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Photo by Steve Parker

Introduction:

Today’s topic is panpsychism, which is a theory in the philosophy of mind that deals with the nature of consciousness. In short, a person who holds to the truth of panpsychism is proposing, as a potential path toward solving the hard problem of consciousness, the notion that every piece of matter in existence possesses some modicum of consciousness. A conscious experience is something that happens at different scales and to different extents for certain collections of matter. The panpsychist would hold that an atom possesses a quantity of consciousness, as does a rock, a person, and a building.

If you’ve not read much into the philosophy of mind (and even if you have, depending on your intuitions), this might seem at first like a lot of nonsense. And furthermore, if you’ve been following along with this series—and so have a fair grasp of my naturalistic, phenomenological, pragmatic, and compromise-suffused personal philosophy—then you are probably going to be surprised by what I say next: I think panpsychism is a good theory. And, much like 19th-century philosopher William Kingdon Clifford, I think that anyone holding to the truth of evolutionary biology (as I clearly am) ought to think panpsychism is a good theory.

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