Defending Panpsychism | Philip Goff Ph.D. on Waking Cosmos

Philosopher Philip Goff believes that consciousness is fundamental to the physical world — an idea which is gaining new attention in both philosophy, neuroscience, and cosmology. Philip and I discuss this view, known as panpsychism, and what it might mean for our relationship with the world.

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[thomassoliton]

I would like to make a simple point. Having listened to and read many discussions on consciousness, and viewpoints based on idealism, realism, materialism, panpsychism, etc, one factor always seems to get overlooked. We all recognize that we are conscious - we can talk to each other about all these physical theories and philosophies and understand each other. Human consciousness has two basic forms, direct (sensationos - sights, sounds, feelings, etc), and reflective (thinking - e.g. thinking about what consciousness is). As far as I can tell, consciousness is always objective, that is, you must be conscious of something - whether a flower, pain, or the white light - but something. In reflective consciousness, the objects are our memories and past thoughts. When you are simply experiencing reality (sights, smells, etc.) you aren't asking yourself "what is this consciousness that is enabling me to experience the world". You are just experiencing the world. It is in the realm of reflective consciousness that you ask about the nature of consciousness. That is the realm of thought, of mind if you will, where "mind" can be taken to be the processes of the human brain that enable us to understand the world - thinking, in other words. So here is the important point. No matter how you define it, thought is essentially dualistic - ying/yang. The essence of thought is comparison. Your brain is designed to record information and make comparisons, so everything you know and think of is inherently relative to something else. You do not know anything directly. So when you try to explain consciousness using your mind (and I don't know how else you could), you must appreciate that the only models or explanations you can come up with are inherently dualistic. As a simple example, consider light. Is it a wave? Or is it a particle? We have no other means of understanding light except in those terms. It depends on how you measure it. Ok, you say it is a probability wave function. But that is just a mathematical model representing the fact that we can't really grasp what light is - you can only sense it indirectly and only know how it behaves in particular situations. Same for "consciousness". You cannot understand consciousness directly by thinking about it. You cannot model it directly, only dualistically. That is why it always is couched one way or another in terms of the mind-body problem. Panpsychism, for example, creates non-physical "stuff" apart from material stuff precisely because it is impossible to think about consciousness any other way. Our brains cannot do that. You can experience consciousness directly, but as soon as you try to explain it, you invoke thought, and then comparison, and so what can you compare consciousness to? Some imaginary non-physical stuff of course! Well, maybe there is some separate consciousness stuff out there, but I suspect that explanation is just your brain creating some imaginary rationalization because that is just the way it works.

[MonisticIdealism]

“One starts as a materialist, then one becomes a dualist, then a panpsychist, and one ends up as an idealist”. ...First, one is impressed by the successes of science, endorsing materialism about everything and so about the mind. Second, one is moved by problem of consciousness to see a gap between physics and consciousness, thereby endorsing dualism, where both matter and consciousness are fundamental.
Third, one is moved by the inscrutability of matter to realize that science reveals at most the structure of matter and not its underlying nature, and to speculate that this nature may involve consciousness, thereby endorsing panpsychism. Fourth, one comes to think that there is little reason to believe in anything beyond consciousness and that the physical world is wholly constituted by consciousness, thereby endorsing idealism." -David Chalmers

[bajajones]

good channel. a good interviewer. great topics. THANK you.

[Paulus_Brent]

The main problem I have with this is that it does not explain why the elementary consciousness of an electrons or other particles led to organize itself into higher levels of animal and human consciousness? How can this come into being if these are not already inherent in the electron? Resorting to Darwinian evolution doesn't explain much since it explains only how matter has organised itself into higher forms of organisms due to natural selection. But there is no reason to believe that natural selection brings higher levels of consciousness into being further than that of the electron. So, if panpsychism is correct one must logically posit all the higher levels of consciousness already present in the electron (although perhaps veiled and inactive) or pansychism is wrong.

[nickidaisyreddwoodd]

Friedrich Nietzsche was a panpsychist as well. His favorite philosopher was Gautama Buddha.

[lucaspierce]

If the universe has living conscious creatures inside it, is itself also alive, as at least a part of it feels experiences, and understands(aware) itself?!

[aboveallthingslove]

Awareness is a protoconsciousness and a base constituent of it's emergent consciousness. There was never a time or place without it's creator "awareness". There has always been a reality be it material, ehterial, energetic or conceptual because reality expresses itself through awareness. Awareness=reality and reality expresses itself into consciousness which sets the rules through perception for further expression which builds the code for countless stable universes.

[janinefarris]

Panpsychism is boring Tomos although I appreciate your effort it doesn't seem like it's not leading to anywhere significant in terms of contributing warmth like the study of consciousness on beyond the matter and get to it what really matters life after death Consciousness after the body dies that's more interesting to talk about and could contribute more on the spiritual Edge if you will pondering over things that don't seem 2 really matter. The thing that really matters is the consciousness that the brain did not create and maybe go from that point something evolving in the present that most of us could relate to thank you very much

[aryanknowledgeseeker]

As far as known and understandble the universe constructed a being as humans that is the pinnacle and masterpiece that has been constructed over billions of years. The mention fact constitutes that we define the truth by facts and observations.

If we analyze the pinnacle of the universe it has to be said that these species developed a need for knowing from an intrinsic curiosity. We abserve a less developed curiosity in lower stages of the animal kingdom. If the modern explanatory of evolution is right and if man is the pinnacle of the known universe and if consciousness is an undeniable phenomenon then we must agree that consciousness is not only the aim of the universe but its also the motive and at the sametime the instrument by wich it crawled from the depths to to surface.

To comprehend this view in a small frame all we need is to imagine a small particle that travels trough the universe and eventually bind’s by physical law until it becomes a part of living three that gives life to other combined matter.
This particle is the building block that forms the tree fruit and and later being obsorbed by the human and becomes the light that we call consciousness. The question are 2 namely.
Is matter part of consciousness?
Is consciousness the law that governs the universe?
My answer is that both are one and the samething. There is now law without matter and a dead matter has no properties.
From this point of view we can suggest that consciousness is one but has degrees that flows from the tiny particle to this article that you are reading. The only barrier is limitation to grasp to fullness of that one consciousness. I call this the Alpha-conscious. We only comprehend a portion of that fullness wich is restricted by the evolution of our kind.
One may use a subjective example by using the psychosocial domain to pointing out the adult that became an Infant by an disability has no value in the relm of consciousness becaus the infant has is happy as it should be.
Objectivly the motive and the aim of the Alpha-conscious is to be known by itself if we observe and consider the humane as pinnacle. Hereby is the evolutionary chain reversed and reduced in a descending degree from adult to infant. Thats a degradation and therefor bad .. as einschtein said in his kast words in his biography God is great -Allahu Akbar

[philcava]

I agree with some of what Dr. Goff says, however I think his use of the word consciousness is somewhat misleading, I don't think there are quarks with a form of consciousness. However, if life arose from a world of matter, then matter formed the basis for life, and life the basis for consciousness. Life with all its various levels of awareness are therefore potential states of matter, but it's matter in the correct arrangement.

[gumgomgim]

What is the intrinsic nature of consciousness then? Aren't you just shifting the problem?

[galactusmonitor]

Thank you for the video
I dont want to bother you
But have you ever talked about
Mystics shamens yogis or
The abilities they have
I'm really into the concept of human potential
Especially astral projection
Bilocation
materialization
Levitation
Passing through solid matter
Walking on water
Kundalini
Ect
These are just ideas

[galactusmonitor]

Hey have you talked about the siddhis or supernormal abilities since last time
I don't remember well
I don't want to bother you
But do you ever research on abilities
Like levitation object materialization
And bilocation
Large scale reality shifts

[tommysalmon]

Hey buddy - lots of comments flying around here, but I thought I’d just send you some props for “waking cosmos” being mentioned by this chappie on Joe Rogan… just in passing, but I guess that kinda makes you officially a big deal. I feel proud like a brother.x

[lucaspierce]

All matter has the potential to be alive like us or other biological systems! This may be part of the reason why we can't define what life is let alone consciousness(most of the qualities of nonliving matter(like stars, minerals and other nonliving systems/objects) is shared with living biological material like cells such as mass, color, growth, metabolism self-organizing and so on)! All biological systems are out of thermodynamic equilibrium with the rest of the physical universe(non-equilibrium thermodynamics)! But if you think about it all matter, energy, the expansion and warping of space as well the asymmetric arrow of time is out of equilibrium with the vacui or the source of matter or nonmatter being nothingness(the source of material existence is immaterial)!

Also what is it that produces quantum entropy(fundamental entropy); for example the negative entropy or(syntropy or negentropy) that organizes biological living systems (biological forms, functions, information, design/order or biosemiotics and code biology) requires it to produce the same amount of entropy external to it through it's activities and behaviors(metabolism/feeding, growth, development, reproduction, evolution, niche construction etc) which rearranges the matter(as well creating and warping spacetime) in the nonliving environment(syn-entropy and co-evolutionary co-creation or quantum holographic fractal informational/computational co-entanglement syn-entropy)?!

[mediocrates]

I suggest panQUALISM. Panpsychism suggests emergent psychic dynamics are fundamental but; it's seems clear that psychic dynamics are themselves emergent from evolutionary dynamics. What's fundamental is the qualitative aspect which is then shape by time and context.

[darjandoltar]

Perhaps it would make sence to make an explicite diference in terminology. Definition of terms. Perhaps the term conciosnes should be replaced by term experience. Term conciousnes makes people confuzed, cause some understand the term as inner intimate expiriance, and other who understand term conciosnes as kompleks act of (self)reflection. If i understan this guy rihgt, he is saing implicitly, that the second one can be reduced to the first one. That would mean, that there is some proto experience in rock or a glass of water, but komplex conciousnes that can do math or write poetry requires material counterpart(manifestation, or fenomenon in conceusness, representing material thing on its own, that in essence is concousnes istsef) with adecwate complexity.... Perhaps I am missinterpreting this guy, but if i remmeber right, Bernath Russel or some other guy from early 20th scenthury called this specific idea of panpsichism as panprotoexperentalism... Or perhap I got confuzed right now....

[nmemonicporsche]

Thanks for the interview. I particularly liked the distinctions that were made between Panpsychism and idealism.
I have a few questions: Is panpsychism then basically a dualistic philosophy? I.e. things have both a “material” aspect and a “conscious” aspect. Like the famous particle wave duality of light. 2. What evidence is there for panpsychism? If panpsychism were true, shouldn’t we see evidence of consciousness in supercomputers? Please comment.

[Realworld]

The universe is gaining consciousness as a whole

[lucaspierce]

The meaning of the quantum wave function is one of infinite potentiality. In turn meaning that for example an ounce of any matter can take on an infinite number of possible forms and qualities both living/biological(functions) and nonliving! Physics can't explain consciousness but consciousness can explain physics as it is consciousness and awareness that experiences, percieves it, difines it and at the base creates it!.