Joe Rogan Experience #1739 - Philip Goff

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast.…

   1. PGPhilip Goff0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music) Yeah? Yeah. Well, it started out as a plain, clean table-

   3. PGPhilip Goff0:17

      Uh-huh.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      ... because it was a new studio. And then along the line, people give you a bunch of shit.

   5. PGPhilip Goff0:21

      Uh-huh.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:21

      And then it just starts piling up.

   7. PGPhilip Goff0:23

      (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:23

      And you have to figure out when, like, "When do I empty this ashtray?"

   9. PGPhilip Goff0:27

      Uh-huh.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:27

       "When do I throw out some of these objects? When do I move them into storage?" And then when I move them into storage, there's always, there always seems to be new ones that show up.

   11. PGPhilip Goff0:36

       So these are things, these are all things people have bought? Brought?

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:39

       Yes.

   13. PGPhilip Goff0:40

       Right.

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:40

       Everything is something someone's given me.

   15. PGPhilip Goff0:42

       Oh, I should have brought something. I feel bad now.

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:43

       Uh, except the, the deer head. Oh, please don't give me anything.

   17. PGPhilip Goff0:46

       (laughs)

   18. JRJoe Rogan0:46

       We're good. Thank you. Just, just your-

   19. PGPhilip Goff0:48

       You're kidding.

   20. JRJoe Rogan0:48

       ... pretty self is fine.

   21. PGPhilip Goff0:49

       Aw. It's fine.

   22. JRJoe Rogan0:50

       Um, so, uh, thanks for doing this, man. Appreciate it.

   23. PGPhilip Goff0:53

       No worries. Thanks for having me.

   24. JRJoe Rogan0:54

       It's a very fascinating subject 'cause I've always wondered. Um, let's, let's just expla- uh, tell everybody what you do and who you are.

   25. PGPhilip Goff1:02

       My name's Philip Goff. I'm a philosophy professor from Durham University in the north of England. And I spend most of my time thinking about consciousness. And specifically, I guess, I defend this view, panpsychism, uh, which is roughly the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world. So, so it doesn't, doesn't literally mean that everything is conscious necessarily. The basic commitment is that the fundamental building blocks of reality, maybe fundamental particles like electrons and quarks, have incredibly simple forms of experience and then the, the very complex experience of the human or animal brain is somehow rooted in or derived from this very simple experience at the level of fundamental physics. So, sounds kinda wacky, but I think, uh, more and more philosophers and even some neuroscientists are thinking this might be our best hope for addressing the hard problem of consciousness and the, the, the scientific and philosophical challenges consciousness raises.

   26. JRJoe Rogan2:11

       Well, we are starting to challenge whether or not other things have something akin to consciousness, like plants, right?

   27. PGPhilip Goff2:18

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   28. JRJoe Rogan2:19

       There's, uh, there's real evidence that plants-

   29. PGPhilip Goff2:22

       Mm-hmm.

   30. JRJoe Rogan2:22

       ... um, both, uh, feel something when they're being eaten and react to it. Um, the r- the real evidence that they react to it, they actually change their, the profile, the chemical profile, to make themselves, uh, taste disgusting so that animals will not eat them.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:00

      one wants to have a house where someone was murdered in. In fact, when you... In many states, they have laws, so they have to let you know if someone was murdered in that house or if someone committed suicide in that house.

   2. PGPhilip Goff15:12

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:12

      Because we have this feeling that, like, "Oh, the, the, whatever that is is still in there."

   4. PGPhilip Goff15:18

      Hmm.

   5. JRJoe Rogan15:18

      Well, what is that?

   6. PGPhilip Goff15:19

      Yeah, look, I mean, I know what you're talking about. I mean, I think these are difficult questions. Is this, is this just associations we have or is, is this something we can't explain here? And I mean, these are ultimately kind of empirical questions that it, that it's hard to settle. I mean, I suppose, f- fortunate for me in a way, I think the, the case for panpsychism is based on much, you know, in a sense, much more solid data, just the reality of consciousness, the reality of feelings and experiences, you know, this inner world of colors and smells and tastes that, you know, each of us enjoy every second awaking life. And that's real. That is real. I'm not sure. I'm e- I'm not sure whether-

   7. JRJoe Rogan16:08

      Right, but we're, we're detecting those with senses, right?

   8. PGPhilip Goff16:10

      We-

   9. JRJoe Rogan16:10

      So if you have something that you, you say has consciousness, like this coffee pot. Let's imagine this coffee pot-

   10. PGPhilip Goff16:16

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan16:16

       ... has some sort of a consciousness. What is it, w- what is it based on?

   12. PGPhilip Goff16:20

       So I think, yeah, there's a tendency to... So w- whenever people hear about panpsychism, there's a tendency to think, "Oh, it's the kind of consciousness a human being has." So we're thinking like-

   13. JRJoe Rogan16:31

       Right.

   14. PGPhilip Goff16:31

       ... particles are feeling existential angst or-

   15. JRJoe Rogan16:35

       Mm-hmm.

   16. PGPhilip Goff16:35

       ... wondering if it's Tuesday or something. But-

   17. JRJoe Rogan16:37

       Yeah.

   18. PGPhilip Goff16:38

       ... you know, what... I mean, it's, maybe to g- it's good to get clear on what we mean by consciousness, because it is a bit of an ambiguous word. And often people use it to mean something quite sophisticated, like awareness of one's own existence or something. And, you know, that's-

   19. JRJoe Rogan16:52

       Right.

   20. PGPhilip Goff16:52

       ... that's something I'm not sure a sheep has, never mind a particle.

   21. JRJoe Rogan16:55

       Is consciousness-

   22. PGPhilip Goff16:56

       But-

   23. JRJoe Rogan16:56

       ... and sentient thoughts, are they linked?

   24. PGPhilip Goff16:58

       I think I would just say consciousness is... The way it's standardly used in the science and philosophy of consciousness is just subjective experience. Uh, pleasure, pain, seeing color, hearing sound. Consciousness is what it's like to be you, right? And, you know, in con- and this comes in all shapes and sizes. You know, in human beings, it's incredibly rich and complex. A sheep's consciousness is a bit simpler. Consciousness of a mouse, simpler again. And as we move to simpler and simpler forms of life, we find simpler and simpler forms of experience. So for the panpsychist, this just continues right down to the, the basic building blocks of matter, which have incredibly simple forms of experience to reflect their in- their incredibly simple nature. So, so that's, I mean, that's one clarification, that it's, this is, we're talking about just very simple kinds of experience. But also, I mean, you say, is the coffee pot conscious? I, I think most panpsychists would not think the coffee pot is conscious. The idea is that the, the fundamental-... particles, perhaps, are conscious, but maybe not every random aggregation of them is conscious in its own right. Although, although some people, although some panpsychists do think literally everything is conscious. Lo- Luke Roelof is a very good, very rigorous panpsychist philosopher and, um, he does think literally everything, including the coffee pot, is conscious. But even then, you know, it's, it's not gonna be like sitting there wanting us to drink it.

   25. JRJoe Rogan18:33

       Right.

   26. PGPhilip Goff18:33

       You know, that's the kind of consciousness you get after millions of years of-

   27. JRJoe Rogan18:36

       Right.

   28. PGPhilip Goff18:36

       ... evolution. Its consciousness is gonna be s- just some kind of meaningless mess.

   29. JRJoe Rogan18:41

       Like the difference between the consciousness of a dog and a human, even though a dog's clearly a conscious animal-

   30. PGPhilip Goff18:46

       Yeah.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Wow. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      uh, filled it with cement. So I don't know how they did it, I don't know how long it took, but essentially when they dig it out slowly and excavate the site, you get to see the actual structure of the leaf-cutter ant colony and where they lived. And it is unbelievably complex and amazing, and somehow or another they-

   2. PGPhilip Goff30:22

      Wow.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:22

      ... they know how to do this.

   4. PGPhilip Goff30:24

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:24

      And it's, it's not just that they know how to do this, but that all leafcutter ants know how to do this. This is not unique to this one, individual colony that's figured something out that other ones haven't. And there's a series of complex, little pods and, and holes and tunnels. And again, they, they actually have vents. They have like an area where the leaves they bring in are fermenting-

   6. PGPhilip Goff30:48

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:49

      ... and they go through this process. And, uh, when you're looking at this, and for the folks that are just listening, these folks are, you know, 8, 9, 10 feet down in the ground-

   8. PGPhilip Goff30:58

      Yeah. Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:58

      ... digging out these incredibly complex, it looks like tunnels that lead into these large pods. And it's just wild. It's wild-

   10. PGPhilip Goff31:09

       Wow.

   11. JRJoe Rogan31:09

       ... to see like what causes this incredibly complex construction? Like, what is it?

   12. PGPhilip Goff31:17

       Mm-hmm.

   13. JRJoe Rogan31:17

       What, how are they communicating? If they're just communicating through pheromones and odd signals that they're giving off, like how do they know how to do this? Like, what, what is this? Right? What is-

   14. PGPhilip Goff31:30

       (sighs)

   15. JRJoe Rogan31:30

       What causes bees to make beehives all over the world? Why are they doing that? Like, what, why is it such an immense structure? Why do they have ... why have they figured out the correct way of making these geometric patterns that form the, the, the hive itself? It's wild.

   16. PGPhilip Goff31:52

       Yeah. I mean, so look, these are really difficult scientific questions. So I mean, I, I mean, I guess this, this, the orthodox view would be in some sense this is just reducible to underlying chemistry, underlying physics. Um, but I mean, there, there are experimental scientists who deviate from that norm. Um, I'm friends with a Daniel Picard at Columbia University who's got the, uh, the psycho-biology mitochondria lab at Columbia University. And he's experimentally exploring the hypothesis that, uh, mitochondria in the brain, their activity should be understood as irreducible social networks rather than reducible to underlying chemistry, underlying physics. So I think, I mean, I think there's ... this is an on- ongoing argument I'm having with the physicist Sean Carroll at the moment. (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan32:47

       Oh, really?

   18. PGPhilip Goff32:48

       I, I think, um ... he was on my podcast, uh, last week. We, we had a three-hour debate on-

   19. JRJoe Rogan32:53

       What does he think?

   20. PGPhilip Goff32:54

       You know, he's just so confident that, uh, you know, we, we know so much, we know enough about physics to think that, um, everything in the brain, everything in the biological world is ultimately reducible to underlying physics. I, I, I used to, I used to hold that myself, and I don't necessarily d- deny it now, I'm, I'm just more agnostic. I used to hold that myself because a panpsychist can totally accept that, right? A panpsychist can just hold, yeah, everything's reducib- r- you know, the causal dynamics of the world are reducible to physics. All that the panpsychist adds is that the, the causal dynamics of physics are sort of filled out with consciousness. But they, but they can agree with Sean Carroll that e- in terms of like the causal dynamics of what those ants are doing or mitochondria in the brain, a panpsychist can a- ac- ac- accept that the causal dynamics are all bottom out at physics. Um, that's what ... For many people, that's, that's an attraction of panpsychism that you don't need to deny that. But actually, the more ... So, you know, my first academic book, um, Consciousness and Fundamental Reality, a- and actually in, in my, in my popular book, Galileo's Error, I, I supported that view. But actually, the more I talk to neuroscientists and w- well, you know, we've got an, an interdisciplinary consciousness group at my, my university in Durham, and I just don't think we know enough about the brain to, to know whether that's true or not. I think, you know, I think we know, we know a fair bit about the basic chemistry in the brain, like, uh, you know, how neurons fire, calcium chambers, um, neurotransmitters and so on. We know a fair bit about large-scale functions in the brain, you know, what, what, what large bits of the brain do. So we know kind of the top and the bottom. But what we're almost totally ignorant about is h- a- the middle bit is how large-scale brain functions are realized at the cellular level, how the, how the brain works, right?

   21. JRJoe Rogan35:02

       Mm.

   22. PGPhilip Goff35:02

       We are, you know ... People get very excited with brain scans, but they're very low resolution. You know, every pixel on, on a brain scan corresponds to, I think, 5.5 million neurons. You know, we're only 70% of the way getting, way through getting a connectome of the maggot brain with its ... Is it 10,000 or 100,000 neurons? Whereas the human brain has 86 billion neurons. So I think we'd have to know a lot more about the, how the functions of the brain are realized before we can say, "Oh yeah, it's all explicable in terms of underlying chemistry and physics." So maybe, you know, maybe Daniel Picard is right, that it's not, that it's, that there are these irreducible social networks at the level of mit- mitochondria. Um, I think that's just an open question. And I think physicists ... I think I s- I think I saw Brian Greene making a similar, similar comment on your podcast. I think physicists are too quick to, to have the assumption that ... I think an assumption that goes beyond physics itself, which is that all causal dynamics ultimately bottom out at physics. I don't think that's a, that's a claim of physics. I think that's a philosophical claim that goes beyond physics. And we just don't know yet. I mean, this has implications for free will as well, I think. But anyway, I'm talking.

   23. JRJoe Rogan36:17

       The, the, we know for a fact that the human mind at least, uh, has reactions to chemicals. Like so there's some sort of a chemical composition that's-... making it react certain ways, and when the chem- chemical composition-

   24. PGPhilip Goff36:34

       Hmm.

   25. JRJoe Rogan36:34

       ... is imbalanced it cau- it causes, uh, consciousness to go awry.

   26. PGPhilip Goff36:39

       Mm-hmm, absolutely.

   27. JRJoe Rogan36:40

       We, we, we know there's so much going on, but to reduce it down to just those chemicals seems silly as well.

   28. PGPhilip Goff36:48

       Yeah, so I- the- the way I think about consciousness is there's a division of labor here. There's an experimental aspect to the science of consciousness and there's a philosophical aspect. Right? I'm gonna come back to your- to your point in a roundabout way. So the, I mean, the experimental task is to try and work out what kinds of electrochemical activity go along with what kinds of experience, and you do that by asking people how they're feeling while you're scanning the brain. That's a really important project, although there are challenges as we've discussed already. But that's- that's important data, but that's not gonna get you a full theory of consciousness, because what we ultimately want from a theory of consciousness is an explanation of why. Why do certain kinds of brain activity go along with experience? And because consciousness is not publicly observable, that's not a question you can answer with an experiment. At that point, you have to turn to philosophy and you just have to look at the various proposals philosophers have offered, um, for explaining why brain activity goes along with conscious experience. So, I mean, or at least it's- at least it's philosophy at the moment, you know, philosophy is what you get when the rules of the game are not set. I mean, the subtitle of my book is Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. I hope that this will- what is now philosophy will one day be established science, you know, once the rules of the game are set, it becomes science. But coming back to your point, you know, it's- it- I guess many people have the intuition if it's just chemicals, that's not f- that's not quite feelings. Feelings and electrochemical activity are- are somehow not the same thing. The panpsychist has- has a- has a nice way of accommodating that intuition whilst also disagreeing a bit. So the panpsychist will say, "Look, all there is in the brain is physical activity. Nothing spooky, nothing supernatural, just physical activity." But, there's more to the physical than what physical science tells you about. Physical science just tells you what f- what matter does. Right? You know, p- physics talks- talks about mass and charge, and these properties are completely defined in terms of behavior, you know, attraction, repulsion, resistance to acceleration. It's all about what stuff does, it's all about mathematically capturing the causal dynamics of the physical world, what Russell called the causal skeleton of the world. Um, the i- the idea of the panpsychist is, so- so physics doesn't tell you what matter is, it just tells you what it does. And so there's a kind of hole in our standard scientific story of the universe, and the idea is, well, maybe we can put consciousness in that hole. So we can- we can sort of accommodate your intuition, 'cause your thinking... When you say or if you have the intuition consciousness is more than just chemicals, that's because you're thinking physical science tells us what chemicals are, but the panpsychist says no, physical science tells you what chemicals do. When- to the question what chemicals are is ultimately answered by the panpsych-

   29. JRJoe Rogan40:12

       But what's fascinating though-

   30. PGPhilip Goff40:14

       ... by the underlying consciousness.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Yes. …

   1. PGPhilip Goff45:00

      these qualities and, and really leaving out consciousness itself. Um, and, you know, I think we shouldn't be surprised that physical science has this difficulty with consciousness be- because the scientific paradigm we've been operating in for the last 500 years was designed by Galileo to exclude consciousness. Um, should I talk a bit about that?

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:25

      Yes.

   3. PGPhilip Goff45:26

      So, yeah. So this is why, why I defend in my book, Galileo's Error. So really, the most important... Well, I shouldn't say that. A key moment in the scientific revolution, right, is 1623, Galileo's decision that mathematics was gonna be the language of science, right? Uh, this was the start of mathematical physics. What is not discussed much is the philosophical work Galileo had to do to get there, right? Because the problem was, before Galileo, people thought the world, the physical world was filled with qualities, right? So you have colors on the surfaces of objects, smells floating through the air, tastes inside food. And this was a problem for Galileo because you can't capture these qualities in, in the purely quantitative language of mathematics. You know, an equation can't capture the, the redness of a red experience. Um, so Galileo got around this 'cause... So Galileo, you know, he wanted to describe it all in math. Um, so Galileo got around this problem by proposing a radically new philosophical theory of reality. So we think of Galileo as a great experimental scientist, which he was, but he was also a great philosopher. So he proposed this new philosophical theory of reality and according to this theory, the qualities aren't really out there in the physical world, right? They're in the consciousness of the observer, right? So if you're looking at this, uh... Is that black? You're looking at the... You know, the blackness isn't really on the surface of the pen, it's in the consciousness of the person looking at it. Or if you're eating a spicy curry, the spiciness isn't really in the curry, it's in the consciousness of the person eating it. So Galileo strips the physical world of its qualities and after he's done that, all that's left are the purely quantitative properties, size, shape, location, motion, properties that you can capture in mathematical geometry. So, so in Galileo, Galileo's worldview, there's this m- radical division in nature between two domains, the quantitative domain of science, sci-... You know, the physical world with its mathematical quantitative properties, and the qualitative domain of consciousness. You know, consciousness with its colors, sounds, smells, tastes, which he took to be outside of the domain of science. So this is the start of mathematical physics, which has gone incredibly well. But I think what we've forgotten is that it's gone so well because Galileo gave science this narrow, specific focus. Galileo essentially said, you know, "Just put consciousness on one side. Just focus on what you can capture in mathematics." So this is so important. So I think people... We're now living in a strange period of history where people like Sean Carroll, for example, think, "Oh, materialism has to be true 'cause, you know, look how well physical science has done. You know, it's explained so much. Surely, it's gonna explain consciousness."... the irony is, it's done so well precisely because it was designed to exclude consciousness. So I think if we, if we wanna bring consciousness fully into science, we need a new worldview. We need to find a way to bring together what Galileo separated, to bring together the quantitative domain of science and the qualitative domain of human consciousness. And that's what panpsychism does, it gives us a way of bringing these together.

   4. JRJoe Rogan49:08

      I still am not getting how Galileo excluded consciousness.

   5. PGPhilip Goff49:12

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JRJoe Rogan49:12

      That doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. I, I do understand that mathematics are what he felt was the underlying building blocks of all things. But even if you're talking about how like spicy curry, for example-

   7. PGPhilip Goff49:24

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JRJoe Rogan49:24

      ... spicy curry doesn't exist in the curry, it exists in the consciousness of someone-

   9. PGPhilip Goff49:28

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan49:28

       ... who eats the curry. But it's not really true 'cause there's a chemical reaction. There's, there, we know what the ingredients are in the curry that causes it to have a spicy reaction to the human being that's taking it in. It's a very distinct, very definable-

   11. PGPhilip Goff49:45

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan49:45

       ... chemical reaction that we know that these plants have, uh, excreted these chemicals to discourage predation. That's why they're so spicy in the first place. We know, we know all these things. Like this is, in a way, mathematics. It's mathematics engaging with consciousness.

   13. PGPhilip Goff50:03

       Yeah, so look, there's, there's definitely a lot we can, we can do mathematically with the tools of mathematical science. Yeah, you can capture the chemical composition of the curry. You can capture-

   14. JRJoe Rogan50:16

       Yeah.

   15. PGPhilip Goff50:16

       ... the changes it makes in your brain.

   16. JRJoe Rogan50:18

       Right.

   17. PGPhilip Goff50:19

       But then at some point, uh, the resulting brain activity goes along with the sensation of spiciness.

   18. JRJoe Rogan50:28

       Well, you recognize it.

   19. PGPhilip Goff50:29

       That, that's where the miracle happens.

   20. JRJoe Rogan50:30

       But how is it a sen- but, but you're recognizing, 'cause your pain sensors and your tongue and the, the, the sensations of taste, they're all... This is mathematics, right? Like there's, there's certain compounds that cause certain reactions. We even attribute genes to those compounds, like the genes for, with some people, cilantro tastes like soap, and some people, it tastes delicious. Like that, those-

   21. PGPhilip Goff50:53

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan50:53

       ... those are, there's a genetic... We, we, we know for sure that there's a genetic component to that. We, we can actually isolate the very, very specific genes that cause people to have that reaction.

   23. PGPhilip Goff51:04

       So I think, I think the, the chemical story can, the physical story can explain how people react to the, the taste, how people store information about it, how that impacts on their later behavior.

   24. JRJoe Rogan51:18

       Right.

   25. PGPhilip Goff51:19

       But all of that story could, in principle, go on in a, in, in what we call a zombie, in s- w- without any kind of inner life, any kind of experience of spiciness. You, you know, it's conceivable that you could have a mechanism that had all those reactions, um, and all those responses, but there was no feeling of spiciness. Um, I mean, he's, I mean, it's, it's sometimes, it's sometimes a bit more, more vivid with color if you think about... So I mean, he- here's another way of putting it, right? Suppose, suppose I wanted to explain in neuro, in a neuroscientific theory the redness of a red experience, right?

   26. JRJoe Rogan52:01

       Okay.

   27. PGPhilip Goff52:02

       Why red experiences have that red quality. So the first issue is, I don't think you can... and this is essentially Galileo's insight. You can't capture the redness of a red experience in the language of neuroscience. And the way to see that, you, you know, you couldn't convey to a, a blind neuroscientist what it's like to see red by sh- you know, getting him to read your theory in Braille, right? You couldn't convey that to him. So that's a descriptive limitation, right? That the language of neuroscience, this purely quantitative language can't express the redness of a red experience. So that's just a descriptive limitation, but I think it entails an explanatory limitation, because if I wanted to present my neuris- my brilliant neuroscientific theory that explained the redness of a red experience, my theory would first have to describe that quality and then explain it in terms of underlying physical processes. But if the theory can't even describe it, then it can't explain it. So I think, in principle, a neuroscientific theory cannot explain the qualities of our experience. Galileo, 500 years ago, realized that and he said, "If we want science to be mathematical, we have to take consciousness out of the story." And that was a good move, but we've sort of forgotten that that's what we did. So now we're in a weird period of history where people think, "Oh, it's gone so well," but yeah, it's gone so well because we took consciousness out of the story, because you can't capture those qualities in a purely quantitative language.

   28. JRJoe Rogan53:46

       But what if it's both? What if, what if it's both conscious and chemical? That seems more likely, right?

   29. PGPhilip Goff53:56

       Yeah, but that, I mean, that's essentially the panpsychist view, right? But the, look, the question is, what comes first? So both, both the panpsychist like myself and the materialist like Sean Carroll, for example, you know, many, many people are materialists, we both think, you know, in some sense, consciousness and chemicals go together. The question is, which is more fundamental? I think that we get physics and chemistry out of consciousness, we don't do it the other way around. It's, it's very easy to explain here.

   30. JRJoe Rogan54:30

       But why, but why do... I still don't understand why you think that.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      based on the experience, aren't they both mutually... Or they're, they're, they're both in- they're happening at the same time? The, like-

   2. PGPhilip Goff1:00:08

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:08

      ... both things are-

   4. PGPhilip Goff1:00:09

      Yeah, yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:09

      ... they're interacting. It's not as simple as-

   6. PGPhilip Goff1:00:12

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:12

      ... one versus the other.

   8. PGPhilip Goff1:00:14

      Well, I mean, let me put it another way. Wh- what is there at the fundamental level of reality, right? For the materialist, what there is at the fundamental level of reality is just the mathematical structures we find in physics.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:29

      Right.

   10. PGPhilip Goff1:00:30

       That's what there is. I think if that was what our world was like, there would be no consciousness.There would be complicated mechanisms-

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:00:38

       But what if, but what if consciousness is an essential aspect of the fundamental structure?

   12. PGPhilip Goff1:00:43

       Yeah. Well, that's the panpsychist view.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:00:44

       Right.

   14. PGPhilip Goff1:00:44

       You're a panpsychist, Joe.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:00:45

       But what if it's like mathematics?

   16. PGPhilip Goff1:00:47

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:00:47

       Like, the reason why this structure exists is because it enhances the ability for these creatures to procreate and innovate and move things forward, that it's a- it's a- it's an element of life because life propagates better-

   18. PGPhilip Goff1:01:04

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:01:04

       ... when it has this consciousness. So just like sight is an element of life because you can pick out your prey and your food-

   20. PGPhilip Goff1:01:13

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:01:13

       ... and what the dangers are, just like sounds are an element and the ability to receive those sounds enhances this being's ability to survive, consciousness is a more complex version of all of these senses, that it's an all-encompassing thing that allows this creature to innovate, to create structures, like the leafcutter ants have built this insanely complex colony, like bees create beehives, like humans create computers.

   22. PGPhilip Goff1:01:39

       But why couldn't you have all of that without experience? Why, why couldn't we just have... As long as you have complicated enough physical structure to- to behave in the right ways, like those ants are doing, you'd survive as well. What, why do you need inner experience? Where does th- what, where does experience come into the mix? I think it, if you started with just- just physics, there'd be no need for experience.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:02:06

       W-

   24. PGPhilip Goff1:02:06

       Experience wouldn't pop up.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:02:08

       ... experience. Why... I don't understand. Why, why would there be no need for experience?

   26. PGPhilip Goff1:02:14

       Can you make sense of the idea of, you know, that... I mean, I don't mean can you, I mean does this make sense to you? Commander Data, you know Commander Data from s- th- The Next Generation stuff?

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:02:25

       Mm-hmm.

   28. PGPhilip Goff1:02:25

       You know. Let's say, you know, he's made of silicon and let's say for the sake of discussion silicon things aren't conscious, right? There, there's no inner life. There's nothing that it's like to be Commander Data. But if he's complicated enough, he could behave just like us, right?

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:02:42

       Right.

   30. PGPhilip Goff1:02:42

       So if- if silicon creatures somehow evolved, then they would survive just as well as us. They would behave in all the same ways, even though there was no inner experience. Does that make sense to you?
6. 1:15:00 – 1:27:13

   What does that mean,…

   1. PGPhilip Goff1:15:00

      here to do this podcast, and he's slightly ambiguous on it. He wants to say, "Well, in a sense, I believe in pain, in a sense I don't." But there's another illusionist, F- Francois Kammerer, who says, um, he just says there's, no one's ever felt pain. And he's got a really interesting article, uh, exploring h- how we should think about morality.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:17

      What does that mean, no one's ever felt pain?

   3. PGPhilip Goff1:15:18

      Yeah, I don't know. I-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:15:19

      What if somebody kicks his ass? What if someone holds that guy down and punches him in the nose until he screams to stop?

   5. PGPhilip Goff1:15:24

      Do you know, actually, when I was-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:15:25

      You think he's in pain?

   7. PGPhilip Goff1:15:26

      When I was a first year-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:15:27

      This is an intellectual masturbation exercise.

   9. PGPhilip Goff1:15:29

      (laughs)

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:15:29

       Do you understand that?

   11. PGPhilip Goff1:15:30

       When I was-

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:15:30

       Like, things to- go too far.

   13. PGPhilip Goff1:15:32

       When I was... When I was a first year philosopher, I wrote, um, when I was 18, I wrote an essay expressing these sentiments, saying, uh, you know, if, if I kind of stuck a rusty blade in one of these people, what-

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:15:44

       Yeah.

   15. PGPhilip Goff1:15:44

       And I got a really bad mark. I got really, they, they said it was, like, violent. (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:15:47

       Oh, because you were explaining something that would be physically painful?

   17. PGPhilip Goff1:15:51

       (laughs) Well, look, this, I think-

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:15:52

       You got a bad mark for that kind of thinking?

   19. PGPhilip Goff1:15:54

       Yeah, but I think my tutor didn't like... I think he thought I was a bit of an obnoxious... But I, I probably was when I was 18. I think I-

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:16:00

       Well, you're probably challenging ideas. You know, like you should encourage all young minds to.

   21. PGPhilip Goff1:16:05

       I think-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:16:05

       I think your teacher's a piece of shit, how about that?

   23. PGPhilip Goff1:16:07

       I showed him, um...

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:16:09

       (laughs)

   25. PGPhilip Goff1:16:09

       I took pictures of my b- I don't know, my, my band, uh, we took our group photos of us pretending... On the toilet we took photos. Anyway.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:16:17

       Yeah.

   27. PGPhilip Goff1:16:17

       It was, uh-

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:16:18

       He got mad at that too?

   29. PGPhilip Goff1:16:19

       He got really ups- I mean, it wasn't pornographic, you know, it was from an angle, but it was-

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:16:22

       You're being silly.

Episode duration: 2:14:01