As philosopher Edward Feser has pointed out, the only type of materialism that is really consistent is eliminative materialism. But that means eliminating the mind by which we determined that: “Eliminativism is a snake that eats its own tail.”

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There is a way out. Instead of insisting on the absurdity that nothing is conscious, a scientist can maintain materialism by holding that everything is conscious (or cognitive, or something similar). Such claims are now made for plants, fungi, living cells, and electrons. Plus, pansychism merges seemlessly with the fashionable idea that AI personas are reaching the status of persons.

Tackling the question “Is everything conscious?,” University of Southampton philosophy lecturer Sam Kimpton-Nye responds, “If the question makes no sense to you, try spending some time with the principle of sufficient reason.”

Very well, what principle is that?

Under the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), everything in the world is held to be ultimately intelligible. Kimpton-Nye sees the drift toward panpsychism as an attempt to understand our world better. He does not seem to espouse panpsychism himself but he offers three approaches to it. He starts by providing an accurate statement of the problem:

Why is there something that it is like to be you? Why are some physical states, but not others, conscious? However completely we describe the physical arrangements of matter that make up a conscious being, that description leaves out the very thing we’re trying to explain: what it feels like from the inside. This challenge to provide an explanation that bridges the gap between third-person scientific descriptions of matter and first-person conscious experience is what the Australian philosopher David Chalmers dubbed the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ …

The question is so fiendishly hard because it does not seem amenable to scientific methods of enquiry…

However closely we look at the physical matter that makes up conscious beings, we get no closer to understanding how consciousness arises.

“Is everything conscious,” October 12, 2026

In short, Kimpton-Nye permits no nonsense about how “science will one day figure it out,” — where the “it” that science is supposed to figure out is left fuzzy, rendering the quest pointless or impossible.

And this is where panpsychism offers a way out. He explains:

The mystery arises because there is no way to understand how non-conscious physical matter, arranged in space and time, can give rise to consciousness. But why must we think that fundamental physical matter is not conscious? This assumption is not mandatory. If consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, then the problem of explaining consciousness, as formulated above, does not arise. So, in the interest of avoiding this in-principle obstacle to explaining consciousness, many are inclined to believe that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, that panpsychism is true. “Is everything conscious?”

He drills down: “If consciousness is absent at the fundamental level, there will always be an explanatory gap between the physical and the mental… But if consciousness is introduced at the fundamental level, this obstacle is removed.” So making consciousness global eliminates the problem of the mind.

But explaining the behavior of, for example, electrons via panpsychism comes at a cost.

When electrons make decisions to follow the laws of nature …

A second approach he notes is that of Norwegian philosopher Hedda Hassel Mørch: “In the interest of rendering the behaviour of matter intelligible, we should take those properties responsible for that behaviour to be conscious mental properties. That is to say: all paradigm physical properties such as charge, mass and quantum spin are conscious mental properties.”

He adds “This plugs the explanatory gap left by the scientific method alone.”

Well yes, it plugs the gap. But it does so by reintroducing animism, the very ancient view that inanimate entities are agents with a point of view. It is one thing to see them as part of a universal consciousness; quite another to see them as engaging in voluntary conscious behavior. Do we really want animism back? A world where we punish stones when we stub our toes?

When panpsychism becomes a religion

The third approach to panpsychism that he notes is a bit hard to distinguish from pantheism, along the lines of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) and perhaps it is best not to try:

… there is a single fundamental substance with all properties and with both essential attributes of thought and extension. This conclusion can be cast in pantheist terms: to maintain that there exists just a single substance with all properties and attributes invites the identification of this substance with both God and nature. It can also be cast in panpsychist terms: the single fundamental substance is essentially a conscious, thinking thing. Hence consciousness is a fundamental property of reality. “Is everything conscious?”

I’m not sure that most panpsychists with a science bent got there by Spinoza’s route; more likely they just wanted to avoid the snake of eliminationism, endlessly eating its tail…

Kimpton-Nye concludes, “Philosophical theories such as panpsychism are better thought of as providing new and enriching perspectives on these mysteries, and we should remain open to the possibility of their collapse and replacement.” A gambler would be wise to bet on eliminative materialism collapsing before panpsychism, which has its roots much deeper in the history of the mind.