Panexperientialism

Ahh, now to the most difficult of the three “p“s of Naturalismppp — panexperientialism. It is actually not that difficult, but it kind of runs into the realm of woo spirituality / New Age thinking if taken into silly realms.

Panexperientialism basically means that every entity has “experience”. Lots of thoughts here, but let us agree that every entity indeed experience nature. An electron experiences the formation of an electron cloud around an atom’s nucleus. DNA experiences cell division during mitosis. A bacterium experiences an interaction with a small intestinal enterocyte. Humans experience our world and our interactions with nature / culture.

Consider the famous quote by Bertrand Russell:

Thus we find that, although the relations of physical objects have all sorts of knowable properties, derived from their correspondence with the relations of sense-data, the physical objects themselves remain unknown in their intrinsic nature….

Here is the difficulty. Can this experience or this intrinsic nature of experience lead to a proto-conscious or lead up to formation of consciousness from a bottom-up structure. Similarly difficult is the question as to if there is consciousness everywhere. A great book to read on this subject is by Philip Goff. In other words, does panexperientialism lead to panpsychism (or consciousness abounding throughout the universe as very real property). Heated arguments go back and forth in the philosophy and theology literature

Here is my take:

1. I do think entities have experience; however, I also think we need to define what simple, baseline “experience” consists of. This is the concern of Russell. What is this “intrinsic nature” of matter?
2. I would hypothesize (philosophically) that very simple entities (quarks, electrons, atoms, molecules) have ever increasing experience. From a bottom up aspect, this experience leads to consciousness perhaps in a manner of Integrated Information Theory (or ITT).

Bacteria travel in response to environmental changes. Thus, perhaps the entirety of the microbiome in humans (and other animals) has some type of panexperiential / panpsychism response with the human in response to all sorts of environment cues to form a holobiont that has greater influence on emotions, culture, society, etc. The holobiont of would have some type of panexperiential or perhaps panpsychism response to the world. If God is in the world (see prior post on panentheism) and all of nature is in God, then God experiences all (which is comforting to me).

I don’t know if we can ever get good research in this area, but there is quite a bit of literature on diet changes and microbiome changes perhaps affecting mental health. We probably need to keep this area of inquiry in the realm of philosophy and theology for now while watching where the science leads.

I went kayaking on Deer Creek Reservoir yesterday. It was a quiet day. The lake really was similar to glass (it is usually very windy there with lots of waves). The sound of my oar, the singing birds, the lapping of water on my kayak, and the beautiful sky did not make we “one” with nature. However, it did make me appreciate how nature interacts with its various components and how the various components experience each other. This setting was my panexperiential metaphor or perhaps reality. If, as metaphor, it leads us to consider how we should treat our fellow human and our planet better, than this aspect of Naturalismppp needs more study and reflection.

Thank you for reading my blog.