scientificamerican | I grew up in a devout and practicing Roman Catholic family with Purzel, a
fearless and high-energy dachshund. He, as with all the other, much
larger dogs that subsequently accompanied me through life, showed plenty
of affection, curiosity, playfulness, aggression, anger, shame and
fear. Yet my church teaches that whereas animals,
as God's creatures, ought to be treated well, they do not possess an
immortal soul. Only humans do. Even as a child, to me this belief felt
intuitively wrong. These gorgeous creatures had feelings, just like I
did. Why deny them? Why would God resurrect people but not dogs? This
core Christian belief in human exceptionalism did not make any sense to
me. Whatever consciousness and mind are and no matter how they relate to
the brain and the rest of the body, I felt that the same principle must
hold for people and dogs and, by extension, for other animals as well.
It was only later, at university, that I became acquainted with Buddhism
and its emphasis on the universal nature of mind. Indeed, when I spent a
week with His Holiness the Dalai Lama earlier in 2013 [see “The Brain
of Buddha,” Consciousness Redux; Scientific American Mind, July/August
2013], I noted how often he talked about the need to reduce the
suffering of “all living beings” and not just “all people.” My readings
in philosophy brought me to panpsychism, the view that mind (psyche) is found everywhere (pan).
Panpsychism is one of the oldest of all philosophical doctrines extant
and was put forth by the ancient Greeks, in particular Thales of Miletus
and Plato. Philosopher Baruch Spinoza and mathematician and universal
genius Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who laid down the intellectual
foundations for the Age of Enlightenment, argued for panpsychism, as did
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, father of American psychology William
James, and Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin. It declined in
popularity with the rise of positivism in the 20th century.
As a natural scientist, I find a version of panpsychism modified for the
21st century to be the single most elegant and parsimonious explanation
for the universe I find myself in. There are three broad reasons why
panpsychism is appealing to the modern mind.
