Sam Kimpton-Nye at Aeon Magazine:
Panpsychism is an increasingly popular view about consciousness. You are conscious, you feel pleasures, pains and all manner of other experiences. At every waking moment, and even when you dream, there is something that it is like to be you. The same goes for other humans and animals, and this accounts for moral status: thumping a fist on a desk in frustration is morally permissible in a way that hitting a conscious person or animal is not. Desks, chairs, rocks and so on are not conscious – and are therefore without moral status – whereas humans, bonobos, dogs and so on are conscious, and deserving of at least some moral recognition. But panpsychism rejects this division into conscious and non-conscious things. It is the view that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, so everything from electrons and protons to tables and planets, and, of course, humans and dogs, has consciousness to some degree.
Panpsychism is a remarkable thesis, motivated by the ‘perennial hope’ that the world is ultimately intelligible.
more here.
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