| Home | Panpsychism, Do We Need A New Name?Even many panpsychists don't like to call it panpsychism. There is something unscientific about the word. It seems to conjure up mythology and we have enough trouble getting taken seriously in scientific circles as it is. Picture Psyche and Cupid and it starts to be laughable. And the less said about the God Pan the better. Perhaps we do need a new name? Personally I have trouble calling it panpsychism because I think the word "pan" meaning "all", is misleading. I do not believe all things have a mind. Even the "psychism" is misleading because it isn’t necessary for an experiencing entity to have what is commonly thought of as cognitive ability or mind. In spite of its name, ours is the ontology that best accounts for mind and consciousness. Biologist Charles Birch calls it panexperientalism, the philosopher David Chalmers calls it double aspect ism, mathematician/philosopher Whitehead suggested process and occasions, Charles Hartshorne used psychicalism, it has even been called radical materialism. Perhaps if we substituted one of these terms it would sound more scientific? Radical materialism won’t do because it is the materialists who are most vocal in rejecting panpsychism. They almost shudder at the concept of matter being sentient. Those who feel most threatened by panpsychism attempt to ridicule it by saying, Thinking that rocks have feelings is "silly." While we believe matter to be sentient, most panpsychists do not believe rocks have feelings, but we do believe individual entities feel or experience. Charles Birch says the mistake arises because of a failure to differentiate between individual entities that feel, compound entities that feel, and aggregates which do not feel, (even though an aggregate is composed of individual entities, which do have a unified experience. I conceive Panpsychism/Panexperientalism to be monistic form of Pantheism wherein Mind is immanent in all substance of the Universes. This contrasts with Panentheism with its dualistic, transcendent God. Somehow swimming in their ocean of God” is not to appealing to me. Besides the possibility of drowning, the water it too cold in California. Panpsychists have no quarrel with Pantheism, they just believe it to be a somewhat incomplete philosophy. Modern Panpsychism considers quantum cosmology and physics and attempts to explain the "how" of it. |