An objective verification of mind properties existing independent of biological brains — Nickolasgaspar

Asking for objective verification of subjectivity may be asking for a square circle, an ore of nonexistium, a bucket of pure being.

So the answer is quite simple. What motivates panpsychism is a heuristic called Superstition — Nickolasgaspar

That's not true of modern educated panpsychist philosophers, physicists and neuroscientists.

However, essential questions are not answered. What does panpsychism say about the consciousness of plants? What about subsets of consciousness, e.g. do the two hemispheres of the brain each have their own consciousness? Then there would already be three of me, my two brain hemispheres and both together. — SolarWind

These are very good questions, and difficult for the panpsychist. There is no single answer to any of these questions - panpsychists differ radically. Some might say plants have no unified consciousness as plants, but their constituent particles do. Others (like me) think that any object or entity or whatever, however arbitrarily defined (and so includes plants) is likely a centre of consciousness. However what that object experiences depends on its structure, functions and processes. So the vast majority of conscious things in the universe do not experience anything of any real interest or complexity (by human standards). Perhaps this might be a good place to wheel in the Intergrated Information Theory. While the IIT is not a good theory of consciousness IMO, it fits rather nicely as a possible way to quantify the richness of experience that any given object has. The more information it integrates, the richer its experience. The vast majority of systems integrate very little information. Another way to delineate individuals is to invoke some other functionalist theory. @apokrisis suggests that the ability to model one's environment to make predictions and adapt behaviour accordingly is a hallmark of the conscious. Perhaps that is another way to measure individual identity, and pick out those systems that are conscious in an interesting, perhaps living, way, as opposed to those that are dead but still with the light on, if you see what I mean. Being a mineral sounds depressing to me. Don't really like to think about it. Maybe it's OK if you actually are one.

A consequence of this is that there may be a myriad of selves associated with a single brain, as you point out. It's weird, Jim. But is it false? I don't know.

So in short, I don't know what the relationship between consciousness and identity is. As Searle asked of me when criticising panpsychism, "What are the units supposed to be?" And you raise the same issue. I'm sorry I don't have a very well developed answer for you. It's a central question, perhaps the central question of panpsychism. It's linked to the combination problem - how do experiences sum? Or do they sum at all? The solution to these questions depend perhaps on whether one is a microsphyschist (bottom-up) or macropsychist (top-down). Personally, I lean towards the latter.

wonder, do you put your ideas into practice in real life? Do you attempt to explain the behaviour of inanimate objects in psychological terms? "Why is that stone rolling down the hill?" "Because it wants to". — Daemon

Not at the macro level, no. There's no need, mechanical explanations (even if they are ultimately incomplete) are often what we want.

I'm sincerely struggling to interpret your last post in a rational way, or to find any argument for the existence of mind in molecules. — Daemon

I can offer you an argument more explicitly than I have done so far.

Consciousness does not admit of degree
All process or functions admit of degree
Therefore consciousness cannot be a process or function.

Every emergentist theory of consciousness I have come across associates consciousness with some kind of gradually emergent process or function. I can't improve on that, I can't think of a plausible emergentist theory that finds some binary event in nature and says 'That's where consciousness emerges'. Even if it did, there would still be the question "OK, but why can't that happen without consciousness? What is it about that that necessitates an experience?"

So, if we reject emergentist theories, we're left with either eliminativism (consciousness doesn't exist, at least in the sense given in this argument) or panpsychism (consciousness was around at the start and is likely in everything in some way, if we can make sense of it). Eliminativism is clearly false, therefore we are left with panpsychism.

But when we see them trip over the paving stone, we don't say "it was because the centre of gravity was too far forward, but there must also be a psychological explanation". — Daemon

I'm happy with mechanical explanations with regard to medium sized objects, where those explanations are useful and give us the information we want, as in your example. We don't need to question the exact nature of gravity for the explanation (or description) to be useful. But if we want to know what gravity is, or the nuclear forces, or magnetism, then we don't have mechanistic explanations for these field-like influences, because they do not have internal parts that mesh with each other, we can't break them down further, as far as I know anyway. We just say, well, these forces describe how matter behaves when in their influence. Some physicists might be realist about these forces, and say that they are more than just descriptions of how stuff behaves, I don't know. Anyway, the panpsychist has a problem. What role does consciousness play in the behaviour of matter at this foundational level, if any? Are we going to be epiphenomenalist about the consciousness of an atom or molecule, but not when it comes to humans and other brainy animals? Where exactly does consciousness start being causal? And when is it just a added extra that doesn't do anything (epiphenomenalism)? My talk of the consciousness of non-brainy things is an attempt to make sense of this. I'm trying to be a responsible panpsychist and actually try to tackle these questions. So the panpsychist has to attach consciousness somewhere, and the best fit seems to be at the fundamental level of field forces, it seems to me. (Tononi and Koch attach it to systems that integrate information, which makes them panpsychist, but that doesn't commit them to will in the same way that I am committed to will.) I'm suggesting, for maximum consistency, that consciousness is causal from humans all the way down to atoms and field forces. That's the simpler theoretical approach to take, and that's what I am exploring. The reason I have to do this is because panpsychism must be true in some way or another, because we know (I suggest) that eliminativism and emergentism is false, and these are the only alternatives. Am I entirely comfortable talking about the will of atoms? No, not really. It's a bit weird, I grant you, but necessary. I have to follow the logic. And it's not actually incoherent, at least to my mind.

So back to the paving slab (good example by the way), I agree with you that we are not looking for a psychological explanation in this case. What I'm trying to do is resolve arguments about the causal closure of the physical. The way I do it here, and the way I inject psychological causes in is not at the macro level, but at the level of fields, perhaps. The mechanistic explanation is still correct enough at the macro level, but it is reducible, I suggest, to psychological explanations at the micro level. We have a reduction of the mechanical to the psychological. By analogy, we could look at the behaviour of whole populations. Individuals do what they do because of how they feel. But on aggregate, we can describe their behaviour in quantitative terms perfectly accurately, without ever mentioning their psychological motivations, and forget that psychology was ever a part of the explanation. Nevertheless, the psychology is there in the background driving the macro-level behaviour on aggregate. With the paving slab example, I'm suggesting that psychology makes a difference at the fundamental level. Without consciousness causing things to happen at the micro-level, nothing would happen at the macro level, I suggest. Indeed the macro-level would not exist at all, if we consider that particles are persistent behaviours of fields.

But the ultimate motivation for panpsychism, as @I like sushi has correctly explained, is that it is the result of a struggle with the question of the place of consciousness in nature, and the conclusion is (rightly or wrongly) that it is everywhere, in some sense. For me, this is by process of elimination - it's the only theory of consciousness that doesn't have fatal objections.

As I mentioned, nature has had billions of years on billions of stars to hit on something like that. It happens by chance. Because it can. There isn't a "why". I mean, you're asking "why is there life?". — Daemon

I probably wasn't clear. I'm not disputing chance-driven evolution. I'm not an intelligent design advocate, not do I advocate for teleology on a macro scale in evolution, although I'm not completely ruling it out either. I'm asking why molecules behave they way they do in the same way we might ask why a person behaves the way they do. And normally, with people, we are looking for a psychological explanation. If we give an explanation in terms of neurons firing and muscle movements, we haven't really got the answer we were looking for with human beings. We've just got a fine-grained description of lawlike behaviour. I'm suggesting the same is the case for molecules. We don't need that information in order to predict behaviour and exploit the chemical world, but that doesn't mean that there is no psychological explanation to be had.

If that isn't an explanation, what is missing? — Daemon

Why any of that happens, at all. It's a description of what happens, and as such is useful, if it can be relied upon to repeat in a lawlike way, as presumably it can.

My hunch is there is no solid reason for the panpsychism hypothesis. — Agent Smith

What would qualify as a 'solid reason'?

Indeed, what does motivate panpsychism? — Agent Smith

I thought this was well known? The motivation is bound up in the problem of understanding ‘consciousness’. That there are many different people taking up the idea of panpsychism with various other motivations attached is secondary to the original point of trying to understand consciousness right? — I like sushi

But why should that be necessary? — Daemon

Because the alternatives are impossible, or wildly implausible, namely, that consciousness emerges from the interfunction of severally non-conscious elements.

What's the motivation for your introduction of the psyche, when the process can be explained without it? — Daemon

It can't be explained, just described.

There's not, I submit, any "will" in this scenario either. It looks like will, but the real driver is chance, natural selection. Only organisms equipped with the biochemical machinery that gets them swimming in the right direction will survive. — Daemon

Sure, at the mid-level description you quote there isn't. But when we ask for finer and finer details, we get to forces, and 'no further explanation is possible, we are just describing what happens'. That's where I suggest a further step is possible, and perhaps even necessary, and that is to say that the observed behaviour is the result of will. The idea is that physical explanations of the bacterium's behaviour is, at least, reducible to psychological explanations. And that opens the door to the possibility that the whole bacterium is conscious, and it is doing what it is doing because of how it is feeling as a whole, and the mechanical explanations are, at bottom, just descriptions of behaviour which has psycholgical causes. (Not that that is unproblematic of course, there is still the combination problem for panpsychism. The combination problem is the most common and famous objection to many forms of panpsychism.)

We could make an analogy. We might observe that every Friday, after receiving their pension, old humans go to the shop to buy their groceries. We could conclude from this that there is a physical law that describes this behaviour, no? It successfully predicts observation, with no reference to feeling or consciousness in the pensioners. However we know, because we are similar to pensioners, indeed some of us are pensioners, that feelings absolutely play a totally essential role in this story don't they? The physical law we just invented is horseshit isn't it? We know perfectly well that the pensioners want to eat because they are hungry and they want to stock up on food for the next week and get themselves a nice treat in the process, and maybe chat to each other a bit in the process. We don't do that with atoms and molecules because they are not like us. We don't immediately have an insight into their feelings. I'm suggesting that the physical laws we use to describe behaviour are very useful and accurate when making predictive models and whatnot. But that they are no more than that, and are ultimately made-up.

the only causation we actually know happens is psychological - we cause our arm to go up, for example. But this seems to compete with other, physical, causal accounts involving neurons firing.
— Bert1

Descriptions at two different levels. That's good. The more distinctions, the more we understand. What's the problem? — Daemon

The difficulty with the idea of two levels of description is that it creates a dualism, and imports many of the difficulties of that. What accounts for these two points of view? Why do some things have a point of view of their own, but others don't? Why are there two methods of explaining actions in humans, but only one method with cars?

Your intuition that what is necessary for consciousness that there be an inside and an outside is very interesting, as that is suggestive of the creation of two points of view, that of the subject (from the inside) and that of the external observer (from the outside). Is that where you are coming from?

Life has a drive to evolve systems of increasing complexity, and at some point Chance thought of a mechanism for feeling. It seems likely that would be a development of an existing non-conscious mechanism. — Daemon

OK, this is a start. The next question is: at what point in the evolutionary process did feeling first emerge? This is a hypothesis at the moment. How are we going to narrow down the possibilities? If we want to take a scientific approach, how do we test a system for the presence of consciousness?

Is it when the cell wall developed?

EDIT: I know this is a thread about panpsychism, not your view. However part of understanding the theoretical appeal of panpsychism is to come up against the difficulties with emergentism.

I could say "consciousness sometimes feels heavy so maybe it's a property of gravity". Just nonsense, sorry. — Daemon

I think I probably agree with you about that example linking feelings of heavyness to gravity. But still, that feeling of heavyness is one of the things that a fully developed theory of consciousness will have something to say about. While I am a panpsychist, I'm not sure how to get a handle on why particular experiences tend to attach to characteristic physical functions consistently. Just like any other take on consciousness, there remain a lot of unanswered questions. I think the variety of functionalisms, while failing to explain consciousness itself, may nevertheless make headway in explaining what functions go with what experiences.

Yes I would. And I didn't change my mind. Again, I think we are speaking at cross purposes. It sounded to me as if you changed your mind, but no matter.

Absolutely it's an art. And it's a descriptive rough snapshot, and doesn't pretend (or shouldn't) to offer prescriptive certainties.

So dictionary definitions are always awkward and frustrating as they treat language like a game of construction. A word carries some definite content in terms of its semantics. It starts with some complete certainty about the unit of information it represents. — apokrisis

I very much doubt a lexicographer would agree with you on that.

The IIT is a very different kind of panpsychism, and very differently theoretically motivated.
— Bert1

I've looked into that, in my opinion it's a total failure. — Daemon

I mostly agree with you. I think it's a failure as a theory of consciousness, but it might be a very good theory of identity. I think identity admits of degree in a way that consciousness doesn't. The IIT might tell us which bits of the universe are strongly individuated in terms of the complexity of the content of their consciousness. It give us a way to both privilege brains (brains generate an immense variety and complexity of content) and still be panpsychists.

Why do you think it fails?

(I'll get to your other questions in due course - thank you for asking them).

perhaps consciousness is a property of space. This has some intuitive appeal for me as it fits with the phenomenology quite well.
— "Bert1

How do you mean? — Daemon

Consciousness feels container like, it feels still and relatively unmoving (or sometimes does) while things happen in it, yet still connected to those things, consciousness feels stretchy, one can focus in and out, one's awareness can be sharp or diffuse, it unifies and relates its contents in the way space does. This doesn't prove anything of course, but I do like it when discussions of consciousness take seriously such phenomenological intuitions and reflections. In most areas, the truth about the world has nothing to do with subjective feelings about the way it is. However when the subject matter is subjectivity itself, these feelings become far more relevant to the discussion.

It's not clear to me why emergence would require "degree" — Daemon

It doesn't necessarily require it, but it is very hard to think of a non-gradual, instant change in a system that could plausibly be associated with the emergence of consciousness. All relevant changes in the development of a brain in an embryo, for example, or the evolution of the brain, or even the transition from being anaesthetised to be a wakeful state, are gradual changes. At exactly what point does consciousness pop up? And why that point? You need a concept of consciousness that admits of degree, ideally, for this kind of account. But phenomenal consciousness does not seem to admit of degree.

It seems odd that folk suppose consciousness to somehow be central to the nature of the universe when it is so easily dissipated in one's lounge chair on a slow Sunday afternoon. Sleep should cure one of panpsychism. — Banno

We've gone over this before. I don't think you are trolling, so I'll just make the same point. There are different senses of 'consciousness' which you prefer to amalgamate, and lexicographers distinguish. There is a sense in which someone asleep is unconscious by definition, that's just what it means. Moving on to the phenomenal definition, which is the one I take to be operative in philosophical discussions of consciousness, there are a couple of panpsychist responses to the challenge of sleep (or being KO'd, drugged etc).

1) The subject remains conscious, but just not of very much, or perhaps even conscious of nothing at all, and they don't remember when they come to, so they have nothing to report.

2) They cease to exist as a functional unit. The total consciousness remains, but the subjective units are different, perhaps. Like the total mass of a car engine remains after it is dismantled, but it no longer runs. If consciousness is like the mass (rather than the function) then it too can remain, but is a property of smaller functional units, perhaps. With this idea, it is the function that determines the content of consciousness (i.e. what is experienced), not whether or not consciousness is present at all.

Yes, that's the broad picture.

I wonder what the motivation is? — Daemon

There are a number of different motivations depending on the panpsychist, I think. Some panpsychists take a very conceptual approach think that it impossible to make sense of the idea of the emergence of consciousness because the concept does not seem to admit of degree. Goff and Antony develop this line of reasoning.

Panpsychism can be motivated by an examination of the various binding problems, when we look for candidates in nature that can fulfil the binding function, we can see that space relates its contents, and fields are also present at every point in space, so perhaps consciousness is a property of space. This has some intuitive appeal for me as it fits with the phenomonology quite well.

Some panpsychists do think that consciousness emerges, and is reducible to a kind of function, it's just that this function occurs in everything, so consciousness is also in everything. The IIT is an example of this. The IIT is a very different kind of panpsychism, and very differently theoretically motivated.

Some panpsychists are motivated by idealism. Timothy Sprigge is one of these. If you think of Berkeley, but take out the role God plays in maintaining the existence of the external world of ideas, and substitute panpsychism - everything exists in a vast web of mutually perceiving and mutually defining subjects, then I think that is close to Sprigge's view.

Some panpsychists are no doubt motivated by spiritual views, they have already come to the conclusion that consciousness is present at the start of everything, and think that everything after that point will therefore also be conscious, as all subsequent existing things are modifications of the original conscious substance.

One can also come to panpsychism by an examination of psychological causation and the problem of overdetermination - the only causation we actually know happens is psychological - we cause out arm to go up, for example. But this seems to compete with other, physical, causal accounts involving neurons firing. One way out of this puzzle is to reduce physical causation to psychological, and assert that what we normally refer to as forces in the world are actually wills, and the behaviour of matter is determined by how it feels. The slogans might be 'matter does what it does because of how it feels' and 'how matter feels is determined by what it does'.

Panpsychism is attractively monistic. If the basic starting properties in a typical physical explanation of the world (e.g. mass, charge, spin, extension, whatever the latest list is) are not enough to explain everything, one way to fix this is to add a starting property, namely consciousness, especially if the alternatives are more theoretically problematic.

Another way to come at panpsychism is by process of elimination. Consciousness either (a) doesn't exist, or at least isn't what it appears to be (eliminativism) (b) emerged (was not around at the start and arrived on the scene later - this is the majority view I suspect), or (c) was here from the start and exists in everything. Pick the least problematic option. This is the Churchill approach - "Panpsychism is the worst theory of conciousness apart from all the others."

And there's more motivations, and many sub-variants...

I mean, I look around at the world, and I see that some things are conscious, you and me, my dog, and I see that the mechanisms for consciousness are in our brains, we can switch them off and on.

Well, maybe. When we switch consciousness on and off, are we switching consciousness? Or are we switching identity on and off? How could we tell the difference between non-consciousness and non-existence, phenomenologically?

I see that some things are not conscious, rocks, dead people or dogs.

I understand your intuitive starting point. But can these distinctions be maintained? Philosophers will want answers to the following questions: What are you seeing exactly? And what follows from that about consciousness? Why aren't people and dogs conscious? How do you know? What constitutes evidence for consicousness?

I think bacteria for example aren't conscious (because we can explain their behaviour through non-conscious processes), but they do have something which is a prerequisite for consciousness, they are individuals, separated from their environment.

Well, that's very interesting. You have the start of a theory, or at least line of enquiry. I would question whether we can explain their behaviour through non-conscious processes - when we get to the level of forces, we end up saying 'that's just what happens'. But if those forces are wills, we can go, perhaps, one step further into something we can understand - 'because that's what they will'. Conversely, lets take humans. If we can explain bacterial behaviour in terms of non-conscious processes, why can't we do the same with humans? Maybe Apo has an answer - that human behaviour cannot be explained in the kind of bottom-up way that perhaps bacterial behaviour can. And I suspect Apo will say the same about bacteria - there is top down stuff going on there too which is necessary to understand bacterial behaviour. But even if he is right, I don't see how that entails consciousness.

This stuff is surely super-important?! Whether we ourselves and other items are conscious or not really matters to us.

Indeed.

So I'm wondering what is gained by losing the distinction between conscious and not conscious.

I don't think panpsychists do lose the distinction. I can conceive of a rock that isn't conscious.The concept of non-consciousness still has meaning, even if I think that nothing is in fact non-conscious.

Have you had the last word yet? — apokrisis

Not yet!

Have you seen off every challenge to your confusions? — apokrisis

I wish there were some challenges to my confusions that I could understand. Hence my question to you. Could you please have a go at answering it?

Apo, you don't understand the concept of reduction as used in philosophy, and you do not acknowledge different types of panpsychism. What are you doing here?

You gave a bunch of different contradictory answers to the one question. That's slightly different. — apokrisis

Well, I tried. Please would you? I mean, it's not hard. I asked it in such a way as you could say 'yes' or 'no'. So I tried to make it as easy as possible for you, as I did wonder if you have PDA.

It seems according to you, panpsychists don't mean to reduce consciousness to being another ultimately simple property of matter, like presumably mass and charge. — apokrisis

Apo, I don't speak for all panpsychists. It's not a single position. There are many types, with different theoretical justifications.

For myself, I assert that consciousness is a fundamental property. But this is not a reduction, it is the exact opposite of a reduction. So we at least have a difference in usage here, or you don't understand the concept.

And you say that panpsychists also can't see how consciousness could reduce to processes, functions, or information. — apokrisis

Again, you lump all panpsychists together. Tononi, for example, is a panpsychist who does think that consciousness reduces to integrated information. I disagree with him. I can't see how consciousness can be explained in terms of other concepts. That's why I think it's likely fundamental, brute.

And somehow "a snail, a molecule, an atom, a field" are all just essentially the same metaphysical category in your eyes - presumably a system (a system that has no process or function) — apokrisis

No, these systems have processes and functions, of course. It's just that consciousness isn't one of them.

And you say you want clarification from me.... — apokrisis

I do! Most eagerly. I beg you. Please.

.

No. You just continue to badger me without addressing the inconsistencies of your own position. — apokrisis

I answered all your questions Apo! All I ask is that you answer one of mine. It's polite! Humour me.

What the panpsychist argument attempts to do is to depict 'consciouness' in naturalistic terms, as an object or the property of objects. — Wayfarer

It can do, but it can also depict it as primarily a property of substance, and then, a fortiori, derivatively, of modifications of that substance as well.

I have always understood, that the naturalist view, is that consciousness is an emergent property. — Watchmaker

Yes, I think you are exactly right. "Emergentism" is a much clearer and less ambiguous word than "physicalism" or "materialism" or even "naturalism", and better captures people's views. I know I'm not an emergentist. But I can't say for certain that I am not a physicalist, as I don't know what it means.

I think the notion that apokrisis and I take issue with, in different ways, is the depiction of consciousness as a substance or property. What makes this problematic is that it is the tendency to reduce phenomena to physical substance that led to the hard problem to
begin with. If all you have is hammer , then everything looks like a nail, and if your only metaphysics is monistic naturalism, then everything looks like a substance.
But consciousness is neither an object, a substance or a property, but a relational activity. — Joshs

OK, thanks. I still don't really understand though, sorry. I'm OK with reducing phenomena to more basic concepts where we can. But I don't regard consciousness, nor extension, spatiality, as phenomena in need of explanation. They seem to be basic concepts that resist analysis, to me at least.

I'm interested in your view of consciousness as a relational activity if you'd like to say more about that.

So that kind of makes panpsychism sound naturalistic - but at the cost of introducing an attribute or quality for which critics will say there can't be any direct evidence. — Wayfarer

I think that's quite a good summary.

Apo, you are behaving very oddly.

Are you answering any time soon? — apokrisis

I didn't even know you'd asked me. You still haven't, but I presume you intended to. I'll answer.

My own view is that consciousness is a property of reality-as-continuum, perhaps space, or the quantum field. I do not think there is any difference in kind between the consciousness of a human being, a snail, a molecule, an Apokrisis, an atom, or the fields they are behaviours of. All are equally conscious, I do not think consciousness admits of degree. I think any arbitrarily defined object is also conscious.

So now I'll ask my question for the third time:

I see, and that's what you're asserting of panpsychists, that panpsychists think consciousness is a complex phenomenon, fully explained in terms of fundamental constituents, which panpsychists assert are themselves also conscious. Is that right? — bert1

Really? They all claim consciousness is a universal property of systems, not a universal property of matter? — apokrisis

I think so, but it depends what 'matter' means, doesn't it? I tend to think of 'matter' as persistent behaviours of substance. That's what some panpsychists assert as the primary bearers of consciousness (e.g. the IIT theory). Other panpsychists go a step further and assert consciousness as a property of substance. That would include me. If we use 'matter' instead to refer to substance (as many people do), then I'm one to assert that consciousness is a property of matter. The dictionary definition of panpsychism you found is roughly OK, but as you would expect in philosophy, there are distinctions that are glossed over in a simple one-sentence definition.

Was this the version of panpsychism that I was responding to in the OP? — apokrisis

I don't know.

As I understood the OP it was asking for clarification of what panpsychism is, rather than clearly stipulating a definition.

Or the more usual dictionary definition? — apokrisis

I don't know.

I gave you the dictionary definitions. They fit what I was saying. If you think different, show me how. — apokrisis

I'm just asking for clarification, that's all! I wasn't sure what you meant, and it sounded odd to me. The dictionary definitions you offered are not clear to me. I tried to put into my own words what I thought you were saying, and asked if I'd got it right! That's a nice thing to do isn't it? I don't understand why you are making this so difficult.

I don't know! You introduced the term and said panpsychism was reductionist. I'm just trying to understand what you mean!

There's lots of different conceptions of reduction - look at the Stanford article. My usual casual understanding of it is that one thing (the reduced thing) is fully explained in terms of other things (the things it is reduced to). But I'm not an expert on the concept. And I wasn't sure what you meant by it. So that's why I asked, it's odd to think of panpsychism as a reductionist theory, because it is precisely difficulties reducing consciousness to processes, functions, information, whatever, which motivates some panpsychists.

Panpsychism covers a number of views. What most of them have in common is perhaps that consciousness is present in every system. It's problematic trying to get a single definition to cover the variety of views accurately. Are you asking what my particular panpsychist view is?

Anyway, this:

The simple answer is that you don't seem to understand the terms in the usual way. — apokrisis

..is not an answer to this:

I see, and that's what you're asserting of panpsychists, that panpsychists think consciousness is a complex phenomenon, fully explained in terms of fundamental constituents, which panpsychists assert are themselves also conscious. Is that right? — bert1

I'm trying to understand what you're saying. Please will you help? Did I get it right?

I see, and that's what you're asserting of panpsychists, that panpsychists think consciousness is a complex phenomenon, fully explained in terms of fundamental constituents, which panpsychists assert are themselves also conscious. Is that right? — bert1

@apokrisis It's a really simple question.

Let the dictionary be your friend: "[Reductionism is] the practice of analysing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of its simple or fundamental constituents, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation." — apokrisis

I see, and that's what you're asserting of panpsychists, that panpsychists think consciousness is a complex phenomenon, fully explained in terms of fundamental constituents, which panpsychists assert are themselves also conscious. Is that right?

That the substance that the universe is composed of is essentially consciousness? — Watchmaker

That's what I think, yes. Not all panpsychists think that though.

Where did "knowing" come into play? Something had to initially know how to arrange atoms and chemicals in way to give rise to awareness. — Watchmaker

I don't understand what you mean, or what that's got to do with panpsychism. Panpsychists do not usually explain consciousness in functional, chemical or any such terms, although some do. Even those who do would say there is no prior knowing, knowing is these processes, not a pre-existing condition of them.

Panpsychism says that consciousness is fundamental. What does that mean exactly, that consciousness is fundamental? That the substance that the universe is composed of is essentially consciousness? Where did "knowing" come into play? Something had to initially know how to arrange atoms and chemicals in way to give rise to awareness. — Watchmaker

Not all panpsychists think that consciousness is fundamental. I do though.

All that is necessary for panpsychism is that consciousness is present somehow in everything. The IIT, for example, is reductionist, it says consciousness is integrated information, so in a sense information is more fundamental than consciousness, it just so happens that there is no unintegrated information around, so everything is, in fact, minimally conscious.

There are also micropsychists, that take a bottom-up panpsychist approach, starting with small things and building up; and macrospsychists, who take consciousnes as a property of reality as a whole and get to multiple subjects by division (rather than addition). Lots of different versions with different theoretical motivations.

In other words, as others have suggested, "panpsychism" is a reductionist... — 180 Proof

Panpsychism is the pathological metaphysics that arises when you try to reduce all existence to materialism, and wind up including "consciousness" as "another face of matter". — apokrisis

Could you explain the reduction?

Reduction normally involves explaining one thing completely in terms of things other than it. So a is reduced to x, y, z if a is fully explained by x, y, z with no reference to a in that explanation. Something like that anyway.

So if panpsychism is a reductionist theory of consciousness, what non-conscious things do you think it reduces consciousness to?

I find this very odd, as one of the primary theoretical motivators for panpsychism is the that is it not a reductionist theory, that is, difficulties with attempts to explain consciousness in non-question-begging terms lead us to the conclusion (not assumption) that consciousness is a fundamental property of reality.

That's a really clear explanation. I don't have the knowledge to know if you've got it right or not, but it's very nicely set out.