Leibnizian Panpsychism: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Panpsychism
Journal of Consciousness Studies December 1, 2024 S. Siddharth, Tejas Bhojraj
Russellian panpsychism holds that all fundamental physical entities have inner experiential properties. A major challenge is the combination problem: how micro-experiences combine into the unified experiences of larger beings like humans. This paper defends a Leibnizian version of panpsychism, which denies that micro-experiences ever combine. The authors address two objections: that denying combination (mereological nihilism) is implausible, and that Leibnizian panpsychism implies human experiences are simple physical entities. They argue both objections can be answered and that this view deserves serious consideration as a theory of consciousness.