Panpsychism and the Religious Attitude

2. Versions of Panpsychism

C H A P T E R T W O Versions of Panpsychism Panpsychism has its origins in Greek philosophy, but its formulation as a comprehensive metaphysical theory came only much later in the writings of Leibniz. Its contemporary version is commonly identified with that developed in the twentieth century by Whitehead and Hartshorne. The next four sections trace the central stages of this development. More recently, Thomas Nagel has formulated a version of panpsychism designed to explain the relationship between mental events of which each individual is directly aware and physical states of the brain known about by others. This version is examined and rejected later in this chapter. Finally, we consider a defense of panpsychism used in the nineteenth century and reformulated recently by David Chalmers in a way borrowed from information theory.1 Greek Origins The origins of the Greek term psyche that was to be translated by the Latin anima and spiritus and then by “soul” or “spirit” are obscure. At some early stage the term seems to have become associated through the influence of Eastern mystery religions with the concept of an immortal substance surviving after death. This association is clear in the doctrines of Pythagoras and his followers. Death is acknowledged by the Pythagoreans to be the decay of the body. But for certain practitioners of the mystery religions, those leading exemplary lives of 19 temperance, engaged in the study of theoretical matters, and having privileged knowledge of the secret rituals of their religious sects, Pythagorean doctrines held out the hope for a “purification” from the body. These special few practitioners were believed to have cultivated souls that could survive the death of the body. This religious concept of a soul somehow separable from the body was borrowed from Pythagoras by Socrates and Plato, and is defended by Socrates in the dialogue Phaedo in which he argues for his belief in his own immortality.2 It is also the basis for Socrates’ use of the doctrine of recollection to explain the possibility of a priori knowledge. If the soul had a disembodied existence prior to birth, this would explain, Socrates reasons in the Meno, our ability to comprehend the proof, independent of any past or present experience , that the length of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle with equal sides is not a rational number. In following the proof, we are simply recollecting what in disembodied form we had previously known. This concept of an immortal soul existing before birth, joining temporarily with the body, and then existing after death was specific to humanity for the Greeks. There is no suggestion that a cow or pig had the remotest chance of immortality. In the sacred writings of the Hindu religion, the belief is expressed that the souls of humans can inhabit the bodies of lower animals in some afterlife, or that what in a previous life was at the animal level could be elevated to the human. This has the effect of endowing immortal souls to the animals to and from which the souls migrate. In Buddhism we find similar notions, along with the mysterious assertion that all things can be regarded as having in them the Buddha nature. But no such religious beliefs seem to have found their way westward to Greece, nor can they be found in the later Christian theology that based itself in large part on the writings of Plato. For this theology, members of our species were accorded a very special status that elevated them far above all other living creatures. In this way, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Christian theology introduced a humanistic bias that has tended to predominate in Western philosophy from René Descartes to the present. This religious use of the term psyche is in stark contrast to uses found in the surviving writings of the early cosmologists who predated Socrates. The soul was defined in these writings as the life principle, that which distinguishes the living from the dead and inanimate. A person is at one time alive, at another time dead, and 20 Panpsychism and the Religious Attitude the difference between the two conditions the early cosmologists regarded as explicable in terms of the presence or absence of a soul. But clearly the living–dead contrast can be applied to cattle, dogs, and even plants, and hence the definition seems to require attributing souls to living things of all kinds, both human...