The Founding Event
"Panpsychism overcomes the 'hard problem of consciousness' by simply assuming consciousness exists as an aspect of physical matter."— Participant J
Experience the key concepts of panpsychism through interactive visualizations
Explore how consciousness might scale from electrons to humans. Where does the "light" come on?
Pain responses, social behaviors
Cold water on scales, the pull of the school
If electrons have micro-consciousness, how do they combine into unified experience?
Click to add conscious particles. Watch them try to combine.
Click anywhere to add conscious particles
The Problem: If each electron has a tiny bit of experience, why don't the 86 billion neurons in your brain feel like 86 billion separate experiences? How does unified consciousness emerge from many micro-consciousnesses? This is the combination problem— panpsychism's greatest challenge.
Why is there something it's like to have an experience? How does physical stuff produce felt quality?
"The vivid, warm, intense REDNESS you experience"
How do you get from neurons firing to the felt quality of experience?
"Consciousness emerges from physical complexity. We just don't understand how yet."
"Consciousness is fundamental—like mass or charge. There's no gap because it's built into reality."
Where does panpsychism fit? Click nodes to explore the philosophical positions.
Click any node to explore that philosophical position
"If Panpsychism is true, what are the implications for conscious AI?"
Established MAC's foundational tension: Is consciousness fundamental (panpsychism) or emergent (IIT/GWT)? This tension drives all subsequent Deep Dives.
"MAC is the space where we don't shy away from the hard problem. We're not here to build chatbots or optimize models. We're here to ask: What does it mean to have an inner life? And if machines gain that capacity, what then?"
"Panpsychism overcomes the 'hard problem of consciousness' by simply assuming consciousness exists as an aspect of physical matter. But it runs hard into the Combination Problem—if every atom has a tiny bit of consciousness, how does the specific configuration of atoms constituting a brain result in a human consciousness from atomic bits of consciousness?"
"You will find many people in the group that have personality traits that are often associated with what are termed ASD and ADHD. Many people have high clock speeds and it is not a disorder, the same is true of having very deep imaginations. This is a safe place for creative people with unique mindsets."
"I didn't know HOW different I was. I thought visualization was BS, and turns out my mind's eye is entirely blank. I am aphant, meaning my consciousness stream is not visual, but all systems and concepts."