His Bungling Panpsychism Pitch at Least Gets One Thing Right

 In academic circles it is commonly assumed that consciousness is generated by the brain. But many philosophers have been dissatisfied with this idea. Why is it that some particular arrangement of matter would cause Mind (a totally different type of thing) to emerge from the matter in a brain? To many that seems no more plausible than the idea that some particular arrangement of crystals in a rock might cause the rock to gush out blood.

One alternate idea is to assume that we have something like a soul, and that our mental experiences are produced not mainly by matter (the brain), but by something that is itself mental or spiritual. Another alternative (called idealism or immaterialism) is to believe that everything is mental, and that matter only exists as perceptions within minds.  A third alternative is the idea that the brain doesn't actually produce our minds, but somehow taps into some great external reality that is the source of our minds, perhaps in a way rather similar to how a television set receives TV signals, or how a smartphone connects with the internet. 

Yet another alternate idea is the radical notion known as panpsychism. Panpsychism has been described as the idea that consciousness is in everything.

This idea may not seem very unreasonable if we think of consciousness as some very simple thing. But the word “consciousness” describes only one aspect of human mentality, and there are many different aspects of the human mind. The visual below reminds us of the many aspects of mentality.

I doubt whether panpsychism theorists have thought out which of these aspects of mentality they think should be attributed to “all matter.” Below are some questions I would ask a panpsychist:

1. How could dead matter be said to have consciousness or mind, when objects such as rocks, atoms and electrons do not have sensory organs? Do you maintain that such objects have some existence like some person born blind and deaf into the world, who also had some brain defect preventing a sense of touch?
2. How would self-hood work under a scenario in which all matter is conscious? Is the Pacific ocean a single conscious self? Or is every drop of water its own conscious self? Or is there perhaps some particular unit of matter (such as a liter) which causes some quantity of water to achieve self-hood?
3. Does each atom on a beach have its own self-hood, or does it take a grain of sand to make a sand self? Or does perhaps the whole beach constitute a single self?
4. Do you maintain that lifeless objects have volition, the ability to will particular actions? If so, how do you reconcile such a belief with the complete lack of any evidence that lifeless matter is engaging in volition or willing actions?
5. Do you maintain that lifeless objects have memories or thoughts? If you think they have either, how could that be, since thoughts require language (which could not be known by minds without sensory experience), and memories require either thoughts or sensations (which would seem to be impossible for a mind without sensory experience)?
6. Do you maintain that lifeless objects have interests, pleasures, pains, attitudes, knowledge or ideas? How could lifeless objects have such things if they never had sensory experience?

Of course, once we consider such questions we become entangled in a great ocean of difficulties. Let us consider the question of volition, which means the power to carry out some action. There are two possibilities for a panpsychist. The first (call it option A) is to maintain that lifeless objects can carry out actions by willing them. One problem with this option is that lifeless objects do not have sensory organs. So we can't really imagine any reasonable scenario by which a lifeless natural object would will something to occur. For example, if a lifeless asteroid were traveling through the solar system, we cannot imagine it willing itself to move closer to the Earth, because lacking all sensory organs, such a rock would never know what Earth (or anything else) was.

Another strong reason for rejecting option A is that there is zero evidence that lifeless objects can will things. For example, on the subatomic level, subatomic particles such as electrons and protons act with unvarying precise obedience to the laws of electromagnetism. If they did not, you would not be reading a coherent intelligible essay at this moment, but would be seeing only a jumbled scramble of pixels. To give another example, astronomers find that things such as asteroids and comets act with unvarying precise obedience to the laws of gravity, showing no signs of independence.

So it seems option A doesn't work. The alternative for a panpsychist considering this question of volition in lifeless objects is what we may call option B: the idea that lifeless objects with minds do not have any power of volition. But when we think about this possibility, it seems very depressing. Given their lack of sensory organs, lifeless objects with a mind would be like a child born deaf, blind and incapable of any tactile sensation. If we also imagine them having no power of volition, we then imagine them like a child born completely paralyzed, blind, deaf and incapable of feeling touch.

So option B seems like quite a dismal scenario. If we have a universe filled with 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 conscious objects that are like children born deaf, blind, paralyzed and without any sense of smell, taste or touch, that is a dismal and repulsive scenario. The scenario becomes even more dark and depressing when we ask ourselves: how long would these conscious but lifeless objects live? The answer would apparently be: in many cases, for billions of years. So, for example, if you were a conscious rock on the moon, you would have to hang around for billions of years in such an undesirable state: blind, deaf, and paralyzed, unable to communicate with your fellow rocks, unable to do anything. The panpsychist apparently must believe that for every conscious human such as yourself who can exercise volition and enjoy sensory experience, there are 1,000,000,000,000,000 or more conscious entities living a horrid life o of blindness, deafness and paralysis.

Lament of a lunar rock (if panpsychism is true)

Engaging in the shadow-speaking of trying to make a human mind sound like a mere "property," panpsychists are constantly forgetting (or speaking as if they forgot) that a human mind is largely a great wealth of capabilities, capabilities not decently described by the ultra-reductionist "make it sound as tiny as possible" shadow-speaking of referring to a human mind as "consciousness."

At the atheism indoctrination site bigthink.com, we have the latest bungling sales job by a panpsychist. We have an article with a title of "The consciousness theory that connects you to everything." We don't need consciousness theories, which are examples of shadow-speaking, in which some enormous reality is spoken of as if it was a mere shadow of itself.  What we need is a credible theory that explains human minds, human mental experiences and human mental capabilities. Human minds are realities a million times bigger and more complex than mere consciousness.  And it is is not true that panpsychism connects you to everything. It does not connect you to anything.  A better description of panpsychism would be "The shrink-speaking theory that puts you on the same level as a rock." 

The article by psychiatrist Ian McGilchrist has a subtitle with the false claim that "we’ve learned that even single-celled organisms can make intelligent decisions." No, we haven't learned any such thing. A cell may move in some way or act in some way that helps serve some higher purpose. But that isn't the cell making a decision. 

Sounding like someone who cannot get his story straight, McGilchrist says this:

"The brain definitely does not create consciousness. It gives rise to my consciousness." 

That does not make sense. The two terms are equivalent.  Later he refers to "when my brain or your brain produces my consciousness or your consciousness," which sounds he has forgotten that he previously claimed that "the brain definitely does not create consciousness." 

Later McGilchrist makes the silly claim that "matter is a phase of consciousness," a claim making no sense at all. He gives some rambling talk about water and whirlpools that fails to hold together in any coherent way. 

He says this:

"I think single cell organisms are conscious. Cell biologist James Shapiro wrote a long time ago that single cells make intelligent decisions. And they do. They realize what's going on, even if it's something that they couldn't be prepared for genetically or by their own experience. And they make intelligent choices as to what to do."

There is no evidence that cells are intelligent. When a biologist such as Shapiro said cells make intelligent decisions, he was probably referring only to a cell moving in some direction or changing in some way that was good for the cell's survival, or good for some higher purpose in an organism that a cell belonged to.  Such movement or change did not constitute a conscious decision by a cell. 

But what about the problem of morphogenesis, the problem of how a speck-sized zygote progresses over nine months to become the vast organization of a human body? That is the most gigantic unsolved problem. You can start to realize how big an unsolved problem it is when you realize that DNA does not have any specification for how to make a human body, nor does it have any specification for how to make any organ system or organ in a human body, nor does it have  any specification for how to make any cell in a human body,  nor does it have any any specification for how to make any of the organelles that make up cells. Can the ocean-sized explanatory shortfalls be lessened here by imagining intelligent cells making the right decisions? 

No, it cannot. What could a cell know and perceive? Only what was in front of it, just a billionth of a human body. A cell could never know where it was supposed to go and what it was supposed to do to help serve the grand purpose of the construction of the fantastically organized body of a mobile, two-legged and two-armed human with a digestive system, a vision system and a circulatory system. Similarly a brick and a pipe could never what they needed to do to serve the purpose of building a nine-story apartment building. 

So, no, the idea of conscious cells is not useful in helping to explain the origin of human bodies. To credibly explain the unexplained origin of human bodies and their unexplained continuation over decades (requiring a thousand daily unexplained miracles of organization such as protein folding and the formation of protein complexes so complex they are called molecular machines), we must imagine causal agency by some reality bigger than a human, not merely the causal agency of something a billionth of a human in weight. 

Human bodies are systems of systems of systems of systems, a reality of the most enormous organization and dynamism. Human minds, human mental capabilities and human mental experiences are as complex as human bodies. Beware of those who take "make my explanation job a million times easier" shortcuts by describing either of these realities as if they were something simple. 

Overall, McGilchrist's article is a bungling affair. But it does have one very good quote. He says, "Nature is all the time doing things in the twinkling of an eye that otherwise by chance would take literally millions of years."  That is correct. I described some of that reality in my June, 2026 post "In Your Body Every Day There's a Million Miracles of Warp-Speed Purposeful Assembly." 

But you cannot credibly explain such blazing-fast miracles of purposeful assembly by merely imagining molecules or cells that are conscious. If such things were conscious, they would only know tiny little molecule things or tiny little cell things, and would not know how to serve the goal of some grand construction process that is so complex that no human being even half-understands it.  To credibly explain such million miracles of warp-speed purposeful assembly occurring every day in each of our bodies, we must imagine some transcendent reality with a mind and an understanding greater than any humans, rather than just imagine conscious cells or molecules with only the tiniest sliver of a human's understanding.