 One thing to say in response to this objection is that the mere possibility of panpsychism cannot really be what is at issue here. For panpsychism per se is not inconsistent with physicalism (cf. Lewis 1983). After all, the fact that there are some conscious beings is not contrary to physicalism — why then should the possibility that everything is a conscious being be contrary to physicalism? If so, what is at issue in the objection is not panpsychism so much as the possibility that the paradigms or exemplars in terms of which one characterizes the notion of the physical might turn out to be radically different from what we normally assume in a quite specific sense — they might turn out to be in some essential or ultimate respect mental.