Panpsychism: A biological approach to the nature of consciousness

This thesis addresses the problem of consciousness—one of the central issues in the philosophy of mind—within a naturalistic framework. It systematically discusses the main approaches to the mind–body problem (monism, dualism, materialism) and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of intermediate positions such as property dualism and emergentism. The fundamental impasse of these approaches lies in their inability to explain how consciousness can seemingly "emerge from nothing" in nature, or why consciousness is present in some forms of matter but absent in others. Thus, consciousness remains a problem that resists reductive and emergentist accounts, demanding a broader explanatory framework. Against this backdrop, panpsychism is examined as an alternative solution, positing consciousness as a fundamental and continuous feature of nature. The study traces its development from historical origins to contemporary debates, analyzing both the supporting arguments and the major criticisms it faces. Panpsychism's strengths lie in its intuitive appeal in defending the continuity of consciousness and its resistance to reductivism, while its weakness centers on the difficulty of explaining how conscious qualities at the micro-level combine into unified conscious experience. This dual character highlights both the appeal and the unresolved challenges of panpsychism. The original contribution of this thesis is the development and defense of a "cell-based panpsychism" model. This model interprets consciousness not as a property of subatomic entities, but as emerging at the level of living cells, thereby avoiding both the explanatory gap of emergentism and the combination problem of classical panpsychism. The organizational power of cellular life is defended as the fundamental explanatory ground for understanding consciousness. In conclusion, this thesis presents an account of consciousness that transcends the limits of reductive materialism while avoiding entanglement in dualistic dichotomies. Within this framework, it reinterprets the continuity intuition of panpsychism on a biological level, opening up the question of how the mental can take root in nature. In doing so, it develops a perspective that highlights not only the human mind but also the intrinsic connection between all living existence and consciousness. The thesis designates this holistic approach as "biological panpsychism" and introduces it as an original contribution that can enrich ongoing debates in contemporary philosophy of mind. The significance of this perspective lies in its capacity to conceptualize consciousness as a fundamental feature of nature, while grounding phenomenal experience—something reductive approaches struggle to explain—in the continuity of biological processes. Thus, the thesis does not merely recount historical and contemporary discussions of panpsychism; it also provides a new orientation that contributes to both philosophical and scientific dialogue.