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Join us on our quest for the extraordinary!
Sam McKee (@polymath_sam) has 9 university qualifications across 4 subjects including doctorates in history and philosophy of science and molecular biology. He researches both at two British universities and contributes to both space science and cancer research. Meet fellow polymaths and discipline leaders working on the frontiers of research from all over the world. Be inspired to pursue knowledge and drive the world forwards.
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www.sam-mckee.co.uk
Polymath World (00:02.17)
Hello and welcome to the Polymath World channel and we're dipping back into philosophy again and I'm so excited for the guest that we have today for you. He is a wonderful philosopher of mind and really at the cutting edge of the intersection of the popular and the academic philosophy. His books are really accessible. It's Professor Philip Goff from Durham University. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Philip Goff (00:26.83)
Thanks Sam, thanks for the kind words. I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Polymath World (00:31.022)
Yeah, me too. I really enjoyed reading your book, Why, over the summer. I had the pleasure of writing a review for it for one of the science and religion journals. And I find your ideas really interesting, both in terms of engaging with modern science and how it can inform philosophy, but also just reviving and intermixing and bringing back a lot of classical ideas that philosophy students might be familiar with. But before we get into all that, I'd love to know
about your academic journey, where you deep into philosophy as a child.
Philip Goff (01:04.12)
I was deep in- I was just thinking, your channel's called Polymath, I don't think I am... I'm particularly someone who is good at a wide range of things, I think I'm always just someone who can do one thing, I think I was always obsessed with philosophy in particular, and as a result, I guess partly of ability, but also largely sheer enthusiasm, I did well at that. So yeah, always been obsessed with philosophies.
long as I can remember really. I think, I think maybe I'd capture it by saying you
driven by and trying to understand how the different stories we tell about the world fit together, you know? The scientific story, how that fits together with the story of feelings and experiences and mental life. How does that fit together with the story of values, good and bad, right and wrong? How does that fit together with the story of mathematical things like numbers, sets?
or maybe free will. So all these different things we talk about and we sort of seem to think are real, but it's hard to see how they all fit together in a single picture of reality. So I think that's what's always kind of driven me.
Polymath World (02:24.111)
Were you a child who was always asking, why, why, why?
Philip Goff (02:29.504)
Yeah, well, my parents tell me that when I was four I asked why are we here. But although we had recently moved house, so I don't know if I was just confused about the location or something. But apparently they did say I asked it. I asked it in the philosophical sense. Yeah, I think from an early age that kind of fascinated me. I suppose I was raised Catholic and I remember asking the priest at an early age, you know...
Polymath World (02:35.181)
wow.
Philip Goff (02:59.814)
how the story of Adam and Eve fits together with the story of the Big Bang, because I was also interested in black holes and Big Bangs. So again, it's like, how do these different stories fit together? Did Adam and Eve sort of blow up in the Big Bang or something? And actually, well, my parents, I remember what age, fairly young age, sent me to the local physicist with a neighbor who was a physics professor. And he very kindly talked me through, because I was really into black holes and Big Bangs.
But after a while he realised that it was more maybe philosophy than physics. I was asking, so does God exist? you know, do we have free will? And he was thinking, I think you're talking to the wrong person. But yes, I wasn't like brilliant academically. I think I was good academically, but not. well, I'm recently thinking people are talking more about sort of neurodiverse things like...
ADHD which seems to fit me really. I I wasn't, I was never good at things I wasn't interested in and you know, did quite bad academically in some ways but when I'm passionate about something I get really absorbed and do well at it so that's sort of how my brain works.
Polymath World (04:14.863)
Terrific. It sounds like you had lot of influences dropping in as you were growing up, but can you remember reading a particular book that really switched you on to studying philosophy?
Philip Goff (04:29.102)
In terms of consciousness, I remember, I don't know why, in a secondhand bookshop, coming across something by Lenin. Not that I was kind of a, you know, a huge fan of Lenin or just kind of slick flicking through that and Lenin say, you know, we are purely made of matter. We're just sort of atoms and molecules and, just sort of really, well, but where do they ex-
experience is filling if we're just mechanisms then we don't have feelings do we? So how do feelings fit into that picture? So I think I just remember just reading that random bit of Lenin that prompted that thought. What was books that... I never read Sophie's Choice, that's the class, that was the classic that set a lot of people onto... I mean I remember, I remember at a young age having the very common experience many young...
Polymath World (05:14.607)
Yeah, that's the classic.
Philip Goff (05:25.422)
philosophically inclined people have of wondering, know, what I see as red, is that the same as what you see as green? How would we ever know if we use the same words? And I remember talking about that with my older cousins, actually. My brother was four years older and my older cousin was the same age and we talked about that a little bit late at night and I thought it was really exciting and grown up to be talking about that with my older siblings.
I suppose it was a bit older, you know, reading Descartes, who connect to lot of that, and Plato. I think in many things, I think, you the core of those great classical Western thinkers, Plato in ancient Greek philosophy and Descartes in modern, what we call early modern sort of 17th, 16th, 17th century philosophy. I think the core of what they...
what they conveyed really made sense to me. And I think they still got the core ideas quite right, actually. So that's a little bit later. I don't think I was, I wasn't really a massively reading, read-y person actually. Again, it's sort of when I got captured by something, maybe I'd read loads and then, but I think it was more just, it was more just sort of thinking and daydreaming and that started me off philosophically. I'm not, I'm not wonderful scholar actually. I'm not like,
I mean, obviously over the years I've had to read, you know, I've read a lot through being a professional academic and so on, but I'm not naturally a wonderfully scholarly person. My colleague, Emily Thomas, historian of philosophy, just, you know, spends ages going through the archives, finding fascinating things that people have never read by ancient philosophers and read. Yeah, I've been the most scholarly person.
but it's more just sort of staring into space thinking about stuff.
Polymath World (07:25.167)
That's so interesting. There is the common thread. I mean, we've had lot of philosophers on this channel and the number of philosophers who say, you know, I wasn't that great at school. Like Stephen Law said that, Alex Carter said that. Like plenty of plenty of said like, well, I wasn't great at school. Maybe philosophy is just something we mature into and come to later.
Philip Goff (07:43.018)
Really?
Polymath World (07:50.767)
Were you fortunate enough to have the opportunity to do it at school at A level?
Philip Goff (07:57.423)
Yeah, just on that topic, actually my mother often says, uh, when my first parents evening, when I was like four or five, and the first thing the teacher said, so I suppose, was, God, he drives me mad. And my mom is still really angry about that to this day, which is because it was like, you know, a four year old child. But yeah, so I wasn't necessarily an academic, but yeah, study philosophy. So
Well, I went to a very traditional Catholic school with monks learning Latin and Greek, all boys. But then when I was 16, I moved to a six-form college called Carmel College. I'm from Liverpool, St. Helens, sort of just outside Liverpool. You could wear your own clothes and meet girls and study philosophy. So I did, you know, the...
like a lot of people in the UK did for the sort of religious studies A level that had a lot of philosophical components but also philosophy AS so it was like half an A level actually you know I didn't do I didn't do amazing I think I got a B so again I wasn't like exceptionally good I think it was maybe when I got to university that I really thrived I didn't want to go to university actually
I wanted to be a rock star, that was my plan A for a long time. I was in a band, thought we really good actually. Didn't get anywhere, but anyway. But I was not good, I didn't want to go to university but my brother said, well you might as well, otherwise you've to get a job. I was the last year of free education, 1997, and so I just went to university to just, you know, not have to get a job. Terrible to say really, isn't it?
Polymath World (09:52.879)
Okay.
Philip Goff (09:53.679)
But I think it was at university that I sort of just got really absorbed in philosophy and took off from there, I suppose.
Polymath World (09:55.823)
Thank
Polymath World (10:02.391)
And did you do sort of a degree, master's, PhD, just sort of that route?
Philip Goff (10:08.364)
Yeah, straight philosophy and so, as I say, I think that's kind of all I can do really. I don't know what the hell, well, I wanted to be a rock star. I think I like performing and, you know, public stuff. So I guess I can do that well, hope and philosophy, but I don't think I can really do anything else. But yeah, well, I had a year out after undergraduate, went to Poland.
and taught Polish as a far as taught Polish, learnt Polish as a foreign language and taught English as a foreign language and got really absorbed in that because I have anything else to do. I just obsessively that was what I got absorbed in learning Polish and so again I didn't really think much about philosophy and then but slowly started thinking about it again and learnt about panpsychism actually I talk about this in my book Galileo's Error.
little bit of autobiography reading about classic article on panpsychism by Thomas Nagel from the 1970s when no one was really talking about panpsychism and he sort of argues for it but he's almost a bit embarrassed he's like I can see this argument for it and I know it's sort of sounds ridiculous but and so yeah I just think
Well, I think before that I'd just been totally stumped with consciousness. When I was at university, we learnt the traditional views of... ...or either consciousness is in the soul, outside of the body and the brain, or it's just electrochemical signalling. And I came to think both of those just didn't make sense. I wrote my end of degree dissertation saying we can't solve the problem of consciousness. Had a year out, thinking about other stuff, learning Polish.
and then slowly, erm...
Philip Goff (12:06.796)
started thinking about philosophy and learn about this middle way option that sounded a bit weird at first but seemed to me to solve all the problems with these two more traditional options that I'd learned at university and so then I ended up finding the only university in the country that had a panpsychist philosopher, Professor Galen Strawson at University of Reading and took up an MA and a PhD and took it from there.
Polymath World (12:31.951)
That's a fine institution, it's where I am right now. it's... Redding's sort of known for yourself and Anthony Flew as well, in particular. But you are known now most for philosophy of mind. These questions of consciousness and existence. And you've done a really terrific job of marrying a lot of modern conversations in science with philosophy of mind.
Philip Goff (12:36.302)
Alright, oh cool.
Polymath World (13:02.351)
So your PhD was on panpsychism. Could you just define panpsychism for the general audience for us?
Philip Goff (13:13.218)
Yeah, just before we get to that, just a chain of thought, just thinking about when I was in Poland and I was 21 and I used to, what I used to drink in the evenings was a pint of lager, a shot of vodka in the lager and an energy tablet that used to be my tippling. Absolutely incredibly unhealthy. I'm a bit healthier now, but happy fun days.
Polymath World (13:30.681)
Wow, that's your secret sauce.
Polymath World (13:37.598)
That's it.
Philip Goff (13:41.731)
Panpsychism. So panpsychism is the view that consciousness goes all the way down to the fundamental building blocks of the physical universe. So... fundamental particles like electrons and quarks have on this view incredibly simple rudimentary forms of conscious experience and the very complicated experience of the human or animal brain is somehow built up from these
more basic forms of consciousness at the level of fundamental physics. So yeah, so sounds a bit weird, but I think it offers a particularly elegant, unified, attractive solution to the terrible problems consciousness raises.
Polymath World (14:28.397)
This crosses through a lot of other ancient debates as to whether animals possess a sense of self much like us and the other minds problem. You I know I have a mind. I think you have a mind. But you don't see panpsychism as a like a compromise between different positions. You very much see it as the best answer to what's true about the universe. Is that correct?
Philip Goff (14:58.808)
suppose it could be both of those really. In a way it's an attract- it's a- it's- I think it's the best solution because in a sense it is an attractive com- comp- compromise. I trying to think of the word then, I was gonna say compensation. An attractive compromise between, you know, consciousness being sort of supernatural outside of the physical universe, or just reducing it all to physics. It's sort of middle way in saying, you there's just the physical universe.
There's nothing supernatural, just atoms, molecules, but the physical universe is made up of consciousness. And ultimately there's nothing more than consciousness. Consciousness is sort of the building block of physical reality. So yeah, think that's often the motivation. I was teaching my second year undergraduates, lecturing on panpsychism this afternoon, actually. I suppose that's how...
in this revival of interest in panpsychism. That's how lot of people see it. They see it as avoiding the worries of A, putting consciousness outside of the universe or outside of the physical body and brain or B, just trying to say, it's all just reducible to electrochemical signaling, you know, it's sort of a happy middle way.
Polymath World (16:21.569)
And you very much reject the... I was listening to a very hardcore materialist this afternoon who, you know, all mental states are just brain states and consciousness is just an emergent or byproduct of chemical and electrical activity in the brain. You'd very much reject that position.
Philip Goff (16:45.484)
Yes, I mean that's, I suppose, still just about the most popular view, although its opponents are a very significant minority. But, yeah. I mean, certainly-
We've never had any success explaining how complicated electrochemical signaling could somehow produce a feeling or an experience. It's not just that we don't have the full story. We haven't even got the beginnings of a way of making sense of that. But also I think, yeah, I think there's good reasons to think actually it's not a coherent project even, and that's why we haven't had any look at it.
I mean, look, there's different ways of coming at this, but one way of coming at it is... science is all about explaining behaviour. That's what it... Think of anything. What does physical science explain? Like, the phase change of water from ice to liquid water to steam. And we explain that in terms of the underlying molecular motion.
maybe get deeper with subatomic particles. What that is all about is explaining behaviour, right? When it's very cold, the ice is very rigid, and we explain that in terms of the rigid molecular bonds, the rigid hydrogen bonds of the molecules, then the kinetic energy builds up and it becomes more flexible. It's all about explaining behaviour. That's what physical science does.
Whereas I think when we're explaining consciousness, we're not trying to explain why a system behaves in a certain way, we're trying to explain why it feels a certain way and it's just, it's just a different question. So I think it's a little bit like saying, an analogy I like to give, it's like someone saying, wow, telescopes are brilliant at looking at stars, we should apply them in pure mathematics. I was like, well, that's just, it's just...
Philip Goff (19:00.84)
Totally different explanatory project physical science is wonderful at explaining observable behavior But it's not set up to explain Feelings experiences. It's just a different thing
Polymath World (19:14.383)
Hmm, yes, very good. I heard a debate recently on panpsychism and the proponent of panpsychism was pointing very much to a century ago as sort of being a boom period of it being revived. Now, philosophy of mind is much older than that, but they pointed to about a hundred years ago with Bertrand Russell, Arthur Eddington, and a lot of people are sort of being credited with this
Philip Goff (19:16.984)
makes sense.
Polymath World (19:43.706)
this explosion of interest in it and what's interesting about that in particular for me is it's also the boom period of interwar physics, relativity, quantum physics, a lot of our understanding of the universe changes, gets a bit more weird, a bit more complicated. Is that a coincidence or is there a lot that physical science can inform in terms of panpsychism?
Philip Goff (20:10.35)
That's a good question. Yeah, so I mean, very much in line with what you've just said, the contemporary panpsychist research community that's recently emerged in the last 15 years or so, very often draws inspiration from important work by Bertrand Russell in the 1920s, in his book, for example, in his book, The Analysis of Matter. And in that incredible book, he was...
as a skilled mathematician, reflecting on these new radical new developments in physics, as you say, relativity, quantum mechanics, developments which we haven't had since. I mean, there have been big moves in big developments in physics, but it's mostly been about working out the implications of those early 20th century discoveries. There haven't been
huge revolutions like we had with quantum mechanics and relativity. And so I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Russell, this great philosopher reflecting on this new science. Was there a connection? It's a good question. Maybe in part, I mean, the core of Russell's insight.
Philip Goff (21:34.467)
was that physics doesn't really tell us what matter is. Which seems kind of a weird thing to say at first. think, physics is telling us this wonderful story of what's space and time and matter. But Russell's point was, well, actually, it's just mathematics. It's just equations. It's very abstract. It's not giving us the substance of the world. Now, we could go more into the philosophy of that, but I think part of it was
the strange picture physics was painting, that it wasn't sort of 19th century billiard balls knocking into each other, it was quantum wave functions, whatever they are, Lorentzian invariance, and, what's the quote? There's so, now I can't remember exactly, but to paraphrase something like, physics is, it's more like what you find in a seance, if something like that. So it was sort of
physics is no longer giving us a picture of the substance of the world. It's important, it's very, you know, it's wonderful, but it's more about giving us a mathematical structure, a very strange mathematical structure, but it's not telling us what fills out that structure. And in this way, Russell opened up the possibility of saying,
Well, maybe it's consciousness that fills out that structure. So, you know, Stephen Hawking famously says, physics doesn't tell us what breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe. For the panpsychist, for the Bertrand Russell-inspired panpsychist, it's consciousness that breathes fire into the equations.
Polymath World (23:25.313)
It's very hard to argue against the notion that consciousness is the universe's most fundamental level of reality. Eddington said, the only subject available for my study is my consciousness, which was quite an extreme thing for an astrophysicist to say. Before we move on to your books and your own thoughts, a lot of the physicists at that time ended up in idealism.
Eddington, Jeans, Edward Arthur Milne, a lot of the ones who writing at a popular level in particular, who were doing like frontline astrophysics at the most boom period in the history of physics, if not the history of science itself, they ended up in idealism. Is that a position you could accept or do you not accept idealism? Ultimately not quite going that far.
Philip Goff (24:23.458)
Yeah, just on Eddington, before I answer that. Yeah, I mean, Eddington was very much in this, in these conversations as well. And as you say, he, you know, he starts on the point that consciousness is, the only thing, like Descartes said, that resonates with me as well. It's the only thing we know for certain to exist. It's the only thing we have direct access to. And then he says, again, slightly paraphrasing, so they're like,
It's weird when people say, there isn't consciousness at the base of reality, and then they think, how am going to get consciousness out? You know, he says it's silly. He says it's silly to sort of...
Suppose there's no consciousness down in the level of physics and then trying it conscious enough when
Philip Goff (25:12.494)
physics isn't really telling us what's down there, it's just giving us this mathematical structure and consciousness is the one thing we know exists. If we can start with that and let's see if we can get everything else out and I think Russell and Eddington painted the way to do that. But what about idealism? mean, a historian and philosophy colleague of mine tweeted recently a quote from a physicist in the 30s saying,
Of course, all we physicists these days all think consciousness is fundamental. It's kind of weird, you you think of like, know, physicists these days, I think, tend to be pretty hostile to panpsychism if they think about it at all. But, you know, it's just interesting how quickly fashions change. But to answer your question, yeah, it depends what you mean by idealism. I mean, idealism could just mean consciousness is the only f-
fundamental thing, in which case panpsychism is a form of idealism. Often, I guess, panps- often idealists are more associated with the view that maybe the physical world is something more illusory in some sense, or not fully real, or not fundamental. So in that way, maybe panpsychism is a little bit closer to physicalism. Maybe again, it's a-
I always like the middle ways, so it's the panpsychist is saying in opposition to the idealist perhaps or a certain kind of idealist, no physical reality is totally fundamental. It's just that it's made up of consciousness. And you know, physics is giving us the mathematical structure of it. Russell called this the causal skeleton. So physics gives us this skeleton and consciousness is sort of...
flesh and blood of it. It's an imperfect metaphor but yeah so but you know so so panpsychists would tend to be more realist about the physical world and I guess I could get maybe the default position. Why not just accept the reality of the physical world if you can, if you can make sense of that without any compromise but I mean I'm also very open to idealist views. These are close cousins.
Philip Goff (27:39.15)
And I'm much more sympathetic to idealism or dualism for that matter that consciousness is non-physical much more sympathetic to that than Than panpsychism. Well, actually just one more thing on this. I've probably talked too much already
Polymath World (27:53.785)
No, it's great. I wanted to give space for it.
Philip Goff (27:56.097)
I mean, one thing that tempts me to dualism or idealism is if there's the potential for a consciousness-based solution to quantum mechanics issues. I've recently been with the philosopher of physics, Kelvin McQueen, re-exploring a version of quantum mechanics that's been maybe forgotten about from the 1990s by the physicist
you and Squires, which is sort of like the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics where reality is branching into different versions of itself. But on you and Squires view, all the consciousness goes down one of the branches. So anyway, we're exploring that possibility and you know, in certain quarters, there's mockery of bringing quantum mechanics and consciousness together.
Like, just because they're both mysterious, you think they fit together. But I think that, you know, they're a
I think both of these are issues in terms of our fundamental story about reality. And if you can tell a unified solution to both, then there's a gain there, you know, because we want our fundamental story of reality to be as simple and unified as possible. I mean, it might not work out that way. There might be a solution to the issues in quantum mechanics that's nothing to do with consciousness.
But if there is a unified solution, maybe there's a sort of saving there that we can kill two birds with one stone, as it were. those kind of reflections sometimes lead me in a more idealist direction. That was a long-winded answer,
Polymath World (29:45.548)
No, it's okay. I want people to feel like they're dropping in on a conversation here. And it's interesting. There's a line in Eddington's famous work, The Nature of the Physical World, where he says, what I'm saying is the stuff of the world is mind stuff. And then about 100 years later in Why, you say the stuff of the world is rational stuff. And I had to smile at that because I thought, you know,
Philip Goff (29:51.062)
I'm
Polymath World (30:14.041)
There's got to be something to this if a century later we're coming back and landing in the same general area. There's probably some truth there if we're landing in the same place. Now I'm in the natural sciences as well as philosophy of science and I was recently doing a program with some NASA astronauts on...
working with these teenagers to send experiments to the International Space Station and we were working with slime mold and I find slime mold absolutely fascinating because they don't have a brain but they can solve complex problems like mazes and things like that. They're evolutionarily, very interesting and important animals. They sort of, they fit in that strange in-between world between plants and animals.
And I thought, gosh, they don't have a brain, but they can solve problems. There seem to be creatures that don't have a brain. They have a very rudimentary nervous, central nervous system, like jellyfish as well. But they might have a mind of sorts. So that would seem to suggest that there's some scientific basis for there being minds, but not brains. So brains and minds can't be the same thing. How would you describe
the difference and sort of where the meeting point might be.
Philip Goff (31:44.047)
between minds and brains or brains and minds, thank you. That's really fascinating thing, fascinating case. And the thing you said about Eddington again, you're making lots of nice connections. Cause I have read Eddington a long time ago. I didn't consciously make the connection when I wrote that in why, but maybe it was there in the subconscious, who knows. Minds and brains.
Polymath World (31:45.091)
brains and minds. Yes.
Philip Goff (32:09.855)
So yeah, I mean...
Of course, our consciousness and the consciousness of other mammals is tightly wrapped up in what's going on in our brains. Nobody would deny that. You still get people saying, pointing that out as though it proves physicalism. You know, the, well, look what goes on in your brains correlate, correlates with the consciousness. so physicalism is true. So it's just caused by the electrochemical singing in the brain. But look,
Philip Goff (32:45.038)
the scientific data about which kinds of brain activity go along with which kinds of experiences, that's something everyone would agree on, but it leaves open all of these philosophical options of panpsychism, physicalism, idealism, dualism. So I I sort of think that...
I like to divide up this, there's a sort of scientific task and a philosophical task here. The scientific task is which kinds of brain activity go along with conscious experience? And it's already very difficult to do and there's no consensus. It's hugely challenging. But that's the sort of scientific task. But then the philosophical task is, why? Why should...
brain activity and conscious experience have anything to do with each other? You know, the entire story of the brain we get from neuroscience, neurons firing, electrochemical signaling, it seems, it doesn't say anything about feelings and experiences. It looks like that whole story could go on without feelings and experiences being any part of it. So what's the connection? What's going on in reality?
And the physicalists have a story, the panpsychists have a story, the dualists have a story, these are sort of separate things. But then you're asking a further question, but can we have consciousness beyond the brain? Could consciousness exist in very simple systems and
I mean that is I guess what a panpsychism is more open to given that we think consciousness goes all the way down to electrons and quarks. It's not troubling for us if it exists in very simple systems. But it's not inevitable, you know? As a panpsychist, don't think absolutely everything is conscious. The basic building blocks are conscious.
Philip Goff (34:51.512)
but it doesn't mean every random combination of them is consciousness. We don't necessarily think rocks and socks are conscious. But yeah, there's clearly a greater openness to consciousness existing in very simple systems. But it's a scientific question in part. But it is, you know, there is just, we have managed to get almost no consensus on these issues. I'm now thinking what we need to do is fragment the community, the scientific community into
Philip Goff (35:23.298)
sort of teams of scientists and philosophers working together, setting up experiments in a way that's informed by philosophical assumptions, interpreting the results in terms of those philosophical assumptions, splitting into different experimental research programs governed by philosophical assumptions and then see which bears fruit and maybe we can come back together again. But something has to be done at the moment. It's not really, it's not really.
Polymath World (35:46.511)
Thank
Philip Goff (35:53.132)
making progress. Well, it is making progress, but we're not reaching consensus.
Polymath World (35:58.544)
It could well be an unsolvable problem, mean, students who are doing philosophy of mind at A level or beyond will be familiar with the hard problem of consciousness and David Chalmers' famous lost bet. And so I was speaking to Amna Whiston on this channel, who's a philosopher of mind at Oxford University, and she very much thinks its consciousness must be an emergent property.
when you get to the complexity of living systems, everything that's going on with the brain in conjunction with the rest of the body just somehow combines to make consciousness an emergent thing. But that doesn't seem to be an explanation, it's an answer, but it doesn't explain the how of how it works. Given that panpsychism seems to solve the problem, even though there's details we may not...
know yet. Do you think that it might realistically be the only answer to an otherwise unsolvable problem, the hard problem of consciousness?
Philip Goff (37:13.822)
I I'm, what I am, what I'm opposed to, what I am confident is false in my view. It is the physicalist view. And maybe, I guess that was what you were just describing is that it's emergent. If it's just, it's just what you get from neurons firing, electrochemical signaling, and you just get consciousness.
That's the view I fundamentally reject. I nothing's certain, okay? With all of these things, with all of philosophy, I hold some humility that maybe I'm wrong. But that's the view I'm most confident in rejecting. And you've just got to ask yourself.
Philip Goff (38:00.779)
Is having feelings just a matter of behaviour? Not just external behaviour, but behaviour of bits inside of you. Is it just a matter of what stuff does? Is it mechanistic in that sense? And if you say no, then you've got to reject that physicalist view. Because the physicalist view that it's all just about what physical science talks about, physical science just talks about behaviour. Chemicals, molecules, it's all just...
describing behavior of stuff. And so if having a feeling doesn't consist in behaving in a certain way, then the whole, it's not just, we haven't done enough brain scans. It doesn't make sense. And I just think, so just think when I say like,
Why is my partner feeling pain? I think that is not a question about why is she behaving or why are her inner parts behaving. It's just a different question. Why is she feeling? Of course, feeling and behavior are closely connected. When you feel in pain, you scream and run away. Obviously, that's fine. But to feel pain does not consist in behaving a certain way. Anyway.
Polymath World (39:20.525)
No, it's not.
Philip Goff (39:20.578)
I mean there's a huge debate and, and, and you know, viewers may disagree with me on that and there's obviously much more to debate about it, but I, I would just like to, I would encourage people to ask themselves that because I think people just think, yeah, physics, there's something in the brain and they almost think of it like Frankenstein, some new energy appears or something, which is kind of how Galileo thought about it actually, it's that anyway, but no, that's not, that's not the physicalist view. It's just, it's just behavior. So.
You gotta ask yourself that question about does feeling just consist in behaviour? but anyway, so that's what I'm opposed to. Sorry, I'm already giving too long answer, but just that's what I'm opposed to. But apart from that, I'm open minded as the same. I'm open to some extent to idealism, to dualism, to... I just think consciousness... Sorry, I just think panpsychism is the simplest alternative to physicalism.
Polymath World (39:54.464)
you don't find
Polymath World (39:59.056)
No, it's like.
Philip Goff (40:18.774)
It's a very simple, elegant view that you've just got forms of consciousness and they make not just our consciousness but all of physical reality in the way Bertrand Russell and Eddington showed us how to do. So it's wonderfully simple. So in my mind, it's the default position. So I'm very confident physicalism is false. Panpsychism is the simplest alternative. That's where I stand. Sorry, I interrupted you. Go for it.
Polymath World (40:40.335)
Now I was only going to comment that you don't find too many behaviorists in philosophy these days. It seems to be sort of a dying position. Now you write-
Philip Goff (40:51.118)
Can I just say something on that? Sorry, there's a bit of nuance here because, yes, nobody is a behaviorist in the very strict definition of that from the 30s and 40s where it's just external behavior, sensory inputs, behavioral outputs. Everybody rejects that. But what is now very, very popular is what is called functionalism, which is...
Polymath World (40:53.935)
Of course.
Philip Goff (41:20.49)
is still the view it's just behaviour but it's behaviour not just extra sensory inputs and behaviour levels but behaviour of bits inside your brain so that's why when I was saying I always thought physicalists think it's all just behaviour that's why I talked about like behaviour not just external but in bits of your brain so you write that nobody is a behaviourist in the old-fashioned sense of just external behaviour but actually
Very many people are behaviorists in that slightly broader sense that it includes behavior inside your head, bits and... But to my mind, it's still just behavior. So it is behaviorism in a sense, in a significant sense. Sorry, go for it.
Polymath World (42:06.647)
So, if people want to know more about panpsychism in this position, I recommend they read your book, Over Your Right Shoulder, Galileo's Error. I'd like to talk about the book Over Your Left Shoulder for a moment, because you did go on this interesting journey that was quite public of converting to, as you put it, a heretical form of Christianity. And a lot of it, you know, we've been talking about the nature of ultimate reality here.
is not just connected to these issues of consciousness, but the bigger question of purpose. That purpose seems to be a fundamental underlying importance in the universe for life. I saw one of my favorite descriptions of humanity as opposed to other animals was from Psychology Today that said that we are meaning-seeking creatures.
I mean, not too different from what C.S. Lewis was saying a century ago that someone without meaning will die, just like someone without water will die. And we're seeing that more evidence for that than ever with mental health, issues which we're far more cognizant of now than we would have been in the past. But I resonated a lot with your book, Why, this overarching theme that purpose is fundamental.
And I thought you connected them both in a really, really fantastic way. And it opens up these other questions of religion and suffering and things that you talk about. would you just briefly explain and defend the thesis of your book, Why, which I encourage everyone to go and read.
Philip Goff (43:52.719)
I suppose the core of it is, again, it's always the middle ways. I suppose I just, I mean, I was raised Catholic, rejected that when I was 14, was a happy atheist for 30 years. Just slowly came to think that both sides of this endless debate between theists and atheists, both sides have something they can't explain.
So theists face this problem of explaining suffering? Why would a loving God?
choose to create us with this horrific process of evolution by natural selection, or choose to allow all the horrific suffering we see every time we turn on our TV screens. Atheists have this trouble explaining a number of things, such as the fine-tuning of physics for life. This surprising discovery that, against incredible odds, certain fundamental
numbers in physics are exactly as they need to be for life to be possible. It's a bit like Goldilocks Porridge if they'd been slightly bigger or slightly smaller like what impossible they have to fall in this incredibly narrow range and if it's just chance it sort of looks on the face of it at least wildly improbable that you'd get the right numbers for life just by chance that we'd win the Cosmic Lottery. So it's so that's what
at least one thing atheists struggle to explain so I think theists struggle to tie- theists sort of tie themselves up in knots trying to explain suffering, atheists tie themselves up in knots trying to explain fine-tuning and we're just ignoring middle ground options and so I explore a few different middle ground options in the book actually but if you're a panpsychist
Philip Goff (45:50.989)
I think it opens up certain middle ground options. example, one form of panpsychism is that the universe itself is conscious and that the universe itself is the fundamental conscious entity. Now if you're starting from that kind of position and you're wanting to explain fine tuning, why the numbers in physics are just right for life,
You don't have to postulate a supernatural designer. You've got a conscious universe that might have its own goals. We can just hold that the universe fine-tuned itself. So I think this kind of extension upon psychism can offer a nice middle way between the traditional supernatural idea of God and the atheist idea of a meaningless, purposeless universe.
Again, it's a sort of attractive, elegant, fairly simple, I think, middle ground option.
Polymath World (46:51.257)
Now, we have had a number of physicists on this program, including Lord Martin Rees and others who have argued particularly around issues of fine-tuning like Phil Halper and his on his recent release book on the Big Bang. physicists might posit certainly the non-theistic ones, either different ideas around inflation, like a bouncing universe, the universe starts, stops, starts and stops.
multiverses and or just blind ridiculous chance like yeah we just we just got so insanely lucky but you make a case against all of those in the book and none of them seem to satisfy you why do you think a multiverse in particular wouldn't solve this problem
Philip Goff (47:42.201)
We should take the multiverse option very seriously and, you know, at least people working with a multiverse are thinking this needs explaining. It's not just saying, we just fluked it, I think. Well, we could talk about that, but I think that is not a plausible option at all.
I've just been influenced by a certain contingent of philosophy of probability that thinks there's some dodgy reasoning going on here.
Philip Goff (48:17.624)
How much to get into this is a huge discussion. don't, well, I've sort of changed my mind about this a little bit recently. I don't know how much to go into it. Well, I'll tell you what, people can read my sub stack this Friday. I'm going to publish, we'll give my mind, the change of mind on this. But let me just introduce you to the, you know, the basic, the basic worry here is that multiverse theorists commit the inverse gambler's fallacy.
So the analogy here is suppose you and I, Sam go to a casino tonight and... The first person we see when we walk in the room is having an incredible run of luck. They're just winning and winning time after time and it's, oh my God. And I say to you, wow, the casino must be full tonight. You what are you talking about? We've just seen this one person. What's it got to do with the rest of the casino? I say, well, look.
If there's tens of thousands of people in a casino, it's not so surprising that someone's gonna win big. And that's just what we've observed. Someone winning big. Now everyone agrees that's bad inference, right? Our evidence concerns this one particular person. And people elsewhere in a casino has no bearing on that. But it looks strikingly similar to the reasoning of the multiverse series. At least if they're trying to explain fine-tuning. You know, because they say...
my god, our universe got the right numbers for life! Against Incredibles, there must be loads of other universes! But it looks analogous, right? Our evidence just concerns this one universe, and the existence or non-existence of other universes has no bearing on how likely it is that this one universe, the only one we've observed, gets the right numbers for life. So now, that's the basic idea. Then a lot of people say, well, there's a sort of selection effect in the fine-tuning case. Sean Carroll had a recent, very good,
Polymath World (50:12.089)
Yes.
Philip Goff (50:13.994)
I love Soan Carroll, he takes philosophy seriously. Disagree with him on almost everything that he takes philosophy seriously. We've had a debate if people are interested. But a recent podcast, he did a really good two-hour solo podcast on fine-tuning and he engaged with me on this. But he just basically said, what is a selection effect? Everyone knows a selection effect, but people on my side say it doesn't change anything. Phil Halper just also did a video recently responding to me on this. I wrote a sub stack.
a week or so ago counter responding and yeah probably the next two sub stacks are gonna deal with Sean Carroll and why I've changed my mind on this it's a big issue but that's that's where I end up
Polymath World (50:57.967)
Yeah, we'll put a link to your sub stack in this video description. But before we go, thank you for being so generous with your time. Every student of philosophy should read at least one Philip Goff book. It's a great introduction to this topic. But I'll give you the floor here very quickly. Why should young people or older people who want to get back into education study philosophy of mind? What's the joy in it? What's great about it?
Philip Goff (51:29.752)
That's a really good question to end on. Well, just actually, you mentioned the heretical Christianity earlier. If I could just maybe say something quickly about that, because the Why Book was prior to that, the Why Book was just, there's reason to think there's purpose going on and who knows what the hell it is. But then later really discovering the mystical traditions of Christianity that have always been there right from the start and the way the Eastern Church thinks about the core of Christianity, which is
Polymath World (51:37.839)
Cool.
Philip Goff (52:00.749)
less focused on sin and punishment and more mystical ideas of God and the universe coming together. So this really made a lot of sense to me, resonated with me at a spiritual level and I think fits with a lot of these.
and psychist ideas of cosmic purpose we've been discussing. really where I've ended up finding my spiritual home in my mid forties is the combination of the mysticism of the Eastern Church, but also the liberal flexibility of the Anglican Church. I'm not a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, you know, I like, if it was just one of those, if it was just the liberal flexibility of the Anglican Church, it'd a bit sort of wet and empty, but the combination of the two, I find really attractive.
Yeah, the book I'm currently writing is trying to spell this out in more detail. Tentatively titled, Heresy. Anyway, yeah, so why study philosophy?
Philip Goff (53:02.272)
I think we're going through a period of history where, as a society, we don't really know what the hell philosophy is. I think we're going through a phase of history where people are so understandably blown away by the success of physical science and the incredible technology it's produced, it leads people to think, that's it, that's the truth, and everything else feels sort of intangible and...
But at the end of the day...
We can't answer all questions with experiments. Questions of value, questions of consciousness, questions in quantum mechanics actually, questions of biology. There are always these...
choice points where there's roles maybe for judgment calls in how we're interpreting the evidence. We can't do without philosophy. It's always gonna play a role in the project of having our best guess as to the ultimate nature of reality, what this world we live in is all about. So it's always been and always will be a noble and important part of...
human existence and I think we're starting to get back to that. I think we're gonna get back to that eventually. And when we don't prize philosophy, people do it anyway and they just do it badly. You get these scientists who, some scientists who, know, are philosophies alone and rubbish and then go on to do really bad philosophy without realising it. So it is always gonna be crucial and it's a wonderful thing to do. mean...
Philip Goff (54:44.152)
I suppose people might be thinking more practically, what job am I going to get out of this? You know, that's important, it's a serious question, you've got to live, haven't you? But I think with any humanities degree, there's no obvious career that comes out of it. What if you do history, English music? But I do actually think with philosophy, forget how wonderful philosophy is, there are real...
important transferable skills. I think you learn to read and think and write analytically in a clear, precise, structured way. Build an argument for something. Think creatively. Think outside of the box. You know, the real skills that you see students getting better at. I think it's really objective, Mark, in a philosophy essay, because those skills of writing clearly, precisely, structuring an argument.
You see students getting better, you can objectively mark it. And those skills are so important in, I don't know, law, journalism, politics, business, the creative industries. So yeah, it's wonderful and it's practically useful as well.
Polymath World (55:58.544)
Yes, excellent. If people want to know more about you, I mean, we'll look forward to your next book. But where can they find you? Where's the best place to find you?
Philip Goff (56:09.87)
My website is philipgoughphilosophy.com I try to update that with academic stuff as well as videos and articles and yeah I've just decided to write my sub stack more frequently I'm trying to do that fortnightly Spend a lot of time, too much time arguing on X and blue sky philip underscore goff and I'm on blue sky as well
Yeah, I'm in talks. I might be doing more stuff that I'm not quite ready to go public about right now, but I've given up on TikTok. I was going to do TikTok, but I don't know. I'm too old to do TikTok. Anyway, that'll do.
Polymath World (56:54.103)
Yeah, that's some great places where people can find you. Thank you so much this evening for being so generous with your time. I could talk to you for another hour easily about the things you've written about and encourage everyone to read your books and thank you so much for your time today.
Philip Goff (57:09.32)
thanks Sam, it's been really fun. Sorry, I've given quite long answers, but it's been a really fun conversation. Thank you.
Polymath World (57:13.84)
You're philosopher. Those are the best kind of answers. Thank you, sir.