There is an arguably bizarre theory in philosophy today—gaining momentum in both academia and popular culture—called ‘panpsychism’. It has many variants, but the most recognizable one posits that elementary subatomic particles—quarks, leptons, bosons—are conscious subjects in their own right. In other words, the idea is that there is something it feels like to be an electron, or a quark, or a Higgs boson; their experiential states are allegedly an irreducible property of the particles themselves, just like mass, charge or spin. According to this theory—which has been openly embraced by influential mainstream figures, including reductionist neuroscientist Christof Koch—our complex conscious inner life is constituted by an unfathomable combination of the experiential states of myriad particles forming our brain.
I understand the urge to circumvent the failures of mainstream materialism, according to which matter is all there truly is (experience being somehow an emergent epiphenomenon of certain ephemeral material arrangements). There is growing awareness in both science and philosophy that materialism is untenable, as I discussed in a previous article. The question is whether simply adding—next to mass, charge, spin—fundamental experiential properties to matter is a persuasive and legitimate way out, or just avoids the need for explanation.
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