Consciousness: fundamental to reality? | Philip Goff

Philip Goff discusses panpsychism and the role of fundamental physics in the study of consciousness.

Philip Goff responds to recent critiques of panpsychism by theoretical physicists Sean Carroll and Sabine Hossenfelder, and then explores some implications for the science of consciousness.

Philip Goff is a philosopher of consciousness at Durham University. His research focuses on integrating consciousness into our scientific worldview. His 2019 book Galileo's Error sets out his defence of panpsychism rooted in an analysis of the work of Arthur Eddington and Bertrand Russell.

#Panpsychism #TheoriesOnConsciousness #IntroductionToScienceOfConsciousness

Philosopher of consciousness at Durham University, Philip Goff's research focuses on integrating consciousness into our scientific worldview. Philip is a defender of panpsychism as the solution to the hard problem of consciousness.

Philip's 2019 book Galileo's Error sets out his defence of panpsychism rooted in an analysis of the work of Arthur Eddington and Bertrand Russell. We will hear more of Philip's perspective in our debate on the framework of beliefs.

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[eugenechun]

Is it necessary for consciousness to originate from a physical brain? Is consciousness in dreaming valid and pertinent?

[tty]

The problem is, why posit such an extraneous property called consciousness as the nature of physical properties? and how are we going to test it? What explanatory role can it provide, other than our existing physical theories?

[AmbivalentInfluence]

Our consciousnesses, powered by QM, merely interpret reality, it is our ego that suggests anything more. Studying the electrons within a computer is interesting but it says nothing about the programming, what it does.

[rustyspottedcat]

What new consciousness parameter X is included in predictions of standard model ?

[Robinson]

I like at least he is trying to make it specific. Then you can work with it: concepts are essential and already a good result in the world. Happy to hear this from him, didn't know he got so specific, that's already a plus

[yifuxero]

He doesn't quite go far enough. The universe and everything in it IS Pure Consciousness "In-Itself" (Shankara's Advaita Vedanta). To use a metaphor from the Upanishads, imagine a large number of clay pots with varying sizes and shapes. The Substance of every diverse entity is obviously fundamental. How do we know this? Through direct experience in the state of Samadhi or Satori. We can tap into this state of Pure Consciousness (Sat-Chit-Ananda) by accessing "Mahamritunjaya mantra - Sacred Sounds Choir". Listen to it for 5 min per day for at least two weeks. Enjoy the Bliss.

[TheUltimateSeeds]

If it is possible that the universe is the MIND of a higher consciousness (as is suggested in Berkeleyan philosophy), then rather than thinking of quantum phenomena as being "conscious" in some way, I suggest that it is better to think of it as simply being "ALIVE." And that's by reason of the fact that it is imbued with the life essence of the higher MIND to whom the universe belongs. In other words, universal matter is alive in the exact same way that your own thoughts and dreams are alive.

[fraiopatll]

STOP! Just stop! Mass is universally defined to be a measure of matter. Mass and matter are not the same thing. While two pieces of matter can be very different in their properties, they both can have identical mass (at least in theory). This guy treats mass as if it were matter. It is not. The plethora of loose verbiage he pumps out is unbearable. This guy should receive the Grand Prize of Sophisticated Word Salad Casuistry.

Furthermore, what is meant by the word "nature" of something? How does anyone know at what stage of observation or analysis the nature of the thing under consideration is captured and understood? Isn't the behavior of anything indicative of its nature? And vice versa, can't the nature of something be indicative of its behavior? How do we distinguish nature from behavior?

[estherbenzaquen]

Sabine defends naive materialism. She claims that what we perceive is reality external to us. This is intellectually unacceptable.

[realphysics]

Mass is a neutral thing, possessing neither force nor energy nor any godlike ability, nor can it ever move itself, and cannot be turned into energy at all. The only thing that mass has is inertia.

[theway]

Any sort of physical back reactivity and self reactivity at the subatomic level we must interpretate as a building block of consciousness. The essence of human mind is reflection multipled by different distirtions. Absolute copying mechanism couldn't be the basic of consciousness but we should differentiate existence if our mind in the zero level or mather reality not in the quantum computer of a super civilization.

[cipaisone]

the guy just adds labels to labels, and claim that this should sound as a sort of demonstration .

[bernardofitzpatrick]

Awesome well structured talk! I agree Sabine and Sean seem to miss the mark regarding consciousness. You website is my next place to visit. 🤙🏽

[nyworker]

If you take Searle's conclusion that OUR consciousness is biological. One must conclude that since biology is formed from fundamental physics, then biological consciousness is emergent from fundamental physics ==fundamental consciousness.

[brothermine]

Unless adding "simple conscious experience" to a theory of fundamental particles helps the theory better explain some observation, Occam's Razor advises against adding it. The only actual observations that appear related to consciousness are based on human introspection and are, to the best of my knowledge, correlated with the presence of brains. There's no reason to suspect particles are conscious. There's no reason to suspect that brain consciousness requires a non-classical explanation, other than the failure thus far to produce any explanation of consciousness.
Also, the speaker is mistaken when he asserts that physicists only care about what things do, and not about what thing are. That's true of some physicists but not all. It was more predominant during the Cold War when there was a race to invent new military and "dual use" applications, like more powerful or more portable H-bombs, neutron bombs, lasers, integrated circuits, communication, etc. Those physicists' motto was "shut up and calculate, " which implicitly acknowledged the widespread desire by many physicists to learn more about the nature of the fundaments.
Part of the problem is the use of the words "observation" and "observer" by many of the founders of quantum physics, which a lot of people assumed meant a conscious observer is required by quantum theory to "collapse the wavefunction" and instantiate reality. But mainstream physicists no longer consider conscious observation to be required.

[TheWayofFairness]

Some people think the universe is conscious before life evolved and some don't. It is irrelevant, interesting but not as important as truth, unity and fairness for all.

[Thomas...]

Who's artwork is on the thumbnail?

[AmbivalentInfluence]

Mass, gravity and time are the elastic property of spacetime attempting to equalise variations in its density. QM is the study of the vibrations in spacetime caused by the stress of variations in density. The study of consciousness is trying to understand how the fabric of the nervous system and the energy moving through it can create a 'self'. The 'self' is fundamentally quantum in nature but needs the structure of the nervous system to manifest itself with any coherence or meaning, energy alone is just white noise. Reality is spacetime, mass, gravity and time, everything else is just the performance on the stage.

[eugenechun]

Can there be a bridge between conscious real life and unconscious conscious dreaming ?

[robertosvrahimis]

He redefined consciousness to be what things are and concluded that everything is conscious. So if I redefine fantastic, strange or Devine to be what things are then everything is fantastic, strange or Devine etc etc. This is a classical example of a definist fallacy. No serious argument here.