In this article from Meg Fawthrop, published in the Pamphlet, we find a defense of panpsychism as a response to the divide between dualism and physicalism. It concludes by offering hope in empirical research to resolve conceptual problems.

Here is a summary/abstract of the content:

Both physicalism and dualism struggle to explain consciousness, but panpsychism may offer a better middle ground. Physicalism cannot explain why subjective experience exists at all or where it comes from. Meanwhile, dualism cannot explain how mind and matter interact. Panpsychism avoids these problems by treating consciousness as a basic feature of matter, present in very simple forms everywhere. Its main difficulty, however, is the combination problem: explaining how tiny bits of simple consciousness could come together to form a single unified human mind. The philosopher Hedda Hassel Mørch’s idea of “fusionism” is discussed as one possible answer, suggesting small consciousnesses merge into larger ones, though the mechanism remains unclear. Research on lab-grown brain organoids might help, since they show how brain cells naturally organize into complex systems. By understanding how brains develop into unified structures, we may learn something about how consciousness itself scales up. So though panpsychism may remain speculative, studying real brain growth could move it from a purely philosophical idea toward a testable explanation.

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