| Home | How I Became a PanpsychistBy Ken Van Cleve I am not sure when I realized I was a Panpsychist. I guess it was in 1998 when I wrote an article for Pantheist Vision magazine. The editor, Harold Wood, described me as Spiritual Pantheist. I pondered over what he was driving at, and concluded Pantheism meant more to me than just the mystical feelings I got when surrounded by nature. As a scientist it seemed to me that there had to be some sort of underlying mechanism to life and consciousness. The only thing that came to my mind was Mind itself. The universe and particularly Life was so improbable that some sort of intelligence must be a fundamental part of it all. It was impossible for all this to just happen without some guiding force being inside it. I was a chemist and Life and Consciousness were definitely more than just some chemical reactions. Not too long after this I came across a review by Christian de Quincey. de Quincey thoroughly debunked mind and body worldviews of Dualism, Materialism and Idealism, each of which requires some supernatural intervention. He claimed that matter and consciousness are inseparable and sentient and both go all the way down to the smallest particle. de Quincey called this Panpsychism. Hey! That's what I am! Finally someone was actually saying what I had been feeling intuitively. While all the other ÒismsÓ required improbable Super-natural miracles, Panpsychism did not. I no longer had to "leave my brains at the door." Since then I have tried to read and recommend as many of de QuinceyÕs writings as I can find on the Internet. To get a feeling for de Quincey go to his article, "Consciousness: Truth or Wisdom" on the Institute of Noetic Sciences site. |