Panpsychism is crazy, but it's also most probably true

[rva_jeremy]

This is more philosophy of mind than science, but it addresses science so I thought it best posted here.  Please move as needed, mods.

Panpsychism is the idea that consciousness is not limited to sentient or living beings but is instead inherent in all matter.  This article points out that it is increasingly being viewed as the simplest way to solve the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness, namely: how do neurons firing create the experience of consciousness?

In fact, the only thing we know about the intrinsic nature of matter is that some of it – the stuff in brains – involves experience. We now face a theoretical choice. We either suppose that the intrinsic nature of fundamental particles involves experience or we suppose that they have some entirely unknown intrinsic nature. On the former supposition, the nature of macroscopic things is continuous with the nature of microscopic things. The latter supposition leads us to complexity, discontinuity and mystery. The theoretical imperative to form as simple and unified a view as is consistent with the data leads us quite straightforwardly in the direction of panpsychism.

The article is here.

P.S. Here's a counterpoint.  I tend to think that both perspectives are valid and the usefulness of one theory or another has more to do with the problem one wants to solve.  Consciousness is most likely a quantity of X and not simply a quality arising from some specific pattern of X.  But that begs the question of what consciousness actually is, what the nature of things actually are that can be summed into sentience, which I don't think panpsychism determines much better than other theories.  And if one is interested in sentient consciousness, the idea of building that out of smaller consciousnesses of atoms cannot but be of limited practical help.

I just think it's interesting to see ways in which Confederation philosophy shines through academia.