The real panpsychism

This is a somewhat difficult conversation between Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon. Sheldrake is mostly known for his theory of "morphic resonance" and for being a kind of gadfly extraordinaire in general. I don´t know who Vernon might be, but judging by his bio, he has written an entire book on Owen Barfield! In other words: here we go again...

Judging by the exchange linked to above, both Sheldrake and Vernon see themselves as Christians, but they are fairly heterodox in theological matters. Both find Whitehead´s process philosophy interesting, and somehown tries to interpret the Christian Trinity and the Logos in a process philosophical manner. Sheldrake is also interested in animism and the animistic worldview of ancient pagans and shamans, while Vernon is into Plato. However, his Platonism is not the abstract "mathematical" version often associated with the ancient Greek philosopher, but rather a more animistic-process version, in which the Ideas are real living angelic beings. I was (of course) reminded of Charles Williams´ criticism of abstract Platonizing in the novel "The Place of the Lion". Vernon also interprets the medieval worldview as a kind of Neoplatonist panentheism (pan-en-theism), while Descartes and the Reformation sundered God from the world, making God easier to abolish for the materialists. 

Sheldrake begins the discussion by criticizing something he calls conservative or materialist panpsychism, which he believes is really an attempt to save materialism by attributing a limited degree of psychic ability to all or most matter. The emergence of human consciousness can then be interpreted as "natural" and a difference in degree only, rather than in kind. Presumably, such panpsychism could also see consciousness as simply a function of matter. However, both Sheldrake and Vernon are also critical of idealism, seeing it as too abstract. What could "mind" or "consciousness" even mean outside space and time, where many idealists have a tendency to place it? 

Both contributors feel that time and "process" are somehow fundamental to the way the world works, and also to the way God operates. "Time is an image of eternity". Both space and time emanates from God and are somehow contained in God, being parts of his very nature. 

As already indicated, Sheldrake and Vernon are more robustly animistic than modern panpsychists tend to be confortable with. Sheldrake believes that everything is alive and conscious, from tiny electrons to the sun itself. He even says that this means that the sun somehow *wants* to control the solar system in exactly the way it does in fact do. Electrons are drawn to other particles, perhaps because they actually like each other? Sheldrake explicitly says that this kind of animism could lead to a form of pantheism if generalized to the entire cosmos. 

Although some of the ideas in this "Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogue 64" are a bit too outlandish for my tender skeptical tastes, I admit that I kinda like the free-wheeling format. And yes, I have linked to Sheldrake´s heresies before...