Sheldrake’s Self-Organizing Systems at All Levels of Complexity

Iconoclastic biologist Rupert Sheldrake's radical views on the nature of reality inform theories of consciousness in two ways. One, covered here, envisions self-organizing systems at all levels of complexity as a robust form of panpsychism. A second, covered later, is how “morphic fields” relate to consciousness (17.9) (Sheldrake, n.d.a).

Sheldrake sees no “sharp separation of consciousness in physical reality;” rather, “our consciousness and our physical reality go hand in hand.” He says, “I am certainly not a dualist,” but he does posit “a kind of mind or consciousness at all levels of nature”—in atoms and molecules, cells and organisms, plants and animals—and, astonishingly, “in the earth, in the sun, in the galaxy, and in the whole universe” (Sheldrake, 2007a). Motivated in part by “the recent panpsychist turn in philosophy,” Sheldrake suggests that “self-organizing systems at all levels of complexity, including stars and galaxies, might have experience, awareness, or consciousness” (Sheldrake, 2021).

Consciousness as Choice and Possibility

Sheldrake defines consciousness, idiosyncratically, as “largely about making choices, considering alternative possibilities.” He states, “Consciousness is about choice. It's about choosing among possibilities.” What then does consciousness do?” he asks. “It enables different possibilities to be held together and chosen among”—yielding his non-mainstream postulate that “any system in nature that has possibilities that are not fixed would have some measure of consciousness.”

A key to Sheldrake's consciousness is how “physical reality at any moment opens up into the future through a range of possibilities … And it's those future possibilities which are the realm in which consciousness operates.” All things that have consciousness are in this same state (Sheldrake, 2007b).

Referencing the indeterminate nature of quantum mechanics, Sheldrake says, “even a hydrogen atom and an electron has a whole realm of possibility open to it, of which only a small fraction is realized … [but] to what extent it's making real choices, to what extent consciousness [occurs] in something as simple as an electron, is arguable and probably undecidable.”

Minds at Cosmic Scales

He then makes his even more startling move: “I think it gets much more interesting when we look at larger systems like the sun or the galaxy.” Here's Sheldrake's argument: “If consciousness emerges from patterns of electrical activity in our brains, as materialists would assume, the sun has vastly more complex patterns of electrical activity than our brains. So why shouldn't that be associated with consciousness? Why shouldn't the sun have a mind? And if the sun has a mind, why not all the stars? If all the stars have minds, what about huge collections of stars in galaxies, linked up by vast plasma currents of electricity surging across trillions of miles of galactic space, with rhythmic patterns connecting all parts” (Sheldrake, 2007b).

Sheldrake goes ultimate: “Maybe the entire universe has a mind. Why not? There may be many, many levels of consciousness.” Sheldrake's consciousness is a nesting of consciousnesses at all levels of organization resident in reality. (Actually, Sheldrake would prefer the term “mind” or “mind-like aspects” than “consciousness,” because from our perspective these nonbiological “minds” might be considered “unconsciousness” or “nonconscious.”)

Sheldrake clarifies that these kinds of nonbiological consciousnesses would be totally different from human consciousness. Just as human consciousness differs from dog consciousness, he says, “sun consciousness’ differs from “earth consciousness,” and so on. If the sun is conscious, “it may be concerned with the regulation of its own body and the entire solar system through its electromagnetic activity, including solar flares and coronal mass ejections. It may also communicate with other star systems within the galaxy” (Sheldrake, 2021).

“It's hard for us to imagine other forms of consciousness,” Sheldrake stresses. Nonetheless, he suggests, “there's mind-like organization at all levels of the universe and in nature,” including a mind-like organization of the entire universe.”

Sheldrake suggests that “the electrical fields of organized or self-organizing systems are a good candidate for an interface between consciousness and the physical structure”—whether cells, animals, humans or stars. Note that in Sheldrake's system the electrical fields are not the consciousness per se, which he describes as “matters of possibilities.” Rather, the electrical fields mediate between physical and consciousness (as defined).

Sheldrake concludes that all levels or kinds of organization in nature have their own kind of mind, mediated by electrical fields, and that the entire universe as a whole also has some kind of consciousness or mind, which would play an important part in what happens as the universe evolves (Sheldrake, 2021, n.d.a).