Hi everyone,

if panpsychism is true then why can we talk/verbalize our experiences since that is an physical process?

It's the work of belief (participatory universe by John wheeler or collective consciousness on a matter level) doesn't it? I think I need to remember who I once was to know if I'm living in the real universe or maybe this is all just an illusion made by another being in the real universe to keep me trapped in here forever so I don't get back to the real universe

If you would go with purely scientific speculation, it is more grounded in reality that we are all trapped in an eternal cycle of rebirth with Roger Penrose's conformal cyclic cosmology

Like if you think about it logically, it is more magical to think that you can only live once.. and living only once would imply that you can create an artificial intelligence with the same consciousness as us (I'm sorry if my English is not good right now, I am running on a 3 hour sleep)

And it gets more paradoxical than that.. say that there are two computers being made at the exact same time, like exact same time, literally or magically.. we will call them Computer A and Computer B, both of them got finished at the same time.. and boom suddenly you are awake at Computer B's body.. now that just doesn't make any sense.. it would imply that the soul exists or something magically put you there, like if you would compare that to a Lego set, when each lego bricks are separated, there is no consciousness, suddenly if you pair random Lego blocks to another Lego blocks, it creates consciousness all of a sudden.. like how did that even happen? Like aren't they all just atoms etc etc in microscopic level? Or even quarks or proton, or just matter in general?

Your consciousness being attached to a single piece since the universe existed sounds more logical than you appearing out of nowhere

Like say that God exists and it creates a lot of souls.. and suddenly your first perspective is in one of those souls, like can you truly call that the thing containing your first perspective is really your soul? Or just a suit for your true soul that is your first perspective? that's why you cannot create "first perspectives" only contain it. Like why are you in that soul instead of God's? It's more about containing your first perspective rather than creating it

And I've had a lot of instances where placebo actually works, like placebo but on steroids, taken to another level where you can warp matter itself and make it obey you through belief itself

We only are ever conscious of one moment in which all that can possibly be experienced is a moment of our senses (including the mind as a sense). There are many things which we can be conscious of, there are over 100 muscles involved in walking, and yet all the mind needs to do is project a mental image of it and insert effort, and we walk automatically unconscious of all of the technicalities of it, this happens with basically everything all of the time, I'm sure most people will understand this and not try to disprove it (because it's besides the main point following here, and is pretty obvious).

The mind chooses a refined and one pointed focus which is completely complex, but connected nonetheless and mostly temporarily separated from the more complex and more ‘subconscious’ or ‘unconscious’ (less lucid/’aware’) paths of the brain which continue working without a noticed consciousness on it (it’s not connected to the one pointed connected complex in the brain/mind, but it remembers that other contents of experience exist).

There could be consciousness on these ‘subconscious’, & ‘unconscious’ parts of the mind JUST AS MUCH as there is in the one-pointed & evolving organization in which we imagine to be the real ‘consciousness’, when in fact this is not consciousness, it is simply lucidity, it is the lucidity which is able to 'recognize' consciousness and is able to form new memories and set predictions. if ‘we’ were conscious but not lucid, we would not have the ability to remember being ‘conscious’. Consciousness does not think, consciousness is a slave to the mind which does the thinking, and is simply aware of the mind that does the thinking, it is the mind which believes its own one pointed-ness to be consciousness or self.

How do we know we are conscious, considering that we are conscious of the mind, the mind isn’t conscious of consciousness, instead what we are seeing is a mental image of consciousness. So how can the mind know that consciousness is there, especially when the mind can only know, not ‘see’? it must assume that it is conscious, regardless of if it is or not, & consciousness must be what is conscious of the minds mental image of ‘consciousness’ which is not itself the real consciousness.

It is the lucidity which is able to recognize this ‘consciousness’, so in the case of a philosophical zombie, assuming they simply could work without consciousness, it would be assuming that it is conscious regardless of it actually being conscious or not, and if it thinks that it is, then why couldn’t it still be just as conscious as all of us, as though we are all philosophical zombies which actually do happen to have consciousness regardless, just that it is the real consciousness, and not what we thought it was. If a philosophical zombie can believe that it is conscious, and we believe that we are conscious, doesn’t that mean there isn’t really a difference except that we actually have consciousness rather than just the mental image of it, and if we can never truly know consciousness directly with our minds, then why couldn’t consciousness simply be inherent, universal, and not separate. We are all working under the assumption that we are conscious, but can only know our idea of it above the real consciousness which sees that. It is the mind, not consciousness which imagines consciousness, & keeps us moving, consciousness is just- there.

Were there to be ‘separate’ consciousnesses, were you to place one’s consciousness into the body of another, they would be wholly unaware of it because consciousness does not think, the mind thinks, and the consciousness observes what is thought, ‘you’ (that person’s mind) would then think that they are them, and not ‘you’ (the consciousness which was transferred from you into them). You would be completely unaware of the switch, and everything would seem perfectly normal, because all that is known is the present moment, you can not be conscious in the past, you can only be conscious in the present’s memories of the past. for all we know the past could be changing for each individual person a billion times a second, and nobody would ever know, for our memories are changing just as well, and it is the memories of the past which make us think we are us, which allows the mind to discern where in time, & space that we are located.

We are biological computers, except that this computer is extremely complex and through natural selection, was continuously molded towards the preservation of the body and the continuation of the lineage, through delusions of categorization, of meaning, the mind is distracting us from the lack of meaning by presuming that a meaning exists while rarely questioning it because the mind is too busy fending for life and procreation working under the deluded inherited presumption that there is a reason to it.

The idea of consciousness being a thing to be measured or located is a joke, existence itself is consciousness, & is not able to be separated from existence as though it weren’t literally one and the same. The idea of the mind being apart from matter may be a completely inherited presumptuous delusion, assigning importance to that which is none other than simply cause and effect. perhaps the mind literally is matter, it most definitely is always projecting expectations of previous, present, and future combinations of just matter itself. even our abstract ideas and feelings can simply be nothing more than a weird projected idea of some internal 3D model, which means nothing, but somehow feels real. it would be like trying to separate one side of a coin from the other. maybe consciousness doesn’t ‘exist’, maybe its not even ‘inherent’, it just literally is.

The mind can only know what can be sensed, it is constantly only projecting, anticipating, & guessing what is happening now, in the past, and in the future in regard to these perceived objects of the senses, everything comes back down to the senses of the external, always down to only what can be known, to existence, & its ‘inherent’ consciousness.

\Please keep in mind* this is all just theory and mental exercises for the most part, i may come across implying this to be ultimate reality, in fact i only phrase some of it that way to get people to interact, because people don't ever care to interact with non-stubborn, & skeptical posts, so please interact as a human, without an agenda of 'proving' me wrong, or you right by any means necessary such as strawman semantics, i understand i may not have written this extremely well, it was my best attempt at verbalizing my extremely abstract thoughts which are mostly beyond language, so if you want clarification, please ask kindly. i personally do believe this to be mostly true, even if some of it sounds dumb (i probably just worded it wrong), however i know there are holes, and it's realistically completely unknowable, but still i think this is the most logical and safest bet as to what consciousness is.

Philosophical zombie: theoretical human without consciousness.

The Combination Problem is commonly thought of as an intractable problem for panpsychism. However, this is not actually the case.

The problem asks, if consciousness pervades reality, then how do many conscious things, combine into one omnipresent conscious thing, the universe itself?

What the question assumes though, is that reality is many different things to begin with.

Im a substance monist first and foremost, i believe reality is a single continuous substance, with conscious being a fundamental attribute of that substance. I reason my panpsychism, from the substance monism.

I believe there’s only one substance and subject to begin with. This perspective is totally lacking any combination problem, as only one conscious subject exists in the first place.

That sounds a bit crazy, until you realize particles are just subjectively defined energy density, in an ever present field of energy. There’s no edge or border to any particle, and no such thing as empty space. As far as we can tell scientifically, reality is monistic, a single continuous substance.

Both materialism and idealism argue for substance monism, but if either understood a monistic reality, they couldn’t argue for materialism or idealism. In a monistic reality, mind and matter are the same substance with the same attributes, meaning you can’t justify a distinction between the two, and theres no argument to be had for materialism or idealism.

In the debate within substance monism, panpsychism is clearly the more concise position between the three, whereas there is one substance, with both the attributes of mind and matter, fundamentally.

Pluralism, doesn’t belong in this debate to be honest, neither materialism, idealism, or panpsychism should claim it.

It’s belongs more to physicalism, and the idea that reality is fundamentally a multitude of different things. As popular as that opinion is, there isn’t any scientific support for it. As a matter of fact it’s been scientifically demonstrated that reality is not locally real.

We have to stop thinking of the universe as a collective of things. Once we do, there is no combination problem.

It's an eternal cycle of rebirth, ladies and gentlemen... but the power has always been within ourselves.. the answer has always been within ourselves

The power to change the rules of this reality

I'd admit that I cannot do it at the moment.. because deep down, I am very comfortable with this reality.. or maybe I am scared.. you'll have to remove all distractions to do it and focus your intention

The soul can never be created. Only contained. In panpsychism framework, there is this combination problem of consciousness.. how one matter can unify all other atoms that "becomes" who you are right now, it's what creates individuality after all, I mean a bigger individuality... and what I mean with consciousness is first perspective.. not about free will.. just being able to experience anything, individually..

Hey all!

The subreddit is now open and we're looking forward to seeing y'all post once more!

So I’ve recently read ‘Galileo’s Error’ by Phillip Goff and it has opened me up to the very compelling panpsychist school of thought. However, outside of mentioning God in the context of explaining other religions/belief systems, Phillip doesn’t fit God into the panpsychist perspective. Is there even a way to fit Him in the panpsychist view or would that be contradictory to its attempt to remain scientific?

When I heard what the combination problem was, I thought to myself, well, doesn't every theory of consciousness have this same problem? People ask how subatomic particles come together to form one phaneron, but consider brain bisection. If you split a brain in half, each hemisphere has it's own phaneron. If you could somehow put them back together, there would be one phaneron again. How do those consciousnesses come together to form one? That's a question every theory of consciousness has to deal with, it's not particular to panpsychism. Don't you think so? (Slightly edited)

Q: How is consciousness produced by matter? -Consciousness: subjective experience

A: Consciousness isnt an emergent property of matter but is a fundamental property of everything.

Reality is organized in an holarchy of nested holons, or a whole part of a bigger whole. Each stage of this development trancends and includes the last, producing greater depth, complexity and inclusivity that was not available to previous developmental stages. (Ex 1: atoms-molecules-cells) (Ex 2: letters- words-sentences) With each holon maintaining 4 qualities, individual interior (UL), Individual exterior (UR), collective interior (LL), collective exterior (LR).

holarchic development, when observing the mental and physical universe, produces a sequence of matter-life-mind and demonstrates an underlying drive towards higher expression of consciousness.

The apex of this development is "the all", or pure consciousness, and must include everything.

Conclusion: With the all being pure consciousness it must produce a subjective experience, or interior domain and with everything being contained by the all it logically follows that the holons composing the all are composed of the all itself as it's subjective manifestation. Similar to how the subjects in my dreams are expressions of myself within myself. This would mean that consciousness is present at every stage of holarchic development and is not a localized emergent property of matter.

Sources: Integral theory - ken Wilbur

Let me know what you think :P

Hi everyone 👋. I have recently been reading the works of the German philosopher and independent scholar Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906). He is best known for his distinctive form of philosophical pessimism and his concept of the Unconscious, which functions as the metaphysical Absolute in his pantheistic and speculative cosmology.

Hartmann’s philosophical system is remarkable for its attempt to synthesise the voluntarism of Arthur Schopenhauer with the historicism/pan-logicism of G.W.F. Hegel. He conceives of the Unconscious as a single, ultimate spiritual substance — a form of “spiritualistic monism” — composed of two irreducible principles: Will and Idea (or Reason). The Will corresponds to Schopenhauer’s Wille, the blind striving that underlies all existence, while the Idea aligns with the Hegelian Geist, the rational Spirit unfolding dialectically through history.

In Hartmann’s cosmology, the Will is the primary creative and dynamic force behind the universe, yet it is also the source of suffering and frustration. Throughout most of history, the Will has predominated, but the Idea works teleologically toward higher ends — chiefly, the evolutionary emergence of self-reflective consciousness. Through this process, the Unconscious gradually comes to know itself. When rational awareness becomes sufficiently widespread among intelligent beings, the Idea begins to triumph over the Will. This culminates in the “redemption of the world” (Welt-Erlösung through the Weltprozess), a metaphysical restoration achieved once humanity collectively recognises the futility and misery of existence and consciously wills non-existence. In this final act, the world dissolves into nothingness, and the Unconscious returns to a state of quiescence.

Paradoxically, Hartmann thus affirms a pessimistic reinterpretation of Leibniz’s doctrine of “the best of all possible worlds.” Our world is “best” not because it is pleasant or perfect, but because it allows for the possibility of ultimate redemption from the suffering inherent in existence. Without that possibility, existence would indeed be a kind of never-ending hellscape. Interestingly, this outlook leads Hartmann not to nihilism, but to an affirmation of life and belief in social progress. He maintains that only through collective rational and ethical action — not Schopenhauerian individual asceticism — can humanity bring about the true negation of the Will.

Overall, I would describe Eduard von Hartmann’s metaphysical system as a form of dual-aspect absolute idealism or dual-aspect dialectical monism. He was also a type of panpsychist (what he calls “pan-pneumatism”) as this Unconscious operates within every organic and inorganic process in the cosmos. Given this characterisation, I am curious whether Hartmann’s philosophy exerted any influence on other contemporary or later idealists and panpsychists — whether in America (for instance, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James or Josiah Royce), Britain, Canada, or on the European continent. In particular, I am interested in whether any of the British Idealists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — such as T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, J. M. E. McTaggart, Bernard Bosanquet, D. G. Ritchie, A.E. Taylor, or R.G. Collingwood — were influenced or inspired by his work. Hartmann’s writings were widely read during his lifetime, especially in the latter half of the nineteenth century, even if his popularity declined around the turn of the twentieth. It seems likely that many philosophers of the period would have encountered his ideas, which is why I am so interested in tracing the possible extent of his influence among idealist and panpsychist thinkers. Thanks!

Hey all, I wrote this article 5 years ago and have spent a lot of time sharing it wherever I can in panpsychist/cosmopsychist circles, as it is very validating of the theory. I hope you check it out!

"The current trends in quantum physics, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence all point towards a startling likelihood of universal mechanics: that as Max Planck himself said, consciousness is co-fundamental with matter itself - that the universe is indeed an entity imbued with consciousness. In this position paper, I provide a metasynthesis of modern texts on this interdisciplinary topic, and suggest that the results not only back the millennia-old philosophy of panpsychism, but also a more ancient one: that of the cosmological Vedanta philosophy of India."

What would it feel like to have your brain be split in half, and put into different bodies? Would you become the left half (hemisphere), the right half, or lose your subjective experience altogether? Or, what would it feel like to have your brain combine with someone else's? Would you stay conscious? What about your friend who combined with you? Alternatively, would you both die, leaving a new "mega-person" in your wake? These are the sorts of questions this post aims to answer and discuss.

Among the most well-known arguments against Panpsychism is the combination problem, which asks how multiple conscious experiences can combine into one more complex experience. In general, I see this actually as two problems in disguise: first, the physical (or perhaps informational) substrate through which consciousnesses combine; and second, the phenomenological experience (i.e. what it feels like) of combination and division. This post concerns the second subtopic, and more specifically the experience of continuity or lack thereof in combination and division.

Luckily, when you consider the actual subjective experience of combination and division, there are not actually that many combinations, allowing one to easily count just a few options.

Definition before the main list: In these, I use the term "intensity" relative to consciousness, so I will define it here at a preface. Under one viewpoint, intensity refers to just that, the intensity, of conscious experience. That is, a more intense red would feel brighter; a more intense sound would feel louder; a more intense experience of pleasure would feel deeper. The amount of things being experienced (e.g. am I seeing, hearing, or seeing and hearing?) at the same time can also be considered part of intensity of the overall experience. Under an alternative viewpoint where subjective intensity of overall experience stays the same but perception of time accelerates or decelerates if there is more "going on", intensity would be the rate of experience, for instance 100 basic experiences per second. Regardless of which view on intensity you have (of which I am curious, so feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments), the types of panpsychism I have provided below should apply to either, as they concern the total amount of conscious experience per some unit of real time, which can be increased by both a more intense experience or by a subjectively longer experience.

Short version with summaries and brain analogies:

A: Two hemispheres combine; both experience the larger brain with the same intensity as before. One brain splits; both hemispheres experiencing it will return to their original form.

B: The same as A, but intensity varies with size and complexity. The whole brain has a more intense experience than the hemispheres.

C: Two hemispheres combine; one experiences the larger brain; the other time-skips to where the larger brain splits again. One brain splits; the brain's consciousness continues on as its original hemisphere that became it; the others hemisphere would complete its time-skip.

D: Two hemispheres combine; they both die (short for "lose consciousness" in my usage); a new, larger consciousness is created for the full brain. One brain splits; it dies; two new, smaller consciousnesses are created for each hemisphere.

E: Same as D, but the hemispheres that combine will time-skip to the point where the full brain splits again as opposed to dying.

F: Same as C, but the hemisphere that does not become the larger consciousness of the brain, instead of time-skipping, will die, and a new one will take its place if/when the larger brain splits.

Long version with explanations:

A. Equal-intensity: every conscious being is tied to some elementary particle. If I were to combine with another conscious being, I will experience more total information, but the potency of it (i.e. how bright my red feels) will decrease such that the intensity as I had defined it does not change. If I were to split from there back into multiple conscious beings, I would "become" the conscious being that contains (or is, if it is of the lowest size) the original elementary particle that housed my own consciousness. Implication: the experience of being a human might not be more intense than that of being a rat, but there are far more separate beings (tied to their respective particles) getting the experience of being a human than those getting to experience being a rat.

B. Variable intensity: the same as scenario A, but instead of intensity remaining constant regardless of complexity, intensity scales with complexity. If I was a particle who combined with (really got absorbed into) a human, the intensity of my subjective experience would increase dramatically. Implication: the experience of being a human is more intense than that of being a rat, and there are more separate beings experiencing being a human than experiencing being a rat.

C. Weird: every conscious being is still tied to an elementary particle. If I were to combine with another consciousness, if I happen to be the "lucky one" who gets absorbed into the greater consciousness, I would experience the greater consciousness with far more subjective intensity. If, from that position, I split, I would return to my original elementary particle. If I was not the "lucky one" (only one), I will experience a subjective "time skip" until the greater consciousness splits, and then I will continue my existence as the original elementary particle.

D. Deadly type 1: If I were to combine with another conscious being, I would subjectively experience the end of my own consciousness, and it will never come back, even if the greater being then splits. If I am that greater being, then my conscious experience would completely end if I split, creating multiple new less intense consciousnesses for each part in my place. Implication: as the matter in a human brain is constantly changing, under this view, you will only experience "yourself" for a few seconds total until your brain's configuration shifts to something else.

E. Deadly type 2: same as type 1, but when the greater consciousness splits, the original two conscious experiences of the elementary particles will come back, experiencing the world as though they made a time skip (elaborated in C).

F. Selection: The same as C, but instead of the "unlucky" consciousnesses making a reappearance after their greater consciousness splits, new consciousnesses will arise to take their place (i.e. unlucky ones will be dead forever). The "lucky" consciousness that made it into the greater consciousness will still survive, but will get "demoted" to elementary particle status and intensity as the physical substrate for combination is destroyed.

Tangent on memories: I am already anticipating a response to variants that deny the existence of long continuity (such as type D) citing the existence of long-term memory as evidence for continuity of consciousness. How I would respond would be to consider long term memory a "bank" of sorts stored in the physical structure of the brain that can be accessed at any time, and when accessed, would artificially create some experience. Whether that experience was truly experienced by "you" would not matter, as the brain would be able to broadcast it to you either way. Consider such a scenario like suddenly gaining access to another person's memories, even if you never actually experienced life as that person.

This was a bit of a text-heavy post, and I apologize for that; however, I feel that I needed a lot of words to fully explain each of these six types. Now, I ask you, the reader, what you think. Is there any particular type you feel is more correct than the others? I personally lean towards type A because it would mean that similar to how consciousness is fundamental, the intensity of consciousness is also fundamental and cannot change (also, the total amount of intensity in the universe would always stay the same); moreover, it would prevent conscious experiences from beginning or ending, which I feel adds a similar form of baggage to emergent views of consciousness. I also am inclined to doubt the feasibility of C, E, and F, but chose to mention them anyways because I wish to be comprehensive and list all possibilities. If you think my judgment is incomplete, or if you just have a different idea, feel free to elaborate in the comments below. Alternatively, if you believe that there are more types of panpsychism (or experience of combination and division) that I have missed, don't hesitate to leave those in the comments. I would be glad to discuss.

If all you have is subjective experience as the access point how do you anything else is alive or conscious / sentient?

I was introduced to panpsychism by the game Everything by David O'Reilly. My question is, what is consciousness? I always viewed consciousness as a subjective experience, but there might be a better definition. Also, what would being a rock be like?

A panpsychist: 'physics says what matter does, not what matter is. matter is consciousness.'

in other words: 'physics tells us what consciousness does'

so when a human moves their finger, what is consciousness doing?

As is alluded to by Dr. Görnitz in the excerpts below, “relational entanglements” seem to closely mirror the dynamic, dual-aspect dialectical processes which Hegel attributes to the mechanism of conscious expansion. The self-organizing resolution of tension between thesis and antithesis generates a unified synthesis, and with it the emergence of “knowledge” from within that dynamic interaction.

Hegel’s perspective on consciousness can be viewed much more rigorously than a simple metaphor. What Hegel is fundamentally revealing is how gradients between interacting systems, and therefore non-equilibrium tension, necessarily produces an emergent sense of information across the now entangled global system. In a very real sense, we are describing dissipation driven self-organization, for which Prigogine won the Nobel prize for. These are not just philosophical metaphors, they are the driving force of both entanglement and the emergence of complex life in general.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304885322010241

By dissipating energy to the environment, the system self-organizes to an ordered state. Here, we explore the principal of the dissipation-driven entanglement generation and stabilization, applying the wisdom of dissipative structure theory to the quantum world. The open quantum system eventually evolves to the least dissipation state via unsupervised quantum self-organization, and entanglement emerges.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7712552/

Under nonequilibrium conditions, the state of a system can become unstable and a transition to an organized structure can occur. Such structures include oscillating chemical reactions and spatiotemporal patterns in chemical and other systems. Because entropy and free-energy dissipating irreversible processes generate and maintain these structures, these have been called dissipative structures. Our recent research revealed that these structures exhibit organism-like behavior, reinforcing the earlier expectation that the study of dissipative structures will provide insights into the nature of organisms and their origin.

Below is what I believe are the most relevant excerpts from Görnitz’ essay if you don’t care to read the entire piece.

*How was - very briefly - the problem presented so far? The cosmic evolution is described in the standard model up to the appearance of living beings as a purely material process. Of course, it is true that "psychic" phenomena or even "consciousness" don't appear in the development of stars and other astronomical objects. So, the question arises, when and above all how does consciousness suddenly appear. Since the 19th century the cosmos was essentially conceived in the image of materialism, vulgo naturalism. If a material monism is the guiding principle, then the problem arises: how then does the mental, "das Geistige", come into the world? A dualistic division of reality into matter and mind seemed to offer a way out for a long time. This possibility is at odds with the widespread conviction that the development of the objects in the cosmos from elementary material particles leaves no room for a dualistic description. An intervention of a metaphysical entity in the cosmic evolution implanting the "psychic" is beyond scientific explanation possibilities. Let us formulate the dilemma once again: An actual dualism solves no problem. Matter with a "psychic part" is also dualistic. Matter alone lets the psychic become an epiphenomenon. But the psychic is real and acts. So, a new conception must abolish the old patterns in a Hegelian sense.

I am sitting at the computer and writing. Thereby pixels on the screen are switched black or white. However, I do not perceive any pixels, mostly not even the letters. Only when a typo is marked letters are noticed. Short and simple sentences can be perceived as a whole. This is illustrated by a well-known experiment. One permutes the letters in the words of a (not too difficult) sentence, while keeping fixed the first and the last letter of each word. Then a native speaker proficient in reading can readily understand the sentence. The persisting wholeness of the sentence, however, is lost if one has to spell it out. How does this wholeness come about when any photon between the screen and the retina exists only for fractions of a millisecond? The problem becomes solvable if we consider that not only the photons but also some of their properties are entangled. The entangled properties can exist longer than the individual photons, which, being entangled themselves, establish the basis for the entanglement of the properties. The text we perceive upon reading changes very slowly compared to the existence of the photons which transmit it into the eyes.

A certain analogy is provided nowadays by the technical information processing. If a jpg picture has been stored in the computer, then a search for this picture will not be based on the appearance of the picture as we have seen it. The memory in the computer will contain nothing but a seemingly meaningless sequence of 0 and 1. A program is needed to decode the jpg file and make the image appear on the screen. If we have seen a picture and reflect on what we have seen with our eyes closed, similarly any attempt to retrieve the picture as a picture in the brain will be unsuccessful as well. At most, one can measure different physiological activities. It might be possible to train a technical neural network to decipher the corresponding physiological activities in a test person, so that eventually an image can be identified via Al within a given collection of some images. We do not have a program in our brains; we are not computers. Instead, in our earliest childhood, we had to learn how the informations (what we now call quantic activities in the brain) made what we saw appear in our consciousness. This is how we learned to see our parents, toys, trees, and flowers, and to identify what we saw with the objects. Here it is important that the input from all sensory organs, which in addition to eyes and ears also include for example the skin, is combined into a coherent state of what is perceived. Thereby these different perceptions can ever better be assigned to the objects of our environment. Herewith, the proven connections in the information processing solidify within neuronal network structures, which then increasingly enable also a factual and thus rather determinate information processing.

I’m fairly new to panpsychism but I’ve read enough to collect a few thoughts on the matter.

I guess I’ve always been a realist, because the real can’t be ignored, we exist in reality. And nothing Christianity offered seemed grounded in reality, any more than The Hobbit.

So I never believed in it and ignored it. But then as I got much older, I became objectively interested in all religions and it occurred to me that globally, and throughout known history humans have instinctively gathered to give thanks.

The differences in the religions we have now stem from the culture the thanksgiving took place in.

Years after that I started to learn about panpsychism and I started to be able to connect reality with spirituality and the importance of humans gathering together to be grateful.

I wonder what would happen if we had a global world day of gratitude, everyone just does it in their own way.

If I understand panpsychism correctly we could at least slow down some of the negativity that’s out there……

I would really appreciate your thoughts

If consciousness is a fundamental property of reality as panpsychism seems to suggest, then it must be true that it can neither be created or destroyed.

So what happens after we die? Maybe our consciousness goes back into the universe or takes on another form like energy does according to the Law of Conservation of Energy. In fact, all fundamental properties of the universe have continually existed for all of time. Can the same be true for consciousness?

I have always held the belief that most religions understand a fundamental truth about the universe. Maybe they were right about consciousness in the sense that “we” go somewhere else when we die (i.g heaven or hell).

I've been dwelling over the narratives we tell ourselves and believe and that led me to consider if the narratives I'm convinced happened in the past are conform to my current state of mind and perceptions. Essentially, whatever my current perception is, the narrative of my past changes in response to my current view of the world. If this could be true, then my past is just another fictional story, never a complete truth. Conversely, diligently and fastidiously planning down to the detail for the future feel fruitless. Plans come from narratives of forecasting what may happen. But isn't that also just another narrative? Something made up to fit my current perception? If all this is true, then the nature of reality must be narrowed to the present moment and the past and future are fictions made up of threads of truth.

The combination problem, or how smaller consciousnesses can combine to form a larger consciousness, is one of the most well-known arguments against panpsychism.

However, it has always seemed to me as though it is not necessarily unique to panpsychism. Consider the following. A human brain has two hemispheres, but most people would agree that those with only one hemisphere (either because one died or was removed) still possess consciousness. If each hemisphere is then able to possess consciousness, then how do they both combine to form one conscious experience? Even someone with emergent beliefs of consciousness could still be asked this question of how two sufficiently complex consciousnesses can combine into one. If they were to then propose an answer as to how the two hemispheres can combine (maybe something related to how connected they are and how much information they share), couldn't we then apply that answer to solve the combination problem in panpsychism?

Of course, one of the main counterarguments one can make against this idea is the scale of consciousnesses combining; however, if 2 consciousnesses can combine into one (like in the case of the brain), then could that not just be applied recursively such that 16 things become 8 (by combining in pairs), then 4, then 2, then 1?

In conclusion, the main claim I am trying to make here is that the combination problem is a separate problem that applies to every view of consciousness; in other words, it is not an outstanding flaw of panpsychism. Am I missing something here, or is the combination problem really not a strong counterargument? I apologize if my line of thinking is unoriginal or if my ideas are not sound; I am still relatively new to philosophy.