In philosophy of mind consciousness is often defined as “what it is like to be” and often referred to as “phenomenal consciousness”. This definition was popularized by Thomas Nagel and refers to the way we feel about things we do. It’s not just a body perceiving or manipulating objects; the perception is accompanied by a subjective point of view (Nagel 1974).
What we do not know
Currently, we have no good explanation for phenomenal consciousness. This means we are unable to account for our subjective experience in our theories: how could we tell which things are conscious? Are tables conscious? Are animals conscious? Are your neighbors conscious?
Despite leaps in scientific progress, our mind is still something of a black box. The material of the brain and the electric activity within seem like very different things compared to the experience we have of our minds: the rich audiovisual field, the smells, the thoughts and memories of yesterday. How could it be that our personal feeling of ”me-ness” would arise from simple brain matter (Chalmers 1995)? This is a problem for current physicalist theories of consciousness.
Physicalism posits that consciousness is physical. Physical is usually defined as the sort of thing our fundamental sciences handle, such as the objects of physics. Alternatively, we might posit that consciousness is mental, instead of physical, as in dualism or idealism. These have their own problems, which is why they are not currently as popular as physicalism. Yet another choice is panpsychism.
Wild ideas
Panpsychism is the thesis that consciousness is common and fundamental in the universe. This would mean that there is something conscious (or protoconscious[1]) in the most fundamental particles or things that our world is made of. This doesn’t entail the consciousness of tables necessarily. Nor does it entail a consciousness similar to humans in tables or electrons. It could be that small particles need to come together in very specific ways to combine or fuse into the macro level consciousness we are personally familiar with. But panpsychism does entail that whatever our world is made of, be it quarks, electrons or otherwise, has some kind of consciousness (or protoconsciousness). (Chalmers 2013.)
From our human perspective, it might seem very unbelievable to assign consciousness to electrons. This reaction to panpsychism is common enough that it has a name: the Incredulous Stare (Mørch 2024; Goff 2017). It’s simply too far out, seemingly too different from known physical science. And yet many philosophers persist in defending or at least exploring panpsychism. Despite its unintuitiveness, panpsychism promises to offer a compromise between physicalism and dualism, retaining their strenghts without their weaknesses (Goff 2017). If this claim is true, panpsychism would be quite the revolution in the field of consciousness. And just the possibility of such progress should be enough to push past the Incredulous Stare.
Problems to solve
For physicalism, the epistemic gap could be seen as the greatest problem. It is what many famous arguments like the hard problem (Chalmers 1995), or the knowledge argument (Alter 2023) are trying to point at: there seems to be a “gap” between consciousness and the material basis as we understand it. For dualism, the greatest problem might be mental causality: how could mental things interact with physical things. How could a soul, for instance, interact with the physical world? (Mørch 2024.)
Panpsychism promises to avoid these major problems, while staying as simple as a theory compared to its rivals. This is often –but not always– facilitated via a kind of Russelian monism. Russelian monism posits a fundamental substance, which both mental and physical things derive from. It is compatible with current physical sciences and often accepted by physicalists as well. Russelian monists say that physics is merely telling us what things do, not what they are: for example, saying particles have mass just means they have more or less tendency to resist movement. This tells us nothing about the structure of particles, or what they fundamentally are. Following this line of thought, Russelian monists can say that what things are, is this fundamental substance. This substance could also include consciousness or conscious elements, if you are a panpsychist. (Goff 2017.)
Now, not every panpsychist will agree with this kind of metaphysics, and there are as many kinds of theories as there are philosophers talking about them (Nagasawa and Wager 2017; Keppler and Shani 2020). Regardless, the above explanation covers a wide area within panpsychism and the line of thought it was brought to contemporary discussion with (Chalmers 2013). Introducing all the different flavors of panpsychism is well beyond this essay[2].
Panpsychism, maybe not surprisingly, is not yet perfect. The debate on panpsychism centers largely around the combination problem. It is roughly the problem of how small conscious particles could combine into large conscious creatures, like us humans. The combinations problem can be divided into multiple related problems, but the most relevant for this essay is the subject summing problem: how can it be that small consciousnesses (or subjects) combine into a bigger, seemingly singular subject? (Chalmers 2016.)
Understanding from the subjective
It might indeed seem unintelligible that our human consciousness was not a singular whole. It usually seems like there is just a singular person in our heads, so to speak. What happens to all the particles that are supposedly also conscious? Are they fused into one somehow (Mørch 2014)? Do they form complicated structures that enhance and bind these smaller consciousnesses into one, macro subject? The combination problem, or even the subject summing problem are still too complicated to answer here. Instead, I would like to return to the question we introduced in the beginning: what is consciousness like?
This is something anyone can take their time to consider. You can just turn your awareness into your consciousness: what is it like to be you? This is of course also called introspection, which has a tumultuous history within academia. It has been seen both as instrumental for psychological research, and as unscientific and worthless. Either way, it is currently the only way to see what consciousness is like.
In the field of meditation studies, researchers are asking lifelong meditators to tell them what they experience, while also collecting various empirical data (Milicevic et al. 2025). This is an example of how introspection, or self-report can still be used in a thorough, scientific manner. Of course, not all of us are masters of meditation. Could we still say something about what consciousness is like, or at least what it could be like? Considering how often philosophy begins with intuition, I would argue yes, we can.
The combination problem in panpsychism seems to stem from our intuitions about consciousness. We seem to think consciousness has certain qualities, like subjectivity and unity. These might be thought to be undermined by reports from meditators. Peak experiences in meditation often seem to point to the illusory nature of our subjectivity, and the unity of all, instead of the unity of a singular human (Wang 2025). Regular, everyday consciousness is not like this, and a peak meditative experience is not something most people will ever have, most likely. Yet I would encourage you, the reader, to ask yourself: is there really only one single “voice” or subject within you?
Often when making choices, it might seem like there are multiple opinions clashing in our minds. Even our thoughts and feelings about both everyday objects and our loved ones can be overwhelmingly complicated, including both neutral description and affective memories and connections. Of course I am blurring the definition of consciousness here, but only to highlight how fragmentary our subjectivity can be.
Then what?
What is consciousness like? Leaning on meditative experiences: it is merely the light of awareness. Even this simplification implies a sort of singular thing that controls this awareness. Yet it isn’t by any means obvious or empirically tested that we would be singular macro consciousnesses, and not a choir of quiet voices coming together in relative harmony. I would argue that this uncertainty is enough to not dismiss panpsychism as untenable based on the subject summing problem.
Instead, it would seem wise to bring fresh, new ideas to the debate on consciousness. Even if panpsychism is not true, it certainly seems to move the conversation along. Most importantly, it highlights the obvious: physicalism cannot currently explain our subjective experience.
In the end, even what consciousness is like still proves too difficult to answer. We need more studies that take phenomenal consciousness seriously. But what about the tables; could they be conscious? Well, maybe. It won’t hurt to treat them with some respect.
Alter, Torin. 2023. The Matter of Consciousness: From the Knowledge Argument to Russellian Monism. Oxford University Press.
Chalmers, David. 1995. ‘Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness’. Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (3): 200–219.
Chalmers, David. 2013. ‘Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism’. Amherst Lecture in Philosophy 8.
Chalmers, David J. 2016. ‘The Combination Problem for Panpsychism’. In Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Godehard Bruntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199359943.003.0008.
Goff, Philip. 2017. Consciousness and Fundamental Reality.
Keppler, Joachim, and Itay Shani. 2020. ‘Cosmopsychism and Consciousness Research: A Fresh View on the Causal Mechanisms Underlying Phenomenal States’. Frontiers in Psychology Volume 11-2020. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00371.
Milicevic, Anita, Angela Blazely, Anatol Bragin, et al. 2025. ‘Consciousness, Mindfulness, and Introspection: Integrating First- and Second-Person Phenomenological Inquiry with Experimental and EEG Data to Study the Mind’. Frontiers in Psychology Volume 16-2025. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1558453.
Mørch, Hedda Hassel. 2014. Panpsychism and Causation: A New Argument and a Solution to the Combination Problem.
Mørch, Hedda Hassel. 2024. Non-Physicalist Theories of Consciousness. Elements in Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge Core. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009317344.
Nagasawa, Yujin, and Khai Wager. 2017. ‘Panpsychism and Priority Cosmopsychism’. In Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Godehard Brüntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla.
Nagel, Thomas. 1974. ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’ The Philosophical Review 83 (4): 435–50. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/2183914.
Wang, Cheng. 2025. ‘Beyond Mindfulness: How Buddhist Meditation Transforms Consciousness through Distinct Psychological Pathways’. Frontiers in Psychology Volume 16-2025. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1649564.
[1] Protoconsciousness, or “pre-consciousness” would mean not being conscious, but consisting of parts that when put together in specific ways form consciousness.
[2] For a general breakdown refer to (Chalmers 2013)
