panpsychism
Explanation
This comic explores panpsychism -- the philosophical position that consciousness is a fundamental feature of all matter -- by showing how it sounds in casual conversation.
In the first panel, a character introduces herself: "I'm a panpsychist. I believe that consciousness is composed of or arises from tiny, fundamental mental properties, and that some portion of consciousness exists in all matter."
Her companion responds bluntly: "Stupid."
In the second panel, the panpsychist tries to defend her view by pointing out that mainstream science has its own bizarre implications: "Maybe try to be open-minded. Seagulls eat plastic bags, we're trying to make fish nuclear, we keep building roads, you eat uranium and literally go to war due to semantic confusion about religious doctrine..." (listing absurd but true facts about human behavior).
Her companion repeats: "Stupid."
In the third panel, she tries a different approach: "Okay, that's fair. I'm a thermodynamicist. I think everything around us is in the slow but thermodynamically inevitable process of--" Her companion cuts in: "Okay, but then you do agree that everything can think?"
She responds: "Like I said, it's stupid."
The comic's humor lies in the social dynamics of philosophical discussion. The panpsychist's view -- that all matter has some form of consciousness -- is treated as inherently absurd regardless of how she frames it. When she tries to point out that commonly accepted facts about reality are equally bizarre, her companion doesn't engage. But when she tries to disguise her view under the respectable label of "thermodynamics," her companion immediately sees through it and circles back to the consciousness claim. The final twist is that even she seems to concede the point, suggesting that panpsychism is one of those philosophical positions that even its proponents find difficult to defend with a straight face. The comic captures the frustration of holding a minority philosophical position that technically has serious academic defenders but sounds absurd in plain language.