Hylopathism

Hylopathism, in philosophy, is the belief that some or all matter is sentient or that properties of matter in general give rise to subjective experience. It is opposed to the assertion that consciousness results exclusively from properties of specific types of matter, e.g. brain tissue.

Etymology and specific definition

The term is relatively uncommon even in philosophical discussion, and is often erroneously equated with panpsychism despite notable differences between the two views that are evident in the etymologies of the two words: "panpsychism" derives from the Greek pan, "all", and psyche, "soul" or "mind" (the terms consciousness and experience being preferred in philosophy), and implies the sentience of all things; hylopathism derives from hylo-, which is translated either as "matter" or "wood" depending on its context, and whose English equivalent is hyle, and pathos, "emotion" or "suffering" (and, by extension, experience). Hylopathism is thus not necessarily a belief in the universality of sentience, but rather in the derivation of sentience from matter.

gollark: Nope! Tau dropped that ages ago.
gollark: Interesting fact: there is a dedicated PotatOS backup bunker in case of all life on the surface of the overworld being wiped out. It's a solid sphere of bedrock buried in some location somewhere with storage, dedicated melon machines, a trilaterator, and a copy of the potatOS DSK.
gollark: Yep!
gollark: After the Guardian Incident potatOS does not have EZCopy™ enabled on SC, even though that was caused by a bizarre CC race condition or something.
gollark: That's the official line, anyway, yes.

See also

Notes
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