Dialoguing with Philip Goff about Consciousness, Panpsychism, and Process Philosophy

[ewanpakula]

I think philip goff is the quintessential university philosopher. Everything a half answer

[milliern]

Absolutely perplexing to me is that modern philosophy does not respect its own history. The whole point of Kant's critical project was to resolve the problems of early modern philosophy (rationalism vs empiricism, idealism vs realism, etc.), and yet 20th-century academic philosophers generally don't accept Kant, and they don't propose alternative resolutions, even piecemeal, to those problems. So why Whitehead? He's literally the only other exhaustive response to those early modern problems of philosophy. That's essentially what "Process and Reality" is: the presentation of a process metaphysics and ontology that answers each of those problems presented by Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, etc.

[projectmalus]

A wonderful example of how to hold a discussion with less confrontation and more genuine exploration. Thanks!

[dezatron]

Great dialogue. I appreciated the treatment of mereology and the holographic way in which new occasions come about and add to the whole in a recursive process. Does this allow us to sidestep the problem of where the joints in nature are that we might cleave?

[Mandibil]

It takes two professors, to not come to any useful "conclusion", within 90 minutes

[rustart]

Fun! Definitely more persuaded by Matt’s view.

[dltooley]

Stars not only produce the elements necessary for life they also produce in great abundance the photons that ‘empower’ it. As well as, eventually, traveling through the entirety of the universe.

I like Goff’s take on emergentism and his folding in of libertarian free will to the panpsychist approach. I will get his book.

A bit of a tangent, my recent musings have me wondering if the interiority of each consciousness fills the criteria as a multiverse, albeit one bounded inside the exterior by our skin, and sense organs.

[spiritualchuck]

HAVE YOU GUYS EVEN TRIED EMERSING YOUR "SELVES" IN
"WATERS FROM ABOVE"???
I DIDNT THINK SO, BUT I HOPE SO, FOR ALL OUR SAKES!!!
IF YOU "WANT" SEE; ANDREW NORTON WEBBER ON YT???
NO SURPRIZE IF YOU HAVE NO
COMMENT. PEACE LOVE LIGHT

[MGWarren]

Could you direct me to some reading related to the comment you made about childhood development and relationships around 1:13:30?

[Mart-Bro]

Another great conversation. Thanks lads

[StevenPetermann]

I like a lot in Whitehead's organic ontology but I think his God is too passive and impotent. Matthew is interested in existential issues. I couldn't agree more. I do, however, think that process theology's theology of God is problematic. Here's an example. With process theology, prayers of supplication don't make any sense except perhaps as a psychological trick. This leaves many of the weakest among us with no place to turn in their predicaments. For instance, an addict or alcoholic might seek treatments but still finds themselves stuck. In process theology, there are no other resources left to help. Now if the addict is a process adherent, what would their prayer to God look like? Something like "Oh God, please lure me harder to make a change." That seems silly. Now, I'm not talking about some supernatural intervention but rather an active, engaged, organic, and monistic model. Instead, I think an ontology that better addresses existential issues (like prayer, free will, morality, etc) is a divine idealism and aspect monism.
Ontology:
On prayer:

[freedommascot]

Goff is missing a major chunk, which is the relational world which Matt continually tries to bring back into the discussion, much to his credit. It’s like Goff doesn’t understand the organic nature of biological organisms which includes the billions of connections within the brain that have developed over eons of blood, sweat and tears trial and error experience with the external world. The world/self polarity is a web that cannot in any way be separated. His thinking is very anthropocentric, even to the point of always asserting the word “I” when referencing his thinking. A very boring, one-dimensional thinker, imho.

[perkwunos]

One of the problems with getting across the differences in Whitehead’s metaphysics here is maybe in that he is ultimately also a substance philosopher, w/ his ontological principle, the actual entity as a discrete and so in some important sense independent unit of being, within which all other entities must inhere. His analysis of propositions also retains more of a subject-predicate form than his own protests might have one think. Of course, from there there are fundamental shifts from the Aristotelian paradigm, but as Whitehead himself put it in “Process and Reality” from his Essays in Science and Philosophy, this is not so much in analysis of becoming but in introducing an analysis of perishing, and thus objective immortality/physical prehensions, the more constitutively relational side. Whitehead’s own frequent self-presentation as more platonist than aristotelian is misleading imo, and he’s more intelligibly classed as a neo-aristotelian than many other historical comparisons, though this is still exaggeration. To me the most vital post-kantian tradition does seem to involve an Aristotle revival of some sort—this is also clear with Hegel. Even Marx actually seems like quite an Aristotelian to me—at least in Capital (ie his value-form analysis is explicitly cited as deriving in part from Aristotle, and his account of concrete labor is clearly a classical aristotelian account of teleological work).