panpsychism

The belief that all matter is conscious in some form.

In very general terms, the thesis of panpsychism is that throughout nature there is mentality, that the mentality of which each of us is aware in our own thoughts and experiences is present in various forms in a wide range of natural bodies... Those that have minds (souls) are those whom we describe as seeing, hearing, feeling, and believing.

For such thinkers there is no reason to limit mind to humans and (perhaps) higher animals; in fact, they have reasons—both intuitive and rational—to claim that mind is best conceived as a general phenomenon of nature. As such, mind would exist, in some form, in all things. This concept is called panpsychism... As a meta-theory, it simply holds that, however one conceives of mind, such mind applies to all things... In the forms of animism and polytheism, it was probably the dominant view for most if not all of the pre-historical era. Eastern cultures have a nearly continuous record of panpsychist writings, right through the modern era... Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology emerged and subverted it for a number of centuries, but it made a comeback with the naturalist philosophers of the sixteenth century.

Synonym of panexperientialism, the particular form of panpsychism that holds experience but not cognition as universal.

A particular form of panpsychism.

Whitehead devised such a conception, which to my mind definitely supersedes the panpsychisms of the history of metaphysics.

The genius of modern panpsychisms has proved to be their capacity to incorporate rather than reject the mechanistic point of view.