Panpsychism
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The doctrine that all matter has a mental aspect. uncountable, usually
"As we shall see in chapter 3, the Tiantai school of Buddhism advocated a version of panpsychism without such beliefs, and this demonstrates that the panpsychist thesis stands on its own, and is logically independent of the claim that mentality can somehow be attributed to the universe as a whole."
- 2 Any specific doctrine or system of panpsychism. countable, usually
"Whitehead devised such a conception, which to my mind definitely supersedes the panpsychisms of the history of metaphysics."
Example
More examples"Shintō and Dào are Animisms, with ideas tending towards panpsychism or pantheism, respectively the mind-like aspect or the god-like aspect, at some level, in everything."
Etymology
From pan- + psychism, a calque of German Panpsychismus (1874), from Latin pampsychia (1591). Cognate with Ancient Greek πάμψυχος (pámpsukhos, “in full life”) and (modern) Greek παμψυχισμός (pampsychismós, “panpsychism”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.