What we are reaching for here is a way of demonstrating that conscious awareness - 'experience' - is intrinsic to the fabric of being, not simply an epiphenomenon that has appeared fortuitously via evolution and genetics. .

Before the Darwinian revolution many biologists considered organic forms to be determined by natural law like atoms or crystals and therefore necessary, intrinsic and immutable features of the world order, which will occur throughout the cosmos wherever there is life. The search for the natural determinants of organic form-the celebrated "Laws of Form"-was seen as one of the major tasks of biology. After Darwin, this Platonic conception of form was abandoned and natural selection, not natural law, was increasingly seen to be the main, if not the exclusive, determinant of organic form. However, in the case of one class of very important organic forms-the basic protein folds-advances in protein chemistry since the early 1970s have revealed that they represent a finite set of natural forms, determined by a number of generative constructional rules, like those which govern the formation of atoms or crystals, in which functional adaptations are clearly secondary modifications of primary "givens of physics." The folds are evidently determined by natural law, not natural selection, and are "lawful forms" in the Platonic and pre-Darwinian sense of the word, which are bound to occur everywhere in the universe where the same 20 amino acids are used for their construction. We argue that this is a major discovery which has many important implications regarding the origin of proteins, the origin of life and the fundamental nature of organic form. We speculate that it is unlikely that the folds will prove to be the only case in nature where a set of complex organic forms is determined by natural law, and suggest that natural law may have played a far greater role in the origin and evolution of life than is currently assumed.

I am merely after what "actual entities" which animals, which plants, which complex systems, have mind or any properties of mind at all?

Clarifying what is the most primitive form of mentality and what posseses it.
The first step in a non materialist non mechanistic view of the universe.

So to connect those two posts - (1) the nature of conscious experience is elusive because it is not and cannot be an object in its own right but (2) there might be a way to understand it as an outcome of expression of natural law rather than as an accidental byproduct of a 'blind process'.

...maybe there is a way in which we can understand mind to be constitutive, not derivative - not just an outcome, but a cause.

Experiences are fossilized signs or quasistable forms of movement that organize the system's past forms of movement in such a way as to have significant consequences for the system's future movement. As signifying they are triadic by nature and thus involve (i) the physical carrier of 'the fossil' (the representamen), (ii) its reference to its significance (the object), and (iii) its potential or actual future-directed effects (the interpretant(s)). The intensification of the sign process takes place at several levels, it is at once physical, biological and psychic. With the emergence of coded autocatalytic life on cell form, the semiotic freedom is intensified at the biological level. Here semiotic intensification manifests itself both by the appearance of qualitative irritability (in cells who selectively can respond to stimuli) and by the emergence of code-duality in the form of cell-lines (with a digital as well as an analog aspect) incorporating past experiences into the future.

The imprints left on the subconscious mind by experience (from this or previous lives), which then color all of life, one's nature, responses, states of mind, etc.

At what point in the "chain of existence" does "experience" disappear?

On what basis does one deny "experience" to quantum particles or events?

Experience does not "emerge" from matter with absolutely no capacity for experience (inert and insensate)

... I think this statement may reflect a misunderstanding of emergence (as opposed to British Emergentism?) ... emergence is not a material matter (pardon the pun ) ... emergence is about organization and dynamics ... emergents do not emerge from matter; emergents emerge as a result of organization and dynamics ... and in fact, matter itself may be an emergent (if Chaisson is right, matter emerged from the dynamics an expanding universe forced upon the energy plasma that was all that there was at the beginning of our universe) ... this is a form of physicalism (a "some wholes are more than the sum of their parts" response to the "every whole is exactly the sum of its parts" of materialism) ... I think to deny that emergence occurs is to default to materialism (since the observed properties of the world cannot be a result of organization and dynamics, they must be a result of the summed properties of matter) or else appeal to the supernatural ... in which case a non-supernatural panpsychism is a form of materialism, is it not? ... and materialism seems to deny the possibility of creativity in this world - if everything that appears in this world must first be a property of matter, then nothing is ever created but only expressed ... is this consistent with your observations of creativity? ... it is not consistent with mine ...
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I understand that rocks dont have a conscious experience that is on par with us humans -no one is going to argue that- but again the question is how do you know that everything (including elementary particles) are endowed with an innate property of experience? when the implication of your own question of, "How would you know?" entails one to be completely mute, and the point moot.

Materialism cannot explain, describe, or account for experience or consciousness at all. It does not deal in experienced phenomena; it deals in empirical observation. Therefore, science can determine if something is conscious only by observing it's behavior or physical structure. But how then does science know what sort of behavior or structure to associate with consciousness? Obviously, the only consciousness we are certain exists is our own, so likeness to our own behavior and physical structure become the criteria for determining consciousness. As we try to determine whether or not other species/things are conscious, materialism has only those criteria: i.e. how similiar is the biology of the specie/thing to our own?

Materialism claims that consciousness arises from a brain, i.e. that consciousness arises only from a certain physical structure and not others - but you cannot explain HOW consciousness arises from that structure - you cannot explain what properties in that structure, which are absent in others, allow it to generate experience.

And, you fail to recognize that this is an impossible task, because science deals only in physical properties and consciousness is not defined in terms of physical properties.

The claim which requires proof is the materialist (i.e. that consciousness arises from a certain physical structure only), not the other, which rests on the simple logic that, in absence of a demonstration of HOW consciousness arises from only certain physical structures, there is no reason to assume that consciousness is limited only to those structures.

I would regard creativity as the ultimate metaphysical ontologic prinicple and process as the mechanism. Both the material and the mental could be said to emerge from underlying process with creativity as the ultimate value.

It is not so much an argument against "emergence" as a general phenomena as an argument against physicalism and "emergence" as a theory of mind. Panpsychism, panexperientialism would be alternative meta theories of mind. Almost all panpsychists have a monistic worldview and most of them appear to have a process view of reality.

We construct our own realities. As thing, externally existent (I presume), I am interacting with other things in the external world, and that interaction determines the manner in which I divide the world: i.e. individuate the monism (e.g. to distinguish a tree from the squirrel on its branch, as something seperate). Being-from-that-perspective is simply experiencing the world so divided; experiencing objects and their relations to one another. So my interactions (as a thing in the external world) determine my experiences (as myself in the familiar phenomenological world). The same with all other things, stones, ferns, etc.

As I have said before, dont try and point the finger at ONLY 'materialism' (I hate fossilized terminology like that one) for not being able to explain consciousness -for ALL viewpoint CANNOT explain consciousness. We cannot know what is or is not an experiential entity as of right now, and this is noted by the contrasting statements in your reply. Saying everything has 'experience' is equivalent to creationists saying 'goddidit' for X phenomenon -there is not explanatory power in that statement.

This is true that I cannot explain how consciousness arises from the brain, but at least I am capable of saying that I cant.

As we have seen in the past, 'phenomenal gaps' have been closed and explained away. There is no reason to give up on a problem and say that science cannot explain it. Likewise, there is no reason to say that since we cannot now that 'materialism' (ugh) is false.

That is not true at all. From certain physicalist perspectives consciousness is a process of the brain which thus renders it a physical phenomenon.

Panpsychism is asserting a positive claim about reality and thus has the burden.

... so if reality construction is a result of our interactions with a world, could this also be characterized as "We co-construct our realities"? ... Dewey also interestingly points out that what we pick out as relevant is problem-specific ... that our experiences are just as much a function of the problems we face as they are a function of our senses ... that each particular problem we face brings forth its own worldview of relevancies ... and that the philosophical mistake often made is to latch on to the worldview brought forth by a particularly important problem as "The Real" in disassociation from the problem that initially brought it forth ... so perhaps it's even better to say "We co-construct our many worldviews"? ...

Only materialism

only materialism

only materialism

only a problem for materialistic

materialism

Materialism

materialism

I don't have any desire to explain this, because I don't believe that 'matter' and 'physical things' are actually external of consciousness, but rather that they are experienced as concepts in consciousness. So yes, I'm pointing the finger at science alone - because the inability to explain this is only a problem for science. It constitutes a flaw or gap in scientific theory; whereas it is a non-issue for phenomenology.

If someone wants to define consciousness as a physical process, that's fine - but that merely avoids the problem. The issue is what relation consciousness (as 1st person experience) has to the physical world.

How is the claim that 'all things enjoy some form fo experience' any more a positive claim than that 'only things with brains enjoy experience?'

Remember, what I am saying about panpsychism I recognize as being purely speculative. I'm not claiming that 'this is the case, this is the truth.' I cannot prove my assertion, nor disprove yours; you cannot prove your assertion or disprove mine. If you find my speculation, my hypothesis, to be silly or improbable, then feel free not to accept it. I offered it for consideration - I don't intend to offer proof. As I said, there is no possible proof.