Consciousness & Panpsychism

1150 words, 5 minute read

‘Consciousness’ has been called the ‘hard problem’. It may well be the last remaining piece of the ontological puzzle. But it’s a doozie! Over the past 175 years, we’ve ‘discovered’ Evolution, Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Big Bang, DNA, etc. But ‘consciousness’ – how we know these things and how we know that we know them – not so much.

Traditionally, the ‘problem of consciousness’ discussion has focused exclusively on homo sapiens; but recently, that’s having to change. Strong evidence has emerged suggesting that members of many other species could pass a modified Turing Test

Bonobos and chimpanzees, marine mammals (e.g. dolphins), corvids (crows and ravens), parrots, and cephalopods (e.g. octopus) all seem very likely candidates. Plus recent exploration has detected intriguing signs of self-awareness in multiple species of fish, insects, and plants.

Everywhere we look in the biosphere we seem to find evidence of mental functioning, self-awareness, consciousness, or at least proto consciousness. Recent efforts to reduce consciousness to a ‘neural network’ have failed, both scientifically and philosophically, and recent discoveries make that hypothesis less and less defensible.

Today, mechanism is everywhere in retreat! The imputed connection between physiology and consciousness is growing ever more tenuous. Vastly different versions of ‘sensory processing apparatus’ seem to support very similar mental phenomena.

For example, a recent study (Science, 10/22/2026) compared the ability of crows to recognize and respond to changes in their environment with that same ability in humans. And the winner is: Crows…and not just by beak. What is ‘intelligence’ but the ability to diagnose environmental changes and generate appropriate responses?

On that measure at least, the crow is twice as intelligent as you or I (reaction time = .25 seconds vs. .5 for us) … and her without even an Ivy League education. And before you embarrass yourself, she achieves this enhanced speed with no loss of accuracy. Sorry, perhaps if your parents had sent you to a more elite pre-school…but too late for that now!

More disturbing: crows’ brains are built differently from ours. Birds lack the layered cerebral cortex found in mammalian brains and yet… Is it possible that we have turned down the ‘wrong’ evolutionary path?

For centuries, science has focused on removing all traces of ‘spirituality’ from biology. No more ‘soul’, no more elan vital. Consciousness was to be mechanism’s final frontier. The locker room was decorated, caterers on site, champagne on ice; but turns out, there’s nothing to celebrate.

Recently, we outlined our own theory of reflection, self-awareness, and consciousness. We hypothesized that such phenomena are a feature of Being itself, hardwired into its topos (topology).

We imagine we live in an ‘orientable’ world with 360° symmetry: up is up and down is down and never the twain shall meet. Likewise, we imagine an insuperable barrier separating any two sides: inside from outside, obverse from reverse. But what if these things are true only locally? Or approximately? What if the orientable world we know and usually love is a degenerate case, an abstraction, or an approximation of a wider, non-orientable reality? Take this earth, for example: from here to my horizon (locally), it looks flat; but we know it isn’t (globally).

We proposed the possibility that our orientable world is embedded in a more general, non-orientable topology with 720° symmetry, where ‘up is up’ only once, at t = 0, and the inside/outside, obverse/reverse distinction does not exist at all. In such a world, after a 360° rotation, ‘up is down’. ‘Up is up’ again only after we complete a full 720° circuit, i.e. after our system reverts to its initial state.

Superficially, this model looks appealing, but it has at least one huge unanticipated consequence -

All living organisms must be self-aware – not just monkeys and bees but sponges and trees…and even unicellular bacteria.

Objection #1: “How can we ever know what it’s like, subjectively, to be a unicellular organism?”

Answer #1: We can’t! But neither can I know what it’s like to be you. I presume you’d like to be considered ‘conscious’ but if I grant you that courtesy, I have no justification for denying the same courtesy to my ‘brother paramecium’.

Answer #2: We can! We can just ask: “What’s it like in there? What’s it like to be you?” But tragically, we don’t yet know how to question the unicellular organisms that make up our bodies…and much of our environment. Fortunately though, we do know how to question human beings…like you for example. So why not just ask yourself? After all, you were once a unicellular organism!

Have you forgotten? You were once the single cell merger of one maternal and one paternal ‘half-cell’? Assuming a normal lifespan, more than 100 trillion cells, each an approximate copy of your original single celled self, will participate in ‘your body’.

Objection #2: The single cell that was ‘me’ at conception was not and is not me. ‘I’ am an emergent epiphenomenon. So you can’t ask my cells because they’re not conscious; and you can’t ask me because I am something other than those cells, whether taken individually or collectively.

Answer: While superficially attractive, this alternative model may generate more problems than it solves. If I emerge from my cells, not as some sort of social superstructure, but as an entirely novel ontological entity…well, bully for me, but then, how it that possible…and what am I? At what point in time did I become ‘I’? Did I become ‘I’ gradually (if so, by what process) or was there a ‘quantum leap’ (and if so, how…and when)? When did I stop being ‘Finn’ and began being ‘Finnegan’? (Joyce)

We are on the horns of a dilemma. We face three entirely unacceptable options: (1) Nihilism (there is no such thing as consciousness – it’s a ‘conceptual illusion’); (2) Mechanism (consciousness can be reduced to chemistry); (3) Mysticism (the phenomenon of consciousness is the discontinuous in-breaking of something ‘transcendental’).

One way out of this dilemma: Panpsychism: self-reflection is fundamental; it is part of the topos (topology) and the logos (order) of Being per se – it includes, constitutes, and encompasses everything that is!

Hmm, where have I heard this before? Oh, yeah…in the writings of Sts. John and Paul:

“All things came to be through him and without him nothing that came to be came to be.” (John 1: 3) “For in him all things were created…through him and for him…and in him all things hold together…” (Colossians 1: 15 – 20)

Of course, they were applying these terms in a completely different context to a completely different subject … right?

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