Can panpsychism solve the mind-body problem?

[AgnosticBoy]

I've been reading some interesting articles about panpsychism and how it relates to the mind-body problem. The only problem I'm running into is that I'm not finding a direct answer to the crux of the mind-body problem, that is, how 2 different substances (one physical and the other nonphysical) can interact, esp. in a causal way. Here's one good description of panpsychism:

Panpsychism (from pan and psyche, the Greek for all and soul, respectively) is the doctrine that what exists is sentient or made up of sentient parts; sometimes, but perhaps less clearly, the doctrine is formulated as the claim that experience is a fundamental feature of all reality. In this context such words as “sentient” and “experience” do not mean anything as complex as the reflective experience or sense experience which human beings enjoy: what is meant is that the ultimate constituents of reality possess some awareness of the surrounding environment, however vague and indistinct that awareness may be and however difficult it may be for us to imagine its specific nature. Early versions of the doctrine may be traced back to the origin of Western philosophy. Process philosopher Charles Hartshorne, one of its most powerful advocates, mentions in this connection Plato’s notion that the soul is the principle of all motion as well as Aristotle’s idea that all things are moved by their love of God (Hartshorne 1950, 443).
(Emphasis added)
Source: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110333299.1.383/pdf

Or this:

Cosmopsychism is not to be confused with pantheism: the view that the universe is God.[14] Just as the micropsychist holds that electrons have experience but not thought, so the cosmopsychist holds that the universe has some kind of experience, but may refrain from attributing thought or agency to the universe. It could be that the consciousness of the universe is a gigantic mess that doesn’t add up to anything coherent enough to ground cognition.

Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/#IntrNatuArgu

Any thoughts? Does a view like this address the mind-body problem in any way? I think it does provide an alternative as to the place of consciousness in the world if it is not caused by a brain (I don't believe brain causes consciousness).

 

[AgnosticBoy]

I'm beginning to warm up to the idea of panpsychism. It's not because it is proven, but rather it's because it is a reasonable option via a process of elimination. It's one of the 3 viable options that we have to explain where consciousness comes from.

The options:
1. Consciousness is caused by the brain and so it's nothing more than brain activity
2. Consciousness comes from the brain as an emergent property
3. Consciousness is a fundamental property of the Universe, like mass and charge.

To elaborate on option 3:

Part of the appeal of panpsychism is that it appears to provide a workaround to the question posed by Chalmers: we no longer have to worry about how inanimate matter forms minds because mindedness was there all along, residing in the fabric of the universe. Chalmers himself has embraced a form of panpsychism and even suggested that individual particles might be somehow aware. He said in a TED Talk that a photon “might have some element of raw, subjective feeling, some primitive precursor to consciousness.” Also on board with the idea is neuroscientist Christof Koch, who noted in his 2012 book Consciousness that if one accepts consciousness as a real phenomenon that’s not dependent on any particular material—that it’s “substrate-independent,” as philosophers put it—then “it is a simple step to conclude that the entire cosmos is suffused with sentience.”

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-consciousness-part-of-the-fabric-of-the-universe1/

There is a 4th option though which dualism offers:
4. Consciousness comes from God and is separate from the brain.