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Reductionism
The materialist, physicalist, or mechanical view of the universe is reductionist.
Reductionists try to explain the properties of complex wholes in terms of the most basic units from which they are composed. They would argue that the properties of say, a protein molecule, are completely explicable in terms of the properties of its atoms, electrons, protons, etc.
But if complex things such as living organisms can be broken down into their component parts, how is it that the whole has properties that none of its components have? Can we really expect to explain a tune that somebody whistles in terms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and oxygen molecules? Or can we ignore the tune by saying it isn't real?
Things that feel (panexperientialism)
The proposition of panexperientialism is that subjectivity (feeling of some sort) exists in individual entities such as electrons, atoms, cells, and organisms. But in saying that an electron is attracted by a proton we mean that the electron takes into account internally the proton in its environment. All entities, be they electrons, protons, cells or humans, do have internal relations. Hence all entities can be called organisms. Thus the definition of an individual entity is that which acts and feels as one.
When using the word feeling in relation to an electron we are not proposing that the electron is conscious. Feelings may be conscious, as in ourselves, or unconscious and perhaps highly attenuated, as in an electron.
Panexperientialism means the presence of experience in some form all the way down to the most fundamental particles. To be real, an entity must 'feel.'
[Anything having sufficient substance to be considered as individual rather than compound is an entity that must feel. Thus even the gluons that hold quarks together in the atomic nucleus must be feeling entities--this despite the fact that gluons, in mediating the switch of 'up' and 'down' properties of quarks, pop out from the vacuum, do their thing in less than a billion billionth of a second, then return to the vacuum.]
A distinction has to be made between individual entities and aggregates of individual entities such as a chair, a table, a pile of sand, a rock. An aggregate is a grouping of entities that does not lead to a higher order of unified experience. The pan in panexperientialism means that all things are either experiences or are aggregates of individuals that are experiences. A molecule (its atoms interact with one another) is an example of an entity having experiences. A rock and a car are examples of aggregates--are without feelings. It is possible to have a high degree of organization without having any unified experience.
Panexperientialism generalizes experience (feeling) to all individual entities such as electrons and compound individuals like cells. Consciousness is understood as a high-level experience. It involves memory of the past and anticipation of future events. At its highest level it involves richness of experience that may have components of zest and harmony.
Science, for the most part, studies aggregates. And when it does study individual entities or their compounds, it does so as if they were aggregates--machines that have no internal relations, no feelings, no subjectivity. For the most part, this is appropriate for the purposes of studying how a thing works. However to interact with an elephant as a machine rather than an elephant having real feelings and idiosyncrasies could be courting personal disaster.
Higher to lower v's lower to higher
Human experience is a higher level exemplification of reality. Instead of looking at nature from the bottom up as do the reductionists, panexperientalists look from the top down. In doing so, they look from the aspect of nature that they know most directly--their inner life experience, experience that is known in a way nothing else is.
Classical biology sees all organisms as machines. Classical physics does the same with its particles. An alternative is to interpret all in the light of that aspect of reality that we know most intimately. This leads to the panexperiential view of nature.
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