Michael Shermer with Philip Goff — Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness

Listen to the Science Salon Podcast # 142 (audio-only):

Understanding how brains produce consciousness is one of the great scientific challenges of our age. Some philosophers argue that consciousness is something “extra,” beyond the physical workings of the brain. Others think that if we persist in our standard scientific methods, our questions about consciousness will eventually be answered. And some even suggest that the mystery is so deep, it will never be solved. Decades have been spent trying to explain consciousness from within our current scientific paradigm, but little progress has been made.

Now, Philip Goff offers an exciting alternative that could pave the way forward. Rooted in an analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of modern science and based on the early twentieth-century work of Arthur Eddington and Bertrand Russell, Goff makes the case for panpsychism, a theory which posits that consciousness is not confined to biological entities but is a fundamental feature of all physical matter — from subatomic particles to the human brain. In Galileo’s Error, he has provided the first step on a new path to the final theory of human consciousness. Shermer and Goff discuss:

• the problem Galileo’s approach to science solved,
• Galileo’s error in solving the consciousness problem, that is the qualitative,
• Dualism, Monism, Panpsychism,
• Material Monism, Mind Monism, and Idealism,
• hard problem of consciousness defined,
• how consciousness is at the bottom of reality,
• why science cannot discover the ultimate nature of reality,
• Model Dependent Realism, philosophy, and science,
• Arthur Stanley Eddington and Bertrand Russell build panpsychism back into science,
• philosophical zombies and the “other minds problem,”
• free will, determinism, compatibilism, and panpsychism,
• objective moral values and science,
• fine tuning and the multiverse, and
• implications of panpsychism for attitudes toward nature and the meaning of life.

Philip Goff is a philosopher who teaches at Durham University. He is the author of Consciousness and Fundamental Reality and has published more than 40 academic papers. His writing has also appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian and The Times Literary Supplement, and he has guest-edited an issue of Philosophy Now. He lives in Durham, England.

This dialogue was recorded on October 21, 2020 as part of the Science Salon Podcast series hosted by Michael Shermer and presented by The Skeptics Society, in California.

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[doubleirishdutchsandwich]

I like it that Michael actually reads the interviewee's book

[MrBallynally]

I can just hear Dennett's objections in my head.
Is the bird still there if i turn my head away?
Consciousness is the only big bag where everything fits. No boundaries, no limits, no dimensions. Ie, a catch all term that means basically nothing outside the realm of experience.
Chopra et al will always be right. You cannot prove that God does not exist.
Its a classic non sequitur.
Russell was dead wrong.
Just a nice, rather romantic side step to the hard problem.

[nikolaosdimitriadis]

*edited for clarity, thank you for your likes and comments* Similarly to Vitalism in the past, Panpsychism is the latest attempt to deny to consciousness its brain-based properties. As Vitalism thought of life as too important to be produced my matter, Panpsychism thinks of consciousness as too important to be produced by a brain. Some will never accept that consciousness is a natural emerging function of biology (brain/body/environment) and nothing more...

[KaiseruSoze]

"What is an electron?" The word "electron" is a reference to a package of unique and observable properties. To ask what an electron is like asking "what is the number for 911?".

[sukoelzorrocurioso]

Michael Shermer, I appreciate you and your open mindedness. Thanks for having Goff in this interview, it's fascinating

[jffryh]

Dan Dennett disbelieves in consciousness, but he does believe in free will. Seems inconsistent to me. But then I must be inconsistent in the opposite way.

[carbon]

The trouble with 'intrinsic nature', to me at least, is that if we're stuck explaining things in terms of their subordinate parts then we'll always have that question on whatever layer of our knowledge is most exterior. That said - it's an f'ing trip the way consciousness seems to pipe up through it and I think in a lot of ways either panpsychism, neutral monism, or some kind of reintegration would want to focus on either the seeming isolation of consciousness within physical structures or zeroing on those times where that separation might be broken in a reliable manner that isn't five-sense related. Personally I really like Hoffman and Prakash's model because at root it's functionalist, but it's functionalism with multiple realizability - which deals with the combination problem along with all sorts of strange things that can arise in group dynamics.

[tinagvardanyan]

Thank you for posting this interesting dialogue. I think all mental ingenuity is good and welcomed, if we don’t politicize our theories and incorporate them into our state and federal penal systems. This model of panpsychism is a great way of unifying existence under the umbrella of oneness with the universe, in my opinion. However, I do also see a grave danger of creating an extremely harsh and demanding social and political structure, something akin to the book “1984”, if it is to be politicized.

[davidwilkie]

"I'm not special", another way of combining localization and eternity in unity, like zero-infinity Singularity i-reflection containment.
"Consciousness", numberness.., anything in this category is Complete->ness in the Eternity-now Interval Conception Actuality.

[margrietoregan]

A ‘cyclic universe’ ?
Didn’t anyone else read Isaac Asimov’s “I’m looking over a four leaved clover”.

[giovannisantostasi]

What is relations is all what matters in matters (pun intended)? If you care about the game of chess it doesn't matter what the pieces are made of. They can even be graphics in a computer screen. What if the nature of reality was all about how things relate to each other and there was not an innate nature of things that is so dear to the philosophers?

[eximusic]

Philosophy's going to explain what? The intrinsic nature of electrons? Hunger pangs? I didn't hear one example of a philosophical explanation that compliments science.

[quad]

If you adopt the Copernican Principle far enough, you'll see that consciousness isn't some special emergent property that only certain higher primates developped, but is rather something that was there from the beginning.

[ASH-cnqs]

@shermer Why you do not have a chat with Michael Graziano? He seems to be able to explain consciousness without resorting to mind-body dualism, or quantic weirdness of Penzer, or this new kind of science. He published a book last year I am sure you have heard about him.

[stevecoley]

Love, Magic and Metaphysics. This is the new science.

Metaphysical Hierarchy
Mystic... beautiful dreaming
Magical...harmony
Musical... language of music
Artistic... pictures/metaphors
Poetic... language of words
Numerical...we are here

Mystics create the most joy (smart). Accountants create the least joy (ignorant). Yet accountants rule the world (ignorant).

Ever notice that beings who speak in the language of music can create joy that energizes thousands of beings to celebrate and dance?

Ever notice that corpses that speak with brain numbing, soul sucking numbers do the exact opposite?

Sanction, starve, torture, murder and bomb Ignorance (hate) is bliss for vampires (greed). But not much fun for the humans (love) who they are sucking the joy out of.

Vampires (greed) are inhumane because they are not human. The counting corpses commit crimes against humanity because they are not human.

The alien monsters are desperate to control a darkship called the Whitehouse. Because working in the dark to suck the joy out of life and devour earth is the only way that the loveless, lifeless parasites can survive and thrive.

Unlike earthling poets, artists, musicians, mystics, human beings and creators of joy...the counting corpses that rule US can't create harmony (real intelligence) because vampires (greed) are ignorant (dead).

Darkness (business) exists so that stars like US have a place to shine in heaven (joy, beauty and harmony).

Stars like US don't exist to be sucked out of heaven by a giant black hole in space called greed and it's ignorance (hate).

The clever coyote (greed) is always trying to catch the roadrunner (love). But never does. Because something that is not real (absence of love) can never catch that which is real (love).

That coyote is a crazy clown...

The roadrunner is the state bird of the Land of Enchantment. The land of magic (love).

[lyndao]

Wonderful. Can’t beat Shermer for facts, he lines them up so sensibly. And for now can’t beat Goff for correlation betwixt/between hard and soft problems.
This is a great (glorious) conversation.

[kenhiett]

Reparations is a terrible idea for a litany of obvious reasons. Such obvious nonsense showcases the destructive dysfunction which has metastasized within our society.

[MattAngiono]

The word "maya, " meaning illusion, had the same root as the word matter, and also mother....
Think about that for a minute.
Maybe what keep keep calling materialism is not actually what was originally implied....

[jinglejangle]

What it's like to look out from a particular position. What it's like to be the inside of myself that only observes everything but itself. To be positioned as the observer who cannot observe itself.

[dakrontu]

How can you know if you have free will or not, as opposed to thinking you have?