I
“Panpsychism is the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world.” - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
That is a great definition, I think. This concept is articulated in many ways, from materialist to idealist types. It is with the idealist versions I concern myself here, insofar as they represent to me the most robust versions of these ideas. What I want to say, in brief, is that I don’t think panpsychism (of the idealist type I think is strongest) is enough. Sure, psyche is fundamental, and the physical world is nothing if not a psychic whole. But then, there are things about the world that psyche cannot explain. I am using a neoplatonist definition of psyche here. Although it’s inappropriate to directly map that onto the modern idea of panpsychism, I think the very fact that a distinct activity or substance of psyche is possible, as opposed to other modes of knowledge or intentionality presents the possibility of a critique. This is not systematic, of course. This is more a scribble on a page than a grand scholarly critique for peer review.
To give an outline, I’d say that the modern notion of “mind” or “consciousness” seems to me to be very confused. There isn’t a bigger sign of this confusion than in an attempt to conflate or imply that panpsychism is a sort of platonism. There are platonists that incorporate a psychic idealism into their metaphysics, but the forms (for instance) are not psychic concepts in an ideal mind. Forms are not ideals in the colloquial sense, neither are they universals, abstract objects, or concepts. The last two, especially, for the ancient platonists are psychic objects that are produced from contemplating forms, not the forms themselves. It seems to me that many proponents of idealist panpsychism do not give a systematic insight into the structure of psyche, including what can, and what cannot be explained by it. What instead happens is a monism whereby all “minds” are in some sense only manifestations of a metaphysically prior “mind” as such. This makes sense to me, giving my acceptance of Psychic Gods, including the possibility of the highest psychic God, the God whose activity concerns the ideal (in the colloquial sense). But, the problem is that it can’t explain the thisness of things - their unique individuality - beyond diminution, which implies a principle of diminution itself, something not-ideal for lesser things to “fall” into. In short, there is a duality in idealist panpsychism that idealist pansychism itself cannot explain. There is indeed, no real explanation for the thisness of the psychic ideals themselves, beyond positing their necessary existence (which I accept). The thisness of these ideals, expressed in their form, requires better language than that of “mind”, which conflates so many psychic activities together and either ignores or reduces to the whim of a human mind-like super entity the very structure of logic. I think panpsychism can be better, if only it is complicated and complexified.
II
The idea that a God is the Good itself makes no sense to many analytic theists and atheists. It seems like so much mystical hand-waving. It’s frustrating for me to read responses to the idea, but I’m learning patience. In any case, I want to give the way I can counter the objection that the idea reduces the God (or Gods) to an abstract object.
The Good is the principle of individual integrity considered as telos. All that desires the Good desires its own integral existence. That which is most good is not just that which has integral existence to the fullest, but that which, in its integral existence, facilitates the integral existence of everything else. According to the Platonic understanding of deity, Gods qualify.
It is not that there is a concept of goodness that the Gods exemplify by being subordinate to it, but that the Gods establish the very concept itself being simply being themselves. “Existence”, for us here, is not the mere “concreteness” of the analytic philosophers in opposition to the “abstract” which may or may not “exist” (that is, in thomist language, be actual to some world). It is quite simply, “oneness” or “unity” for each thing in the widest, thinnest sense possible, such that the very concept disintegrates if ever put together as a sort of discrete whole distinct and/or disjoint from every other concept. This is, incidentally, why a platonism as “abstract objects” or concepts doesn’t work, because it is always pulled apart by its exceptions and contradictions. What there are are individuals, and ways of knowing them.