Can Kant be compatible with panpsychism?

Question

Is the transcendental idealism compatible with panpsychism, The view that all things have consciousness?

Answer 1

It depends. In the philosophical tradition that Kant is inserted, the criterion for the presence of consciousness follows parameters that appeal to a certain complexity involved in consciousness (in its most basic form). So, for example, according to Locke, consciousness may extend all the way down to beings like oysters, that have one “small dull perception” that distinguishes them from perfect insensibility, and Kant would’ve probably followed this account. However, at least as I see it, this is more of a contingent view that they held, and if you consider only the basic assumptions of Kant’s system, I believe it wouldn’t be incompatible with panpsychism. Perhaps it could be argued that it is incompatible because transcendental idealism is committed to physicalism about the mind (to some degree), while panpsychism defends a sort of property dualism, but the truth is that not only physicalism is compatible with panpsychism, but some authors also argue that physicalism presupposes panpsychism (cf. “Realistic Monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism” by Strawson).

One more thing: while the definition you gave of panpsychism is somewhat common, it’s also not entirely correct. Panpsychism is a more general thesis, according to which mental properties are coextensive with the most basic properties of the universe. With this in mind, it is important to note that (i) it is possible that there is mentality in particles like quarks, but not necessarily in the aggregate things composed of them, like chairs, stones, etc. And (ii) since “mental” is a more general term, these mental properties may not involve experience/subjectivity. If it is affirmed that they do, then the more appropriate name for the thesis is panexperientialism.

Answer 2

On Mysticism

We may define mysticism as the "non-delimitation" of consciousness. So if we deconstruct archetypal mystical experiences like

1. I am one with the universe
2. I heard God speak to me directly
3. I know I am immortal

what it really meas is that the experience of inexorable limitation we experience in normal consciousness was broken momentarily

So 1 violates the normal experience that "I stop at my skin surface".
2 violates the direct contradiction of knowing the unknowable.
3 violates the inexorability of death

etc

Panpsychism

is one of the attempts at regularizing and validating the seeming nonsense of mysticism by positing that my experience of consciousness being limited to my body, for a limited time in an infinitely vaster unknown is an experience not a fact.

Kant and Mysticism

Panpsychism was perhaps not a thing in Kant's time but mysticism certainly was and the standard received view is that:

• Kant was the pinnacle of rationalism — ok
• And so was anti-mystical — ummm... really?

One of kant's early writings is Dreams of a Spirit Seer (DSS). The received view is that it is a scathing criticism of the mystic(ism) of Swedenborg.

But there has long been a tradition of philosophers who questioned this view — the latest and thorough one being Kant and Mysticism by Stephen Palmquist

In DSS Kant writes:

You could propose a transcendental hypothesis: that all life is really only intelligible, not subject to temporal alterations at all, and has neither begun at birth nor will end through death; that this life is nothing but a mere appearance, ie. a sensible representation of the purely spiritual life, and the entire world of senses is a mere mirage, which hovers before our present kind of cognition and, like a dream, has no objective reality in itself; that if we could intuit the things and ourselves as they are we would see ourselves in a world of spiritual natures with which our only true community had not begun with birth and would not cease with death.

Note: the similarity with the definition of mysticism at the outset

The received view is that Kant states this to mock it.
The alternate view is the simpler view that Kant states his view.

Thanks to Phil Klöcking's recent comment that in Kant's time one could lose a job for espousing non churchy views (eg. atheism) it is necessary to »read past Kant« that is to be open to the possibility that Kant is saying something a bit different than what he obviously seems to be saying