Panpsychism means “all mind” or mind in all things, with an emphasis on cognition being a fundamental aspect or part of nature.
Pansignaling means “all signaling” or signaling in all things, with an emphasis on signaling being a fundamental aspect or part of nature.
I like the term pansignaling because it gets us to look at the signals, without which there is nothing.
Another word that is close to these two is panexperientialism, which connotes that “the fundamental elements of the universe are ‘occasions of experience’ which can together create something as complex as a human being.”
These ideas or similar can be found in the Huayan and Tiantai schools of Buddhism.
Highly recommend giving these ideas some thought and reading the links provided above.
I tend to favor thinking of this stuff from the signaling point of view. A signal can be found, defined, analyzed, and so on. A signal is a fairly objective thing. When we consider signals and consciousness, it is very natural to consider that signals are parts of networks and that networks can be parts of bigger networks.
As I understand it, panexperientialism holds the view that atoms have experience, and that molecules have experience as do the atoms that make them up… and so on till we get to cells, organs, brains, human consciousness. Human consciousness, which is fundamentally experiential, is what humans mainly think of as experience. At all levels, the “parts” of human consciousness also are conscious or cognizant and thus capable of experience. Thus, there is no mind-body problem. Cognition or awareness is part of nature from the very bottom up. For example, a single bacterium can know to move toward something or away from it.
Life is “anti-entropic signaling networks” that organize, self-organize, combine, cooperate, compete, eat, and change constantly. From this, we can see where impermanence and delusion as described in Buddhism come from.
When matter breaks down into waves and laws, it becomes information, but similar processes are still at work. In Buddhist terms we find again dependent origination, no intrinsic self separate from other information, impermanence, rational structure, karma (the work of this producing that), the primary consciousness found in deep samadhi.
first posted FEBRUARY 25, 2017
American Buddhist Net 