His latest book Galileo’s Error: A New Science of Consciousness is a defence of panpsychism – a philosophical position that until recently was dismissed as simply crazy. . Many hope that panpsychism can provide an attractive way of solving the hard problem of consciousness, avoiding the deep difficulties associated with the more conventional options of dualism and materialism. Philip Goff develops a sophisticated argument against materialism, and then explores the prospects for radical alternatives in considerable depth. A mathematical model in economics, for example, abstracts away from the concrete reality of what is really going on – what is being bought or sold, and what actual jobs people are doing. Scientists before Darwin had no explanation of the emergence of complex life, which led many to suppose that there must be something divine or miraculous in the existence of life. His work is focused on how to integrate consciousness into our scientific worldview, and he defends panpsychism on the grounds that it avoids the difficulties faced by the more traditional options of physicalism and dualism. Serious philosophy requires us not to indulge in flights of fancy; but it also demands that we approach the arguments without prejudice. It is certainly true that in popular culture views which sound a bit like panpsychism have been defended with rather unrigorous reasoning. Paul Carus - 1893 - The Monist 3 (2):234-257. Panpsychists do not simply declare animal and human consciousness a sacred mystery which must have arrived by magic. Philip Goff. And so the most simple, elegant, parsimonious hypothesis, is that the nature of the stuff outside of brains is continuous with that of brains, in also being consciousness-involving. X. Panpsychism offers a wonderfully simple, elegant way of integrating consciousness into our scientific story, a way of bringing together the inner reality of consciousness with the external description of physics. Panpsychists deny this datum of common sense, believing that mentality is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the universe. Can Science Explain Consciousness? %���� I call this the ‘simplicity argument’ for panpsychism. Physical theories are nothing more than mathematical models of physical causation. I think what draws you in is that there is a kind of paradox of consciousness. However, panpsychism as defended in contemporary philosophy is the view that consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous, where to be conscious is simply to have subjective experience of some kind. You can read four articles free per month. Causal structuralists have such a conception. What is spacetime curvature? He makes a strong case for panpsychism, the thesis that consciousness exists at a fundamental level of physical reality, and extends this to a case for cosmopsychism, the thesis that the universe as a whole is conscious. Panpsychism, Philip Goff, Jack Preston King and Me. But if we accept that physics tell us nothing about the intrinsic nature of matter, and indeed that the only thing we really know about the intrinsic nature of matter is that some of it involves consciousness, panpsychism starts to look much more plausible. Philip Goff is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Durham University. All rights reserved. Philip Goff: I think I’ve been obsessed with the problem of consciousness as far back as I can remember, really. Does Consciousness Cause Quantum Collapse? The view that the world is (more-or-less) round; that we have a common ancestor with apes; that time slows down the faster you move – all of these ideas were or are wildly counter to common sense, but clearly that counts little, if at all, against their truth. Philip Goff wrote “Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness” which builds the case for panpsychism. I said earlier that this panpsychist view is foreshadowed … Physical mechanisms are well-suited for the explanation of physical behaviour; but it’s hard to make sense of a mechanistic explanation of subjective experience. The supposition that electrons have some form of consciousness, albeit extremely basic, is still thought by many to be just too crazy to take seriously. His research interest is in consciousness and he blogs at Conscience and Consciousness. Philip Goff (Durham University) - PhilPeople I work in philosophy of mind and metaphysics. This site uses cookies to recognize users and allow us to analyse site usage. endobj The Case For Panpsychism Philip Goff thinks that everything has some degree of consciousness. Philip Goff: We believe that a society with well-funded arts, well-funded public services and a redistribution of wealth is a better society Published: 5 May 2011 . Of course in human beings consciousness is a sophisticated thing, involving subtle and complex emotions, thoughts and sensory experiences. As organisms become simpler perhaps at some point the light of consciousness suddenly switches off, with simpler organisms having no subjective experience at all. Raymond Tallis questions an argument for panpsychism. In this climate panpsychism is increasingly being taken up as a serious option, both for explaining consciousness and for providing a satisfactory account of the natural world. Physicalists may object: “Just because we haven’t yet worked out how to give a mechanistic explanation of consciousness, it doesn’t follow that such an explanation will be forever beyond our grasp. stream endobj Clark Butler - 2010 - Southwest Philosophy Review 26 (2):87-108. It is simply an artificial representation that can be used for predicting certain outcomes. The vocabulary of physics is arguably not entirely mathematical, since it involves causal notions (such as the notion of a law of nature); but the kind of qualitative concepts found in the Aristotelian characterisation of the universe before the scientific revolution – ideas, for example, of colours and tastes – are wholly absent from modern physics. If panpsychism can provide us with a plausible account of human consciousness and/or a coherent account of the intrinsic nature of matter, then we have good reason to take it very seriously indeed. 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