Panpsychism discussed

Mind of a Rock - New York Times

A pretty good read from Jim Holt here about panpsychism, which he describes as the following hypothesis:

Perhaps, they say, mind is not limited to the brains of some animals. Perhaps it is ubiquitous, present in every bit of matter, all the way up to galaxies, all the way down to electrons and neutrinos, not excluding medium-size things like a glass of water or a potted plant. Moreover, it did not suddenly arise when some physical particles on a certain planet chanced to come into the right configuration; rather, there has been consciousness in the cosmos from the very beginning of time.

It's a cute idea, but I didn't think it had much current support. Not so, apparently:

The Australian philosopher David Chalmers and the Oxford physicist Roger Penrose have spoken on its behalf. In the recent book “Consciousness and Its Place in Nature,” the British philosopher Galen Strawson defends panpsychism against numerous critics.

I didn't think that Roger Penrose's controversial ideas on mind could quite be described this way.

Here's a review of another book defending it.

I know that Augustine rejected pantheism, but am not entirely sure whether panpsychism has ever really attracted that much attention by famous Christian theologians. (Maybe it has simply been dismissed as too improbable to consider.)

Kind of interesting, anyway.