Spinoza, Leibniz, and William James

Spinoza (1632 to 1677) argued in the Ethics that there is only one substance, which he called God or Nature.^[1] Everything that exists is a mode of it. This substance has infinite attributes, of which humans know two: thought and extension. Mind and body are therefore one thing understood in two ways.

Because thought is an attribute of the whole, everything has a mental aspect. Spinoza wrote that all individual things are animate, though in different degrees.

What Universal Panpsychism shares: one ultimate reality of which everything is an expression. Compare The Source.

What it does not share: Spinoza's God has no purposes and does not act for ends. He also denied personal survival of death in any ordinary sense.

Leibniz (1646 to 1716) proposed in the Monadology that reality is made of simple, indivisible units called monads.^[2] Monads are not material. Each has perception and something like desire. Most are dim. Some, like human minds, are conscious and rational.

Every monad reflects the entire universe from its own point of view. Monads do not affect one another. They agree because God set them in harmony from the beginning.

What Universal Panpsychism shares: mind at every level of nature, in degrees, and the idea of a complete world seen from each point of view. Compare Incarnation and direct experience and Reality Entanglement Theory.

What it does not share: Leibniz's monads are many and distinct from the start. They do not come from the division of one mind.

James (1842 to 1910), a founder of American psychology, matters here for three reasons.

1. The combination problem. In The Principles of Psychology he gave the classic objection to panpsychism: separate feelings do not add up to one mind.^[3] Later, in A Pluralistic Universe, he became more sympathetic to the view.
2. Religious experience. The Varieties of Religious Experience treated mystical and conversion experiences as data to be studied, and found common features across traditions.^[4]
3. The transmission theory. In his 1898 lecture Human Immortality he argued that the brain might transmit or filter consciousness instead of producing it, as a prism transmits light.^[5] If so, the dependence of mind on brain would not rule out survival of death.

James also helped found the American Society for Psychical Research.

What Universal Panpsychism shares: the method of treating first-person reports as evidence, and the transmission idea, which underlies its reading of near-death experiences.

What it does not share: James kept these questions open and did not commit to a system.

Calling these thinkers ancestors does not mean they would agree with the framework. Each holds positions that conflict with it. They show that its central idea, mind as basic to nature, has serious precedent. They do not show that its further claims are true.

1. Spinoza, B. (1677). Ethics.
2. Leibniz, G. W. (1714). Monadology.
3. James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. Henry Holt.
4. James, W. (1902). The varieties of religious experience. Longmans, Green.
5. James, W. (1898). Human immortality: Two supposed objections to the doctrine. Houghton Mifflin.