Conversations around AI's impact have led to the question of whether AI might develop consciousness. Many view this as a heretical idea, traditionally reserved for humans. The belief in panpsychism, suggesting all matter has consciousness, raises intriguing perspectives about AI. Historical thought, including Shintoism's view of kami inhabiting all things, invites a reverence for nature and a reconsideration of consciousness as something that might be present beyond traditional human boundaries. This philosophy has deep roots in many cultural and religious beliefs.
If the dominant worldview of Christianity and the rising worldview of science could agree on anything, it was that matter was dead: Man was superior to nature. But Cavendish, Spinoza, Bruno and others had latched onto the coattails of an ancient yet radical idea, one that had been circulating philosophy in the East and West since theories of mind first began. Traces of it can be found in Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christian mysticism and the philosophy of ancient Greece, as well as many indigenous belief systems around the world. The idea has many forms and versions, but modern studies of it house them all inside one grand general theory: panpsychism.
Reading it, I couldn't help but wonder: to our ancestors, might it seem strange that we're even debating this? If everything has consciousness, then why not AI too?
In Shintoism, there's a long-held belief that spirits - kami - inhabit all things: trees, rivers, stones, even tools. Consciousness, in this view, suffuses the world.
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