Panpsychisms—Overview

Panpsychism is the theory that phenomenal consciousness exists because physical ultimates, fundamental physics, have phenomenal or proto-phenomenal properties. This means that the essence of mentality, awareness, experience is a primitive, non-reducible feature of each and every part or aspect of physical reality, similar to the fundamental fields and particles in physics. Everywhere there is energy-matter, perhaps everywhere there is even spacetime, panpsychism says there is also something of consciousness. Everything that exists has a kind of inherent consciousness or “proto-consciousness,” which, in certain aggregates and under certain conditions, can generate inner awareness and experience. Panpsychism has multiple forms, nuances, and variants, as one would expect.

Historical and Global Roots of Panpsychism

Panpsychism is one of the oldest theories in philosophy of mind, going back to pre-modern animistic religions, the ancient Greeks, Leibniz's monads, and a host of 19th-century thinkers (Goff et al., 2022). Of late, in reaction to the seemingly intractable hard problem of consciousness, panpsychism has been gathering adherents and gaining momentum, especially among some analytic philosophers.

Panpsychism has strong non-Western roots, not often explored. In particular, the ideas and arguments from Indian philosophical traditions—especially Vedānta, Yogācāra Buddhism, and Śaiva Nondualism—can enrich contemporary debates about panpsychism (Maharaj, 2020).

Contemporary Revivals and Critiques

Panpsychism is also finding new supporters. Take “Kabbalah Panpsychism,” an interpretation of the Jewish mystical tradition that understands consciousness to be holographically and hierarchically organized, relativistic, and capable of downward causation (Schipper, 2021).

Yujin Nagasawa provides a careful critique of panpsychism, arguing that although it seems promising, it reaches “a cognitive dead end” in that “even if it's true, we can't prove it.” He challenges so-called constitutive Russellian panpsychism, which many consider to be the most efficacious panpsychist approach to the hard problem of consciousness, by arguing that it “seems caught in a deadlock: we are cognitively unable to show how microphenomenal properties can aggregate to yield macrophenomenal properties (or how cosmophenomenal properties can be segmented to yield macrophenomenal properties)” (Nagasawa, 2021).

Tam Hunt and Jonathan Schooler propose that their General Resonance Theory (GRT) exemplifies a scientifically grounded panpsychist approach, in which all matter possesses rudimentary conscious properties that combine through resonant interactions to form more complex forms of consciousness. They claim that GRT addresses the combination problem by suggesting that synchronized oscillations allow micro-conscious entities to unite into macro-conscious experiences, with electromagnetic fields serving as the binding mechanism in biological systems. Unlike purely materialist EM field theories, GRT's panpsychist foundation posits consciousness as a fundamental feature of reality that becomes increasingly complex through resonant coupling across scales (Hunt & Schooler, 2019; Hunt, 2025).

Panpsychism's revival, as it were, indeed its flourishing, has left some philosophers (as well as scientists) dumbfounded and dismayed. (I'd feel remiss if I did not make an exception and at least recognize panpsychism's critics.) When I asked John Searle about panpsychism's increasing scholarly acceptance, he said, “I don't think that's a serious view. If you've got panpsychism, you know you've made a mistake. And the reason is that consciousness comes in discrete units. There has to be a place where my consciousness ends and your consciousness begins. It can't just be spread over the universe like a thin veneer of jam. Panpsychism has the result that everything is conscious, and you can't make a coherent statement of that” (Searle, 2014a).

To physicist Sean Carroll, “our current knowledge of physics should make us skeptical of hypothetical modifications of the known rules, and that without such modifications it's hard to imagine how intrinsically mental aspects could play a useful explanatory role.” Part of the reason is the “causal closure of the physical,” such that “Without dramatically upending our understanding of quantum field theory, there is no room for any new influences that could bear on the problem of consciousness.” Other than materialism/physicalism, Carroll characterizes all theories of consciousness, including panpsychism, thus: “To start with the least well-understood aspects of reality and draw sweeping conclusions about the best-understood aspects is arguably the tail wagging the dog” (Carroll, 2021).

Here I [RLK] array the nature and kinds of panpsychism on offer. I then summarize the perspectives of several well-known panpsychists.