PANENTHEISM AND PANPSYCHISM: Are they Interrelated?

Purushottama Bilimoria

Dear Colleague,

You are invited to participate in the next session of the Logic and Religion Webinar Series which will be held on March 17, 2022, at 4pm CET with the topic:

PANENTHEISM AND PANPSYCHISM: Are they Interrelated?

Speaker: Purushottama Bilimoria (University of Melbourne, Australia; San Francisco State University, USA; RUDN University, Russia)

Chair: Anand Vaidya (San José State University, USA).

Please register in advance!

https://www.logicandreligion.com/webinars

Abstract: There has been of late a wave of interest in panentheism, which is pertinent to religious philosophies of both the Western and Eastern traditions. The dominant contemporary descriptions of panentheism however appear to be biased toward theistic presuppositions – the Missing God help, even toward monotheism!  Here I offer an alternative account, paying heed to the term’s etymology, and the concept’s roots in Indian religions, with its close counterparts in pantheism and polytheism. I next turn to panpsychism and explore various approaches to this thesis, with particular reference to certain conceptual problems (such as the ‘binding issue’) that have been raised in recent literature. I then draw on Indian theories to address this problem, particularly from the Viśiṣtādvaita, Sāṃkhya and Jaina philosophical systems. The principal concern in the second part will be on the question of the kind of – if any – relation that can be drawn between pantheism and panpsychism: is there a necessary connection? Even so, could it be that certain forms of panentheism entail a version of panpsychism (or the converse); or, to put it another way (a thesis I will propose and defend), that panentheism without panpsychism (of a particular kind) is blind, and panpsychism without panentheism (of a particular kind) is empty.

With best wishes,

Francisco de Assis Mariano   

The University of Missouri-Columbia