Lanell M. Mason
09-02-2025
Abstract: Christians have good reason to reject physicalism as a view of the mind’s relationship to the body given the biblical evidence and the nature of our faith. As a result, Christian philosophers have largely adopted substance dualism. This two part paper will consider a third option, that of panpsychism. Part 1 will introduce reasons why we might want to consider a third option, namely the problems that surround trying to make a distinction between the “physical” and “non-physical.” Part 2 will present both non-naturalistic and naturalistic accounts of panpsychism, pointing out that panpsychists tend to go wrong in thinking consciousness is fundamental. I will end by discussing whether any form of panpsychism can be made compatible with biblical Christianity, and where Christians can go from here in thinking about the body’s relationship to consciousness.
Keywords: panpsychism, substance dualism, body and soul, mind-body problem
1. Introduction
The problem of consciousness is the problem of trying to metaphysically account for the fact that human beings have experience.[1] That is, it seems to be the case that I am more than just an object that has certain classifiable behaviors or types of causal interactions. I possess subjective experience. This experience seems to be completely private, and I seem to be the only one that can be directly acquainted with it. You wouldn’t be able to know what my experiences are like firsthand like I know them, or so it seems.
This is a problem because purely subjective experience like this isn’t readily accounted for in a universe that is wholly subject to the laws of physics. For the naturalist who is committed to physicalism (the thesis that everything that exists is entirely governed by the laws of physics), the typical solution to this problem has been to handwave it away by labeling the phenomena of experience an illusion, or to reduce experience to physical phenomena, such as brain activity.[2] There have even been those physicalists who admit the existence of non-physical phenomena, but account for the existence of non-physical phenomena by making their existence dependent on physical entities and physical activity.[3]
Christians don’t really have the problem of trying to explain the existence of seemingly non-physical phenomena. This is because our faith rests in a non-physical entity—God. Therefore, we do not have noetic barriers to belief in entities that are not subject to the laws of physics. If I am willing to accept that God exists, then I am more readily able to accept that consciousness is fundamentally non-physical. This is why the dominate view among Christian philosophers is substance dualism. Substance dualism says that there are two different ways or kinds of being: physical and non-physical. Thus, the mind is non-physical, while the body is, at least in part, physical.[4] Hence, a Christian who rejects physicalism adopts what seems to be the only other solution—substance dualism.
There might be, however, a third way—that is of panpsychism. Panpsychism is the thesis that everything undergoes conscious experience,[5] and in fact that there is no real distinction between mind and physical matter.[6] The purpose of this paper is to take panpsychism seriously and discuss the compatibility of the panpsychist thesis with Christianity. It will be presented in two parts. In Part 1, I present what the bible says about the body’s relationship to the mind and the physical world’s relationship to that of the spiritual. I will then discuss the problem with substance dualism, giving an argument for why a Christian might reject it in favor of an alternate theory. In Part II, I will present both non-naturalistic and naturalistic views of panpsychism, pointing out that panpsychists tend to make a similar mistake as Cartesian dualists in thinking that consciousness is fundamental. I will then end with the discussion of whether any view of panpsychism can be made compatible with orthodox Christian belief and how we might move forward in thinking about the body’s relationship to consciousness.
2. The Biblical Picture
There are various biblical claims made about the soul that seem a clear refutation of physicalism and prima facie in support of substance dualism. For example, Genesis states that “God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man become a living creature,”[7] or “living soul.”[8] Whatever “soul” is here seems distinct from the dust, although there have been interpretations of this passage denying it is speaking of anything supernatural and is merely symbolic.[9]
The idea of soul as being distinct from the body seems to be also affirmed in the Gospels when Christ identifies the greatest commandment as “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,”[10] quoting Deuteronomy 6:5. Here, Christ is identifying different aspects of a whole human, distinguishing soul as a separate part. He also distinguishes heart and mind as separate parts, so there is a question of what kind of distinction Christ is making, whether it can be interpreted as a metaphysical distinction or a mere logical distinction.
Another example is 2 Corinthians 4 where the Apostle Paul speaks of having and practicing faith in “jars of clay,”[11] contrasting “the outer self [which is] wasting away” with the “inner self [which is] being renewed day by day.”[12] Later in the passage, he contrasts “things that are seen” with “things that are unseen,” and makes the claim that the things that are seen are temporal while the things that are unseen are eternal.[13] It may be implied that Paul views the body as temporal and the spirit as eternal, but in verse 10 he expresses an expectation that the life of Christ, being eternal, would be manifested even in the mortal body.[14]
Further, in 2 Corinthians 5, Paul speaks of the body as a “tent,” a temporary dwelling.[15] This stands in contrast to the “building” we will receive in the resurrected body.[16] He also speaks of being “found naked.”[17] Some bible commentators have taken this to be an intermediate state, that is, being a disembodied soul after the temporal body dies and while awaiting the eternal resurrected body.[18] This view seems to be affirmed when Paul makes the claim “while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.”[19] If anything, this passage is a clear indication of the bible’s rejection of physicalism—if the body dies and the person lives on, or is even able to switch from one body into another, then it seems as if physicalism cannot be true. This is because physicalism would imply the human being just is their physical body, governed by the laws of physics (and subsequently chemistry and biology) and hence when the body dies the person dies. Therefore, it seems as if Paul is affirming some kind of substance dualism given that he can affirm the physical body’s death but the continual living of the soul.
Even though many substance dualists cite many passages in support of their view, there is some reason to believe that these passages need not be interpreted as affirming substance dualism. For example, in Romans 8:10-11, Paul states that the Holy Spirit will give life to our mortal bodies. This is similar to what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:10, and seems rightly interpreted as describing a process that begins the perfection of our current bodies and doesn’t imply a throwing away of an old body for a new one.[20] Moreover, the “jars of clay” passage referenced above can be interpreted to be a reference to our weaknesses as opposed to our bodies. This interpretation coheres with the context of Paul talking about God’s power being seen through him, a possible allusion to the thin-walled clay vessels that were used as lamps which were produced in Corinth.[21] Hence, the point of the passage isn’t on comment on the body per se, but to acknowledge the power of God to even use frail creatures for his glory.
3. Why We May Want to Reconsider Substance Dualism
When it comes to the Christian faith, the main issue of accounting for the problem of consciousness stems from accounting for the continued life of a person after bodily death. Life seems to be beyond the body, as affirmed in the passages cited above. If that is the case, clearly physicalism is incorrect, but the question of the body’s relationship to consciousness remains unsettled. Is substance dualism the best way to make sense of the relationship between mind and body? I turn now to discussing why we might want to reconsider.
It is almost universally accepted by Christian philosophers that Cartesian dualism—a form of substance dualism—is incompatible with Christianity. This is because Cartesian dualism creates too hard of a distinction between the physical and non-physical. According to Pierre Duhem, the classical Cartesian view of the physical is that
matter is essentially identical with the extended in length, breadth, and depth, as the language of geometry goes; we have to consider only its various shapes and motions. Matter for the Cartesians is, if you please, a kind of vast fluid, incompressible and absolutely homogeneous. Hard, unbreakable atoms and the empty spaces separating them are merely so many appearances, so many illusions.[22]
Descartes here denies the existence of natures, as popularized by Aristotle, at least when it comes to physical objects. That is, Descartes denies the formal and final causes that determine the behavior of entities, in particular their causal relations and the manifestations of their causal powers.[23] As Duhem points out, Descartes equated such properties with souls and on that basis denied that every physical particle is ensouled; as such, these essential properties cannot exist.[24]
Hence, Cartesian dualism views the human person as a soul in a physical shell. The person is identical to her soul. Moreover, the soul is identical to the mind (in other words, there is no distinction between the mind and soul).[25] Additionally, the body is like a machine that runs without the aid of the soul. It is not the soul that gives life, as Genesis 2 affirms.[26] The soul, however, can continue to live on in a disembodied state after the body dies.[27]
Descartes was working with the knowledge of his time, and thus thanks to contemporary physics, we now have a different view of what it means to be physical. But in contemporary substance dualism, the principle still holds that there is at least some material in existence that is completely described by the laws of physics. Philosophers acknowledge that our current physics may be incomplete, and so we can say that our description of the physical is incomplete, while anticipating that as we learn more about the physical universe, our description will become more complete.
Contemporary Christian philosophers tend to view the immaterial soul and physical body as more integrated than Descartes, thereby preserving the body’s value and distinctive relationship with one’s identity as an embodied being with embodied functions that the bible seems to emphasize. One such view is the Bodily Soul view, which holds that, while the soul requires embodiment for proper functioning, the disembodied soul can retain identity.[28] The body is both the means by which a person exercises their subjective agency in the world, and a physical object that moves through the world and interacts with other physical objects.[29] Thus in this view, the distinction between body and soul isn’t as stark as it is in Cartesian dualism. Instead, body and mind are two different modes of the same unified being which possesses both mental and physical properties.[30]
Nevertheless, we have reasons to reject even these more integrated versions of substance dualism, like the Bodily Soul view. We can begin to see these reasons when considering the substance dualist response to the interaction problem. The interaction problem stems from three starting point intuitions regarding the mind and body. These are (1) the body is physical, (2) the mind is non-physical, and (3) physical effects always have physical causes. Different theories of mind are characterized by how they resolve the logical tension between these three assumptions. For instance, physicalist theories are committed to (1) and to (3), and so will either explain away (2), such in with fully reductionist theories, or provide an account of how the non-physical mind is dependent on physical entities that can enter into causal relationships. Substance dualism rejects (3) in favor of the view that at least some physical effects can have non-physical causes. This seems, to me, to be what substance dualism at minimum is committed to. [31]
This is, however, where the problem lies for substance dualism. There is an assumption that at least some entities are wholly subject to and describable by the laws of physics. This idea is loaded with a lot of ontological and epistemological commitments that substance dualist Christians might find undesirable, if in the very least unwarranted given their faith. First, Hempel’s Dilemma teaches us that understanding what the “physical” really means is much more difficult than it seems on the face of it. Additionally, to say that the laws of physics maps onto real mind-independent entities is to be a scientific realist about physics, an ontological commitment that non-physicalists do not have a reason to hold. As such, we do not really know what the “physical” entails, and it could entail what we consider to be phenomenal properties, a point that panpsychists are quick to make.
Some may counter that I am misrepresenting substance dualism. There is no commitment to scientific entities, just that there are entities distinct from consciousness. My counter is to say that if we make this distinction, that some things are fundamentally conscious and some things aren’t,[32] we put ourselves in danger of Cartesian dualism. That without a firm distinction between the physical and non-physical given to us by descriptions from the laws of physics, we do not actually have reason to believe there is a distinction. In other words, we don’t have reason to believe that some physical effects have non-physical causes because we don’t have reason to believe reality is really bifurcated between physical and non-physical things, and to believe so gives the physicalist’s position too much credence. While continuing to reject physicalism as entirely incompatible with the biblical data concerning human ontology, we should at least consider an alternative monist view of the soul and body that may be able to resolve these difficulties better than substance dualism. In other words, we should consider whether panpsychism is compatible with biblical Christianity, and we will do so in Part II.[33]
[1] David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford University Press, 1996), xii-xiii.
[2] Chalmers, The Conscious Mind, xii.
[3] Jaegwon Kim, Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation (MIT Press, 1998), 5-6.
[4] Brandon Rickabaugh and J. P. Moreland, The Substance of Consciousness: A Comprehensive Defense of Contemporary Substance Dualism (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2024), 13-14.
[5] Chalmers, The Conscious Mind, 298-299; David J. Chalmers, “The Combination Problem for Panpsychism,” in Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Godehard Bruntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla (Oxford University Press, 2016), 179.
[6] Galen Strawson, The Subject of Experience (Oxford University Press, 2017), 4-6.
[7] Genesis 2:7, ESV.
[8] John J. Davis, Paradise to Prison: Studies in Genesis (Salem, WI: Sheffield Publishing Company, 1998), 76.
[9] Davis, Paradise to Prison, 76-77.
[10] Mark 12:30, ESV.
[11] 2 Corinthians 4:7, ESV.
[12] 2 Corinthians 4:16, ESV.
[13] 2 Corinthians 4:18, ESV.
[14] 2 Corinthians 4:10.
[15] 2 Corinthians 5:1, ESV.
[16] 2 Corinthians 5:2, ESV; Ben Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995), 391.
[17] 2 Corinthians 5:3, ESV.
[18] Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth, 391.
[19] 2 Corinthians 5:6, ESV.
[20] Joel Sienkiewicz, personal conversation.
[21] Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth, 391.
[22] Pierre Duhem, “The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory,” in Arguing About Science, ed. Alexander Bird and James Ladyman (New York: Routledge, 2013), 655.
[23] Duhem, “The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory,” 655-657.
[24] Duhem, “The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory,” 656.
[25] Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro, A Brief History of the Soul (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 67.
[26] Goetz and Taliaferro, A Brief History of the Soul, 68.
[27] Goetz and Taliaferro, A Brief History of the Soul, 69.
[28] Rickabaugh and Moreland, The Substance of Consciousness, 325.
[29] Rickabaugh and Moreland, The Substance of Consciousness, 325-326.
[30] Rickabaugh and Moreland, The Substance of Consciousness, 326.
[31] This analysis of the mind and body stands in contrast to Rickabaugh and Moreland’s analysis which views emergentism, a non-reductionist theory, as substance dualist. I argue that at minimum substance dualism views the non-physical as causally efficient outside of any dependence relation with the physical. See Rickabaugh and Moreland, The Substance of Consciousness, 315.
[32] A substance dualist may counter that he or she is not saying that consciousness is fundamental, only that conscious entities are distinct. I counter that this claim is compatible with non-reductive physicalism and isn’t reflective of substance dualism as a distinct view of the mind and body.
[33] I want to thank Rich Holland and Gary Osmundsen for helping me refine and better articulate these ideas.
Lanell M. Mason is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Christian Worldview Honors at GCU’s College of Theology. She earned a M.A. in Philosophy from Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology and a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. Her research interests include philosophy of mind, phenomenal properties, perceptual epistemology, and the metaphysics of virtue ethics. She and her husband Phil have been married for 6 years and have two kids.