supernatural miracle to account
for consciousness. Panpsychism doesn't have this problem because it is
an ontology where matter and mind are not separate substances. It is
consciousness. Most scientists are materialists and almost reflexively
reject the panpsychist belief that matter can besentient. All too
often they attempt to ridicule it by saying, "Thinking that rocks have
feelings is silly!" While panpsychists do believe matter is sentient,
most of us do not believe that rocks have feelings, but we do believe
that individual entities feel or experience.
Charles Hartshorne (a
disciple of Whitehead) attempted to answer the critics of panpsychism
by referring to (1) the distinction of knowing from within and without;
(2) the difference between aggregates and compound individuals; (3) an
indistinction of sensory perception. The microscopic world is far from
inert.
If you have ever looked at
a drop of pond water under a microscope you begin to believe that even
single celled organisms have some sort of primitive consciousness. They
search for food, avoid danger and their waste products, and move about
with a purpose. I doubt if theyhav......
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Do atheists know more about religion ?
Count Saint Germain
Richard Dawkins and the new age fakers
Baby with abnormal features deified in Jharkhand
Techno-animism
Can we really transplant a human soul ?
Creationist museum challenges evolution
The forever gods
Iron age slab shows belief in soul seperation
