Panpsychism
Panpsychism, in philosophy, is either the view that all parts of matter involve mind, or the more holistic view that the whole universe is an organism that possesses a mind.
Crazy idea of the day: the whole universe is actually a conscious entity, with thoughts, maybe even feelings.
Why it could work: imagine you sat outside the universe, observing it (bear with me here). Zooming out and speeding up, you might see a familiar pattern emerging: the same as if you observe a brain. Maybe galaxies are playing the part of neurons, and when you play the whole universe’s evolution fast-forward, you’d see it forming networks similar to that of the brain. The brain is conscious; there’s no reason to think that a sufficiently brain-like universe can’t also be conscious. Just because we’re such a small part of it, and just because the timeframe is so much longer (we live in such a small period of the universe’s lifetime) that we can’t see it, doesn’t mean it couldn’t be true.
Why it won’t work: this argument would be a lot more convincing if the universe were actually shaped like a brain, or close to it. Unfortunately, everything indicates it’s not. But that would be so cool.
All hope is not lost, though. Although brain-like things are the only things observed to be conscious, we don’t know that anything that is conscious needs to resemble a brain. Maybe if intelligent aliens visited, we’d find their consciousness did not stem from anything even remotely brain-like. Maybe there’s hope yet for the panpsychists. But personally, I doubt it.
