Philip Goff: Panpsychism and the Mystery of Consciousness | Robinson's Podcast
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- Опубліковано 5 чер 2024
- Patreon: bit.ly/3v8OhY7
Philip Goff is a professor of philosophy at Durham University in the United Kingdom, where he researches consciousness and the philosophy of mind. He is the best known proponent of a view about consciousness known as panpsychism, which takes mentality to be fundamental in the world rather than something that either emerges out of complex structures or exists parallel to physical objects (as an immaterial property of things like souls). In this episode, Robinson and Philip discuss the major camps in the debate over consciousness, including physicalism, dualism, and panpsychism, touching on both their strengths and weaknesses. They then turn to a few questions raised in Philip’s most recent book, Why? The Purpose of the Universe (Oxford, 2023), in which he seeks to find a middle ground between atheism and deism.
Why? The Purpose of the Universe: a.co/d/2cqj5Us
Philip’s Website: philipgoffphilosophy.com
OUTLINE
00:00 Introduction
04:41 Philip’s Interest in Consciousness
14:36 Is Consciousness a Spectrum?
31:37 On Physicalism and the Mind
46:56 What Is Panpsychism?
53:27 The Best Arguments for Panpsychism
1:02:20 On Panpsychism and Parapsychology
1:07:06 On Panpsychism and Free Will
1:13:04 On the Fine-Tuning Problem
Robinson’s Website: robinsonerhardt.com
Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.
RIP DENNETT
I'm pretty much with Kastrup regarding the severity of panpsychism's flaws. I really do appreciate Philip's enthusiasm even though he's been rather indecisive over recent years. Such an alt view may still be slightly controversial in academia but at least its finally fashionable overall. IMO Its held purely out of safety since it sort of tries to meet physicalism somewhere in the middle as opposed to just biting the bullet & going in the opposite direction to the currently favored paradigm.
Hearing this recording, so soon after Dennet's death feels surreal
If it’s surreal for you, just think how weird it is for Dennet if he’s also watching it, wherever he is 👻
@@donrayjay Wouldn't he be pissed if that were the case XD
Free will is subjective;
We should act responsibly as if we have free will and judge others as if they have been compelled and need assistance
Philip Chopra
Nah, that award goes to JPB.
It is tautology when you say many times "to my mind I am not convinced". That is called incredulity. Many times Philip has said that science says what electron does (spin, mass, charge), but does not say what electron IS, and he has said electron IS (made of) consciousness. But here he said that every small particle HAS some form of experience or consciousness. So he changed what he has said. Second if he insist on asking what electron IS, we can ask what the consciousness IS that he claims electron IS. What is good for the goose, is good for the gander. Also if he wants to get into answering what electron IS, it is very dodgy then to say this is not a scientific question. Science is not a finished project. it will continue to look into those aspects.
I love how much consciousness throws a spanner into conventional descriptions of physical matter, to the point, it can be career destroying to take the question of how does consciousness fit in current physical laws seriously.
Even trying to explore this question to various logical limits creates so much anger from hardcore physicalists.
This just comes to show how utterly absurd consciousness is, it literally violates the physical sciences, to the point, we are told consciousness must be ontologically - if not metaphysically - "identical" to electro-chemical processes in the brain. Which are essentially amalgamations of mindless atoms, matter with absolutely no conscious property just happens to produce something as radical as 'experience'.
And now it all just comes down to whose technical jargon can explain away how we experience awareness in a universe following physical laws. As if this explains anything.
At least constitutional panpsychism, still relatively a young field, is trying to propose an idea that isn't trying to explain away that which makes our experiences possible.
Personally, panpsychism as defined by Goff is not provable, but neither is any other theory on consciousness. Why? We cannot find a way to directly measure it!
This debate is very entertaining, and frankly, one of the most interesting topics.
If we don 't know enough about the brain to provide evidence for dualism, why don't we also not know enough to provide evidence for physicalism? Neuroscience is in its infancy.
RIP DENNET. I do not believe in most of the position he ardently defended for years but damn if he did not rouse my interest in the things that I now study (if only to counter these points points)!
this one looks exciting!!!
oooooh back to philosophy!
A more important question is: How do we represent the interactions of "conscious minds", however we think of them? Vaughan Pratt has a novel proposal, but it is posed in very heavy CompSci and Category theoretical terms. It seems that the interaction problem between minds might explain the Mind/Body relation using the structure that Pratt proposes. The proposal is very easy to generalize and has strong constraints on possible models.
Philip has the point that the science of consciousness should be able to explain the taste of coffee, which is a quale, using the language of science which is mathematics. The loop Philip is in is that mathematics is a more complex form of a quale but a quale or brain product nonetheless .I'm not advocating that the science of consciousness is intractable but rather that Philip has fallen into the classical trap or loop of thought.
Why does Goff not consider Process ontology based dualism? Since when is it rational to assume that our ability to explain ideas to ourselves is a limit on Reality?
I think we can envision a simplified context where consciousness plays an essential role, like the game of go. For some activities, like breathing, we don't need consciousness. So we can breathe in our sleep without awareness of the breath. But some activities like playing or learning the game of go are unlikely to occur while you're in dreamless sleep. The game of go can be a metaphor for the function of consciousness in evolution, where it enables organisms to adapt more flexibly to their environment by enabling them to optimize learning new behavior with the capacity to exert some level of control over their attention and reflect upon their situation.
Boiled down to the essentials consciousness seems to involve an attentional mechanism and a background of previous experiences that contextualizes the object of attention. I think if we would try to ascribe consciousness to a particle like a photon it would fail because it lacks the capacity to accumulate experiences. So while you might claim that a photon is aware of being detected in a double-slit experiment and behaving accordingly (like refraining from manifesting interference patterns in case of detection which of the two slits was traversed), a photon has no background of experience to impart significance to anything it hypothetically is conscious of. Consciousness seems to be about the relationship between a conceptual framework to interpret perceptions and the environment.
For instance, if you are hallucinating that you see a teapot on the table, that might be an experience that is very similar to someone seeing a teapot on the table that is actually there, but only in the second case we can claim that someone is conscious of the fact that there is a teapot on the table.
So you can't reduce such forms of consciousness to brain activity, because whether or not you're conscious of the fact that there is or isn't a teapot on the table can't be considered without taking into account whether there actually is or isn't a teapot on the table.
Go can be learned in a dreamless sleep, machine learning is now superior to human players in Go, thanks to google's AlphaGo.
However, machine learning lacks reflectivity and understanding, anyone using ChatGPT long enough can tell that it doesn't really understand you fully. Pattern building and learning can occur without consciousness, but to stand over the situation and take it all in as a whole, to ponder it, this is a conscious activity.
Assertion or premise is not a explanation. There are steps.
I think consciousness is interpreting our sensory input and forming a plan of action
If consciousness emerges from physical process then it is slave to the physical world and it wouldn’t be expected to affect the physical in a ‘spooky’ way
Ideas are purely metaphysical, they can be described and considered but they don’t exist as ‘real’ things
Sounds like philosophers have reverted from a false dichotomy to mysticism
Consciousness is complex but I don’t think it’s fundamentals are as incomprehensible as it’s presented;
The World is navigated by an array of no certain senses, there is a metaphysical field where collected data can be bandied about and ideas formed;
It’s metaphysical, it’s not part of the physical world in space-time, it is action not substance, measured with emotion and pragmatism
A wild rose has 5 petals, the 5 is not physical, it’s just how we describe it with math
It seems a very broad definition of consciousness must be adopted if it's to be inferred of other objects.
Human consciousness appears more complex. Here, I'm a Freudian - I define consciousness in opposition to unconsciousness.
I think the division between unconscious and conscious mental processes is useful, and I'm wary to abandon the approach by applying consciousness too broadly.
It appears to me that the phenomenon of mental experience requires both.
On the other hand, I agree with some ideas of panpsychism in analyzing the universe, but I use a different approach to project my problem solving ability on inanimate objects.
It appears we may have found some forms of intelligence (logical/mechanical problem solving) that may or may not be conscious in a human, experiential sense.
Also, we have good theories of observation/measurements that require all intelligent observers to be at least a step away from reality at all times.
The story of Plato's cave appears to be generalizable beyond consciousness.
One can't observe reality directly, one can only sample it discretely, and every observation is a consequence of projecting a theory onto the universe and analyzing the difference between theory and observation.
There's universal observational and theoretical uncertainty. This is the uncertainty space that intelligence is designed to tackle!
The relationship between theory and reality appears to have the following properties:
Theory is embedded in reality.
Theory and reality are both deterministic.
Indeterminacy appears when theory and reality can't be differentiated.
It is the task of intelligence to reduce this indeterminacy.
To me, this is a theory of universal comprehension.
A theory space embedded in a reality space, using sampling and dynamic evolution of theory to orient itself with less indeterminate parts of the universe, is an intelligent entity.
There's a thermodynamic analysis of this process that's consistent.
To me, it's when the complexities of consciousness are disregarded, and the problem is stated more simply, and more mechanically, that progress with this approach is made.
It's easier to replicate simpler ideas.
The basic difference between pansychism and idealism is the emotional state of the philosopher.
Phillip Goff needs a more thorough review of dialectical materialism
Love the super long intros
1:02:42 blooper
Dan Dennett does not claim that consciousness does not exist. The illus😅ion is the knitting together different t brain function to give a sense of continuity.
Yeh, but like people pointed out, it's stupid to call it illusionism, since almost everyone is going to misunderstand it. But I do get the point that pointing out that the stuff like like Goff talks about doesn't exist.
Still couldn't be more wrong
The strongest skeptical claim one could make with the phenomenology we have is that any given instance of consciousness is imbued with autonomous phenomenological continuity, which is perhaps not what some would want, but in the bigger picture it's a distinction without a difference when it comes to whether consciousness is continuous
I do not get the point Philip makes about first person/third person observation. When science observes other system, it can only rely on third person observations. In fact it is a advantage when studying targets (humans) of experiments related to consciousness, who have first person experience/consciousness and are able to communicate that to the scientist. Unless they are not talking. Then too bad. But come on, seriously? It is true that for obvious ethical reasons we cannot do destructive experiments with human subjects and nor should we. But there are many many non-invasive and non-destructive ways to do perform experiments on conscious subjects.
In the 1970's American Auto companies were selling cars that were engineering junk compared to the new Japanese cars that were coming on the market. The American cars still had, engines, ignitions and braking systems designed in the 1960's.However American cars still dominated the market because American marketing colonized the market with American branding. The consciousness debate is dominated by philosophers who pass around branding words like consciousness, physicalusm, pansychism, illusionism, idealism..Dan Dennett refused to use these words but protected neuroscience and said the phenomena philosophers talked about would be solved when they got deeper into neuroscience. Read any general book on neuroscience and you will see that we are still in the neuro correlates stage but only a few theorists speak about what happens more deeply in cells and networks. My personal theory is Supercell Theory or neural cell networks are synchronizing internally similar to how muscle cells synchronize physically. This would explain emergence or the hard problem.
The lattice structures aren’t conscious on a scale I can see
Illusionism once again misunderstood and misrepresented. Partly, it is the fault of the name illusionism for the philosophical position.
Illusionism is an eliminativism. Illusionism implies that people have a thinking error developed by evolution, because of which we give "phenomenal consciousness" some separate qualities. Having qualia is a mistake of our thinking. The problem is that if we are firm enough in this position, then "qualia" and "phenomenal consciousness" turn into emptiness. There is nothing behind them, they do not exist. If there are some physical processes behind them, it means that the nature of the material world is such that matter can generate qualitative states, feelings perceived in the first person. And illusionists claim that they do not exist, otherwise it is already a theory of the identity of mind and brain. If we cannot rely on first-person subjective experience, which speaks about the reality of consciousness, because this is a mistake of thinking, then we cannot rely on the existence of reality from the same premises, because we know about the existence of reality only from some kind of user illusion, behind which there is nothing.
Two things are thought to be all there is: God and Consciousness. It is common to see them as separate which is a mistake. The definition of God is: Consciousness, Existence and Bliss. We share in God’s consciousness, ours deriving from it. In this discussion and in most discussions today, this connection is not made.
All that exists is consciousness. In the manifest realm it is divided, being both substance, and through mind, the ideas that play on substance. It is also forms. It is amusing in the case of atheists when they discuss consciousness; the hard problem of consciousness. It would likely horrify them if they realized they were discussing God who they do not believe in.
Materialism is jumping through hoops to find a material basis for consciousness. Unlike mind which emerges with quantum events and is physical, consciousness does not emerge, it is. It cannot be understood, measured or be scientifically studied as it is not physical. Dualism is just perception, what we see is also what we are. Life force is the bridge between matter and minds, as it not wholly one or wholly the other it can serve as a bridge.
- What are arguments for panpscychism?
- None given.
- thanks. That explains a lot
I haven’t watched yet, so no idea what Argument he offers or doesn’t, but my own as a panpsychist, is that it’s more reasonable than emergence, that is, it poses less unanswered questions. We already know the matter we have access to, our brain, has a phenomenal attribute to it, so it’s a simpler hypothesis to say all matter has that attribute, than to say brains are a special case that create something unique.
@@Galoxieview less unanswered questions doesn’t prove anything. At all. Bible has less unanswered questions than science, but😉
Also, panpsychism didn’t answer those questions, it just did a magic trick and pretends questions are answered
@@Galoxieview simpler hypothesis is ok, but even more simple would be saying god did it.
We need explanations of the world, not simple tricks of language
@@VoloBonja The simplest answer is usually the one closet to truth in scientific terms, even if that simple truth is God, you shouldn’t rule a simpler solution out without evidence to do so.
@@Galoxieview I disagree. You should not even introduce the new solution only base on simplicity, without evidence. And there is no evidence of consciousness everywhere, only where brains are.
I here is another thing. Panpsychism is not even simpler than naturalism, also it didn’t answer no new questions. Basically panpsychism is believe without any evidence. We can still talk about it, just like we can talk about Jesus
It was news to me that physicalism has failed announced by some one who is not physicalist. Let us tell Anil Seth and Michael Graziano to stop working on their consciousness related research projects.
Interesting enough, Goff's past he was a strict physicalist, and he never strayed far from it. The main point of contention with Dennett seems to come down where each place consciousness in the physical world.
Is consciousness some kind of "emergent" property from more fundamental physical processes, the strong emergence position; or is consciousness more fundamental, a property at the quantum.
We need to place consciousness somewhere in the physical world; how could something as radical as consciousness just suddenly emerge from radically different stuff. Is this even an explanation of how it would fit within the standard model? Doesn't everything need to tie back to this model somehow?
When Dennett states consciousness is an illusion from more underlying mechanisms, it sounds like he is arguing our experience of it is an illusion, and in a sense, how "real" it feels is an illusion. And is just a "trick".
Philosopher's like Goff found this inadequate. Indeed, we don't even fully understand what matter is, yet for some weird cultural reason, to even suggest consciousness must be a property of fundamental laws to exist at all is considered magic or something... As if seeing it as a "trick" isn't magical?
I think the biggest problem is saying the dominant philosophy of materialism is false, oppose to "incomplete".
Idealism and Panpsychism are just so annoying to me. And I'm into Vedanta.
That's the reason I suppose. When people conflate "everything is mind" with the whole "non-dual, everything is consciousness" thing
Philip keeps saying that while realism has failed at solving its hard problems, panpsychism has succeded and solved all the mysteries, but he never really tells you how it is solved. He just keeps telling that it has been solved but it is too complicated to explain it briefly. He can't even provide a scketch of the solutions. It is very confusing to me why he thinks he is remotely convincing.
Agree 100%. And of all, philosophers are expected to understand the hypothesis -> observation -> evidence -> analyses -> proof (rough outline) of an argument. Notice he just referenced Bertrand Russel etc and said some stuff but never explained how panpsycism explains anything.
@@SandipChitale We have no way to even directly observe consciousness. There are no arguments based on observation on this issue. It just depends if you think experiencing consciousness is significant enough to think it is either a "trick" or an actual feature of matter.
@@emptycloud2774 That is the beauty of scientific research experiments with conscious subject. In other experiments the targets of the experiment are not conscious, therefore scientists only have to rely on third party observations. But for experiments with human subject, the advantage is that scientists can not only do third party observations but also ask the subjects of the experiment about their first person direct experience of consciousness. How good is that? Won't you agree? It is true that for obvious ethical reasons, we can not and we should not do destructive experiments with human subjects. But there are many non-invasive, non-destructive ways to do experiments with human subjects with their consent and I am glad to know that is being done.
It appears that Philip thinks that science is like religion and Galileo is its pope or something. He seems to think that because Galileo may have set aside consciousness, which I am not sure he did, but OK, therefore all scientists will follow his approach or to continue the analogy, his commandments. I hope Philip knows many many many scientists are working on consciousness studies ignoring science pope - Galileo.
The point towards Galileo is closer to epistemology and metaphysics: it is how science accumulates knowledge is from measurements and predictions using primarily quantitative methods. Which is inadequate in understanding consciousness; because, we have no current way to "directly" measure it, or observe it "outside" of first-person experience. It is a phenomenological limitation...
Goff isn't even discrediting Galileo, just mentioning a very real limitation for scientific enquiry into how consciousness fits in the physical world.
If consciousness is not physical according to panpsychism, then presumably it is not affected by fine tuning in any way because the siting of physical constants are meant to have an effect on physical systems. Thus it is not clear why Philip also (IMO mischaracterizingly) subscribes to fine tuning. I guess it is possible that he independently finds the fine tuning appealing. Consciousness could have existed no matter what the conditions in the universe were, or may be consciousness requires the same fine tuning?
Now about mischaracterization:
Incorrect:
Universe is fine tuned (presumably by someone or something or itself) for life (on earth?).
Correct:
Life on earth is constantly trying to fine tune itself (thru the process of evolution) with the contemporary environmental (gravity strength, pressure, temperature, the abundance of given set of elements, how long earth has survived) conditions on Earth. This is a well known process of evolution. Earth formation is -> solar system is -> milky way is consistent (I am avoiding the word fine tuned) with laws of physics in this universe.
One a different Earth, with different gravity strength, pressure, temperature, the abundance of given set of elements, potentially life based around different chemistry is constantly fine tuning itself to keep up with contemporary environment.
If the environment rapidly changes or there is a catastrophic change due to asteroid strike the life may get destroyed, reset and then go down a different evolutionary path. Ah, it happened to dinosaurs on earth.
Bernardo Kastrup might be the perfect follow up guess after Goff!
He says it's a good philosophy because it explains everything that emerges from consciousness. And how does it do this ? Well, by accepting it as a brute fact of course. What kind of voodoo is this then ?
Goff is a ring light guy? Does he not see the reflection? This is a point against his philosophy imo.
What’s with the shirt, dude?
The dialectical materialist view is more something you could call "panreflectionist" materialism. Much simpler than "panpsychism" or any variants of it! Details upon request! :P
Strawmen gallore.
Goff is a woo woo clown. Represents the very worst of philosophy.
He constantly sets up for himself straw men and proceeds to knock them down.
Wow, this bullshit is getting some research funds?
Panpsychism is a bad joke with no punchline