Rupert Sheldrake’s History of Panpsychism — From Animism to Galen Strawson

 

Rupert Sheldrake states that panpsychism “is not a new idea”. To defend that claim, he puts “traditional people all over the world”, “Ancient Greek philosophy”, the “philosophers and theologians of medieval Europe”, Spinoza, Leibniz, Diderot, Johann Herder, Schopenhauer, Ernst Mach, Ernst Haeckel, Henri Bergson, A.N. Whitehead, and even C.S. Peirce into the melting pot that is panpsychism. One can easily argue that many of these people weren’t panpsychists of any description. Still, Sheldrake ties all of them to panpsychism.

Image from Wiki Commons. Source here.

Many People as Panpsychists

Sheldrake states that “[m]ost people used to believe in it, and many still do”. Well, that entirely depends on what panpsychism is taken to be. Some readers will probably guess that what most people used to believe will bear little resemblance to the panpsychism of Galen Strawson and many other contemporary panpsychists. Still, Sheldrake is free to stretch this term as wide as he wishes.

The first mistake that Sheldrake makes is when he seems to conflate x’s being “alive” and it instantiating experience. I can bet that most people and “traditional people” didn’t take “planets, stars, the earth, plants and animals” to simply instantiate various degrees of experience, from very rudimentary to sophisticated. Indeed, Sheldrake himself let the cat out of the bag when he said that such people believed that stars, etc. had “spirits or souls”. So either panpsychism is a strict philosophical position or it’s simply animism.

Oddly enough, Sheldrake does then make a distinction between panpsychism and hylozoism. He claims that “[a]ncient Greek philosophy” included philosophers who “saw all things as in some degree alive, without necessarily supposing that they had sensations or experiences”.

Sheldrake continues this line of argument and applies it to medieval Europe. He states that

“philosophers and theologians took for granted that the world was full of animate beings; plants and animals had souls, and stars and planets were governed by intelligences”.

Animals are certainly animate. But what has all this to do with panpsychism? (If animals were believed to have souls, then one can see how Descartes’ work moved against this earlier position.)

Leibniz as Panpsychist

Sheldrake ties Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz into his panpsychist picture, just as the cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman ties Leibniz into his idealist picture. Sheldrake claims that Leibniz “proposed that the ultimate elements of the universe were interrelated through consciousness”. As it stands, that claim is vague. It can be taken as a proclamation of idealism, just as much as a proclamation of panpsychism. [See my ‘What Is a Conscious Agent? Donald Hoffman, Please Tell Me’, which discusses the influence of Leibniz on Donald Hoffman.]

So what are Leibniz’s ultimate elements?

Leibniz “called these ultimate units monads, which were both physical centres of force and mental centres of experience, each reflecting the universe”. This picture allows for both physical and non-experiential elements. That appears to go against basic panpsychism. Sheldrake quotes Leibniz himself:

“‘Each monad is a living mirror… which represents the universe from its own point of view and is as ordered as the universe itself.’”

Let’s remember here that each monad has physical features, at least according to Sheldrake. As it is, I’m not going to comment on Leibniz’s own philosophy other than to compare it to panpsychism.

If monads have a “point of view”, then this too goes against panpsychism because panpsychists are often keen to stress that the basic units of panpsychism only instantiate very basic levels of experience. They certainly don’t have a point of view. That said, this depends on what Leibniz meant by “point of view”.

What about the word “perception”?

Isn’t perception over and above basic experience too? Perception, as usually understood, requires sense organs and a brain to perceive, something that the basic units of panpsychism don’t have. And they certainly don’t have an “appetite”.

So, as with all the other names brought into the panpsychist picture by Sheldrake, aspects of Leibniz’s philosophy could indeed be classed as “panpsychist”, whereas other aspects can’t be so classed.

Much of what has been said about Leibniz can also be said about Baruch Spinoza.

Spinoza as Panpsychist

In this case, rather than physical and experiential features existing together, Spinoza talked in terms of body and mind. Of course, both body and mind were “two aspects of the same underlying reality, which he called Deus sive natura, God or Nature”. It’s not being said here that body and mind are two aspects of an underlying reality that is purely — or even partly — experiential. Instead, the underlying reality is simply God or Nature. (It can be argued that God could be conceived as a being who is purely experiential.)

According to Sheldrake, in Spinoza’s philosophy a distinction is made between underlying reality and “the most basic aspect of substances at all levels of complexity”. Spinoza “called [this] conatus, a Latin word meaning ‘striving’ that was both physical and mental”. This use of the word “striving” is easier to tie to the philosophy of Schopenhauer than to panpsychism. So do the basic units of panpsychism strive? Is striving even part of the complex systems discussed by panpsychism?

As with Leibniz, there are elements of Spinoza’s philosophy which can be tied to panpsychism, and there are other elements which can’t be so tied. And that’s the story of Sheldrake’s three subchapters on panpsychism in his book The Science Delusion.

Galen Strawson as Panpsychist

Sheldrake brings panpsychism up to date with the English philosopher Galen Strawson. Interestingly, although Sheldrake doesn’t mention the combination problem, he does mention “aggregates of matter” and “self-organising systems”. Both are made up of parts. Both need those parts to be combined to create a greater experience or greater consciousness. According to Sheldrake, however, Strawson does make a distinction between aggregates of matter such as “tables and rocks”, and self-organising systems such as “atoms, cells and animals”.

Strawson “did not suggest that tables and rocks have any unified experience”. However, “the atoms within them may have”. This all hinges on the technical term “self-organising system”, which Strawson himself has rarely used. [See self-organising system.]

What does Sheldrake mean by “self-organising system”?

Sheldrake’s Strawson believes that “atoms and crystals [are] self-organising”. However, we’re not being told what self-organising means here. We’re simply given the examples of atoms, cells and animals. Sheldrake does say that “man-made objects, like chairs or cars, do not organise themselves”. They’re “designed by people and put together in factories”. So atoms, cells and animals aren’t designed by people and put together in factories. True. Yet we still need to know how self-organisation is relevant to the issue of panpsychism.

Strawson ties panpsychism to evolution.

Evolution may not seem easy to connect to panpsychism in that consciousness can’t be said to be a result of evolution if it was there all along. However, it can be argued that even though consciousness was there all along, evolution allowed it to become more rich or complex. This is Strawson’s 2006 position, as quoted by Sheldrake:

“‘Once upon a time there was relatively unorganised matter with both experiential and non-experiential fundamental features. It organised into increasingly complex forms, both experiential and non-experiential, by many processes including evolution by natural selection.’”

Note that two forms of evolution are mentioned above: (1) The evolution of non-biological entities in the universe. (2) The evolution of biological entities on Earth. Strawson also mentions organisation, as Sheldrake does.

This passage indirectly refers to the combination problem without mentioning it. After all, the “organised matter” was itself made up of organised matter. Alternatively, “complex forms” which instantiated experience were made up of less-complex forms which instantiated lesser-degrees of experience. So the issue here isn’t about the relation of basic and complex forms: it’s about how basic forms which instantiate experience combine to create complex forms which instantiate richer experience.

In addition, note Strawson’s uses of the words “experiential and non-experiential”. In basic terms, this must mean that Strawson believes that all the way through these two evolutionary processes there were basic and complex forms that instantiated experiential and non-experiential features. Thus, not every element instantiates experience.

Rupert Sheldrake vs Ricky Gervais

 

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This essay tackles the author and biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s criticisms of Ricky Gervais. (The former classes the latter as science’s “high priest”.) Then I focus on a long quote from Gervais on science, which Sheldrake dissects in his book The Science Delusion. Following on from that, I too dissect five passages from Sheldrake himself in which he attacks Gervais again. The broad gist of Sheldrake’s position is that Gervais “isn’t an original thinker”: he’s simply someone who parrots “scientific dogma” to serve his atheism and materialism.

Image created by ChatGPT.

In simple terms, Rupert Sheldrake believes he’s more committed to real science than most scientists, and certainly more so than Ricky Gervais. He says that he “take[s] the ideal of free enquiry seriously”, unlike most scientists who, say, outrightly reject his morphic resonance hypothesis.

Sheldrake also believes that “the spirit of enquiry has liberated scientific thinking from unnecessary limitations”… Therefore, scientists should embrace morphic resonance, purpose, telephony, premonition, prerecognition, disembodied minds, shamanism, religion, etc. More concretely, Sheldrake believes that “the sciences, for all their successes, are being stifled by outmoded beliefs” such as materialism. What isn’t outmoded is Sheldrake’s morphic resonance hypothesis.

Like so many other anti-materialists, Sheldrake has a view on the vulgar and uneducated populace that’s very much like the Marxist notion of false consciousness. He states that “millions of people have been converted to this ‘scientific’ view”. Now here comes the Marxist-like addition: “even though they know very little about science itself”. So let me spoon-feed readers for a moment with this rewording.

Millions of working-class people have been converted to the ideology of capitalism even though they know very little about capitalism itself.

Thus, it’s not surprising that Sheldrake finishes off by saying that these millions of people are “devotees of the Church of Science, or of scientism, of which scientists are the priests”.

The Long Quote: Gervais on Science

Sheldrake supplies his readers with a long quote from Ricky Gervais, which is taken from the article ‘Why I’m an Atheist’. (This was published by the Wall Street Journal.) It goes as follows:

“Science seeks the truth. And it doesn’t discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence — evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold onto medieval practices because they are tradition.”

According to Sheldrake “Gervais is an entertainer, not a scientist”. True. He says he isn’t “an original thinker” too. Some would dispute that. In any case, according to Sheldrake, “Gervais’s idealised view of science is hopelessly naïve in the context of the history and sociology of science”. [See endnote on Thomas Kuhn and Bruno Latour.]

Personally, the passage above seems quite a decent account of science. Sure, it’s not the kind of thing that Karl Popper or Bas Van Fraassen would say, and it is indeed slightly naïve. But Gervais isn’t a philosopher of science, and it’s no more naïve than most of the criticisms of materialism and “scientism”.

Gervais finished of by saying that science “doesn’t hold onto medieval practices because they are tradition”. Sheldrake, on the other hand, believes that science is a religion that’s massively conformist. He believes that when “facts come along” scientists shouldn’t “hold onto the materialist worldview just because it’s tradition”. Instead, they should accept Sheldrake’s own morphic resonance hypothesis, etc. and jettison the materialist worldview.

Sheldrake says that this naïve view “portrays scientists as open-minded seekers of truth, not ordinary people”. Yet Gervais didn’t mention “scientists” at all. He mentioned “science”. So the most he can be accused of is treating science as a Platonic form. What’s more, you can be “pro science” at the same time as being very sceptical about individual scientists. Of course, Sheldrake may say that this division is “naïve” too.

More of Sheldrake on Gervais

Apart from the long quote above, I found five other mentions of Gervais by Sheldrake.

The first quote deals with how Sheldrake believes Gervais uses science:

“But in the hands of people like Ricky Gervais, [atheism] becomes a way of saying that science knows there is no God, no purpose, and no soul. This isn’t humility; it’s a belief system pretending to be a lack of belief.”

Basically, Sheldrake is saying that for Gervais, atheism comes first, and then science is simply used in his war against monotheism and religion. Note that Sheldrake says that science “becomes a way of saying that science knows there is no God…” He doesn’t actually quote Gervais on this. Gervais studied philosophy as an undergraduate, so it can be questioned whether he believes that “science knows there is no God”. (Gervais did once claim that he “didn’t really study” and simply read a book similar to Philosophy for Dummies the night before his exam.) Similarly, Gervais may well believe in purpose, just not universal purpose or purpose than runs free of collective or individual minds. Still, these qualifications won’t satisfy Sheldrake. Nothing outside his own worldview would do so.

Sheldrake then makes a classic point against atheists and materialists: that they’re all stuck in the 19th century. This is an odd case, however. Whereas most anti-materialists, spiritual idealists, etc. paint the materialism — of those they take to be contemporary materialists - in 19th century terms, without actually acknowledging that, Sheldrake does mention it. He writes:

“Ricky Gervais portrays himself and other atheists as open-minded seekers of truth, but they are actually followers of a very narrow, 19th-century philosophy called mechanistic materialism. They aren’t open to the evidence for anything that doesn’t fit that machine-like view of the world.”

I watched Gervais in conversation with David Baddiel, and the physicist Brian Cox. They all went into quite some detail on aspects of quantum mechanics, the Big Bang, etc. So I’ll assume that Gervais is not a “follower of a very narrow, 19th-century philosophy called mechanistic materialism”. Of course, Gervais could be as extremely dumb on this matter, as Sheldrake believes he is. But I strongly doubt it. If Sheldrake stopped mentioning “materialists” or “materialism” in every other sentence, perhaps that would help matters. (Sheldrake uses the word “materialists” as Marxists used the word “bourgeoisie”.)

In this next passage, Sheldrake paints Gervais as a “high priest”, just as he paints scientists and God knows who else as “high priests”:

“Entertainers like Ricky Gervais have become the high priests of a secular age. They use comedy to make spiritual questions look ridiculous, but if you look at the ‘science’ they are defending, it’s actually a series of dogmas they’ve never questioned themselves.”

Scientists are “high priests” and entertainers are “high priests”. What is Sheldrake playing at here? He’s displaying the arrogance and elitism he accuses scientists of. (On the word “elitism”. Sheldrake provides much detail on his own scientific background, at least fifteen paragraphs of it.)

The following passage sees Sheldrake reading Gervais’s mind, as well as saying things about his “belief system”:

“[Gervais] says science is humble because it knows what it doesn’t know, yet he seems quite certain that he knows God is an imaginary friend. That’s not humility; that’s the arrogance of a belief system that refuses to look at its own foundations.”

Gervais may well be quite certain that he knows God is an imaginary friend. I, personally, don’t know for sure. But many people are certain about many of the things they believe. Sheldrake is certainly certain that materialism is evil and that Gervais “is not a thinker”. And how does Sheldrake know that Gervais hasn’t looked at the foundations of his own belief system? He doesn’t know that. He’s guessing for rhetorical effect. How do we know that Sheldrake has looked at the foundations of his own belief system? In his book The Science Delusion, there’s little evidence that he has indulged in much self-scrutiny. He spends too much of his time criticising “materialist science” to do so.

Finally, Sheldrake states the obvious, and disparages “most people”:

“Ricky Gervais isn’t a scientist, but he speaks with the authority of science to a mass audience. He’s selling a philosophy, not scientific data, and most people don’t know the difference.”

Readers can assume that Gervais would know that he isn’t offering “scientific data” during his comedy routines, or even in his podcasts and interviews. He’s offering his opinion on science, and on other subjects. Is Gervais “selling a philosophy” then? Possibly. But no more or less than Sheldrake is selling his own philosophy, his morphic resonance hypothesis, and his anti-materialism.

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Afterword: Kuhn and Latour

Sheldrake relies on the writings of Thomas Kuhn… Or at least he quotes him. Just before tackling Gervais, he provides a long quote from Bruno Latour too.

Kuhn was accused of portraying science as “mob psychology”. (Many of Kuhn’s supporters strongly deny this.) Latour, at least in the quote, treats scientists as arrogant elitists. All this squares perfectly with Sheldrake’s positions, even though some people may regard Kuhn and Latour to be unlikely allies. (“The enemies of my enemies are my friends.”)

Maths Is Everything: The Pythagorean Position on Physical Reality Is False

 

My essay involves two aspects: (1) The full acknowledgement that mathematics is the only means to accurately describe the physical aspects of the quantum world. (2) A critique of Pythagorean physics… Many would say that a defence of Pythagorean physics should follow from (1) above, not a critique. Yet this doesn’t need to be the case, as hopefully will be shown.

Image by ChatGPT.

In quantum mechanics, it is the case that everything ‘said’ about particles, forces, fields, etc. is said with mathematics. Indeed, what else could be used to describe these micro-entities and extremely intangible phenomena? Apart from metaphors such as “fields”, “particles”, “waves”, etc., there’s simply nothing else that can be used to do the job. Yet surely that doesn’t mean that there’s no territory to map…

Or that we must become Pythagoreans.

Again, other than metaphors, what language or set of descriptions could be used other than mathematics? It isn’t that there’s nothing else there. It’s that only maths is available to do the job. Some readers may see, then, why Pythagoreanism is so attractive to various mathematical physicists and philosophers.

Metaphors and Analogies in Quantum Mechanics

There are other ways to describe the quantum world other than with maths. We can use metaphors. Such metaphors are — or should be — entirely dependent on the prior maths. That’s the case even if sometimes metaphors come before the maths, or are over and above the maths.

Still, just because there are other ways to understand the quantum world, that doesn’t mean that they truly reflect it.

Maths provides descriptions, but does it provide understanding?

In terms of metaphors again. Metaphors are said to be required to make a connection between the mathematical formalism and what experimental physicists experience. Indeed, could anyone truly make sense of the formalism without metaphors and analogies? [See later section on mystical Pythagoreans.] How would we know what it’s all about?

So are the metaphors and analogies purely stand-ins for the maths? The layperson and even physicist may well need them — but so what! Isn’t this just a consequence of the limitations of the human mind — even the physicist’s mind? If reality is mathematical, yet we must rely on metaphors and analogies, then reality still remains mathematical.

What about the case against such Pythagoreanism?

It can be argued that the maths in mathematical physics only gives you the structure of the world. Yet that world still needs to be interpreted in order to be understood. This is where metaphors, analogies and models come in. It’s of course possible that the interpretations are always wrong — at least to some degree.

What’s more, the maths in quantum mechanics doesn’t interpret itself.

Even a pure or “mystical” Pythagorean can agree that metaphors are indispensable, or that, more broadly, interpretation is unavoidable. He may, or will, do so because he believes that human minds are limited; therefore we require such interpretations. In that case, then, metaphors, etc. are simply aids to human understanding. They have no ontological status or significance. A Pythagorean may even state that they don’t reveal anything about reality at all…

Surely, that can’t be right.

If all the above were the case, then metaphors, analogies, etc. would be literally pointless.

We can also turn the Pythagorean claim on its head by saying that we shouldn’t read any ontology into the maths. That’s mainly because maths is seen by many physicists to be just a tool for prediction.

All this raises two questions: (1) What are the metaphors actually metaphors of? (2) What, exactly, is being interpreted?

In the Pythagorean case, the metaphors are metaphors of mathematical reality. And it’s that mathematical reality that’s being interpreted. Yet surely this must mean that the description and the thing described are the same thing, or at least both are mathematical.

The Swedish-American physicist, machine learning researcher and author Max Tegmark can be brought in here.

Tegmark believes that if a mathematical structure is identical (or “equivalent”) to the physical structure it “models”, then they’re one and the same thing. Thus, it makes little sense to say that x “models” — or is “isomorphic” with — y because x and y are one and the same thing.

Tegmark gives an explicit example:

electric-field strength = a mathematical structure

In Tegmark’s own words:

“‘ [If] [t]his electricity-field strength here in physical space corresponds to this number in the mathematical structure for example, then our external physical reality meets the definition of being a mathematical structure — indeed, that same mathematical structure.”

If x (a mathematical structure) and y (a physical structure) are one and the same thing, then one needs to know how they can have any kind of relation to one another at all.

Pythagorean Physics: Maths Describes Maths?

At first, a layperson may see a problem with Pythagorean physics because a mathematical description D is describing mathematical reality R, and thus creating an identity. Yet, in basic terms, D doesn’t need to be identical to R. However, this is still maths about maths.

Because mathematics (or at least numbers) can be applied to anything, it can even be applied to itself, as with Gödel’s incompleteness theorems in which Gödel assigned numbers to every element of a formal system. So maths describing maths isn’t surprising or problematic in itself.

If I were in a Pythagorean frame of mind, when walking about my room I could “see” various mathematical relations, symmetries and ratios. For example, the relation of my computer to the window, the accidental symmetry between tables and desk. Etc. All this would involve angles, distances, parallelism, etc., all described in mathematical terms. I can go deeper here and discuss light reflections, the timings of typings, volumes, trajectories of movement, etc. in mathematical terms.

Similarly, if I were to randomly throw an entire pack of cards on the floor, then that mess-of-cards could still be given a mathematical description. The disordered parts of that mess would be just as amenable to mathematical description as its (accidental) symmetries.

But why bother? What can I conclude from all this?

It was just said that maths can be used to explain almost anything and almost everything. The cognitive psychologist and idealist Donald Hoffman, for example, proves this point when he uses maths to describe qualia! He sums up his approach by saying that his position

“give[s] a mathematically precise theory of conscious experiences, conscious agents, and their dynamics, and then makes empirically testable predictions”.

Yet if we follow on from what’s already been said, that mathematicisation of qualia and consciousness shouldn’t be a surprise.

Mystical Pythagoreans?

The term “mystical” is used in the following simply because that’s the term that’s been used about the ancient Pythagoreans, and even about later ones too.

Still, why use the word “mystical” at all?

When people use the word “mystical” about the ancient Pythagoreans they usually do so because they claimed to have a direct — and even privileged — access to reality as it truly is.

The true Pythagorean only thinks in terms of the maths. He may even “visualise” in purely mathematical terms. So, sure, this position is deemed to be extreme only because the mystical Pythagorean believes that he can dispense with metaphors and analogies.

It may now seem that the contemporary Pythagorean physicist is actually going all the way back to the mysticism of the ancient Pythagoreans. In other words, if we take a contemporary Pythagorean at his word, then all there is to reality is mathematical structure. Thus, isn’t it possible that there are human persons who can know or grasp reality directly without the crutches of metaphors, models, analogies, etc? So do some human Pythagoreans immediately grasp the mathematical structure and, therefore, reality?

Take the mathematical physicist Roger Penrose.

Roger Penrose as a Pythagorean

Penrose has often been classed as a “Platonist”, less so a “Pythagorean”. (Penrose can be classed as a “Platonist” toward maths itself, and a “Pythagorean” when it comes to the applications of maths to physical reality.) Take the following passage:

“[T]he entire physical world is depicted as being governed according to mathematical laws. [ ] everything in the physical universe is indeed governed in completely precise detail by mathematical principles.”

There is a forced way that the passage above can be interpreted as not actually endorsing Pythagoreanism. Perhaps the words “governed according to” can be stressed to do so. In addition, there’s no statement of identity here. Still, the passage is worth noting for its Pythagorean “flavour”.

What about this passage? -

“[A]long comes quantum mechanics, and this quantum mechanics turns out to be fundamentally based on these complex numbers. [ ] they’re very much essentially part of the fabric. The fabric couldn’t exist without them”.

This is even more strongly Pythagorean in flavour. Yet there’s still no explicit statement of identity.

More relevantly, and in terms of the metaphors and analogies used in quantum mechanics, Penrose once stated the following:

“[I] find words almost useless for mathematical thinking. Other kinds of thinking, perhaps such as philosophizing, seem to be much better suited to verbal expression. Perhaps this is why so many philosophers seem to be of the opinion that language is essential for intelligent or conscious thought!”

To be fair, Penrose is talking about mathematics itself here, not mathematical descriptions of the physical world. Despite that, it would seem possible that this attitude could pass over to mathematical descriptions of the world too. In other words, Penrose may even find words, metaphors, analogies, etc. personally useless when it comes to describing physical reality.