Metaphysics & Psychology

Panpsychism: could everything in the universe be conscious ?

By T.K. Randall
March 26, 2024

Image: AI-generated (Bing AI / Dall-E 3) While in recent years science has made great strides in unraveling the workings of the physical human brain, today we are still no closer to understanding the nature of human consciousness.

As things stand, we don't really know what consciousness even is.

Is it something that manifests as a result of the functionality of our physical brain or does it exist independent of our physical selves ?

It has been suggested, for example, that our conscious self might exist in multiple dimensions and that we live and interact with the physical world by 'driving' our bodies using the brain as an interface.While it is clear that humans and other animals possess consciousness, one theory goes one step further by suggesting that absolutely everything - from the planets in the solar system to the chair you are sitting on - are conscious as well.

Known as panpsychism, this idea is not a new one, but a growing number of scientists seem to be subscribing to the notion that consciousness may be far more pervasive than we previously thought.

This is not to necessarily suggest that a chair, for example, is just as conscious as a human, but that objects possess levels of consciousness relative to their state and complexity.

At the most basic level, even fundamental particles may possess some level of consciousness.

Without fully understanding what consciousness is, how it works and how it arises, however, it's impossible to say for sure what really does have consciousness and what doesn't.

Source: Popular Mechanics

Tags: Consciousness