The disadvantage of this position is that it seems to explain the obscure by appealing to the outrageous. We are asked to believe that there is mental activity at the level of the electron or the quark, but also at the level of stars, and galactic superclusters as well. For your average “scientific-y” hard-nosed type of empirical thinker, this seems like the worst sort of mushy-minded nonsense imaginable. We’re supposed to believe that an electron is “thinking”? That a quark has propositional attitudes? That a galaxy entertains beliefs? What manner of stampeding nonsense on stilts is this twaddle!

But no small part of the difficulty such persons have here are the kinds of habits of thought which they are taking for granted as just “obvious.” Another, and arguably deeper problem, are the collections of notions that are assumed to fall under the heading of “mental activity.” Notice, for example, that I have pointedly avoided using terms like “thought,” “belief,” or “consciousness” here. This is not an accident. Such terms invoke characterizations – indeed, oft times caricatures – that can be profoundly misleading, and which others are frequently imposing on an idea they which to strawman into mockery and oblivion.

To be sure, not all advocates have always been careful in their choice of words on the subject. Thus, for example, this recent article at Scientific American (found HERE) treats “consciousness” as entirely equivalent to the nature, and even the very possibility, of mental activity. This is almost as bad as Descartes reducing all mental activity to thinking (the source of and justification for his famous cogito); indeed, depending on how it is construed, it could even be worse. (I’ll not attempt to follow this possibility down any of the rabbit-holes that suggest themselves, so you may heave a sigh of relief on that account, at least.)

The problem her is the reduction involved as with treating consciousness as coeval with any and all forms of mental activity. I’ve no problem with acknowledging where consciousness is present – when, in point of fact, it is actually present. It is not a matter of anthropomorphism. Consciousness is present in my cats … when they are, in fact, conscious, and not, say, sleeping. It is true that, even while they are sleeping, my cats retain a considerable sensitivity to the world around them; things can happen which will interrupt their sleep pattern and bring them all the way up to full consciousness. But there is still a difference here that is real and deserves to be marked out as such in our language and descriptions.

For example, even sleeping my cats’ investment in the surrounding world exceeds that of a mere tropism or a plant; a weed is not alarmed by a strange sound the way my cats are. This is not to say that plants are not responsive to their environments. Flowers will turn to face the sun, and trees in a forest will interact with one another through their roots and the mycelial network to signal the presence of disease or insect infestations. (Sloppy, to the point of being wild-eyed, there are writers who will precipitately spout about how the trees are “talking” to one another or “using language.” One can only dream of the day when people might condescend to read a little Charles Sanders Peirce and learn something about semiotics. The temptation to recklessly conflate a chemical reaction with a verbal expression might be less frequently embraced.)

“Consciousness” – as a word, as a concept – ought to stand for a substantive level of awareness above and beyond the trivial. Consequently, I would argue that, when some panpsychists argue that consciousness is at the root of all things (typically along with other things), they are flogging that concept as brutally as Cinderella’s step-mother “reshaped” her own daughters’ feet in an attempt to fit the glass slipper. (If you’re not familiar with the original tale, knives and mutilations are involved. It is not pretty.)

Consciousness, I would argue (and here I am, in my way, following Whitehead) is an achievement of a kind of awareness that is found at the extreme end of a spectrum that is rarely actualized. (Self-consciousness is an even more extreme achievement, even further out on the spectrum, and actualized with even greater rarity.) Nevertheless, it is on a spectrum, and (here’s the kicker) the opposite end of that spectrum is not the merely physical. At this point, my reasons do diverge from Whitehead’s, at least within the scope of what and how he articulated those reasons. My reasons have to do with the semantics of intentional-with-a-“t” language. (I intend that, I mean that, I believe that; including anything that might be translated into language of purpose, etc.) There is no way to derive such language from the logic of physical description and science. Yet such purely physical descriptions absolutely depend upon intentional language in order to be meaningful, because their advocates believe those descriptions to be true, and intend for them to be treated as such.

For Whitehead, mental activity manifests itself in the processes of reality in what he calls the “mental pole” of any coming-to-be. A dissertation could be written on this subject alone. (I’ve not looked, but would not be in the least surprised to discover that more than one already has.) I’m going to be criminally brief and merely sat that, for Whitehead, the mental pole is one of those logical “moments” (recall, this is all prior to the emergence of space and time) where diversity can enter into the process of becoming. That’s pretty important, but honestly it is also not very much. But that, after all, is as it should be. For at the very root of reality prcessually actualizing itself, mental activity is NOT very much; it sure as the awareness of broad daylight is not “consciousness.” But neither is it mere physical, mechanical, intention-free repetition of the non-mental. Within process philosophy, what I have been neutrally designating as “mental activity” is one of the foundational sources of creative origination in the process of becoming.

Whitehead takes the position that consciousness, and especially self-consciousness, are vanishingly rare phenomena that are of dubious significance or importance in the grand scheme of things. He and I diverge some on this point, as it raises the question of where the evaluation of importance and significance comes from. But this is a minor point in the larger issue of panpsychism raised here. For one thing, we can now see that if panpsychism requires consciousness to be a founding principle, then clearly neither Whitehead nor myself are panpsychists. This is true even as we differ absolutely from pure physicalists by insisting that some form of mental activity is a fundamental character of the real.

This invites one more question, particularly in light of one of my earlier polemics. What does Whitehead’s explicit pushing of consciousness and self-consciousness to the fringes of actuality (and here I am deliberately not saying “reality,” as this latter is more invested with aspects of potentiality and possibility) do for those process theologists, whose most basic thesis seems to necessitate centering those very character Whitehead dismisses? This is not something to which I’ve devoted any real attention, merely something that strikes me at the end as a subject which they need to address.