Panpsychism, or neutral monism, is the idea that there is only one kind of stuff: light/matter/energy/proto-consciousness. Quantum mechanics says that atoms and photons exist in a probability state if they are not being observed. Quantum physics supports panpsychism.

1. The Quantum Mind: Panpsychism,
Physics and Consciousness
Jed Stamas
M.A. Physics, Psychology & Education, University of California, Berkeley
B.S. Physics & Astronomy, Haverford College

2. What is the connection between
consciousness and the physical world?
Part I: What is consciousness?
Part II: Historical background
Part III: Quantum mechanics
Part IV: Ethical considerations

3. The Scientistic Orthodoxy
Consciousness
Biology
Chemistry
Physics (Matter/Energy)
hierarchical model

4. Alternative Model
Physics (Matter/Energy)
Consciousness
Chemistry
Biology

5. Alternative Model
Physics (Matter/Energy)
Consciousness
Chemistry
Biology
The connection between physics and consciousness is
often dismissed. However, aspects of quantum
physics point in that direction.

6. What is Consciousness?
• Descartes (1637): “I think therefore I am.”
mind vs. body
• David Chalmers: the phenomenological hard
problem is the experience of consciousness
• awakeness
• self-awareness
• sensing (pansensism)
• alertness vs. sleeping or day-dreaming
• pure consciouess / onesness / mystical / psychedelic
(James, Huxley, Hindu, Magick)

7. Consciouness
• David Chalmers: Say there is a zombie
person who has everything we have:
except the experience of consciousness.
• So what the hell is consciousness?

8. Philosophy of Consciousness
• Idealism
• Dualism
• New Mysterianism
• Neutral Monism / Panpsychism

9. Idealism
• Idealism: We project mental qualities onto the world.
• Problem: physical reality does not exist
Mind Matter

10. Dualism
• mind body
• Consciousness and matter are separate
• View of scientistic orthodoxy: a
dualism that dismisses consciousness
entirely in favor of a completely
materialistic interpretation.

11. New Mysterianism
• wikipedia: “New Mysterianism is a
philosophical position proposing that
the hard problem of consciousness will
never be explained; or at the least
cannot be explained by the human
mind at its current evolutionary stage.”

12. Panpsychism
Neutral Monism
• Anti-dualist: there is only one kind of
“stuff”
• so both consciousness and physics must
be explained by that “stuff”
• consciousness exists on the atomic level
• But physicists don’t want to study
consciousness; there is resistance to the
idea that it is a branch of physics.

13. E = mc 2
• Modern physics is connecting light,
matter, and energy together.
• Shortly after the big bang, light and
matter were the same stuff.
• Einstein discovered that matter is
energy.
• Light a match, and a bit of its mass
becomes light and thermal energy.

14. Part II: Historical Background

15. Religious History of
Europe
Before 500: Paganism / Animism
200-2000: Theism was the dominant view
instilled by christianity in the AD period.
1776-present: emergence of Masonic, Secular
Humanist, Atheist, Agnostic, Neo-pagan,
Pantheist, and New Age systems.

16. Animism
primary philosophy worldwide prior to
Western tradition
Many variations: Shinto, Native American,
African, Australian
Spirits dwell in nature, mountains are alive,
rocks are alive
“Old skool” panpsychism

17. Hylozyism
Greek: everything is alive; life and matter
are one
Advocated by Empedocles, Democritus, and
Stoic Philosophers.
Empedocles (490-430 BCE): fire, air, water,
earth; love and strife
Democritus (460-370 BCE): first atomic
hypothesis; thought about consciousness,
ethics

18. Theism
Humans are the only things with souls.
Mind-body duality
The body is bad, the soul is good.
We are “of G-d,” but animals are not.
The Earth is not a higher consciousness; G-d
is.

19. problems resulting from
Theism:
genital mutilation
religious wars
overpopulation
environmental destruction

20. Atheism
Sam Harris: “Atheism is not a religion or a
philosophy. Rather, it is the exposure and
destruction of bad ideas.”
Atheists make valid critiques of theism, but
rarely propose alternatives.
Atheist philosophy is usually based on
materialism.

21. Materialism
The idea that the material world is all that
exists.
Materialism denies the existence of the
supernatural, spiritual, and the soul.
How is mechanistic (world-body-machine-like)
philosophy, falsely accredited to Newton,
related to materialism?

22. An argument against
materialism
According to panpsychism, there is no
supernatural because the physical and
consciousness are both natural.
By defining “supernatural,” materialists
assume dualism, then assume that
consciousness cannot influence the physical.
These assumptions are not supported by
quantum physics.

23. Mechanistic Philosophy
The universe is a great big machine.
Wholes (trains, bodies, planets) can be
reduced to their constituent parts
(reductionism)
Everything is deterministic.
falsely accredited to Newton
Disproved by modern physics.

24. Consequences of
Mechanistic Materialism
Matter is dead.
Humans are the only things that have minds.
Therefore, we can do anything we want to
things without minds.

25. Secular Humanism
watered-down atheism; materialist influences
Science became technology, and technology
was integrated into human culture (economic,
social, lifestyle).
This caused many people to doubt theism,
especially during WW2 and again in the ‘60s.

26. Secular Humanism
an incoherent mixture, not a philosophy
advocates tolerance, but also human rights?
(You can’t have both.)

27. Panpsychist Alternatives
Indigenous
Western magick
Sufism
Masonic
New Age
Pagan / Neopagan
Pantheist

28. Panpsychism
• “Everything is alive.”
• The physical stuff (matter/energy) has
psychic properties (choice or
awareness).
• Everything is part of the same thing;
holistic, anti-reductionist, monistic

29. Panpsychism
• The natural world is all that exists.
• The natural world, at its fundamental,
atomic, quantum level, is mind-like
• Quantum mechanics provides evidence
of this choice making (collapsing of the
wave equation / probability function)

30. But rocks aren’t alive!
• Ok, but both rocks and humans are
made up of the same stuff.
• Rocks are made up on atoms, which
behave quantum mechanically. The
electrons are constantly making choices.
• In the brain, the same quantum
mechanics causes awareness and
consciousness.

31. Part III: Quantum
Mechanics
Physics of the atom
Matter and energy at the smallest scales
Developed by Faraday, Einstein, Bohr, Planck,
Heisenberg from 1838 to 1927.

32. Quantum mechanics led
to computer technology.
• Applications of quantum mechanics
are responsible for 1/3 of all economic
activity (computers, cell phones, etc.)

33. Quantum Mechanics
• explains how matter and light both
exhibit wave-like and particle-like
characteristics.

34. “Particles” such as electrons, protons,
and photons all show interference
patterns.
• particle-like: like a ball in space;
collisions can occur, but
interference cannot.
• wave-like: like a wave; interference
(constructive and destructive) can
occur.

35. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
a certain amount of uncertainty is unavoidable when
making measurements of a particle’s characteristics.
The particle is also wavelike, and it is impossible to
to know the exact position or energy of a wave
because it is spread out.

36. • Although wave-particle duality also
applies to matter (electrons, protons,
and neutrons), for simplicity, let’s
think about it in terms of light.

37. Light is both a wave and a particle.
The particles are called photons.
The brighter the light, the more photons.
The higher the frequency of the photons, the more
often the electromagnetic waves vibrate, and the more
energy the photons have. (E = hf)

38. Shine photons on
two slits, and over
time an interference
pattern emerges.

39. Before a photon is detected, it can only be described by
a probability function (wave function or superposition
state).
One can predict the probability of where a photon will
land, but not exactly where it will land.
Once a photon is detected, the wave function collapses
into a real, known value.
The act of detection (or observation) creates a physical
reality.

40. What does it mean to “detect” a photon?
Open question: is a macroscopic instrument all that is
necessary to detect? Or, is a conscious observer (such
as a scientist) necessary?
Is seems impossible to design an experiment that could
test this question.

41. Dr. Quantum

42. Superposition
According to Richard Feynman the superposition
principle “has in it the heart of quantum mechanics”
and is its “only mystery.”

43. Light can be polarized. A filter can block out all
photons which electromagnetic fields that are not in
alignment with it.

44. If two polarizing films are aligned in the same direction
light from the first polarizer passes through the second.
If the polarizers are opposed at a 90° angle, the
polarized light from the first polarizer is stopped by the
second.

45. However, if a third polarizer is sandwiched between the
two opposed polarizers at a 45° angle, some light gets
through the last polarizer!

46. The light passing through the diagonal polarizer is in a
superposition state: 50% horizontal and 50% vertical.
A superposition state is a combination of two different
states. A given photon has an equal probability of
being horizontal or vertical, but it does not exist either
horizontal or vertical until it is observed.

47. Schrodinger’s Cat
• Put a cat in a box. If a particle decays, poison is released
and the cat dies. In 1 hour, there is a 50% probability this
will happen.
• After an hour, is the cat alive or dead, or both?

48. Schrodinger’s Cat
• Until it is observed, the cat is in a 50% alive, 50% dead
superposition state.
• When you open the box, you see the cat either alive or
dead.

49. Many Worlds Interpretation of
Quantum Mechanics
Every event is a branch point. The cat is both alive and dead,
even before the box is opened, but the "alive" and "dead" cats
are in different universes, both of which are equally real, but
which cannot interact with each other.

50. Probability to Reality
Quantum mechanics implies that the act of detection
collapses a superposition state into a real, observable
value.
1. What constitutes an observer / detector?
2. How often is this happening?
3. How is it related to time?
4. Is this collapse similar to a conscious choice?

51. 1. What constitutes an observer / detector?
We don’t know. Some interpretations say that a
conscious observer is necessary. Others say that any
macroscopic scientific instrument’s detection causes
collapse.
We don’t know if or how detection influences the state
into which the atom collapses.

52. 2. How often is this happening?
We don’t know. For macroscopic objects, quantum
collapse is happening all the time, so they are particle-
like. But with the large number of atoms, it may be
rare for any given atom to collapse.

53. 3. How is it related to time?
Ilya Progogine researched how quantum collapse is
related to the directionality of time.

54. 4. Is this collapse similar to a conscious choice?
Hypothesis: Quantum collapse (reality
creation) is the proto-consciousness that
panpsychism proposes.

55. Quantum Mechanics Supports
Panpsychism
• Panpsychism: there is only one kind of
stuff, and it has mind-like properties
• light, matter, and energy all exhibit
wave-particle duality
• When detection occurs, a superposition
state collapses, “making a choice” to be
a certain way.

56. Animal Consciousness
• Decisions made in the mind are much more
complex and involve networks of neurons.
• Each neuron consists of many
microtubules, within which many atomic
wave functions are collapsing.
• Human higher consciousness occurs
because atoms are mind-like.
• Panpsychism is true!

57. Orchestrated Objective Reduction
• Developed by Penrose and Hammeroff
• A paramecium does not have a brain,
but it can learn
• Brain processing takes place in
microtubules
• Quantum wave functions objectively
collapse over time; this is free will
consciousness

58. Part IV: Ethical Considerations

59. Why is this important?
Even though science supports it, panpsychism is still
considered to be a radical, “mystical” view.
If the mainstream materialist view is not overthrown
and replaced by panpsychism, the human race may go
extinct.

60. If the mainstream materialist view is not overthrown and
replaced by panpsychism, the human race may go extinct.
• Materialism has allowed the Earth’s
rights to be ignored.
• If one views the Earth as dead, it
becomes easy to exploit.
• If all things are alive as we are, we must
respect them.

61. with mind, with rights
• 18th century: only white males with
property
• 21st century: adult humans*
• *does not consider discrimination,
racism, sexist, homophobia, human
rights violations

62. without mind & without rights
• babies
• animals
• plants
• the Earth
• Sun & Moon
• rocks & natural resources

63. without mind & without rights
• babies: nonconsensual genital mutilation
• animals: dying and going extinct
• plants: dying and going extinct
• the Earth: ocean ecosystem collapse,
global warming
• rocks & natural resources: mountaintop
removal, declining air and water quality

64. Possible Future
if materialism is not overthrown
• Coastal flooding
• Respiratory diseases
• Starvation
• Widespread antibiotic resistant bacteria
• Nanotechnology & AI takeover

65. Autonomous Participatory
Panpsychism
• A moral, ethical, and political philosophy
• Autonomous choices are made by atoms and
autonomous individuals.
• Infants make fewer autonomous choices.
• Children learn to make autonomous choices.

66. Ethics
• Adults have the freedom to make
choices, as long as those choices do not
impinge on other’s bodies or lives.
• Holistic: the health of the Earth is
important.
• Living and eating requires us to kill
plants and animals, but can be done in
a way that is part of the ecosystem.

67. • Freedom, consent = choice
• Coercion = lack of autonomous choice
• Ethics and morality has to do with
freedom and consent.

68. Economics
• Corporate capitalism and materialism
have had a cozy relationship.
• We need a new economic system, one
that rewards virtue and favors worker-
owned small businesses and anarcho-
syndicalist collectives that respect the
environment.

69. The End
Love is the Law, Love Under Will