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> Luckily the article is very low on details

The only real detail the article gives is that one of the main proponents of panpsychism is Rupert Sheldrake, who is better known for his theory of "morphic resonance" and his mass-market books about various metaphysical and parapsychological topics.

In short, it's unclear that there's any actual "science" behind any of this.

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There's also not any science behind the assumption that all matter is inherently dead, and that by complex arrangements of atoms it can become conscious. These are questions that are beyond the ability of science to currently shed much light on.

Panpsychism is what you get if materialism can't be proven. Sure, maybe there is a neural correlate of consciousness, but there is no proof of it. If no neural (or perhaps quantum?) correlate can be found, it would perhaps fall on panpsychism as the default explanation.

These folks^0 put money on it, and panpsychism is winning so far.

0: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/07/12/a-25-year-old-bet-on...

We've been doing fine with not proving that God exists.

Edit: scratch that, I'm not sure if we're doing fine :)

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