Panpsychism encompasses many theories, united only by the notion that mind in some form is ubiquitous. or as a form of panpsychism. Proponents of cosmopsychism claim that the cosmos as a whole is the fundamental level of reality and that it instantiates consciousness. They differ on that point from panpsychists, who usually claim that the smallest level of reality is fundamental and instantiates consciousness. Accordingly, human consciousness, for example, merely derives from a larger cosmic consciousness.
Panexperientialism Panexperientialism is associated with the philosophies of, among others,
Charles Hartshorne and
Alfred North Whitehead, although the term itself was invented by
David Ray Griffin to distinguish the
process philosophical view from other varieties of panpsychism. Goff has used the term
panexperientialism more generally to refer to forms of panpsychism in which experience rather than thought is ubiquitous. Adherents of panprotopsychism believe that "protophenomenal" facts logically entail consciousness. Protophenomenal properties are usually picked out through a combination of functional and negative definitions: panphenomenal properties are those that logically entail phenomenal properties (a functional definition), which are themselves neither physical nor phenomenal (a negative definition). Panprotopsychism is advertised as a solution to the
combination problem: the problem of explaining how the consciousness of microscopic physical things might combine to give rise to the macroscopic consciousness of the whole brain. Because protophenomenal properties are by definition the constituent parts of consciousness, it is speculated that their existence would make the emergence of macroscopic minds less mysterious.
Russellian monism Russellian monism is a type of
neutral monism. Drawing on the "argument from the experience of causation”, historically traced to philosophers such as
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,
Arthur Schopenhauer, and
William James, the view posits that our direct experience of our own agency serves as the only positively conceivable model for the intrinsic nature of physical causation, so that
all relations in the world involve a phenomenal aspect, making the view a form of panpsychism. Central to this account is the "phenomenal powers view", according to which phenomenal properties such as pain or pleasure are not merely qualitative but intrinsically powerful. For example, the feeling of pain necessarily motivates avoidance behavior in virtue of its specific phenomenal character. The theory is attributed to Nino Kadic, who argues that the experience of each simple subject is determined relationally by the structure it is in: either one simple subject takes on a "dominant" role and instantiates the full consciousness of the structure it is part of, like the brain, or all
relevant simple subjects of the structure instantiate full consciousness. Relatedly, S. Siddharth and Tejas Bhojraj propose Leibnizian panpsychism, arguing that there is neither a "dominant" simple subject nor many with identical experiences, but rather a determinate "causal neighborhood" where many simple subjects have similar but not identical experiences of the structure.
Continuist panpsychism Continuist panpsychism (or simply continuism) is a variety of panpsychism proposed by Luke Roelofs, according to which while human consciousness is informationally bounded (causally and functionally distinct), it is likely phenomenally unbounded (part of a single, continuous field of experience). Roelofs distinguishes between six senses of boundedness, ultimately claiming that the intuition that our minds are separate "phenomenal fields" is an illusion caused by our informational isolation. Instead, he proposes that the universe consists of a single continuous field of consciousness and individual subjects are
informationally dense regions within it. Anand Vaidya and
Purushottama Bilimoria have argued that it can be considered a form of panpsychism or
cosmopsychism.
Animism and hylozoism Animism maintains that all things have a soul, and hylozoism maintains that all things are alive. According to the Lorber Revelations, specifica grow in complexity and intelligence to form ever higher level clusters of intelligence until a fully intelligent human soul is reached. In this scenario panpsychism and
metempsychosis are used to overcome the
combination problem.
Buddha-nature , the artist must be aware of the "ishigokoro" ('heart', or 'mind') of the rocks. In numerous Indian sources, the idea is connected to the mind, especially the Buddhist concept of the
luminous mind. In some Buddhist traditions, the Buddha-nature doctrine may be interpreted as implying a form of panpsychism. Graham Parks argues that most "traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean philosophy would qualify as panpsychist in nature". Similarly,
Soto Zen master
Dogen argued that "insentient beings expound" the teachings of the Buddha, and wrote about the of "fences, walls, tiles, and pebbles". The 9th-century
Shingon figure
Kukai went so far as to argue that natural objects such as rocks and stones are part of the supreme embodiment of the Buddha. According to Parks, Buddha-nature is best described "in western terms" as something "
psychophysical". Scientific theories Conscious realism Conscious realism is a theory proposed by
Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist specialising in perception. He has written numerous papers on the topic which he summarised in his 2019 book
The Case Against Reality: How evolution hid the truth from our eyes. The consensus view is that perception is a reconstruction of one's environment. Hoffman views perception as a construction rather than a reconstruction. He argues that perceptual systems are analogous to information channels, and thus subject to
data compression and reconstruction. The set of possible reconstructions for any given data set is quite large. Of that set, the subset that is
homomorphic in relation to the original is minuscule, and does not necessarily—or, seemingly, even often—overlap with the subset that is efficient or easiest to use. For example, consider a graph, such as a pie chart. A pie chart is easy to understand and use not because it is perfectly homomorphic with the data it represents, but because it is not. If a graph of, for example, the chemical composition of the human body were to look exactly like a human body, then we could not understand it. It is only because the graph abstracts away from the structure of its subject matter that it can be visualized. Alternatively, consider a graphical user interface on a computer. The reason graphical user interfaces are useful is that they abstract away from lower-level computational processes, such as machine code, or the physical state of a circuit-board. In general, it seems that data is most useful to us when it is abstracted from its original structure and repackaged in a way that is easier to understand, even if this comes at the cost of accuracy. Hoffman offers the "fitness beats truth theorem" as mathematical proof that perceptions of reality bear little resemblance to reality's true nature. From this he concludes that our senses do not faithfully represent the external world. Even if reality is an illusion, Hoffman takes consciousness as an indisputable fact. He represents rudimentary units of consciousness (which he calls "conscious agents") as
Markovian kernels. Though the theory was not initially panpsychist, he reports that he and his colleague Chetan Prakash found the math to be more
parsimonious if it were. They hypothesize that reality is composed of these conscious agents, who interact to form "larger, more complex" networks. and it has undergone two major revisions since then. Tononi approaches consciousness from a scientific perspective, and has expressed frustration with philosophical theories of consciousness for lacking
predictive power. As it turns out, even basic objects or substances have a nonzero degree of Φ. This would mean that consciousness is ubiquitous, albeit to a minimal degree. The philosopher Hedda Hassel Mørch's views IIT as similar to
Russellian monism, while other philosophers, such as Chalmers and
John Searle, consider it a form of panpsychism. IIT does not hold that all systems are conscious, leading Tononi and Koch to state that IIT incorporates some elements of panpsychism but not others. ==In relation to other theories==