PANPSYCHISM

"Panpsychism" is the theory according to which all objects in the universe, not only human beings and animals but also plants and even objects we usually classify as "inanimate," have an "inner" or "psychological" being. The German philosopher and psychologist G. T. Fechner wrote:

I stood once on a hot summer's day beside a pool and contemplated a water-lily which had spread its leaves evenly over the water and with an open blossom was basking in the sunlight. How exceptionally fortunate, thought I, must this lily be which above basks in the sunlight and below is plunged in the water—if only it might be capable of feeling the sun and the bath. And why not? I asked myself. It seemed to me that nature surely would not have built a creature so beautiful, and so carefully designed for such conditions, merely to be an object of idle observation. … I was inclined to think that nature had built it thus in order that all the pleasure which can be derived from bathing at once in sunlight and in water might be enjoyed by one creature in the fullest measure. (Religion of a Scientist, pp. 176–177)

To many readers this may seem to be merely charming poetry, but Fechner was writing in defense of a philosophical theory for which he argued with great passion and resourcefulness. "Where we see inorganic Nature seemingly dead," wrote the American panpsychist Josiah Royce, "there is, in fact, conscious life, just as surely as there is any Being present in Nature at all" (The World and the Individual, second series, p, 240). "All motion of matter in space," in the words of Hermann Lotze, "may be explained as a natural expression of the inner states of beings that seek or avoid one another with a feeling of their need.… The whole of the world of sense … is but the veil of an infinite realm of mental life" (Microcosmus, Vol. I, p. 363).

Panpsychism and Related Doctrines

Although panpsychism seems incredible to most people at the present time, it has been endorsed in one way or another by many eminent thinkers in antiquity as well as in recent times. Among those who were either outright panpsychists or who inclined to a position of this kind, in addition to Fechner, Royce, and Lotze one may count Thales, Anaximenes, Empedocles, several of the Stoics, Plotinus and Simplicius; numerous Italian and German Renaissance philosophers (including Paracelsus, Girolamo Cardano, Bernardino Telesio, Giordano Bruno, and Tommaso Campanella); G. W. Leibniz, F. W. J. von Schelling, Arthur Schopenhauer, Antonio Rosmini, W. K. Clifford, Harald Høffding, C. B. Renouvier, Eduard von Hartmann, and Wilhelm Wundt; the German freethinkers Ernst Haeckel, Wilhelm Bölsche, and Bruno Wille; C. A. Strong, Erich Adickes, Erich Becher, Alfred Fouillée, C. S. Peirce, and F. C. S. Schiller; and, in the twentieth century, A. N. Whitehead, Samuel Alexander, Bernardino Varisco, Paul Haeberlin, Aloys Wenzel, Charles Hartshorne, and the biologists Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, C. H. Waddington, Sewall Wright, and W. E. Agar.

Few panpsychists, writing in recent years, would make the claim that their position can be proven, but they do assert that the available evidence favors their theory or at the very least enables it to be a serious contender. According to Fechner, it is the best, clearest, most natural, and most beautiful account of the facts of the universe. According to Schiller, who was both a pragmatist and a panpsychist, the doctrine "renders the operation of things more comprehensible" and also enables us to "act upon them more successfully" (Studies in Humanism, p. 443). Similarly, Whitehead, after quoting a passage in which Francis Bacon declared his belief that "all bodies whatsoever, though they have no sense … yet have perception," claims that this line of thought "expresses a more fundamental truth than do the materialistic concepts which were then being shaped as adequate for physics" (Science and the Modern World, p. 56). Agar, who was a follower of Whitehead's, conceded that there can be "no coercive demonstration" of the truth or falsehood of panpsychism, but it "leads to a more consistent and satisfying world picture than any of the alternatives"; and, unlike these alternatives, panpsychism is not committed to the paradoxical view that "the mental factor … made its appearance out of the blue at some date in the world's history" (The Theory of the Living Organism, pp. 109–110).

Modern panpsychists have been quite aware that their theory ran counter to what Fechner's distinguished follower Friedrich Paulsen called "the obstinate dogmatism of popular opinion and of the physical conception of the universe" (Introduction to Philosophy, p. 93). This obstinacy they attributed to the prevalence of the "night-view" of the universe—an outlook natural in a mechanized civilization in which people are incapable of noticing and appreciating anything that cannot become the subject of measurement and calculation. In arguing for panpsychism, Fechner and Paulsen (among others) believed that they were counteracting a pernicious tendency in modern life, not merely defending a philosophical viewpoint. Fechner conceived of himself as "awakening a sleeping world" (Religion of a Scientist, p. 130) and frequently appealed to his readers to "meet nature with new eyes" (p. 211). Whether plants have souls is not, in the opinion of these writers, an idle or trivial question but on the contrary has a "broader bearing," and its answer decides many other questions and indeed determines one's "whole outlook upon nature" (Fechner, op. cit., p. 163). It is only by accepting panpsychism that a modern man (who finds it impossible to believe in the claims of traditional religion) can escape the distressing implications of materialism.

Unlike Fechner and Paulsen, Lotze supported the traditional religious doctrines of a personal, immaterial deity and a substantival, immortal soul; and hence he did not claim that we had to embrace panpsychism in order to avoid materialism. Lotze also repeatedly insisted, quite unlike Royce and Schiller, that we must not introduce panpsychism into science. Nevertheless he, too, greatly emphasized the emotional benefits accruing from the acceptance of panpsychism. Although science may and should set aside all reference to the "pervading animation of the universe," the "aesthetic view of Nature may lawfully fill out the sum of what exists." If we are panpsychists we no longer "look on one part of the cosmos as but a blind and lifeless instrument for the ends of another," but, on the contrary, find "beneath the unruffled surface of matter, behind the rigid and regular repetitions of its working, … the warmth of a hidden mental activity." Lotze was particularly concerned to vindicate "the fullness of animated life" in such lowly things as "the dust trodden by our feet [and] the prosaic texture of the cloth that forms our clothing." Dust, Lotze declares, is "dust only to him whom it inconveniences," and he asks us to remember that human beings who are "confined" in a low social position, in which the outflow of intellectual energy is greatly impeded, are not by any means deprived of their "high destiny." If in the case of such "oppressed fragments of humanity," of "this dust of the spiritual world," we may yet affirm a divine origin and a celestial goal, then we have far less reason to deny an inner life to physical dust particles; uncomely as these "may appear to us in their accumulations, they at least everywhere and without shortcoming perform the actions permitted to them by the universal order" (Microcosmus, Vol. I, pp. 361–363).

hylozoism

Panpsychism is related to but not identical with hylozoism. "Hylozoism" is sometimes defined as the view that matter is "intrinsically" active and in this sense is primarily opposed to the view of philosophers, like Plato and George Berkeley, who asserted that matter is "essentially" inert or passive. More frequently, it refers to the theory that all objects in the universe are in some literal sense alive. Any panpsychist who endorses the usual view that mind implies life would automatically be a hylozoist in the latter sense, but the converse does not hold. In fact most panpsychists have been quite ready to have themselves labeled hylozoists, but there are some exceptions, of whom Schopenhauer is perhaps the most famous. According to Schopenhauer, all objects have an inner nature that he calls "will," but although this will may be described as psychic or mental, it is not necessarily a form of life. "I am the first," Schopenhauer wrote, "who has asserted that a will must be attributed to all that is lifeless and inorganic. For, with me, the will is not, as has hitherto been assumed, an accident of cognition and therefore of life; but life itself is manifestation of will" (On the Will in Nature, p. 309).

William James is responsible for some terminological confusion that should be cleared up before we go any further. In several of his later writings James strongly supported a theory he stated in the following words: "there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir. … we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest" (Memories and Studies, p. 204). Not only psychical research, he held, but also metaphysical philosophy and speculative biology are led in their own ways to look with favor on some such "panpsychist view of the universe as this." Elsewhere he remarks that the evidence from normal and abnormal psychology, from religious experience and from psychical research combine to establish a "formidable probability in favor of a general view of the world almost identical with Fechner's" (Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 311). It is true that Fechner held to a theory of a cosmic reservoir of consciousness, regarding God as the universal consciousness in which all lesser souls are contained, but it was not the acceptance of this theory that made him a panpsychist, and James himself was not a panpsychist. He nowhere maintained that plants and inanimate objects have an inner psychic life, and it is not easy to see how the reservoir theory by itself logically implies panpsychism.

world soul

It should also be pointed out that the theory of the "world soul" is not identical with and does not necessarily follow from panpsychism. A number of panpsychists have in fact maintained the existence of a world soul, and they regarded it as a natural extension of panpsychism. Thus, Fechner in his Zend-Avesta (Vol. I, p. 179) concluded that "the earth is a creature …, a unitary whole in form and substance, in purpose and effect … and self-sufficient in its individuality." It is related to our human body as "the whole tree is to a single twig, a permanent body to a perishable, small organ." "Nothing," in the words of Zeno the Stoic (as approvingly quoted by Cicero), that "is destitute itself of life and reason, can generate a being possessed of life and reason; but the world does generate beings possessed of life and reason; the world therefore is not itself destitute of life and reason" (On the Nature of the Gods, Bk. II, Sec. VIII). In a very similar vein Paulsen argues that Earth, since it "produces all living and animated beings and harbors them as parts of its life," may itself be plausibly regarded as "alive and animated." Only the person who is "not open to the inner life of things" will find it difficult to regard Earth as a unitary organism with an inner life as well as a body (Introduction to Philosophy, p. 108). To demand to be shown the eyes and ears, the mouth and digestive system, the skin and hair, the arms and legs, the nervous system and the brain of Earth is quite improper. Unlike an animal, Earth does not need a mouth and a stomach because it does not have to take in substances from outside. An animal pursues its prey and in turn attempts to escape its pursuers, and hence it needs eyes and ears, but Earth is not a pursuer and is also not pursued. An animal needs a brain and nerves in order to regulate its movements in response to its environment, but Earth moves around without any such aid. Much like Fechner, Paulsen concludes that "it has regulated its relations to the external world in the most beautiful and becoming manner." "Please do not," he adds, slightly hurt by the irreverent objections of some critics, "please do not ask it to do what is contrary to its nature and cosmical position" (ibid.). This elevated idea of Earth soul has not won general acceptance among panpsychists. Charles Hartshorne, a twentieth-century panpsychist who, like Fechner, is a friend of religion, pays tribute to the "eloquence" of Fechner's account but questions whether "the advances of science since his time have served to confirm" his view. While it may be plausible to regard an electron as "a rudimentary organism," the larger systems that Fechner and Paulsen dealt with so enthusiastically "seem to contemporary knowledge rather too loosely integrated to be accepted as sentient subjects." A tree, it seems plausible to argue, has less unity than one of its own cells, and, similarly, Earth has less unity than the animals which inhabit it ("Panpsychism," p. 447). Hartshorne, as just observed, is a religious thinker, but there have also been atheistic and agnostic panpsychists, and there is no doubt that they would dismiss the theory of the world soul as quite absurd and as an illegitimate extension of panpsychism.

degrees of consciousness

There is one other terminological confusion against which we should be on guard. Rudolf Eisler, in the article on panpsychism in his Wörterbuch der Philosophischen Begriffe, first supplies the definition that we have adopted here and that is the one generally accepted. Later, however, he remarks that many panpsychists merely assert that all matter has a "disposition towards the psychological"—that is, that they ascribe to inorganic things no more than a "hypothetical" or low-grade mentality. Now, panpsychists have indeed generally emphasized that there are degrees of "mentality" or "soul life" and that the mentality or psychic nature of inanimate objects is of an exceedingly simple order, but a low degree or level of mentality must be distinguished from "hypothetical mentality" or the capacity to become the subject of mental activities. To qualify as a panpsychist a person must claim that all bodies actually have an inner or psychological nature or aspect. That all matter is potentially the subject of mental activities or characteristics is something that many other philosophers, including not a few materialists, would concede. To say that a stone is made of elements which, when suitably combined, form an entity that thinks and feels is not the same thing as to say that the stone itself has an inner, psychological being.

Royce is a notable exception to the statement that panpsychists regard the psychic character of inorganic bodies as much lower than that of human beings or animals. He thought that the difference was mainly one of speed and that the "fluent" nature of the inner life of inorganic systems tends to go unnoticed because of its "very vast slowness." To this he added, however, that slowness does not mean "a lower type of consciousness" (The World and the Individual, second series, pp. 226–227).

naive and critical panpsychism

Eisler distinguishes between "naive" and "critical" panpsychism—by the former he means the animism of primitive peoples and of children, by the latter he means panpsychist theories that are supported by arguments. In this article we are, of course, concerned exclusively with the "critical" or philosophical variety of panpsychism. Most critical panpsychists would probably endorse Agar's judgment that although primitive animism was "in its analogical way of thinking basically sound," it was also "full of errors" and "ludicrously mistaken in detail" (The Theory of the Living Organism, p. 109).

It should be observed that some philosophical panpsychists are not consistently "critical" in the sense just indicated. Thus, while offering elaborate arguments and conceding quite explicitly on numerous occasions that the inner psychic processes of plants and inanimate objects are not given to us in immediate experience but have to be inferred, both Schopenhauer and Fechner occasionally take the opposite position. In a remarkable passage, Schopenhauer tells us that if we consider various inanimate objects "attentively," we shall observe (among many other things) the "strong and unceasing impulse with which the waters hurry to the ocean, [the] persistency with which the magnet turns ever to the North Pole, [the] readiness with which iron flies to the magnet, [the] eagerness with which the electric poles seek to be reunited, and which, just like human desire, is increased by obstacles [as well as] the choice with which bodies repel and attract each other, combine and separate, when they are set free in a fluid state, and emancipated from the bonds of rigidity." Furthermore, if we attend to the way in which a load "hampers our body by its gravitation towards the earth," we shall "feel directly [that it] unceasingly presses and strains [our body] in pursuit of its one tendency." This passage is taken from the early first volume of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (Bk. II, Sec. 23). His later work Über den Willen in der Natur consists largely of lists of scientific facts "proving" Schopenhauer's assorted philosophical theories, including his panpsychism. Here we are told to "look attentively at a torrent dashing headlong over rocks," whose "boisterous vehemence" can arise only from an "exertion of strength" (p. 308). As for the celestial bodies, if we observe them carefully we shall see that they "play with each other, betray mutual inclination, exchange as it were amorous glances, yet never allow themselves to come into rude contact" (p. 305). Fechner, a milder man than Schopenhauer and more interested in plants than in boisterous torrents or burdensome loads, records experiences in which "the very soul of the plant stood visibly before me," in which he "saw" not only a special "outward clarity" of the flowers but also "the inward light" that in all likelihood caused the outer appearance (op. cit., pp. 211–212).

To see what is at issue between panpsychists and their opponents, it is important to point out that passages such as these are aberrations. It may indeed be held that in addition to the more familiar properties, to which philosophers refer as the primary and secondary qualities, physical objects possess a further set of qualities that are not noticed by observers who lack certain gifts or a suitable training. Such a view need not be mystical and has been plausibly defended in the case of the so-called tertiary qualities, especially those of artistic productions and performances. However, the initial definitions of "soul," "psychic," and "inner," or of any of the other terms used by panpsychists in statements of their position, preclude them from adopting a position of this kind. The "soul," the "inner" nature of an object, its "mental side" is by definition—a definition to which the panpsychists subscribe—something private that only the object itself can experience or observe. Hence, even if one grants that panpsychists possess gifts of which other mortals are deprived, these cannot possibly be the means of directly perceiving the inner qualities or states of any object external to the observer. Moreover, the great majority of panpsychists, including Schopenhauer and Fechner, do not, in their more considered presentations, claim any special faculty for themselves that the opponents of panpsychism supposedly lack. On the contrary, it is implied that, starting from certain generally accessible facts, sound reasoning will lead a person to a panpsychist conclusion.

Arguments for Panpsychism

The arguments for panpsychism may be conveniently grouped according to whether they presuppose the acceptance of a particular metaphysical system or some controversial epistemological theory or whether they are or purport to be of an empirical or inductive character. Some of the arguments of Leibniz and Royce are based on their respective versions of metaphysical idealism, and some of the arguments of Schopenhauer and Paulsen presuppose a Kantian theory of knowledge. It is impossible to evaluate any such arguments without getting involved in an appraisal of their particular metaphysical or epistemological framework, and we shall therefore confine our discussion to arguments of the other kind. It is perhaps worth noting in this connection that, especially since the mid-1800s, many panpsychists have regarded themselves as opponents of metaphysics, or, if they did not object to being labeled metaphysicians, they took care to add that theirs was an "inductive," not a speculative, variety of metaphysics. Fechner in particular prided himself on dispensing altogether with "a priori constructions," and he was a leading figure, along with von Hartmann and Wundt, in a movement to renounce any claim to a special philosophical method distinct from the method employed in the natural sciences. The only method that, on his view, could lead to a tenable theory about the universe as a whole was "generalization by induction and analogy, and the rational combination of the common elements gathered from different areas," as he observes in Zend-Avesta. Furthermore, even some of the panpsychists who were also speculative metaphysicians appealed to empirical considerations. They thought that panpsychism could be supported in different ways that were logically independent of one another. Royce was one of the philosophers who adopted this approach. Insisting that his "Idealistic Theory of Being … furnishes a deep warrant" for panpsychism, he nevertheless regarded panpsychism as also resting on "a merely empirical basis" (op. cit., p. 213). "Wholly apart from any more metaphysical consideration of the deeper nature of Reality," certain empirical facts suggest panpsychism as the conclusion of "a rough induction." In this connection, the theory should be treated as a "hypothesis for further testing" (ibid., pp. 223–224).

genetic arguments

The arguments that have been most widely urged in defense of panpsychism, and which go back at least as far as Telesio and Campanella, rely, in one way or another, on the assumption that mental facts can be causally explained only in terms of other mental facts. Philosophers who have arrived at a parallelistic answer to the body-mind problem have been specially prone to endorse such arguments, but these can be stated independently of any commitment to parallelism. It is perhaps interesting to note in passing that many early champions of Darwinism (for example, Clifford in England and Haeckel and L. Büchner in Germany) were attracted by reasoning of this kind, although they were frequently repelled by the analogical arguments considered later in the present article. We shall here examine two such genetic arguments—one advanced by Paulsen, the other by a twentieth-century British scientist.

How, asks Paulsen, did soul life originate? Modern biology assumes, quite rightly in Paulsen's opinion, that organic life had a beginning on Earth and that the "first creations" arose from inorganic matter. The question then arises how "psychic life" came into being. "Is the first feeling in the first protoplasmic particle something absolutely new, something that did not exist before in any form, of which not the slightest trace was to be found previously?" (Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 99–100). To suppose that the first feeling in the first protoplasmic particle was something "absolutely new" would, however, imply a "creation out of nothing," which would be totally at variance with the basic (and well-founded) principles of science. You might as well, Paulsen remarks, ask the natural scientist "to believe that the protoplasmic particle itself was created out of nothing." The natural scientist rightly assumes that natural bodies arise from preexisting elements. These enter into new and more complicated combinations, and as a result the bodies are capable of performing "new and astonishing functions." Why does the natural scientist "not make the same natural assumption" in the case of the inner psychic processes as well? Why does he not say that "an inner life was already present in germ (keimhaft ) in the elements, and that it developed into higher forms?"

It is not easy to appraise this line of reasoning because of the vagueness of the expression "absolutely new." As Ernest Nagel and others have pointed out, it is frequently not at all clear whether two processes or occurrences are to be counted as different instances of the same property or as different properties—whether they are or not usually depends on the purpose of the particular investigation. Furthermore, what may be "absolutely new," in the sense of not being predictable from certain initial conditions in conjunction with a certain set of laws, may at the same time not be absolutely new in the sense of being predictable from these initial conditions together with a different set of laws. However, let us assume that in a given case all parties agree that if at a moment T ₁ the features of a system were of a certain kind and if at a subsequent moment T ₂ they were of a certain different kind, something "absolutely new" came into being at T ₂. More specifically, let us assume that the conditions at T ₁ do not include any mental fact but that at T ₂ they include "the first feeling" in the first protoplasmic particle. Now, according to Paulsen's argument, anybody who supposes that this is the kind of thing that actually happened—and a person who accepts certain scientific facts while rejecting panpsychism has to suppose that this is what happened—is committed to the view that something came from nothing. But to suppose that something came from nothing is unscientific and absurd.

There is a simple answer to this. By saying that something must always come from something and cannot come from nothing, we may mean either (1) that every phenomenon or event has a cause or (2) the scholastic principle that any property residing in an effect must also have been present in its cause. If we suppose that at time T ₁ there was no mental fact in the universe while at a later time T ₂ the first feeling occurred in a protoplasmic particle, we would indeed be violating proposition (2), but we would not at all be violating proposition (1). Yet if anything can here be regarded as "unscientific" or "absurd" it would be exceptions to (1). For reasons explained earlier, it is not easy to state (2) or its denial with any precision, but, in the most familiar sense of "new," experience seems to show that there are any number of effects possessing new properties—properties not present in the cause. The very course of evolution, to which Paulsen and other proponents of the genetic argument appeal, provides a multitude of illustrations of this. At any rate, an opponent of panpsychism would deny proposition (2) and would insist that such a denial is in no way unempirical or unscientific. To assume the opposite without further ado would surely be to beg one of the basic questions at issue.

Let us now consider a more recent version of a genetic argument: "Something must go on in the simplest inanimate things," writes the distinguished British geneticist C. H. Waddington, "which can be described in the same language as would be used to describe our self-awareness" (The Nature of Life, p. 121). It is true, he continues, that we know nothing of its nature, but the conclusion is forced on us by the "demands of logic and the application of evolutionary theory" (p. 122). Waddington's argument opens with the declaration that the phenomenon of self-awareness is a "basic mystery." This is so because awareness "can never be constructed theoretically out of our present fundamental scientific concepts, since these contain no element which has any similarity in kind with self-consciousness." But self-awareness undoubtedly exists, and hence we must infer that the mode we experience "evolved from simple forms which are experienced by non-human things." It is not difficult to accept this conclusion as far as animals like dogs and cats are concerned. But, Waddington proceeds, we cannot stop there if we take the theory of evolution seriously. According to the initial premise it is inconceivable that self-awareness "originated from anything which did not share something in common with it and possessed only those qualities which can be objectively observed from outside." Hence, we are forced to conclude that "even in the simplest inanimate things there is something which belongs to the same realm of being as self-awareness." Waddington's argument is not overtly based, as Paulsen's was, on the contention that somebody who accepts evolution but rejects panpsychism is committed to the absurd proposition that something comes from nothing. According to Waddington such a person would be committed to the view that self-awareness is not a mystery—that is, that it is explicable in physical terms—and this Waddington takes to be plainly false.

In reply it should be pointed out that Waddington appears to use the word explanation in two very different senses in the course of his argument. Sometimes when we ask for the explanation of a phenomenon we are looking for an account of its makeup, of how its parts are related and how they work. We use the word explanation in this sense when we want to have the nature of a car or a clock or perhaps a human eye explained to us. At other times, and more frequently, in asking for the explanation of a phenomenon we are looking for its cause. It is not easy to see why awareness should be said to be a "mystery" just because it cannot, in the first sense of "explanation," be explained in physical terms (this betrays a strange materialistic bias that regards a phenomenon as properly explicable, in the first sense, only if it is something material—one wonders why physical objects are not equally mysterious, since they cannot be explained in terms of predicates that are applicable only to mental states). But waiving this point—allowing, that is, that awareness cannot be adequately characterized by the kinds of predicates usually applied to material objects and that this makes awareness incapable of explanation in the first of the two senses distinguished, none of this implies that awareness cannot be explained, in the second sense of the word, in terms of purely physical factors. Avoiding the word explanation, the point can be expressed very simply: Granting that awareness is not a physical phenomenon, it does not follow that it cannot be produced by conditions that are purely physical. When the matter is put in this way, it becomes clear that we are back to the difficulty besetting Paulsen's form of the argument. Waddington's argument does not, aside from the acceptance of the evolutionary theory, depend merely on the admission that awareness is not a physical phenomenon, that it "cannot be constructed" out of physical concepts: It also depends on the maxim that any property of the effect must also be present in the cause. We have already mentioned reasons for rejecting this principle, but perhaps it is worth adding that in the context of the body-mind relationship it seems particularly implausible. Brain tumors and other damage to the body, to give some very obvious examples, lead to all kinds of psychological states, but we do not for this reason refuse to regard them as explanations of the latter.

analogical arguments

The second set of arguments commonly employed by panpsychists, independently of any metaphysical system, purport to be of an analogical kind. Here the more systematic panpsychists usually proceed in two steps: The first consists in arguing that plants are in "essential" respects so much like animals that one cannot consistently attribute a psychic or soul life to animals but refuse it to plants; it is then maintained that the borderline between animate and inanimate objects is not sharp and that a careful examination of inanimate objects reveals them to have many impressive likenesses to animals and plants, indicating the existence of inner psychic being there also.

Plants manifest many of the same vital processes that are found in animals: nutrition, growth, reproduction, and many more. Like animals, plants are born and also die. Moreover, it is simply not true that plants lack the power of spontaneous movement that we observe in animals. "Does not the plant," asks Paulsen, "turn its buds and leaves to the light, does it not send its roots where it finds nourishment, and its tendrils where it finds support? Does it not close up its petals at night or when it rains, and does it not open them in sunshine?" If there is so great a "correspondence" between the visible processes, why should there not be a similar correspondence in "the invisible processes"? (op. cit., pp. 96–97). If it is argued that these analogies are too vague and trifling, because plants have neither a brain nor a nervous system, the answer is surely that there are animals that also lack brains and nervous systems. Fechner was particularly concerned to exhibit the weakness of this counterargument. He observes that if we remove the strings of a piano or a violin it becomes impossible to obtain any harmonic sounds from these instruments. If somebody concluded from this that the presence of strings is essential to the production of musical tones, he would be completely mistaken, because there are many instruments, like flutes and trombones, with which we can produce musical sounds although they have no strings; but this argument would be not one whit worse than that of the critic of panpsychism.

There are, to be sure, differences between plants and animals, and these a panpsychist has no wish to deny, but, according to Paulsen, they "may be conceived as indicating a difference in inner life also" rather than the absence of any inner processes. The differences indicate "that plants possess a peculiar inclination to receptivity and a decentralized extensity, whereas the psychical life of the animal shows more spontaneity and centralized intensity" (ibid., p. 98). Fechner is even more specific and compares the difference in psychical life between animals and plants to the difference in the psychology of men and women. Elsewhere he compares the former difference to that between the emotions of travelers and those who are "homebodies," between the pleasures associated with "running hither and thither" and those accompanying a "quiet and sedentary sphere of endeavor" (Religion of a Scientist, pp. 178–179). Paulsen adds, however, it does not really matter what we think about the details of the inner processes, since all such attempts at conceiving the nature of the psychic life of plants are "at best feeble." It should be remembered that we do not really fare any better if we try to "interpret" the psychical life of animals, especially that of the lower species. We know very little, Paulsen remarks, "about the inner experiences of a jelly-fish or the feelings of a caterpillar or a butterfly."

When we come to inanimate objects, Paulsen continues, the first thing to note is that organic and inorganic bodies must not be regarded as belonging to two separate worlds. There is constant interaction between them. They are composed of the same ingredients and acted on by the same forces. If this were all, however, the analogy would not be strong enough. It would be objected that unlike animals and plants, objects like stones are lifeless and rigid, that they lack all spontaneous activity. This opinion, Paulsen argues, is totally mistaken and is based on the Aristotelian-scholastic theory, taken over by materialistic scientists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, that matter is inherently and absolutely passive. This theory, whether in its original or in its modern atomistic form, is quite untenable. In fact a stone is not an "absolutely dead and rigid body" and devoid of "inner impulses." Modern physics has discarded such a view. Its molecules and atoms are "forms of the greatest inner complexity and mobility." Not only are the constituents of an apparently rigid object like a stone in continuous motion, but the entire system is "in constant interaction with its immediate surroundings as well as with the remotest system of fixed stars" (pp. 101–102). In the light of this it is not only not absurd but quite plausible to conclude that "corresponding to this wonderful play of physical forces and movements" there is a system of inner psychic processes "analogous to that which accompanies the working of the parts in an organic body." We thus arrive, on the basis of scientific evidence, at a view substantially like that of Empedocles that "love and hate form the motive forces in all things"—not, to be sure, quite as we know them in ourselves, but nevertheless in a form that is "at bottom similar" to these human emotions.

It is natural to object to such arguments that the analogies are altogether inconclusive. It is true that there are certain similarities between, say, a stone and a human body, but there are also all kinds of differences. Paulsen assures us that the similarities are "essential," but if "essential" here means that, as far as the inference to an inner psychic process is concerned, the similarities count and the differences do not, that they are relevant whereas the differences are irrelevant, one may well ask how Paulsen knows this. Surely no proposition has been or could have been established to the effect that inner physical movement is always and necessarily connected with psychic activity. Any such general proposition is precisely what the opponent of panpsychism would deny or question. Furthermore, leaving aside any discussion of whether those who regard matter as "active" and those who maintain it to be "passive" are engaging in a factual dispute (so that one party could be said to be right and the other wrong), it must be emphasized that in rejecting panpsychism one is in no way committed to the view that matter is devoid of "inner activity." The view that matter has no inner psychic aspect in no way precludes the admission of inner physical processes such as those postulated by modern physical theory.

These criticisms, however, do not go far enough. They assume, what seems very doubtful, that the arguments under discussion are of a genuinely empirical character. In this connection it is pertinent to raise the question what the universe would have to be like so that there would be no evidence for panpsychism, or, more strongly, so that the evidence would clearly favor the opposite position. We saw that Paulsen considered the fact that human bodies and inanimate objects are composed of the same elements to be evidence for his position. He also regarded the internal movements of the particles of apparently stationary objects as evidence of their inner life. But suppose that stones and human bodies were not composed of the same elements; would this constitute evidence against panpsychism or would it at least deprive panpsychism of evidence that is at present supporting it? Suppose that electrons were not buzzing inside the stone; would this show or would it be any kind of evidence for the view that the stone does not have a psychic life? From the writings of panpsychists it seems probable that the answer to these questions would be in the negative: If the elements of stones were quite different from those of human bodies, it might be an indication that the psychic processes in stones are even more different in detail from those of human beings, and if the internal constituents of the stones were not in constant motion it might indicate a more restful psychic life, but it would not indicate that no psychic life at all is going on. If this is an accurate presentation of the panpsychist position, it shows that the analogical arguments we have been considering are not genuinely empirical, that the facts pointed to are not, in any accepted sense, evidence for the conclusion. This is a far stronger criticism than the claim that the analogies are weak or the arguments inconclusive.

Is Panpsychism an Intelligible Doctrine?

Some contemporary philosophers who have given more thought to the conditions of meaningful discourse than was customary in previous times are inclined to dismiss panpsychism not as false or unproven but as unintelligible. Thus, in his Philosophical Investigations Ludwig Wittgenstein raises the question "Could one imagine a stone's having consciousness?" and comments that if anyone can imagine this, it would merely amount to "image-mongery" (Sec. 390, p. 119 e). Such image-mongery, Wittgenstein seems to imply, would not show at all that in attributing consciousness to a stone one is making an intelligible statement. It would probably be pointless to try to "prove" that panpsychism is a meaningless doctrine. Any such attempt is liable to involve one in an elaborate and inconclusive defense of some controversial meaning criterion. However, it may be of some interest to explain more fully, without intending to settle anything, why not a few contemporary philosophers would maintain that the panpsychists do not succeed in asserting any new facts and in the end merely urge certain pictures on us.

To this end let us first consider the following imaginary disputes about the "inner" nature of a tennis ball. A holds the common view that the ball is made of rubber and not of living tissue, while B holds the unusual opinion that if we were to examine the inside of the tennis ball under a powerful microscope we would find a brain, a nervous system, and other physiological structures usually associated with consciousness. Furthermore, B maintains that if we listened very attentively to what goes on while tennis balls are in their can we would hear one ball whispering to the other, "My brother, be careful—don't let them hit you too hard; if you roll into a bush on the other side of the fence you may spend the rest of your days in blissful peace." There is genuine empirical disagreement between A and B and, as far as we know, A would be right if the ball or balls in question are of the familiar kind. Let us next suppose that C, after reading Paulsen and Waddington, becomes converted to panpsychism and starts saying such things as "the tennis ball is not a mere body—it has an inner psychic life, it is moved by love and hate, although not love and hate quite as we know them in human beings." To an uncritical outsider it may at first appear, chiefly because of the images one associates with the word inner, that C, like B, is asserting the existence of strange goings on inside the ball, never suspected by the ordinary man or the physicist. In fact, however, if C is a philosophical panpsychist, he will not expect to find a brain or a nervous system or any kind of living tissue inside the ball, and he will disclaim any such assertion. Nor will he expect that tennis balls whisper gentle warnings to one another when they are alone. If he should start serving less forcefully in order to avoid hurting the ball, a professional panpsychist would undoubtedly advise him not to be silly, explaining that although their lives are governed by love and hate, balls do not get hurt in any sense that need concern a sympathetic human being. In other words, C does not disagree with A about what would be found inside the ball or about the ball's behavior while it is in the can, and he is also not treating the ball any differently from the way A does—or at any rate no different treatment is logically implied by his opinion that the ball has an inner psychic life. B really contradicts A and, at least in the case of the balls we all know, he is quite certainly mistaken. C is not mistaken, but one begins to wonder whether he is asserting any facts not allowed for in the ordinary, nonpanpsychist view of the ball. A semantically sensitive observer might comment that ordinary people (and uncritical philosophers) are apt to suppose that they understand well enough what panpsychism asserts and that they proceed to dismiss it as silly or incredible (that is, as plainly false) because they regard panpsychism as a theory like B 's unusual opinion about the tennis ball. In fact, panpsychism is not like B 's opinion but like C 's, and the appropriate criticism seems to be not that it is a false theory but that one does not really know what, if anything, has been asserted.

schiller

Let us now turn to the procedure of an actual panpsychist to see the full relevance of the preceding reflections. F. C. S. Schiller argued that inanimate objects, contrary to the usual opinion, take notice of other inanimate objects, as well as of human beings. "Inanimate objects," he wrote, "are responsive to each other and modify their behavior accordingly. A stone is not indifferent to other stones" (Logic for Use, p. 447). Nor are stones indifferent to human beings: "In a very real sense," he wrote elsewhere, "a stone must be said to know us and to respond to our manipulation" (Studies in Humanism, p. 443). It is "as true of stones as of men" that if you treat them differently they behave differently (Logic for Use, p. 447). It must be emphasized, however, that the responsiveness, the nonindifference, of stones is not quite what we mean when we talk about the responsiveness and nonindifference of human beings. How does a stone exhibit its nonindifference to other stones? Very simply: in being gravitationally attracted to them (ibid.). Nor are we "recognized" by the stone "in our whole nature." It does not "apprehend us as spiritual beings," but this does not mean that the stone takes no note whatever of our existence. "It is aware of us and affected by us on the plane on which its own existence is passed." In the physical world we and stones share, "'awareness' can apparently be shown by being hard and heavy and colored and space-filling, and so forth. And all these things the stone is and recognizes in other bodies" (Studies in Humanism, p. 442). The stone "faithfully exercises" all its physical functions: "it gravitates and resists pressure, and obstructs ether vibrations, etc., and makes itself respected as such a body. And it treats us as if of a like nature with itself, on the level of its understanding, i.e., as bodies to which it is attracted inversely as the square of the distance, moderately hard and capable of being hit." The stone does not indeed "know or care" whether a human being gets hurt by it; but in those operations that are of "interest" to the stone, as, for example, in house building, "it plays its part and responds according to the measure of its capacity." What is true of stones, Schiller continues, is also true of atoms and electrons, if they really exist. Just as the stone responds only "after its fashion," so atoms and electrons also know us "after their fashion." They know us not as human beings but "as whirling mazes of atoms and electrons like themselves." We treat stones and atoms as "inanimate" because of "their immense spiritual remoteness from us" and "perhaps" also because of "our inability to understand them" (ibid., pp. 442, 444).

Some of his readers, Schiller realizes, will "cry" that the views just reported amount to "sheer hylozoism," but he does not regard this as any reason for concern. "What," he answers, "if it is hylozoism or, still better, panpsychism, so long as it really brings out a genuine analogy," and this, he is convinced, it does. "The analogy is helpful so long as it really renders the operations of things more comprehensible to us, and interprets facts which had seemed mysterious" (ibid., p. 443). Schiller illustrates his claim by considering the chemical phenomenon of catalytic action. It had "seemed mysterious" and "hard to understand" (presumably prior to the publication of Schiller's "humanistic" panpsychism), that two bodies A and B may have a strong affinity for each other and yet refuse to combine until the merest trace of a third substance C is introduced, which sets up an interaction between A and B without producing an alteration in C itself. But, asks Schiller, "is not this strangely suggestive of the idea that A and B did not know each other until they were introduced by C, and then liked each other so well that C was left out in the cold?" To this he adds—and here surely not even the most hostile critic would disagree—that "more such analogies and possibilities will probably be found if they are looked for." Nevertheless, panpsychism does not merely render the operation of things more comprehensible. It has a further virtue, to which Schiller alludes later in the same discussion: "The alien world which seemed so remote and so rigid to an inert contemplation, the reality which seemed so intractable to an aimless and fruitless speculation, grows plastic in this way to our intelligent manipulations" (ibid., p. 444).

Perhaps the most striking features of Schiller's presentation are the constant modifications or retractions of what at first appear truly remarkable assertions. Inanimate objects are "responsive to each other," but not the way in which human beings or animals are—they are responsive in being gravitationally attracted by other inanimate objects. The stone is "aware of us," but not, of course, in the sense in which human beings are aware—it is aware on "its plane"; the stone "recognizes" other bodies and is "interested" in operations such as house building, but "on the level of its understanding"; it "plays its part," but "according to the measure of its capacity"; atoms and electrons know us no less than we know them, but "after their fashion." It is not, perhaps, unfair to say that Schiller takes away with one hand what he gives with the other, and it may be questioned whether anything remains. When one is told that the stone is aware of us one reacts with astonishment and is apt to suppose that a statement has been made that contradicts what an ordinary nonpanpsychist believes; but this turns out to be more than doubtful since the stone's awareness, on its plane, seems to consist simply in being hard, heavy, space-filling, and colored. The stone makes itself respected and is interested in operations like house building, but in its own fashion, and this consists in gravitating, resisting pressure, and all the usual characteristics of stones, which are not questioned by those who do not subscribe to panpsychism. Schiller plainly believed that the panpsychist asserts (if he has not in fact discovered) facts about stones and atoms that are denied by, or whose existence is unknown to, the ordinary person and the materialist. He evidently did not believe that it was just a question of using words in different senses. But, if so, what are the facts he asserts and his opponents deny? Schiller's qualifications remind one of a song in the musical Kiss Me, Kate in which a lighthearted lady sings of her numerous and constantly changing amorous involvements, adding at the end of each verse, "But I'm always true to you, darling, in my fashion; yes, I'm always true to you, darling, in my way." How does the stone's awareness in its own way differ from what other people would refer to as absence of awareness?

empirical pretensions of panpsychists

Even if one is disinclined to go so far as to dismiss panpsychism as meaningless, there is surely good reason to dispute the empirical and pragmatic pretensions of certain panpsychists. We saw that Royce regarded panpsychism (among other things) as a hypothesis "to be tested," but unfortunately he did not tell us anything about the way or ways in which this was to be done. Royce did indeed guard himself by maintaining that the mental processes in physical systems occur over "extremely august" temporal spans (The World and the Individual, second series, p. 226), so that a human being would be unable to detect a process of this kind. However, making the fullest allowance for this qualification and granting ourselves or some imaginary observer the "august" time span required by Royce's "hypothesis," this would still not do, since Royce omitted to inform us what such an observer should look for.

Schiller, it will be remembered, assured us that as a result of accepting panpsychism the previously "remote" and "rigid" reality "grows plastic … to our manipulations." But he did not explain how and where these happy transformations would take place. Is a bricklayer who has been converted to panpsychism going to lay bricks more efficiently? Does a tennis player's game improve if he becomes a disciple of Schiller? No, but perhaps the chemist will find catalytic action more comprehensible, and "more such analogies and possibilities" will make other "intractable" processes less "mysterious." Regrettably, the opinion that panpsychism makes any of these phenomena easier to understand is the result of a confusion that hinges on an ambiguity in "comprehensible" and related expressions. Sometimes we attempt to make phenomena or correlations of events more comprehensible. In this sense, a phenomenon (for example, a certain disease or a plane crash) is comprehended or understood if its cause is discovered, and a correlation or a law becomes comprehensible if it is subsumed under a wider law (if, for example, the administration of a certain drug has in many cases been followed by the cure of a given condition, the correlation becomes comprehensible if we determine what it is about the drug that has this effect; and this is another way of saying that we subsume the correlation under a law). But at other times when we talk about making something comprehensible, we are concerned with explaining the meaning of theories or statements, not with the explanation of phenomena or of correlations. Unlike the first, this kind of problem may be regarded as pedagogical, and here all kinds of analogies may be helpful that do not or need not shed any light on the causes of the phenomena dealt with in the statements we are trying to make more comprehensible. It cannot, of course, be denied that an analogy such as the one Schiller offers may well make catalysts more comprehensible in this pedagogical sense—it may, for example, help schoolchildren to understand what a chemist is talking about. It is equally clear that such an analogy does absolutely nothing to make catalytic action more comprehensible in the earlier sense we mentioned, and it was surely in this sense that Schiller claimed panpsychism to make things less mysterious and easier to understand. It is difficult to believe that either Schiller or any other champion of panpsychism would be satisfied to have the theory regarded as no more than a pedagogical device in the teaching of natural science.

See also Alexander, Samuel; Anaximenes; Berkeley, George; Bruno, Giordano; Campanella, Tommaso; Cicero, Marcus Tullius; Clifford, William Kingdon; Empedocles; Fechner, Gustav Theodor; Fouillée, Alfred; Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich; Hartmann, Eduard von; Høffding, Harald; James, William; Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm; Lotze, Rudolf Hermann; Macrocosm and Microcosm; Materialism; Nagel, Ernest; Pantheism; Paracelsus; Paulsen, Friedrich; Peirce, Charles Sanders; Plato; Plotinus; Renouvier, Charles Bernard; Rosmini-Serbati, Antonio; Royce, Josiah; Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von; Schiller, Ferdinand Canning Scott; Schopenhauer, Arthur; Simplicius; Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre; Telesio, Bernardino; Thales of Miletus; Varisco, Bernardino; Whitehead, Alfred North; Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann; Wundt, Wilhelm.

Bibliography

The fullest systematic defenses of panpsychism since the mid-1800s are found in the writings of Paulsen, Fechner, Lotze, and Royce. Paulsen's arguments are presented in his very influential Einleitung in die Philosophie (21st ed., Stuttgart and Berlin, 1909), translated by F. Thilly as Introduction to Philosophy (2nd American ed., New York, 1906, with a preface by William James). Fechner's main writings on the subject are Nanna: oder über das Seelenleben der Pflanzen (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1903) and Zend-Avesta: oder über die Dinge des Jenseits (2nd ed., Hamburg: L. Voss, 1906). There is an English translation of selections from Fechner's works by W. Lowrie titled Religion of a Scientist (New York: Pantheon, 1946). Fechner's ideas are discussed in some detail in G. Stanley Hall, Founders of Modern Psychology (New York: Appleton, 1912); G. F. Stout, God and Nature, edited by A. K. Stout (Cambridge, U.K., 1952); Otto Külpe, Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Deutschland (Leipzig: Teubner, 1902), translated by M. L. Patrick and G. T. W. Patrick as Philosophy of the Present in Germany (London: G. Allen, 1913); and G. Murphy, "A Brief Interpretation of Fechner," in Psyche 7 (1926): 75–80. Although Wilhelm Wundt condemned Fechner's speculations about the souls of the stars and Earth as "a fantastic dream," he himself concluded that mental life can arise only out of conditions that are themselves mental (System der Philosophie, Leipzig, 1889). Lotze's defense of panpsychism is contained in Vol. I of Mikrokosmus (Leipzig, 1856–1864), translated by E. Hamilton and E. E. C. Jones as Microcosmus (New York, 1890). Royce's panpsychism is presented in Lecture V of The World and the Individual, second series (New York: Macmillan, 1901). The American neorealist W. P. Montague, a student of Royce, relates how he "jumped with almost tearful gratitude" at Royce's "hypothesis about the varying time-spans in nature." He regarded this "hypothesis" as "a new and challenging contribution to the great panpsychist tradition," as "a clear and great thought" that "might even be true" (The Ways of Things, London, 1940, p. 669). Montague referred to his own position as "animistic materialism," and he is sometimes classified as a panpsychist, but in fact it is very doubtful whether his animism implies panpsychism as we have here defined it.

Little was said in this article about A. N. Whitehead, probably the most distinguished champion of panpsychism in the twentieth century, chiefly because his views on the subject could not have been discussed without consideration of other features of his difficult system. Whitehead would have disagreed with many other panpsychists about the "units" that are to be regarded as the bearers of psychic life. These, he held, are not stars or stones but the events out of which stars and stones are constituted and that Whitehead calls "occasions." His views are presented in Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1925), Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1929), and, most fully, in "Nature Alive," Lecture 8 of Modes of Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1938). Panpsychistic views strongly influenced by Whitehead are put forward in Charles Hartshorne, Beyond Humanism (Chicago: Willett Clark, 1937) and Man's Vision of God (Chicago: L Willett Clark, 1941), and in W. E. Agar, The Theory of the Living Organism (Melbourne, 1943). Samuel Alexander, whose metaphysical position has many similarities to Whitehead's, also expresses views akin to panpsychism in his British Academy lecture "The Basis of Realism," reprinted in Realism and the Background of Phenomenology edited by R. M. Chisholm (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1960).

Of works by earlier panpsychists, special mention should be made of G. W. Leibniz, Monadology (various editions), and Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1818), translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp as The World as Will and Idea (London: Trubner, 1883), as well as his Über den Willen in der Natur (Frankfurt, 1836), translated by K. Hillebrand as On the Will in Nature (London, 1889).

Giordano Bruno's panpsychist views are presented in the second dialogue of De la causa, Principio e uno ; for translations see Sidney Greenberg's The Infinite in Giordano Bruno (New York: King's Crown Press, 1950) and Jack Lindsay's version in Cause, Principle and Unity (New York: International, 1964). The works by Telesio and Campanella in which their panpsychism is expounded are not available in English. There is a very clear summary of their arguments in Harald Høffding, A History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. I (London, 1908). The texts of the pre-Socratics, some of whom were hylozoists rather than panpsychists, are available in English translation in G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1957). Because of his remarks about the "plastic nature in the universe" in The True Intellectual System of the Universe, Ralph Cudworth is described as a panpsychist in various reference works, but it is doubtful that this classification is accurate. Cudworth appears to have postulated the "plastic nature" for living things only and he should be labeled a "vitalist" in a sense in which this theory does not automatically imply panpsychism. C. B. Renouvier's panpsychism, which is in many ways similar to that of Leibniz, is expounded in several of his works, most fully in La nouvelle monadologie (Paris: A. Colin, 1899). Eduard von Hartmann advocates the view that even atoms possess an unconscious will in Grundriss der Naturphilosophie, Vol. II of System der Philosophie im Grundriss (Bad Sachsa im Harz, 1907). Benedict de Spinoza and Henri Bergson were not listed as panpsychists in the text because there is some doubt as to how some of their remarks are to be interpreted. In Spinoza's case there is at least one passage (Ethics, Pt. II, Note 2, Prop. XIII) supporting such a classification. Similarly, some of the remarks in "Summary and Conclusions," in Bergson's Matter and Memory (London: Allen and Unwin, 1910), may be construed as an endorsement of panpsychism.

C. H. Waddington's genetic argument is presented in The Nature of Life (London: Allen and Unwin, 1961). W. K. Clifford advocates very similar arguments in his essays "Body and Mind" and "On the Nature of Things-in-Themselves," in Lectures and Essays, Vol. II (London, 1903). The American critical realist C. A. Strong also employs genetic arguments in support of panpsychism in The Origin of Consciousness (London: Macmillan, 1918). Sewall Wright, a distinguished contemporary biologist, defends panpsychism on scientific grounds in "Gene and Organism," in the American Naturalist 87 (1953). Hackel's views are found in Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (4th ed., Berlin, 1892), translated by E. Ray Lankester as The History of Creation (London, 1892), and in Zellseelen und Seelenzellen (Leipzig, 1909). Panpsychism is also defended on the basis of an appeal to continuity in nature in Harald Høffding, Outlines of Psychology (London, 1919). Høffding, however, is rather more diffident than the other writers mentioned in this paragraph. Schiller's defenses of panpsychism are contained in his Studies in Humanism (London: Macmillan, 1907) and Logic for Use (London: G. Bell, 1929). There is a full discussion of William James's views on panpsychism and various related theories in W. T. Bush, "William James and Panpsychism," in Columbia University Studies in the History of Ideas, Vol. II (New York, 1925).

A defense of the scholastic doctrine that an effect cannot possess any perfection which is not found in its cause is contained in G. H. Joyce, Principles of Natural Theology (London: Longmans, Green, 1923), Ch. 3. The question of what may be meant by the claim that an effect contains a "new" property is discussed in Arthur O. Lovejoy, "The Meanings of 'Emergence' and Its Modes," in Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy (New York, 1927); Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1961); and Arthur Pap, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962). Certain contemporary arguments about the alleged causal inexplicability of human actions, similar to the genetic arguments by Paulsen and Waddington, are examined in Bernard Berofsky, "Determinism and the Concept of a Person," in Journal of Philosophy 61 (1964): 461–475.

General surveys of panpsychism are found in A. Rau, Der moderne Panpsychismus (Berlin, 1901), and Charles Hartshorne, "Panpsychism," in A History of Philosophical Systems, edited by V. T. A. Ferm (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950). Almost all extended discussions of panpsychism occur in the works of writers who accept the theory or who are at least sympathetic to it. One of the few highly critical discussions is contained in Alois Riehl, Zur Einführung in die Philosophie der Gegenwart (Leipzig: Teubner, 1903). Eisler's article on panpsychism in his Wörterbuch der Philosophische Begriffe (4th ed., Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1929) contains a very elaborate list of panpsychists and their writings.

Paul Edwards (1967)