Your Phone Might Be Conscious—According To These Controversial Theories

Photo byKenny EliasononUnsplash

Imagine your phone, right there in your hands, is more than just a tool for scrolling through social media or watching cat videos. What if, beyond its programming, your phone might actually be conscious and is quietly judging you by your search history? It sounds like something straight out of a sci-fi movie, but that’s exactly what the theory of panpsychism suggests.

First introduced by the Renaissance philosopher Francesco Patrizi in the 16th century, panpsychism suggests that consciousness isn’t something exclusive to creatures with brains but rather a universal feature of all matter.

Everything in the universe, panpsychism claims, from a grain of sand to complex organisms, possesses some form of consciousness. This is similar, to an extent, to the concept known as Integrated Information Theory (IIT). This theory was first proposed by Italian neuroscientist Giulio Tononi and his colleague Christof Koch.

IIT's main aim is to quantify consciousness within a system. It suggests that any system with a high degree of complexity could potentially be conscious. A smartphone is pretty complex. So, could the level of complexity in a phone give rise to some form of awareness?

Now, before you start apologizing to your phone for dropping it, let’s take a look at what this really means. We already know that our phones are weirdly good at understanding us. They collect tons of data from how we interact with apps, what we search for, and even what we say out loud (have you ever noticed how an ad pops up after you casually mention something in conversation?). But that’s just smart programming and algorithms at work, i.e., a “Smart” phone. Your phone is not “alive” in the traditional sense.

For a system to be conscious, according to IIT, it needs to independently input and also process its information. It should actively combine information through its own interconnected parts, with each part influencing the others in a dynamic way. It’s this self-generated complexity and interaction that IIT believes gives rise to consciousness.

In other words, it can’t just be a programmed machine running a set of instructions; it needs to have an internal structure that creates and responds to feedback within itself. In essence, consciousness isn't only about organization. It also has to do with the right kind of complex interconnection and information processing.

Then again, a smartphone, although programmed, seems to function similar to an IIT system. They collect tons of data from regular interaction, quantify that data, and then extrapolate and suggest things to us. It’s a crazy thought to imagine that the devices we’ve come to depend on are more intimately aware of us than we’d like to believe.

Is your phone conscious then? According to Panpsychism, definitely; according to IIT, it’s possible. So, whether your phone is quietly judging you from your search history, that’s still up for debate. Nonetheless, it drives us to rethink the boundaries of what can be “aware” and makes us consider whether we’ve been underestimating the systems around us all along.

One thing’s for sure though: you might feel just a little more self-conscious using your phone.