The science and philosophical implications of bioelectric fields

The growing interest in Panpsychism, and to a lesser extent other immaterial metaphysics, will also play a role. ["Lesser extent" for the others not because of any deep flaw but because from what I'm hearing panpsychism has the most broad popularity at the moment.]

Before I would take Panpsychism seriously I'd want to know what the smallest unit of psi looks like.

I mean if (as is often assumed) each elementary particle is somehow conscious, there really is a fundamental problem in that in QM all electrons are IDENTICAL. Protons behave the same way. This comes out in the structure of the wavefunction, in that given two electrons, their common wavefunction, psi(x1,y1,z1,x2,y2,z2) is such that if you swap the two particles around in the wavefunction the result changes sign! A similar result holds if you construct a wavefunction out of more electrons.

Now think about it, if two particles are IDENTICAL, that would mean that if they are proto-conscious (or whatever), every electron must be proto-conscious in the same way! The same concept applies to protons, but in many QM calculations the protons (which are about 1836 times as heavy as electrons) and so can be approximated as being classical particles just to simplify the calculation. Electrons, protons, and neutrons have this property.

I'm sorry to belabour this point, but I think people (including I suppose the scientists that propose Panpsychism) just glaze over this symmetry and say something like, "well maybe the particles are identical except for their consciousness"!

OK, if we don't attach consciousness to fundamental particles what do we attach it to and why? According to quantum field theory (that I don't know in a mathematical sense) fundamental particles are excitations of a fundamental matter field - so I can't really see how you could attach proto-conscious at this most fundamental level.

Can anyone suggest what the smallest unit of consciousness might be (and why)?

David