Panpsychism

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Panpsychism (from ancient Greek πᾶν pan "everything" and ψυχή psyche "spirit, soul") is a metaphysical theory, according to which all existing (and not reducible) objects have mental properties.

Panpsychism offers a proposed solution to the so-called “body-soul problem” , which deals with the relationship between matter and spirit. Panpsychists assume that in the course of evolution there has been an increasing development of spiritual or mental properties. One can now ask oneself whether and how spirit can emerge from matter . Dualists claim that the spirit cannot emerge from matter and is fundamentally of a different kind from matter. Materialists, on the other hand, claim that mental or spiritual properties are nothing more than complex arrangements of purely material things. Panpsychists deny the dualistic separation of mind and matter. But they also deny the thesis that spiritual or mental properties can arise suddenly and suddenly from purely material things. For panpsychists, the development of the spiritual and mental can only be explained if preliminary stages of the spiritual or mental are already integrated into the basic structure of the material world. Such preliminary stages of mental properties are often called "proto-mental" properties. Contemporary panpsychism therefore does not claim that atoms or bacteria, for example, can experience pain or similar states of consciousness. Modern panpsychists therefore do not assume that all things have a soul .

Definition and delimitation

The renaissance philosopher Francesco Patrizi was the creator of the term “panpsychism” . Contemporary panpsychists often refer to the mental or proto-mental aspect that they ascribe to all things in existence as phenomenal properties or qualia . The term qualia means that something feels somehow. Qualia are a (pre) form of what is called phenomenal consciousness in the case of humans . Similar pre-forms of consciousness such as qualia are called sensation or experience. A panpsychistic position that knows simple experience on all levels of nature is mostly in the tradition of Alfred North Whitehead and is also called pan-experimentalism after David Ray Griffin .

In addition to qualia and experiences, panpsychists also generalize other aspects of the spiritual - including subjectivity, the unity of a subjective experience, teleology (purposefulness), spontaneity (decision-making, freedom), intentionality (directionality, representation), perception, memory or even recognition, thinking, Speaking and confidence. Either the smallest components in the world are assigned one of these properties directly or a preform of them - which, however, is not perceived purely physically.

Panpsychism need not necessarily ascribe mental or proto-mental properties to the smallest things. Instead, many panpsychists (especially historical) attribute spiritual qualities to the world as a whole. One differentiates on the one hand atomistic panpsychists, for whom all individual things have a spiritual aspect because it has spiritual parts - and on the other hand holistic panpsychists who derive the spirituality of all things from the spirituality of the whole .

Differentiation from animism

At first glance, panpsychism appears to be an animistic position . Animists assume that e.g. B. Water sources or trees feel feelings that are similar to those of humans. Therefore, panpsychism has occasionally been argued that it is absurd because it attributes a kind of soul to things like stones or telephones. Contemporary panpsychists distinguish themselves against such a confusion of panpsychism with animism with two considerations:

  1. First, from the point of view of many panpsychists, mental properties appear gradually in stages. Bacteria, for example, may only have extremely primitive mental states; they have no self-awareness and cannot feel pain. If one nevertheless wishes to speak of their capacity for sentience, one can either speak with Whitehead of proto-consciousness or prehension, or with contemporary panexperientialists of phenomenal properties or qualia , which belong to the smallest components of the universe.
  2. Second, in modern atomistic panpsychism, a distinction is made between real individual-like units (elementary particles) or hierarchies of such individual units (elementary particles, atoms, molecules, cells, organisms), to which mental properties are ascribed, and artifacts, i.e. accumulations of such individual-like units, which are explicitly not own spiritual qualities are granted. An accumulation of smaller units is not automatically a new individual. The heap as a whole does not have to have any proto-mental properties, only its smallest components. In particular, a bunch has no subjectivity of its own and no individual perspective. All macroscopic objects and some “lower” organisms (such as plants or jellyfish) are viewed by panpsychists as such agglomerations or aggregates. This differentiation is made very clear , for example, by David Ray Griffin and Ken Wilber .

Differentiation from idealism

Panpsychism is often equated with an idealistic approach . An idealistic position that says that every thing in the universe has (proto-) mental properties can in this sense be called panpsychistic. Conversely, however, not every panpsychistic conception leads to a philosophical idealism.

The terms idealism and panpsychism are therefore not congruent: for most idealists, material properties can be reduced to spiritual properties. For many panpsychists this is precisely not the case, since they regard the material and the spiritual as two equally original aspects of an underlying substance. Such a view is not idealistic in that specific sense.

Another definition of idealism is that all properties must be thought in order to exist. Many panpsychists only demand a weaker condition for the existence of a trait, such as Whitehead merely requiring the existence of preconscious "prehensions" (perceptions).

Arguments for Panpsychism

The main arguments in favor of panpsychism are the genetic argument and the argument from intrinsic natures. Also to be mentioned are analogy arguments and the argument that panpsychism leads to the best worldview.

The genetic argument

First of all, it should be noted that the mental and the purely physical differ fundamentally: mental properties such as phenomenality , intentionality (directionality) or teleology (intentionality) cannot be captured using physical structures. How does the spirit come into (purely physical) nature? Where is the boundary between the mental and the non-mental in nature? When does the mental appear in the context of evolutionary history ? When does a human embryo become conscious? Is the idea that the mental arises suddenly - one speaks in this context of radical emergence - plausible?

A smooth transition between the purely physical and the psychological seems much more elegant. Now, however, there cannot be a smooth transition between two fundamentally different areas. Just as there is no homogeneous transition between numbers (from 1 to 200) and a yardstick, according to the genetic argument there is also no transition between the purely material and the (proto-) mental. Consequently, something (proto-) mental must already be found on the lower levels of nature. If you want a theory as simple as possible, then there shouldn't be anything purely physical. If one wants to avoid the latter consideration of economy, one can arrive at the same result if one combines the genetic argument with the following consideration.

The argument from intrinsic natures

Take any object in the world. It is described by the fact that it is part of a system , such as working in the system of economics or certain atomic lattices and molecules in the system of chemistry, etc. For each such system there are descriptions in textbooks, often also simulations in museums or on computers. But what makes the difference that the word “table salt” means a concrete molecule and not a simulation in a museum? The chemicals can not express this difference with their terms. A specific salt molecule must therefore be characterized by something that is outside the system of chemistry. This distinction is due to its intrinsic nature. In this case, the intrinsic nature of the physical constitution of the salt molecule can be assigned.

For an elementary particle in physics, however, the same problem arises as for the molecule. Its describability in the system of physics does not make it so clear that it cannot be part of a simulation. For the fundamental science of physics, however, there is no deeper science that could explain the difference to a simulation. So the physical elementary particles must be characterized by properties that cannot be described by (physical) relations, but belong to the physical things in themselves. They are intrinsic properties that can no longer be described as physical structures.

However, the only intrinsic properties of this type that we know are our own sensations . Only they come to a subject in such a way that it does not have to be related to another. If there are no sensible alternatives for the intrinsic properties of physical things, they must be thought of as analogous to mental sensations. The fact that the intrinsic nature of the smallest physical units actually has to do with the mental is in turn reinforced by the genetic argument.

Analogy arguments

A third class of arguments points to analogies between physical and mental processes that may suggest panpsychism. When some interpretations of quantum mechanics speak of an objective reduction of the quantum state , it is similar to mental selection or decision-making. One can also suspect parallels to the intentionality of the mental between the concept of information in quantum mechanics and applied sciences.

Arguments against panpsychism

Many writers refuse panpsychism because they doubt that intrinsic properties have to be phenomenal. Before overstretching language in such an unreasonable way, it is preferable to view the intrinsic nature as something unknowable , similar to Kant's " thing in itself ".

Combination problem

According to John Searle, the most important objection to panpsychism, which seeks to distance itself from physicalism and interactionalistic dualism , is the so-called combination problem. It was first formulated by William James and is particularly aimed at atomistic panpsychism. The problem is how the unified, higher consciousness of an organism can be formed by combining a large number of simple mental building blocks (such as atoms or cells) - instead of just a disconnected collection of many primitive proto-sensations.

Possible solutions for the combination problem were found by Alfred North Whitehead with the process philosophy (solution by "dominant / regnant nexus of personally ordered actual occasions within a spatiotemporal society of occasions") and by Ken Wilber with the AQAL model of the integral philosophy (solution by combination of Far Eastern non-dualism with Arthur Koestler's holon concept).

Physical properties can be combined by defining (according to Whitehead) an elementary particle as a system of energetic events, or, for example, adding the mass of individual parts and assigning them to the center of gravity, which is obtained via vector addition . In the latter, such simple way, however, phenomenal properties do not seem to be put together. Furthermore, it seems impossible for such a new subjectivity to arise. But then, it seems, the panpsychist confronts the problem of the new emergence of the mental in animals and humans with a similar sharpness as the physicalist and many a dualist.

A panpsychistic defense strategy against this argument consists in pointing out that there are no such simple combination principles in modern physics. In particular, the so-called quantum entanglement refers to completely different combination principles that are closer to the phenomenally experienced unity.

History of panpsychism

Pre-Socratics and Antiquity

The first panpsychistic theories can already be found among the pre-Socratics . In particular, the Milesian natural philosophers Thales , Anaximenes , Anaxagoras and Pythagoras assume that spiritual properties develop their effect everywhere as a universal life principle and as an organizing element of the cosmos. In contrast, Empedocles takes the view that all properties - and thus also those of the spiritual - arise from the four elements ( emergence ).

Since for Plato independent movement is a defining feature of the soul , he also regards animals and stars as animated, in Timaeus also plants. The cosmos itself has reason, which has its seat in the world soul (ψυχή τοῦ παντός psychḗ tou pantós). A creator god, the Demiurge, formed the world soul, gave it a share in ideas and planted them in the world in order to bring reason into the whole of the world and thereby make it more perfect. The world soul is the force that moves itself and everything else. It is immanent in the world, spread everywhere in it and at the same time surrounds it.

The Stoics advocate the thesis that all material (hyle) of reality is inspired by the divine reason (logos). The philosopher Plotinus , who was inspired by Plato and the Stoa , also claims that the cosmos harbors spiritual properties everywhere, since the cosmos is divine and thus of spiritual origin ( emanation ).

The philosophy of the Middle Ages , which was shaped by Aristotle , is mostly skeptical of panpsychism: Most thinkers of the Christian tradition only attribute a soul to living beings (and mostly only to humans in the image of God) and thus spiritual properties. The inanimate things of this world are of a purely physical nature and therefore “spirit-free”.

Renaissance

Panpsychism experienced a heyday in the Renaissance : The philosophers Nikolaus von Kues (Nicolaus Cusanus), Gerolamo Cardano , Bernardino Telesio , Francesco Patrizi da Cherso and Tommaso Campanella attributed spiritual properties to all of reality. Patrizi is the first philosopher who coined the expression "panpsychism" for this worldview. Giordano Bruno assumes that the cosmos is infinite in terms of both time and space: the cosmos has existed for ages and has no spatial limits. Bruno sees the cosmos as an infinitely large organism in which all things are related to all others. Things can influence one another by virtue of the spiritual properties that are everywhere. Bruno anticipates Leibniz's theory of monads here - with the difference that Bruno (like Whitehead in the 20th century) does not see the interacting monads as windowless.

Modern times

For Baruch de Spinoza there is only one substance: nature or God. According to Spinoza's well-known formula Deus sive Natura (“God or nature”), nature is identical with God and God is identical with nature. That is, the entire cosmos is a single substance, there is nothing outside of it, it is in nothing else, and thus all existing things and properties are at the same time modes of being and properties of this one substance. Substance or God has an infinite number of attributes (properties). Two of these attributes are thought (mental qualities) and expansion (physical qualities). Since substance has spiritual properties and everything that exists in reality is only one mode of being of the one substance, reality has spiritual properties everywhere.

In his monadology, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz assumes that the entire cosmos consists of an infinite number of monads . The point-like monads are immaterial design principles or formative forces that are indivisible, immortal and all different from one another. Every monad strives for a goal, that is, it is active as an entelechy and to this extent has an ability to perceive . The perceptions are simple, unconscious perceptions. Only when an organism is sufficiently complex (through the organization of the monads) will consciously experienced apperceptions develop, which can ultimately lead to the self-perception of more highly developed organisms. Leibniz advocates a psychophysical parallelism : There is no direct causal interaction between mental and physical events. Rather, these events, like the hands of synchronized clocks, run parallel to one another. God has provided the world with a pre-established harmony so that spiritual and physical events occur in perfect harmony with one another.

German idealism

For GWF Hegel, the spirit is the truth and the “absolute first” of nature. Because all things and properties of reality (e.g. nature) are derivatives of the idea from which the objective, eternal basic structures of reality can be derived. For Hegel, the entire historical reality is the process of a world spirit present everywhere .

Friedrich Schelling , like Giordano Bruno, regards nature as a huge organism. Nature has spiritual and physical properties everywhere and is in a constant dynamic process of evolution. The Absolute (the world soul ) sees itself in the course of evolution through the spiritual activities of man.

Based on Hegel's idealism, Anglo-Saxon philosophers such as Francis Herbert Bradley , John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart and Josiah Royce founded their own school of absolute idealism with a panpsychistic character in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

19th century

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe did not develop an independent philosophical system. Nevertheless, he advocates a clear panpsychism in his "Naturphilosophischen Schriften". Inspired by Spinoza, Goethe assumes that mental and physical properties can never exist independently of one another. In addition, Goethe, influenced by Schelling's writings, believed in a world soul that is responsible for the entelechy of nature.

Arthur Schopenhauer sees two kinds of principles at work in reality: On the one hand, reality only exists insofar as it perceives a subject, that is, reality corresponds to an idea ( idealism ). On the other hand, this world of ideas is based on a will that Schopenhauer understands as a blind impulse without any ground or aim. This will determines all processes of organic and inorganic nature. It is objectified in the phenomenal world as the will to live and to reproduce.

The physicist and philosopher Gustav Theodor Fechner , like Leibniz, defended a psychophysical parallelism. The reason for the lack of interaction between the spiritual and the physical, however, does not lie, as with Leibniz, in a pre-stabilized harmony, but in the different perspectives that are taken on things. While for Leibniz body and soul are like two clocks that were set to the same time by their creator and therefore run parallel to one another without any causal influence, for Fechner body and soul are, so to speak, a single clock that can be viewed from two different perspectives: off the external to the clock and from the internal to the clock itself. The spiritual is therefore what is given from the perspective of the first person, while the physical includes what is given from the third person. Accordingly, the parallelism does not go back to a common cause, namely God, as in Leibniz, but to the correlated appearance of perspectively different properties of one and the same property bearer: spiritual and physical thus correspond to one another as the inner and outer sides of the same reality. Fechner tried inductively to justify that his two-sided theory is applicable not only to humans, but also to the universe as a whole. The cosmos and nature are built so harmoniously that it is difficult to imagine that the spiritual only appears abruptly with humans (and in an incomprehensible way). The fact that Fechner often spoke of a feeling “plant soul” and an all encompassing, also feeling “earth soul” contributed decisively to the prejudices against panpsychism that are still to be found today.

20th century

The mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead has developed a comprehensive panpsychistic worldview . Influenced by Henri Bergson and William James , Whitehead assumes that reality is not made up of inert, insensitive matter, but rather of “actual entities”, which are “complex and interlocking droplets of experience” with the character of processes that become and perish are to be grasped. Real individuals, called real events after Whitehead, are indivisible and the most fundamental entities of reality. Thus, although they resemble Leibniz's monads, the real events have “windows”: that is, the real events or individual beings capture each other and thus influence each other. In his main work, Process and Reality , Whitehead speaks of “prehensions” (grasping), i.e. not necessarily conscious processes of information processing. Through these mutual previews of real events, the cosmos becomes a gigantic network of individual beings that influence each other and thus enable the process of evolution. For Whitehead, all real individuals are "bipolar," that is, they have a physical pole of causal causation and a spiritual pole of teleological reasons.

In the process philosophy , Charles Hartshorne , David Ray Griffin and Christian de Quincey interpreted, modified and partially reformulated Whitehead's panpsychistic system. Although the aforementioned philosophers have not worked out completely independent models of thought and are strongly oriented towards Whitehead, their merit is that they have made his work fruitful for the current philosophy of mind . Whitehead's work is extremely complex and sometimes difficult to understand. David Ray Griffin helped give Whiteheadian panpsychism an easier-to-understand form and make it more popular. (However in a modified version: e.g. with nested macro-event processes in contrast to Whitehead's microscopic event atoms; and with Hartshorne's concept of process theology, which is quite controversial among process philosophers.)

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin worked as a philosopher, geologist and world-renowned paleontologist. In addition, the Jesuit priest was one of the first thinkers to embed Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in a philosophical model of thought, which earned him a publication ban on the part of the Vatican and a 20-year exile in China. Teilhard de Chardin assumes that all physical things have spiritual properties: The “world matter” corresponds to a dynamic energy that has both a physical outside (“tangential energy”) and a spiritual inside (“radial energy”).

The British philosopher Timothy Sprigge published his little-noticed work The Vindication of Absolute Idealism in 1973 . Sprigge takes the idealistic view that physical reality has a purely spiritual basis: the cosmos consists of innumerable "elements of experience" that are organized in a large overall system.

Whitehead and Teilhard de Chardin were the last thinkers to develop an independent panpsychistic cosmology. In 1976, Thomas Nagel published a brief summary of the arguments for panpsychism. In 1996, David Chalmers sympathized with panpsychism in his book The Conscious Mind , and presented some arguments in favor of such a worldview.

It can be said that panpsychism has moved into the background of the philosophical debate since the Second World War - which was only to change at the beginning of the 21st century:

21st century

At the beginning of the 21st century panpsychism is receiving new attention: in For Love of Matter (2003), the Australian philosopher Freya Mathews pleaded for holistic panpsychism and describes the consequences of such a position for ethics and ecology.

In 2004, Gregg Rosenberg provided important impulses for the current debate in his book A Place for Consciousness . In it, Rosenberg presents a new argument against physicalism based on the Game of Life and derives from these considerations a new model of mental causation within a panpsychistic context.

In 2005, the philosopher David Skrbina presented the first philosophical and historical appraisal of panpsychism under the title Panpsychism in the West . The book presents the entire occidental history of panpsychism from the pre-Socratics to the end of the 20th century. It turns out that panpsychism has had prominent representatives at almost all times and is therefore not an outsider position as it seemed at the end of the 20th century .

In 2006 the British philosopher Galen Strawson published the essay “Realistic Monism. Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism ”in the Journal of Consciousness Studies . His thesis is: Because we have to assume phenomenal awareness for our approach to physics, be it the primary physical fact. Many philosophers discuss his thesis in the same volume. Strawson addresses all of these criticisms in a long essay.

Several authors are currently endeavoring to integrate Whitehead's thoughts into the current debate (e.g. DS Clarke ). In this tradition, some authors try to empirically differentiate variants of panpsychism (for example in anesthesia and physics Stuart Hameroff and in biology Spyridon A. Koutroufini ).

More panpsychists

Other panpsychistic views and models of thought (which, however, differ significantly in their conception) have been represented and developed by the following thinkers, among others: Josiah Royce , John Dewey , William James , Charles Peirce , Ernst Haeckel , Henri Bergson , Bertrand Russell , Arthur Eddington , Carl Gustav Jung , Bernhard Rensch , Charles Birch , David Bohm , Freeman Dyson , Ervin László , Jean Émile Charon and Michael Lockwood . Influential spiritual teachers and representatives of integral theory such as Sri Aurobindo and Ken Wilber also hold pan-psychic views.

Modern panpsychism in Germany

Liberal naturalism

In the German-speaking world, the philosopher Godehard Brüntrup has argued that the concept of emergence leads to a dualistic position without the panpsychistic assumption of gradually graduated proto-mental properties. In the tradition of Bertrand Russell and Alfred N. Whitehead, he advocates the thesis that the intrinsic properties of matter must be thought of as analogous to mental properties. The central point is René Descartes ' rejection of the concept of matter , which continues to shape scientific thinking to this day. In contrast to the reductionist program of the old materialistic naturalism, Brüntrup speaks with Gregg Rosenberg of a “liberal naturalism”, which counts preliminary stages of the mental to the fundamental properties of material nature.
Brüntrup has dedicated a separate chapter of the third, expanded edition of his textbook The Body-Soul Problem to Panpsychism in the Analytical Philosophy of Mind.

Gradual panpsychism

Following Alfred N. Whitehead and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Patrick Spät formulated a “Gradual Panpsychism”. The sudden emergence of spiritual properties is not possible - we must, as it were, take into account the existence of spiritual properties if we want to describe and explain reality in all its facets. Late assumes that in reality a graduated form of spiritual properties can be found: Only if a thing (an entity) is sufficiently complex in material terms, the corresponding spiritual side can also assume complex features. Late in 2012, Man does not live from the brain alone, published a popular science book that deals with "Gradual Panpsychism" in a generally understandable and detailed manner. In his dissertation as well as in his published book, Spät also refers to the theory of Integrated Information Theory of Conciousness (IIT) of the US psychiatrist and neurobiologist Giulio Tononi , which is known to the US neuroscientist Christof According to Koch , can be regarded as a scientific form of panpsychism. An essential point in the theory of integrated information, which is measured in bits, is that it can also be applied to artificial systems, i.e. robots.

See also

literature

  • Michael Blamauer (Ed.): The Mental as Fundamental: New Perspectives on Panpsychism. Ontos, Frankfurt 2011, ISBN 978-3-86838-114-6 . ( Review )
  • Godehard Brüntrup: Is psycho-physical emergentism committed to dualism? The causal efficacy of emergent mental properties. In: Knowledge. 6, 1998, pp. 133-151.
  • Godehard Brüntrup: The mind-body problem. 3. Edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2008, Chapter 8: “An alternative picture of matter”, pp. 152–177.
  • Godehard Brüntrup: Natural Individuals and Intrinsic Properties. In: Ludger Honnefelder, Edmund Runggaldier, Benedikt Schick (eds.): Unity and Time in Metaphysics . de Gruyter, Berlin 2009, pp. 237-252.
  • Freya Mathews: For Love of Matter . SUNY Press, Albany.
  • David Griffin: Unsnarling the World Knot: Consciousness, Freedom and the Mind-Body Problem . Berkeley: University of California Press 1998.
  • Jan G. Michel: Thoughts on a panpsychistic physicalism. In: M. Backmann, JG Michel (Ed.): Physicalism, free will, artificial intelligence . mentis, Paderborn 2009, pp. 43-50.
  • Tobias Müller, Heinrich Watzka: A universe full of spirit dust? mentis, Paderborn 2011.
  • Matthias Rugel: Analytical Metaphysics of Panpsychism. mentis, Paderborn 2013, ISBN 978-3-89785-802-2 .
  • Gregg Rosenberg: A Place for Consciousness. Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World . Oxford University Press, New York 2004.
  • David Skrbina: Panpsychism in the West . MIT Press, Cambridge 2005. ( Review )
  • David Skrbina (Ed.): Mind that Abides. Panpsychism in the New Millennium . John Benjamin, Amsterdam 2009. ( Review )
  • Patrick Spät: Panpsychism: a proposed solution to the mind-body problem. Dissertation . FreiDok of the University of Freiburg, Freiburg 2010.
  • Patrick Spät: Man does not live from the brain alone . Parodos, Berlin 2012 (revised and updated new edition: epubli, Berlin 2016).
  • Galen Strawson et al: Consciousness and its Place in Nature. Anthony Freeman (Ed.). Imprint Academic, Exeter 2006.
  • Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Man in the cosmos . Beck, Munich 2005 (first published in 1955 as Le Phénomène Humain ).
  • Alfred N. Whitehead: Process and Reality. Draft of a cosmology . Suhrkamp, ​​2008 (first published in 1929 as Process and Reality ).

Web links

Wiktionary: Panpsychism  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David Skrbina: Panpsychism. In: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  2. ^ A b D. R. Griffin: Whitehead's Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy . SUNY Press, New York 2007.
  3. ↑ a b K. Wilber: Eros, Kosmos, Logos: A vision on the threshold of the next millennium . Krüger, Frankfurt 1998.
  4. ↑ Holons, Piles, and Artifacts
  5. ↑ D. Skrbina: Panpsychism in the West . MIT Press, Cambridge 2005, chapter 10; W. Seager: Panpsychism. (PDF; 152 kB)
  6. ^ William James: If evolution is to run smoothly, consciousness must have been present at the very origin of things. In: Principles of Psychology. (1983 edition), Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1890, p. 152.
  7. ↑ G. Rosenberg: On the Intrinsic Nature of the Physical. In: M. Weber, A. Weekes (Eds.): Process Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Philosophy of Mind . SUNY Press, New York 2009, pp. 273-291.
  8. ↑ W. James: The Principles of Psychology. Volume 1. Dover, New York 1950 (first published 1890), p. 160.
  9. ↑ DR Griffin: Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom and the Mind-Body Problem . Univ. Calif. Press, 1998.
  10. ↑ K. Wilber: A Brief History of the Cosmos . Fischer, Frankfurt 2004.
  11. ^ P. Goff: Why Panpsychism doesn't Help Us Explain Consciousness. In: Dialectica. 63 (3), 2009, pp. 289-311.
  12. ^ Gustav Theodor Fechner: Elements of psychophysics . Two volumes. Leipzig 1860.
  13. ↑ TLS Sprigge: The Vindication of Absolute Idealism . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1984.
  14. ↑ T. Nagel: The Panpsychism. (1976). In: T. Nagel: Last Questions . Philo, Bodenheim near Mainz 1996, pp. 251-267.
  15. ^ DJ Chalmers: The Conscious Mind . Oxford University Press, New York 1996.
  16. ^ F. Mathews: For Love of Matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism. SUNY Press, New York 2003.
  17. ↑ G. Rosenberg: A Place for Consciousness. Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World. Oxford University Press, New York 2004.
  18. ↑ D. Skrbina: Panpsychism in the West . MIT Press, Cambridge 2005.
  19. ↑ G. Strawson: Realistic Monism. Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism. In: A. Freeman (Ed.): Consciousness and its Place in Nature . Imprint Academic, Exeter 2006, pp. 3-31.
  20. ^ Hameroff's homepage
  21. ↑ Koutroufinis' homepage ( Memento from September 4, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  22. ^ Charles Birch: Why I became a Panexperientialist.
  23. ↑ Matthijs Cornelissen: Sri Aurobindo's evolutionary ontology of consciousness. on: ipi.org.in , also in: Kireet Joshi, Matthijs Cornelissen: Consciousness, Indian Psychology and Yoga. (= History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization. Volume XI, Part 3). Center for the Study of Civilizations, New Delhi 2004, ISBN 81-87586-17-6 .
  24. ↑ Ken Wilber: Do Critics Misrepresent My Position? A Test Case from a Recent Academic Journal. Part III: Panpsychism. ( Memento from July 19, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) on: Ken Wilber Online. Shambhala Publications.
  25. ^ G. Brüntrup: Is psycho-physical emergentism committed to dualism? The causal efficacy of emergent mental properties. In: Knowledge. 6, 1998, pp. 133-151.
  26. ↑ G. Brüntrup: Natural Individuals and Intrinsic Properties. In: L. Honnefelder, E. Runggaldier, B. Schick (Eds.): Unity and Time in Metaphysics. de Gruyter, Berlin 2009, pp. 237-252.
  27. ↑ G. Brüntrup: The body-soul problem. 3. Edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2008, Chapter 8: “An alternative picture of matter”, pp. 152–177.
  28. ↑ G. Brüntrup: Liberal Naturalism and the Reality of Phenomenal Experience. In: B. Goebel, AM Hauk, G. Kruip (eds.): Problems of naturalism: Philosophical contributions . mentis, Paderborn 2005, pp. 183-210.
  29. ↑ P. Spät: Panpsychism: a proposed solution to the mind-body problem . FreiDok of the University of Freiburg, Freiburg 2010.
  30. ↑ P. Spät: Man does not live from the brain alone . Parodos, Berlin 2012. Revised and updated new edition: epubli, Berlin 2016
  31. ↑ C. Koch: A "Complex" Theory of Consciousness: Is complexity the secret to sentience, to a panpsychic view of consciousness? In: Scientific American Mind. July / August 2009 scientificamerican.com
  32. ^ G. Tononi: PHI. A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul. Pantheon Books, New York 2012.