Ask A Genius 1346: Final Thoughts on Panpsychism: Unpack Consciousness and Its Naturalistic Philosophical Roots

Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/04/08

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Okay, so, panpsychism. The opening question is: what foundational definition does panpsychism propose? So, panpsychism posits that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world. In this view, all forms of matter—from elementary particles to complex organisms—possess some form of consciousness or proto-consciousness. There are six major philosophical arguments or angles supporting panpsychism: 1. Anti-emergence – the view that consciousness cannot emerge from purely non-conscious matter. 2. Intrinsic nature – based on Bertrand Russell’s idea that physics describes only the extrinsic behaviour of matter, not its intrinsic nature, which might be consciousness. 3. Evolutionary continuity – the idea that consciousness evolved gradually and cannot emerge suddenly, so it must exist in simpler forms. 4. Causal closure – if the physical world is causally closed, consciousness must have causal efficacy at the physical level, implying it’s physical. 5. The argument from the experience of causation – suggests that we experience mental causation directly. 6. Simplicity and parsimony – some see panpsychism as a more straightforward, unified explanation of consciousness than dualism or strong emergence. These arguments have developed significantly, particularly in recent decades.

Rosner: Yeah, but I don’t buy any of those arguments.

Jacobsen: Oh, we’ll dig into that. It’ll be a good conversation. What are your initial reactions?

Rosner: Nothing in particular, just that I don’t buy the idea that everything is fucking conscious.

Jacobsen: Fair enough. Let’s start with your initial critique and then review the major issues. Your response is a firm “no—and here’s why.”

Rosner: All right.

Jacobsen: This notion has ancient roots—it goes back to Anaxagoras, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. He proposed that “everything contains a portion of everything,” which some interpret as an early form of panpsychic thinking, though it’s more about the divisibility and mixture of substances than consciousness per se. In modern times, one of the leading theories influenced by panpsychist thought is Integrated Information Theory (IIT), developed by Giulio Tononi. 

It proposes that consciousness corresponds to the capacity of a system to integrate information. IIT suggests that even straightforward systems—if they integrate information correctly—have some minimal level of consciousness. This quantitative theory attempts to define and measure consciousness based on a mathematical property called “Φ” (phi), representing the degree of integration. These modern theories are often grounded in intuition and phenomenology and then formalized into scientific or metaphysical frameworks. That’s the general structure. So—what are your first thoughts?

Rosner: It might have been a reasonable speculative idea 3,000 years ago, but not now. It doesn’t hold up. You need complex biological or otherwise machinery to process and share information across multiple modalities. You need to be able to model the world, represent sensory input, and adapt behaviour accordingly. None of those mechanisms exist in a rock, a tree, or a cloud. They don’t have the architecture to integrate information or produce subjective experiences.

Jacobsen: So, getting to the core question of consciousness—we’ve discussed this many times. One of the fundamental flaws in panpsychism and similar theories is the lack of a clear, operational definition of consciousness. They fail to specify precisely what consciousness is, how it’s measured, and what criteria distinguish a conscious system from a non-conscious one.

Rosner: Sure. That’s part of the problem. Again, that’s the 3,000-years-ago problem—that nothing was pinned down, and they didn’t have the experiential or technical background to even take an honest stab at figuring out what consciousness was. I mean, beyond the feeling that you’re conscious when you are the possessor of consciousness, which is, maybe, even better than what they had. Because a tree doesn’t have that special feeling of consciousness, there’s no way to interrogate a tree, a rock, or a cloud to confirm it. 

Jacobsen: For the anti-emergence argument, the idea is: how does panpsychism resolve the complex problem of consciousness by rejecting the idea that consciousness emerges inexplicably from non-conscious matter?

Rosner: I don’t fucking know. I mean, it doesn’t emerge. 

Jacobsen: We need to address it rather than skim it and then be done with it so we don’t have to repeat it.

Rosner: So consciousness would emerge from non-conscious matter at some point along the continuum—or the spectrum—of brains, ranging from fucking grasshoppers or aphids to people. At some point, you could draw some blurry line and say, “Yeah, an aphid’s picture or model of the world is not developed enough to be called anything we consider consciousness.” The grasshopper, however—or a lizard—lizards are conscious. They model the external world. They respond to it. They’ve got some rudimentary consciousness. They have wants. They have agency. At some point, you can draw the line. So yeah, shit emerges—but you still need the mechanism of thought for it to emerge from, at a certain level of complexity.

Jacobsen: The intrinsic nature argument would state: why might consciousness be considered the inherent property of matter, filling a gap left by physicalism’s focus on extrinsic properties?

Rosner: Because it’s not. That’s a failure of observation and analysis. We observe where consciousness is. We have a good idea of how it works. And it’s not extrinsic—but it’s also not intrinsic to raw forms of matter. But you were talking about extrinsic properties. Are we talking now about a Cartesian thing, where you’ve got regular matter, and then you’ve got magical conscious matter? Like regular stuff and then some unique matter with the spark of consciousness added to it from some other realm? Are we talking about thatkind of extrinsic thing?

Rosner: Descartes.

Jacobsen: Descartes would’ve been more about the thinking self—res cogitans—and then the impressions or perceptions impacting that thinking self. And the cogito—”I think, therefore I am”—is the fundamental sort of true self, in a way. So, panpsychists argue that consciousness could be considered an intrinsic property of matter. In a sense, this would blur the line between the cogito and the physical world.

Rosner: But all these arguments don’t hold up given the present framework, where we’re pretty close to thoroughly understanding what consciousness is and how it works. And all this analysis from 600, 1,200, or 2,500 years ago is wrong. We know what consciousness is. You model the world. You do it in real-time across a bunch of analytic nodes that process qualia and your other thoughts—all in this big ball of thinking, which is your brain. That models experience for you and gives you the feeling of being conscious.

You could make all these arguments about the nature of a car. Like, does everything have consciousness? Does a tree or a rock have it? But really, no. By building vehicles and knowing how they work, we know that you need the mechanisms for a vehicle to be a car. And you could make an analogous argument for every one of these six philosophical claims regarding consciousness. And none of them would be correct. You need the actual mechanisms—an engine, controls, a body, wheels—for something to be a car. And it’s the same with consciousness. It’s not that everything in the universe shares some inherent consciousness. Okay, next one.

Jacobsen: Genetic/evolutionary. How does the gradual evolution of organisms suggest that consciousness is present in simpler forms, supporting its ubiquity?

Rosner: So, in a sense, it’s just there—okay, there are several linked arguments. We can look at the evolutionary history of specific organs, particularly eyes. We know that eyes have evolved independently many times—dozens of times, in fact, across different species. That tells us two things: (A) eyes are advantageous—we know this just by having them—and (B) they’re evolvable. We can assume that at every stage of ocular development, there’s an advantage over organisms that don’t have that stage. So, eyes evolve—from light-sensitive cells to fully developed complex eyes.

You can make similar arguments about consciousness, even though we don’t understand it with the same level of clarity. We know what eyes are and how they work. We don’t exactly know what consciousness is, although we’re pretty fucking close. But we do know it provides a massive evolutionary advantage. And we know it can evolve—starting from more straightforward clusters of neurons.

Jacobsen: Causal closure. In what way does panpsychism maintain the principle of physical causal closure while incorporating consciousness as a fundamental aspect? In some interpretations, humans are seen as the closure of the loop—conscious agents completing the system.

Rosner: I don’t know what that means at all. Closure… that we are—

Jacobsen: The idea is that consciousness is fundamental, yet we still live in a physical world. Panpsychism tries to bridge that by claiming consciousness is the closure point of the causal loop—like it completes the cycle.

Rosner: So we’re the endpoint? That somehow consciousness is this necessary element? I’d argue that consciousness is essential—but not in a sense, these fucking arguments suggest. You have to have consciousness to have the world? That’s a separate discussion rooted in what a universe is and what information is.

But the idea that you need conscious beings in the world for the world to exist—that’s what this closure argument is getting at—and I don’t buy it. You can imagine a sterile universe with no conscious beings in it, and it would still be a valid universe. So, no, I don’t buy the closure argument.

Now, we live in a universe that does contain conscious beings—otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this conversation—but that doesn’t mean consciousness is fundamental to the structure of a universe.

Jacobsen: Argument from the experience of causation. What does our direct experience of causation imply about consciousness inherent in causal processes? It’s close to the previous one, but not quite the same.

Rosner: Yes, I don’t know. This sounds like one of those arguments from 90 years ago when Niels Bohr was developing the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. That interpretation speculated that the collapse of the quantum wave function—moving from a probabilistic state to a definite state—might require a conscious observer. The idea was that consciousness somehow holds the observation together: you need a conscious entity to witness both the before and after of a quantum event for the event to become “real.”

That was just one idea at the dawn of quantum mechanics—and it turned out not to be the fucking idea that works.

Jacobsen: Last one. Simplicity and parsimony. Why is panpsychism viewed as a more straightforward, unified theory than alternatives like dualism and emergentism? The basic idea is that Occam’s razor leads us to panpsychism.

Rosner: Yes, it freaking does—that’s the theory. According to Occam’s razor, a theory should be as simple as possible but not more straightforward than it needs to be. But here’s the thing: we’re living in a time where we’re getting close to fully understanding consciousness. It’s ten years away or less. You can’t just swing Occam’s razor around and say, “Well, everything’s fucking conscious—problem solved,” and then go take a nap.

There’s this big red chair next to the bed in our bedroom, and I’ll fall asleep in that fucking thing for 40 minutes or an hour before stumbling down here sometimes. That’s what I did. 

That whole “everything is conscious” take is a highly simplistic way of viewing the world—and it’s very fucking wrong. You need mechanisms. You need the armature that supports thought to have consciousness. You need a brain or some other information-processing system that does many of the same things our brain does to help a mind, which gives rise to consciousness.

No, not everything has it. A rock, a tree, a turd, a jack-in-the-box wrapper? No. Sometimes, a greasy piece of paper is just a greasy piece of paper.

Jacobsen: Do you have any final thoughts on panpsychism before we close the book on that one?

Rosner: Sure. You can trace the evolution of theories of consciousness throughout history. This—panpsychism—would be one of those theories that made sense in the context of people not knowing shit thousands of years ago. But it was wrong then, and it’s still bad now. That’s where it should stay.

If you run into someone who’s a panpsychist, it’s really up to you to decide whether you want to hang out with them. It’s like astrology: how much patience do you have for someone bringing it up? Maybe a lot—if they’re otherwise a lovely person.

Jacobsen: Depends on whether or not you want some “pissy,” to quote Richard Pryor.

Rosner: Yes, I broke up with a girl in college because she was too woo-woo, too hocus-focus. Also—she ate somebody’s popcorn. We were sitting in a movie theatre with a stranger next to her. She goes, “Can I have some of your popcorn?”That got added to the list of things that bothered me.

It’s like lighting a candle right before sex. Okay, you’ll put up with some of that because you’re in college, but at some point, you ask yourself, “Do I need to keep listening to these not-right arguments?” I hope she’s happy in the world forty years later.

Barbara. Even the name is dated. Carol’s name is dated. My name is dated. We’re all pinned to history by our name demographics. Most Ricks aren’t young. Most Carols are a certain middle age. And Barbara is pinned to an era.

All right, I’m going to the gym.

Last updated May  3, 2025. These terms govern all In Sight Publishing content—past, present, and future—and supersede any prior notices.  In Sight Publishing by Scott  Douglas  Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons BY‑NC‑ND 4.0; © In Sight Publishing by Scott  Douglas  Jacobsen 2012–Present. All trademarks, performances, databases & branding are owned by their rights holders; no use without permission. Unauthorized copying, modification, framing or public communication is prohibited. External links are not endorsed. Cookies & tracking require consent, and data processing complies with PIPEDA & GDPR; no data from children < 13 (COPPA). Content meets WCAG 2.1 AA under the Accessible Canada Act & is preserved in open archival formats with backups. Excerpts & links require full credit & hyperlink; limited quoting under fair-dealing & fair-use. All content is informational; no liability for errors or omissions: Feedback welcome, and verified errors corrected promptly. For permissions or DMCA notices, email: scott.jacobsen2025@gmail.com. Site use is governed by BC laws; content is “as‑is,” liability limited, users indemnify us; moral, performers’ & database sui generis rights reserved.