Panpsychism
Summary
The philosophical position that Consciousness is a fundamental feature of reality, not a late-arriving byproduct of complex brains. Exurb1a declares himself “a fairly strong devotee” of it in Notes on Why Stuff Got Written and identifies panpsychism as the philosophical substrate of The Fifth Science: if consciousness is fundamental, then perhaps it can be reproduced in other mediums — which is the premise that makes the whole book possible.
Ch. 03 — For Every Dove a Bullet is the book’s panpsychist thesis story. Henry Berkhamsted’s Mentalic Ontology is the in-universe name for this position; The First Wanderer is, literally, a panpsychist consciousness — a mind that exists as a pattern and inhabits different packets without being native to any of them.
Ch. 06 — And the Leaves All Sing of God is the book’s cleanest direct endorsement of panpsychism as recovered cosmological fact. The narrator’s closing sketch of the decoded Message — “a common shape to all the processes of the world … all phenomena are expressions of a single phenomenon, and while all droplets consider themselves independent, they are nonetheless still ocean through and through … with the right ears even a lesser creature can hear the song” — is not a speculation from a character’s mouth; it is the narrator’s own retrospective summary of what a post-human mInd civilisation found. The story’s closing line — “during a storm, in the forest, on the right night, it is no secret that the leaves all sing of God” — is, in this reading, a literal statement rather than a metaphor. Panpsychism is the book’s thesis, and Ch. 06 is the book admitting it.
In the book
- Ch. 01 — Introduction: Not named, but the introduction’s core claim (“we will learn to make non-conscious things conscious … matter itself, from the molecular up to the cosmic”) is straightforwardly panpsychist.
- Ch. 03 — For Every Dove a Bullet: Dramatised. Mentalic Ontology is the in-universe name for panpsychism, and the wanderers are its walking proof.
- Ch. 06 — And the Leaves All Sing of God: Endorsed as recovered cosmological fact in the narrator’s closing sketch of the decoded The Message.
- Ch. 07 — 101 Things to Not Visit in the Galaxy Before You Die: “Polly Hare’s devotees still remain strong in some regions of the empire” — the narrator’s editorial comment on the nerve-filament creature orbiting New Gara Bov, which scholars suggest computes the universe from first principles. This is the first time panpsychism is named in-universe as a faction with adherents rather than a research programme or a reader-facing frame. It also answers the open question below: in-universe advocates do exist, and they identify explicitly with Polly Hare’s legacy.
- Ch. 15 — Notes on Why Stuff Got Written: Exurb1a names the doctrine explicitly and ties it to the genesis of Ch. 03 — For Every Dove a Bullet.
Real-world grounding
- A real philosophical position with a long history (Spinoza, Whitehead, and more recently Galen Strawson and Philip Goff).
- Exurb1a explicitly notes it is unproven: “I’d be very surprised if there really is a ‘consciousness’ particle out there. But you can’t deny we’re having some serious trouble at the moment matching up what it feels like to be a thing with our picture of the brain.”
- David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks — named as a narrative influence through which this idea entered the book.
Related
Open questions
- “Polly Hare’s devotees” are named in Ch. 07 — who are they? A named philosophical school, a loose network, a quasi-religious movement?