Negative Preference Utilitarianism
An Axiological Comparison with Early Buddhism
B.Contestabile First version 2014 Last version 2026
1. Background
2. Negative Preference Utilitarianism
2.1 Definition
2.2 Standard Interpretation
3.1 Definition
3.2 Nirwana
4. Comparison
4.1 The Devaluation of Happiness
4.2 Internal and External Perspective
4.3 The Reverse Repugnant Conclusion
4.4 The Negative Repugnant Conclusion
5. Discussion
5.1 Amata
5.2 Cosmic Consciousness
5.3 Panpsychism
5.4 Early Forms of Life
Abstract
Negative preference utilitarianism (NPU) emerged as a variant of negative utilitarianism, which dates back to the mid-20th century. Key roots are in Karl Popper (1940s–1950s), who emphasized minimizing suffering rather than maximizing happiness. The preference version developed as preference utilitarianism became prominent in the 1960s–1970s (e.g., R.M. Hare, Peter Singer), with some theorists giving absolute or lexical priority to reducing preference-frustration.
Christoph Fehige explicitly links NPU to Buddhism, stating that maximizers of preference satisfaction should call themselves minimizers of preference frustration, and concluding that "Buddha is on his side".
Research question
Buddhism and NPU both strive to minimize preference-frustration.
Why is Buddhism still influential and NPU a philosophical non-starter?
Result
In Buddhism worldly happiness is downgraded by the doctrine of rebirth. The doctrine posits that desires (attachments) create karmic seeds, which then lead to rebirth and subsequent suffering. NPU has no plausible explanation for denying the intrinsic value of preference-satisfaction.
In Buddhism non-existence is interpreted as end of rebirths and entry into Nirwana, a perfect state beyond the human mind. In contrast, NPU considers non-existence as a neutral state. For that reason, Buddhism avoids the Reverse Repugnant Conclusion and NPU does not.
In short: Without metaphysical assumptions, NPU is counter-intuitive for most people.
1.1 Background
Negative preference utilitarianism (NPU) emerged as a variant of negative utilitarianism, which dates back to the mid-20th century. Key roots lie in Karl Popper (1940s–1950s), who emphasized the minimization of suffering rather than the maximization of happiness. The preference version developed as preference utilitarianism became prominent in the 1960s–1970s (e.g., R.M. Hare, Peter Singer), with some theorists giving absolute—or at least lexical—priority to reducing preference-frustration.
Christoph Fehige explicitly links NPU to Buddhism, stating that maximizers of preference-satisfaction should call themselves minimizers of preference-frustration, and concluding that "the Buddha is on his side" [Fehige 1998, 518–522].
1.2 Relation to Buddhism
Arguments for a consequentialist interpretation of Buddhist ethics can be found in [Verhaeghen 2015]. The consequentialist ethics which comes closest to Buddhism is negative utilitarianism [Keown 1992, 176] [Contestabile 2014]. Buddhism strives to minimize preference-frustration as does NPU [Contestabile 2010, chapt.2.1].
Among the objections to a consequentialist interpretation are the following:
1. The focus of early Buddhism is on individual salvation.
However, Buddhists believe that teaching the Eightfold Path to everyone is also the best strategy to reduce overall suffering. Justice is realized by the law of karma and rebirth. From this perspective Buddhism can be interpreted as consequentialist ethics.
2. Contemporary philosophers see virtue ethics (sīla) as alternative interpretation of Buddhist ethics [Verhaegen 2015].
However, the karma doctrine teaches that the disrespect of the silas – one of three sections of the Eightfold Path – is retributed by rebirth and suffering. Within the Buddhist belief system, virtue ethics can therefore be given a consequentialist interpretation.
2. Negative Preference Utilitarianism (NPU)
NPU strives to minimize preference-frustration, based on the antifrustrationist axiology [Fricke, 20].
Antifrustrationism can be characterized by the following axiom:
What matters about preferences is not that they have a satisfied existence, but that they don’t have a frustrated existence [Fehige 518].
This is a direct, intuitive rejection of preference utilitarianism's symmetry (satisfaction = good, frustration = bad). Instead, it asserts an asymmetry with the following implications:
- Preference-satisfaction has no intrinsic value. It obtains indirect value if it avoids the frustration of already existing preferences. The only intrinsic value is the absence of frustration.
- Since the non-existence of preferences implies no frustrations, it represents the best possible state of affairs.
- The non-existence of preferences has the same moral value as perfect preference-satisfaction.
Preference utilitarianism assumes that the goodness or badness of the world solely depends on the preferences (interests, desires, attachments) it contains, and on their frustration and satisfaction. The term preference is used in this general sense and is not restricted to a preference of ordering as in many essays on economics. On the level of the individual, this means that whatever makes life worth living can be expressed in terms of preferences.
Preferences must be ordered; otherwise, the theory is meaningless [Broome 1999, 9-10].
- The standard interpretation of NPU treats life satisfaction as the highest-order preference, with non-existence considered morally neutral and therefore assigned value zero.
- A human life that perfectly satisfies all its preferences would, in principle, have value zero. In practice, however, every life contains frustrated preferences and is therefore negatively valued.
[Stanford, chapter 2.4].
- Life satisfaction is a kind of happiness – the World Happiness Report calls it evaluative happiness [Helliwell et al., 2012, 6, 11].
- Life dissatisfaction is a kind of suffering [Gallup 2009].
A prominent example of the connection between preferences (desires) and their hedonic value is the Second Noble Truth.
The value zero assigned to non-existence makes clear that the standard interpretation is a hedonic interpretation (see Fig.1). The replacement of the abstract concept of utility by the concrete meaning avoidance of suffering is called hedonic reduction. Hedonic reduction opens the theory to empirical testing [Hirata, 24]. If we consider only degrees of life satisfaction, as practiced in surveys [Helliwell et al., 2013, 10], then we have a numerical basis for utilitarian aggregation.
Fig.1 Metrics for measuring life satisfaction
White rectangles = satisfaction
Dark rectangles = frustration
Since every life is negatively valued, non-existence is the best possible state. Eliminating preferences and not creating new ones – in analogy to the Third Noble Truth – is therefore the logical goal. This distinguishes NPU from positive preference utilitarianism.
Buddhism emerged out of the soteriology of Indian religious culture. This culture saw human life as an irredeemable realm of suffering, from which one should seek transcendence in an enduring beyond-human condition – a stance that virtually all traditional Buddhist schools, as well as Hinduism and Jainism, perpetuate (Buddhism, Wikipedia).
Historically, Early Buddhism covers the time from the Buddha’s life (5/6th century BC) until roughly the reign of Emperor Ashoka in the mid-3rd century BC. This definition includes the Theravada tradition.
3.2 The Doctrine of Rebirth
According to the doctrine of rebirth, liberation is only possible by weakening worldly attachments. Attachments create karmic seeds for future lives and are often described as the "fuel" (upadana) that keeps the fires of existence burning. Wholesome karma (generosity or kindness) leads to a favorable rebirth, while unwholesome karma (hate or violence) leads to realms of suffering.
The Buddhist cosmology identifies six major realms of rebirth. The islands in Fig.2 are the divisions of the human realm, each with a specific quality of life and a specific chance for spiritual progress. The heavenly planes (svarga) belong to the realm of gods and are not shown in Fig.2.
Fig.2 Buddhist Cosmology: The Human Realm
The four great islands, from a Burmese Buddhist cosmology manuscript
British Library, Or.14004, f.27
However, the ultimate goal is not a favorable rebirth, but the complete cessation of rebirth altogether, which occurs at the death of an enlightened being (Pari-nirvāṇa). To be enlightened means to have attained Nirvana during one’s lifetime, and wholesome karma is the essential vehicle to reach this goal. Once Nirwana is reached, the creation of karma is terminated because the ego-drive is gone. Pari-nirvāṇa finally marks the exhaustion of all residual karma [Breyer, 535].
Is it possible to be reborn in the non-sentient world? For the early Buddhists, the non-sentient world (rocks, water, plants) represents the stage (space, time) and the raw material for the unfolding of samsara. Rebirth, however, requires consciousness (viññāṇa). Because non-sentient things do not possess consciousness, craving (taṇhā) and clinging (upādāna), they cannot be a result of past actions. Nevertheless, the physical elements (atoms, molecules, minerals) serve as the building blocks of life. The karmic energy—if not extinguished—organizes them into suffering structures. The only way to end suffering is to stop the karmic energy.
The imagination of Nirwana is a complex cultural phenomenon, with a different function and a different mindset in popular belief and philosophical analysis. In the lay oriented teachings Nirwana is often described as a place or state of happiness. Moreover, most early Buddhists did not aim for Nirwana immediately. They aimed for heaven (svarga), an intermediate state which was described in vividly blissful, sensory terms.
Insofar as Nirwana is described as bliss it is justified to depict it on the hedonic scale (vertical dimension of the rectangle in Fig.3). But the term bliss must be associated with terms such as non-sensual, transcendent, and divine happiness. Human happiness is transient, whereas Nirwana lasts forever (indicated by the width of the rectangles in Fig.3). The attachment to desires is depicted by the shading (dark means strong attachment). The width of the rectangles indicates that worldly happiness is short-lived, while contemplative happiness lasts longer. In approaching Nirwana, the attachments fade away and spiritual happiness prevails.
Moving from left to right in the Fig.3-diagram means moving up the Buddhist ladder. The contemplative life of Buddhist monks is preferable to the passionate life of non-Buddhists. This assessment applies regardless of whether non-Buddhists are happier than Buddhist monks, because the latter cause less overall suffering in the long run.
Fig.3 Human happiness and Nirwana
Philosophical analysis of Nirwana often uses non-hedonic terms such as “indescribable Absolute” [Fowler, 7]. However, the notion that Nirwana cannot be described in everyday language does not mean that it is fiction, or merely a psychological state. While practitioners may experience Nirwana as a state of liberation during life, the Pali Canon describes a transcendent reality (amata) that exists independent of the human mind.
The most consistent and doctrinal suttas describe Nirwana in negative terms [Fowler, 81] [Webster, 96]. In this interpretation the end of rebirths is a complete cessation (nirodha) of the five aggregates, including the non-arising of consciousness (viññāṇa). However, the Buddha explicitly rejected the view that the end of rebirths (Pari-nirwana) is annihilation. What ceases is the illusion of a permanent self (anatta). Some later traditions, such as Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna, describe Pari-nirwana in positive terms, as the beginning of an impersonal, spiritual form of existence within a transcendent reality.
Buddha remained silent on the post-mortem status of an enlightened person. However, he clearly opposed the idea to identify with the cosmos. Following an extract from the Alagaddupama Sutta [Thanissaro 2004]:
“This cosmos is the self. After death this I will be constant, permanent, and eternal, not subject to change. I will stay just like that for an eternity — Isn't it utterly and completely a fool's teaching?" (…) "Thus, monks, any form or consciousness whatsoever that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near: every form is to be seen as it actually is with right discernment as: This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am.”
Buddha saw this as a fool’s teaching for two reasons. First, in his cosmology there is a periodic expansion and contraction of world-systems (kalpas). All cosmic phenomena are conditioned and impermanent (anicca) and therefore a source of suffering (dukkha). Second, the task is to liberate oneself from the illusion of a permanent self, rather than attempting to expand and preserve it.
4.1 The Devaluation of Happiness
Preference-satisfaction prerequisites preferences. Why does Buddhism strive for the non-existence of preferences (desires)? The Legend of the Four Sights and the First Noble Truth suggest that severe suffering and not minor frustration marks the origin of Buddhist reasoning. In a world of minor frustrations Buddhism would probably never have emerged. However, the doctrine of karma and rebirth holds that the end of rebirths (and thus the end of severe suffering) can only be reached in a state that is completely free from desires (Pari-nirwana). From a secular perspective this looks like the NPU zero-risk ethics, but within the doctrine of karma and rebirth, it resembles the moderate NU.
Early Buddhism devaluates worldly happiness (amisa sukha), but not spiritual happiness (niramisa sukha). Moving from the left to the right in the Fig.3-diagram does not eliminate happiness, it changes the kind of happiness. The doctrine of rebirth posits that worldly happiness creates karmic seeds, which lead to rebirth and suffering. In an axiological sense, a perfectly happy (worldly) life is negative because it is a misleading refuge. The Buddha compared it to a dream; once you wake up (die), you realize you are still trapped in a cycle of repeated decay and death.
In NPU a perfectly happy life is not seen as a misleading refuge. But death may be feared even stronger, because secular people cannot hope to attain a realm like Nirwana. The Buddhist “deathless” and the Hindu “immortality” are a translation of the same word in Pali/Sanskrit: amata [Batchelor 2012, 89], a synonym widely used for Nirwana in early texts. Since NPU death is final, it is experienced as a complete loss. In the words of Tolstoi:
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Is there any meaning in my life that would not be destroyed by the inevitable death that awaits me?
[Tolstoi, 44]
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For illustration imagine that you will have to die tomorrow. Under these premises most of yesterday’s priorities become unimportant. The task in such a situation is to detach from everything that made life worth living, in particular from the attachment to the self. Intense happiness comes with intense attachment to life and an accordingly high frustration from transience. Happiness is experienced as a gift, but later it turns out that it was a credit. The question then is why one should get attached in the first place, even if death is still far away. If the suffering from transience and death is seen as intolerable, then all human lives are characterized by degrees of negativity.
Setting aside the fact that NPU is characterized by zero tolerance: The normative claim that life is undesirable (or worthless) because of its mortality is counter-intuitive for most people. Many think that the positive experiences in life outweigh decay and death. Some even assign value to life because it does not last forever. Others identify themselves with a family, a community, a religion etc., i.e. with values that transcend the individual life. The only logic which makes the devaluation of happy lives plausible is – similar to the person-affecting view [Narveson] – the idea that happiness is not missed. This leads us to the distinction of perspectives.
4.2 Internal and External Perspective
There are two meanings of the term “non-existence of desires”:
(1) An individual without desires (seen from an internal perspective)
(2) The non-existence of individuals (necessarily seen from an external perspective)
Buddha did not consider Nirwana as a metaphysical speculation. In his view, the mind in the fourth jhana (a state of profound stillness) acts like a powerful telescope and acquires higher knowledges. He taught that these "higher knowledges" (abhiññā) were not unique to him; they were skills that his disciples could also cultivate to verify the same truths. Because the external universe is perceived and shaped by sentient consciousness, a sufficiently deep dive into the mind reveals the "blueprint" of the world it inhabits.
However, from a contemporary psychological point of view, Nirwana can be understood as a state of the human mind. During deep states of meditation (specifically the arupa jhanas or "formless absorptions"), the brain’s processing of sensory data, time, and "self-location" shuts down. The meditator experiences a state of absolute stillness, non-duality, and timelessness. In this state, because the "I" (the ego-construct) has temporarily ceased to function, the remaining awareness feels "limitless" and "unconditioned"[Dennison].
Buddha interpreted this meditative state as a dimension that is not subject to the laws of birth and death. He extrapolated an internal subjective experience (the absence of mental agitation) onto an objective structure, independent of the human mind (an unconditioned reality). If the unconditioned (asankhata) is a real place, it provides a location for the stream of consciousness to finally land and extinguish, preventing the next rebirth. The "bliss" is in the mind that has realized it can touch an absolute stillness while still alive [Batchelor 2017]. From this internal perspective the absence of preferences (desires) is morally equivalent to perfect preference-satisfaction, because it is an experience of perfection without missing “whatever makes life worth living”.
However, the standard interpretation of NPU does not take an internal perspective. Non-existence of desires is understood as non-existence of a person [Stanford, chapter 2.4] [Ryberg, 140-141]. This “usual” understanding of non-existence shares the safety and refuge appeal with early Buddhism (not missing anything, and not having to experience the horror of violence, loss, illness, and aging) but lacks the metaphysical dimension. The claim that non-existence has the same moral value as perfect preference-satisfaction is accordingly counter-intuitive for most people. In population ethics this intuition is called Reverse Repugnant Conclusion.
4.3 The Reverse Repugnant Conclusion
NPU is confronted with the following objections:
(1) NPU implies that a perfect life of 1 year has the same value as a perfect life of 100 years [Stanford, chapter 2.4]
In other words: 99 years of non-existence have the same value as 99 perfect years.
(2) A theory about welfare that denies the possibility of lives worth living is quite counter-intuitive [Ryberg, 140-141].
Even an almost perfect life is given a negative value.
If the term non-existence of preferences (desires) is associated with the end of rebirths and entry into Nirwana (i.e. with non-hedonic perfection), then the non-existence of preferences is better than an almost perfect life and Buddhism avoids the Reverse Repugnant Conclusion [Contestabile 2010, chapt.2.4].
In analogy, NPU can only avoid the Reverse Repugnant Conclusion by detaching the non-existence of preferences from the hedonic scale and loading it with metaphysical value [Contestabile 2014, chapt.4].
4.4 The Negative Repugnant Conclusion
NPU avoids the Repugnant Conclusion, but creates an extreme version of the Negative Repugnant Conclusion, which says that a large number of individuals with minimal frustration is morally worse than a small number of individuals with maximal frustration [Broome 2004, 213-214]. A radical solution to this problem consists in disregarding population size and focusing on negative average utilitarianism [Chao 2012]. Average utilitarianism has its own theoretical deficiencies [Arrhenius 2000, 54-57], but despite of that, it remains the most popular axiology among welfare economists [Arrhenius 2000, 53].
In Buddhism the Negative Repugnant Conclusion is mitigated or removed by the strong ethical weight of compassion. In a Buddhist aggregation of life satisfaction scores, the suffering individuals would be given more weight than the happy ones, that is, such reports or indices would work with weighted averages.
In the nirodha interpretation of the Pali Canon, amata (the “deathless”) is defined in negative terms. Amata is widely used as a synonym for Nirwana, but strictly speaking Nirwana denotes the process of cessation or blowing out, while amata denotes the result of this process, which is emptiness (suñyatā), or nothingness. Why is amata the highest value? Emptiness can no longer decay, as it has no components that could separate. Moreover, emptiness is the only unconditional state. While perfect happiness is a conditional value (it depends on circumstances), emptiness is absolute. It is the “safe haven" that cannot be destroyed by any physical or psychological process.
Rather than a separate, transcendent place or mind, amata is a property of the cosmos—specifically, the silence of the cosmos that remains when the "noise" of conditioned existence ceases. In this context the term “noise” is a synonym for the five aggregates, i.e. the entirety of physics. Just as silence is not a sound you can hear, but a state that exists when sound stops, amata is the property (stillness) of the cosmos that remains if there is no physics. In contemporary science, the belief that the cosmos has a property beyond physics is seen as implausible hypothesis. Amata makes more assumptions than necessary to explain the natural phenomena and therefore violates the principle of parsimony.
The fact that Buddha did not elaborate on the nature of amata [Thanissaro 2013, ch. 5] opened a vacuum for interpretation. It is documented that Samkhya, a dualistic school of Indian philosophy [Baus] was known to the young Buddha [Ruzsa, Chapter 1]. According to this doctrine there exists an eternal, indestructible form of consciousness (purusha), that is distinct from and independent of any conception of the self. The mind belongs to the physical world (prakrti) and is conscious only to the extent it receives illumination from this eternal source. Although the Buddha eventually rejected this view, his conception of amata resonates more with Samkhya metaphysics than with Advaida Vedanta. The latter maintained that Brahman is the origin and end of all things, material and spiritual. Regarding the mind-body problem the monistic view of Advaita Vedanta aligns more closely with contemporary cognitive science than the dualistic view of Samkhya.
Buddha explicitly rejected the view that the end of rebirths (Pari-nirwana) is annihilation, but he only justified this view with the insight that there was no permanent self in the first place (anatta). How could the early Buddhists accept a negative description of the ethical goal?
- A positive description of amata (like eternal bliss or union with God) was seen as a trap for the ego. If you describe the goal as a great self or cosmic mind, the ego tries to "own" it or "become" it. By using negative definitions such as emptiness (suññatā), cessation, or blowing out, the Buddha forced the practitioner to let go of all grasping.
- The acceptance of the negative goal relies on a specific psychological projection that turns it into a positive one (see chapter 4.2). The meditator experiences the “silence” as a profound positive—the relief of a burden lifted.
For most non-Buddhists the dissolution of the “noise” of existence does not feel like the discovery of a “natural stillness”, but like a frightening, cold, and nihilistic void—the threat of total annihilation. From a strictly hedonic and impartial view, non-existence only becomes preferable if suffering cannot be compensated by happiness. In such an evaluation most people give more weight to suffering than to happiness, but they do not completely devaluate happiness. A corresponding ethics could be the moderate NU, but not NPU.
It is perhaps because pari-nirwana appears much like total annihilation that later traditions, such as Buddha-nature (2nd–5th c. CE) reframed the goal, not as the cessation of the individual stream of consciousness (cittasantāna), but as the stream’s return to a luminous, cosmic source. In several Tathāgatagarbha texts — most notably the Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda sūtra and the Mahāparinirvāṇa sūtra — Buddha‑nature is portrayed as an indestructible, pure, and eternal awareness underlying all beings. This chapter refers to it as cosmic consciousness.
In the state of enlightenment, the ordinary perception of the self is revealed to be impermanent and illusory, while the transcendent reality, that is experienced in meditation, proves to be indestructible and real. In enlightened beings (which culminates in the bodhisattva’s realization) the stream of consciousness is purified of the karmic "seeds" that create the illusion of a permanent self. Once this distortion is removed, the individual consciousness is seen to dissolve into a cosmic consciousness.
In the Buddha-nature traditions, the relationship between the five aggregates and cosmic consciousness is one of distortion versus source. If the five aggregates are physics, and cosmic consciousness the "ultimate reality”, their relationship can be understood through three interpretive metaphors:
1. In the Ocean metaphor, physics is simply the "vibration" or waves on the surface of a singular, deep substance; the aggregates are not separate from the source but are the source in motion.
2. The Prism metaphor suggests that cosmic consciousness is like pure white light that becomes refracted into the "spectrum" of the five aggregates by the distorting prism of our karmic seeds and ego.
3. Finally, the Three Natures metaphor provides a functional hierarchy: we move from seeing the aggregates as a solid, separate world (imagined), to seeing them as a flowing stream of cause and effect (dependent), until we finally realize that this entire physical process is nothing other than the activity of the underlying source (perfected).
According to quantum field theory there is no absolute nothingness, even the vacuum is not empty. The void is a theoretical limit and not a physically realizable state. From this perspective the metaphors of Buddha-nature resonate more closely with contemporary physics than early Buddhism. The ultimate reality behind known physics (the source) can be associated with what Buddha‑nature texts describe as a cosmic consciousness. However, from an early Buddhist point of view, if Buddha-nature is the source of physics, then it is also the source of samsara and its suffering.
Furthermore, the Theravada (nirodha emphasis) critique argues that cosmic consciousness is a psychological trap—a form of eternalism where the ego, fearing its own end, inflates itself to a universal scale rather than truly letting go. By reframing Nirvana as a "luminous source" or an "impersonal existence," later traditions effectively treat it as a permanent soul (atman) with a Buddhist label. The idea of a cosmic consciousness may have been influenced by Advaita Vedanta [Fowler, 34].
Similarly, a contemporary psychological approach investigates the interests behind beliefs. The belief in a possible reunion with a cosmic consciousness alleviates the fear of death and can therefore be seen as serving this interest.
The need, respectively wish to believe in something is not just an inadequate reason to believe it, but it is always and in itself – if there is no independent evidence – a counterargument to believe it [Tugendhat, 191].
Friedrich Nietzsche saw early Buddhism (which he understood as "true" Buddhism) as the only logical answer to suffering. From his perspective, a development like Mahayana seemed almost like a "betrayal" of the original radicalism, filling Nirvana with (pseudo-)existential content again and perpetuating suffering by creating the illusion of a collective salvation (Nietzsche, 1895/1990, §20–23). He famously called early Buddhism a “nihilistic” religion and associated the Mahayana tradition with later corruption or remnants of popular belief. He also denied the ideal of the bodhisattva and compassion-as-moral-duty, since these elements made Buddhism more like Christianity—something he deeply opposed. In his eyes, Christianity is the friendly mask hiding the face of an arbitrary, cruel and invincible ruler, indirectly serving him with its “slave morality”.
Nietzsche was famously sickly, suffering from near-blindness, paralyzing migraines, and severe digestive issues. How, then, did he manage to embrace suffering (amor fati)? Nietzsche relied heavily on sedatives and opiates for functioning. This biographical fact complicates the image of a purely heroic affirmation of suffering. In any case, Nietzsche’s will to power may not be the most convincing alternative to Buddhism.
Pansychism, like cosmic consciousness, represents a positive metaphysics, whereas amata represents a metaphysics of absence. In contemporary philosophy, a much-discussed form of panpsychism is panexperientialism, the view that conscious experience is present everywhere at a fundamental level. In contrast to Buddha-nature, panexperientialism treats consciousness as a feature of the natural world rather than a transcendent metaphysical source.
The idea of panpsychism is as old as philosophy but has become topical again [Chalmers]. The recent interest in the hard problem of consciousness has revived interest in panpsychism. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life? The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of subjective experience (qualia). The most popular empirically based argument for panpsychism stems from evolution. This argument begins with the assumption that evolution is a process that creates complex systems out of pre-existing properties. but cannot make "entirely novel" properties. Today, the idea of panexperientalism is mainly supported by philosophers who doubt that consciousness can be fully explained by physics. However, the question if consciousness exists at a fundamental level, must be distinguished from its evaluation. Most people view the disintegration of a human mind into countless elements of proto-consciousness as a form of annihilation. The situation is therefore similar to the evaluation of amata; see chapter 5.1.
Philosophers such as William James and David Chalmers have noted that cosmopsychism (a variant of panpsychism where the universe as a whole is conscious) echoes certain Buddha-nature or Vedantic intuitions. In this case early Buddhism would apply the same criticism as the one mentioned in chapter 5.2.
Consciousness is not clear-cut. There is no single dividing line between those species that enjoy the glow of an inner universe and those that don’t. There is not just one single way of being conscious. The animal kingdom is suffused with other kinds of minds and other kinds of consciousness, and they are not just mini versions of human consciousness [Holmes 2017, 31] [Birch].
Some hypotheses maintain that emotions are not required for the existence of consciousness. Insects, for example, could have a sensory consciousness. However, the predominant view is that they lack emotions, due to their simple neural systems. There are some exceptions like bees, but they represent a tiny fraction of the estimated 1019 individual insects. If these assumptions hold, then there could be an immense world of sensory consciousness without emotions. As compared to humans, the intensity of negative experiences is absent, while the quality of positive experiences is not missed. In a random lottery where an individual with consciousness could be picked, the chance to pick an insect is close to 100% and the chance to pick a human is practically nil.
But again, the question if consciousness without emotion exists must be distinguished from its evaluation. Most people view the replacement of human minds by simple patterns of sensory awareness as a form of annihilation, although this replacement eliminates suffering. The situation is therefore similar to the evaluation of amata; see chapter 5.1.
It has been suggested that “minimal phenomenal experience” (as experienced in meditation), allows a glimpse into the experience of simple animals or represents a kind of "memory" of an earlier stage of evolution. But even if meditation does indeed open a door to mental states in an earlier world, it must be noted that Nirwana—the “perfection beyond emotions”—is a state of calm, and mirrors only one aspect of a basically dynamic world.
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