Philip Goff: Consciousness, Panpsychism, and the Philosophy of Mind | Lex Fridman Podcast #261

1. 0:00 – 1:14

   Introduction

   1. PGPhilip Goff0:00

      I believe our official scientific worldview is incompatible with the reality of consciousness.

   2. LFLex Fridman0:05

      Do you think we're living in a simulation?

   3. PGPhilip Goff0:06

      We could be in the Matrix. This could be a very vivid dream.

   4. LFLex Fridman0:09

      There's going to be a few people that are now visualizing a pink elephant.

   5. PGPhilip Goff0:12

      A hamster has consciousness.

   6. LFLex Fridman0:14

      Except for cats, who are evil automatons that are void of consciousness.

   7. PGPhilip Goff0:19

      Consciousness is the basis of moral value, moral concern.

   8. LFLex Fridman0:24

      Do you think there will be a time in, like, 20, 30, 50 years when we're not morally okay turning off the power to a robot? (deep breath) The following is a conversation with Philip Goff, philosopher, specializing in the philosophy of mind and consciousness. He is a panpsychist which means he believes that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of physical reality of all matter in the universe. He is the author of Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness and is the host of an excellent podcast called Mind Chat. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description and now, here's my conversation with Philip Goff.

2. 1:14 – 34:40

   Conscious matter

   1. LFLex Fridman1:14

      I opened my second podcast conversation with Elon Musk with a, uh, question about consciousness and panpsychism. The question was, quote, "Does consciousness permeate all matter?" I don't know why I opened the conversation this way. He looked at me like, "What the hell is this guy talking about?" So, he said no, because we wouldn't be able to tell if it did or not so it's outside the realm of the scientific method. Do you agree or disagree with Elon Musk's answer?

   2. PGPhilip Goff1:45

      I disagree. I guess I, I guess I do think consciousness pervades matter. In fact, I think consciousness is, is the ultimate nature of matter. Um, so as for whether it's outside of the scientific method, I think there's a fundamental challenge at the heart of the science of consciousness that we need to face up to which is that consciousness is, is not publicly observable, right? I can't look inside your head and see your feelings and experiences. We know about consciousness not, you know, not from doing experiments or public observation. We just know about it from our, our immediate awareness of our, our feelings and experiences. So-

   3. LFLex Fridman2:34

      Qualitative, not quantitative, as you talk about.

   4. PGPhilip Goff2:37

      Yeah, that's another aspect of it there. So, there are a couple of reasons consciousness, I think, is not susceptible to the standard, or not fully susceptible to the standard scientific approach. One reason you've just raised is that it's qualitative rather than quantitative. Another reason is it's not publicly observable. So, I mean science, science is used to dealing with, uh, unobservables, right? You know, fundamental particles, quantum wave functions, other universes. None of these things are observable, but there's an important difference. With all these things, we postulate unobservables in order to explain what we can observe, right? In, in the whole of science, that's, that's the, that's how it works. In the case of consciousness, in the unique case of consciousness, the thing we are trying to explain is not publicly observable and that is utterly unique. If we wanna fully bring science into consciousness, we need a more expansive conception of the scientific method. So, it doesn't mean we can't explain consciousness scientifically, but we need to rethink what science is.

   5. LFLex Fridman3:49

      What do you mean publicly, the word "publicly" observable? Is there something interesting to be said about the word "publicly," I suppose, versus privately?

   6. PGPhilip Goff3:58

      Yeah. It's, it's tricky to define but I suppose the data of physics are available to anybody if, um, you know, if there were aliens who visited us from another planet, maybe they'd have very different sense organs, maybe they'd struggle to understand our art or our music. But if they were intelligent enough to do ma- mathematics, they could understand our physics. They could look at the data of our experiments. They could run the experiments themselves. Whereas consciousness, is it observable? Is it not observable? In a sense, it's observable. As you say, we could say it's privately observable. I am directly aware of my own feelings and experiences. If I'm in pain, it's, it's just right there for me. My pain is just totally, directly evident to me. But you, from the outside, cannot directly access my pain. You can access my pain behavior, but, or you can ask me, but you can't access my pain in the way that I can access my pain. So, I think, um, that's a distinction. It might be difficult to totally pin it down how we define those things, but I think there's a fairly clear and very important difference there.

   7. LFLex Fridman5:17

      So, you think there's a, uh, a, kind of, direct observation that you're able to do of your pain that I'm not, so my observation, all the ways in which I can sneak up to observing your pain is indirect versus yours is direct? Can you play devil's advocate? Is it possible for me to get closer and closer and closer to, to being able to observe your pain, like all the subjective experiences, your- yours, in the way that you do?

   8. PGPhilip Goff5:49

      Yeah. I mean, it, so, it's, of course, it's not that we observe behavior and then we make an inference. We are hardwired to instinctively interpret smiles as happiness, crying as, as sadness and-... as we get to know someone, we find it very easy to adopt their perspective, get into their shoes. But strictly speaking, all we have perceptual access to is someone's behavior and if you were just... Strictly speaking, if you were trying to explain someone's behavior, th- th- th- those aspects that are publicly observable, I don't think you'd ever have recourse to attribute consciousness. You could just postulate some kind of mechanism if you were just trying to explain the behavior. So, someone like Daniel Dennett is very consistent on this. Uh, so I think for most people, what science is in the business of is explaining the data of public observation experiment. If you religiously followed that, you would not postulate consciousness because it's, it's not a datum that's known about in that way. And Daniel Dennett is really consistent on this. He thinks my consciousness cannot be empirically verified and, and therefore it doesn't exist. Dennett is consistent on this, I think I'm consistent on this, but I think a lot of people have a slightly confused, uh, middle way position on this. On the one hand, they think, um, the business of science is just to account for public observation experiment. But on the other hand, they also believe in consciousness without appreciating, I think, that that implies that there is another datum over and above the data of public observation experiments, namely just the reality of feelings and experiences.

   9. LFLex Fridman7:49

      As we walk along this conversation, you keep opening doors that I wanna walk into. And I, I will-

   10. PGPhilip Goff7:53

       (laughs)

   11. LFLex Fridman7:53

       ... but I wanna try to stay kind of focused. So you mentioned Daniel Dennett, let's lay it out. Since he sticks to his story, uh, pun unintended, and then you s- stick to yours, what is your story? What is your theory of consciousness versus his? Can you clarify his position?

   12. PGPhilip Goff8:13

       So, my view, I defend the view known as panpsychism, which is the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world. So it do- it doesn't literally mean that everything is conscious despite the meaning of the word, pan, everything, psyche, mind. So literally that means everything has mind. But the typical commitment of the panpsychist is that the fundamental building blocks of reality, maybe fundamental particles like electrons and quarks, have incredibly simple forms of experience. And that the very complex experience of, of the human or animal brain is somehow rooted in or derived from this much more simple consciousness at, at the level of fundamental physics.

   13. LFLex Fridman9:04

       Mm-hmm.

   14. PGPhilip Goff9:05

       So I mean, that's, that's a theory that I would justify on the grounds that it can account for this datum of consciousness that e- that we are immediately aware of in our experience in a way that I don't think other theories can. If you asked me to contrast that to Daniel Dennett, I think he would just say there is no such datum. Dennett says the data for science of consciousness is what he calls heterophenomenology, which is specifically defined as what we can access from the third-person perspective.

   15. LFLex Fridman9:38

       Mm-hmm.

   16. PGPhilip Goff9:38

       Including what people say, but crucially, we're not treating what they say, we're not relying on their testimony as evidence for some unobservable, uh, realm of feelings and experiences. We're just treating their, what they say as a datum of public observation experiments that we can account for in terms of underlying mechanisms.

   17. LFLex Fridman10:01

       But I feel like there's a deeper view of what consciousness is. So you have a, a very clear... And we'll talk quite a bit about panpsychism. But you have a clear view of what, you know, a- almost like a physics view of consciousness. He, I think, has a kind of view that, um, consciousness is almost the side effect of this, uh, massively parallel computation system going on in our, our brain. That the, the, that the, the, the brain is, has a model of the world and it's taking in perceptions and it's constantly weaving multiple stories about that world that's integrating the new perceptions. And the multiple stories are somehow... It's like a Google Doc collaborative editing, and that collaborative editing is the actual experience of, uh, what we think of as consciousness. Somehow the editing is consciousness-

   18. PGPhilip Goff10:57

       Mm-hmm.

   19. LFLex Fridman10:57

       ... of this, of this s- story. I mean, that- that's, that's a theory of consciousness, isn't it? Uh, uh, the narrative theory of consciousness or the multiple versions editing, collaborative editing of a narrative-

   20. PGPhilip Goff11:11

       Mm-hmm.

   21. LFLex Fridman11:11

       ... theory of consciousness.

   22. PGPhilip Goff11:12

       Yeah, he calls it the multiple drafts model. Incidentally, there's a very interesting paper just come out by very good philosopher, Luke Roloff's, defending a panpsychist version of Dennett's, uh, multiple drafts model. Um, he-

   23. LFLex Fridman11:26

       Oh, like a deeper turtle that that role is stacked on top of.

   24. PGPhilip Goff11:28

       Uh, just the difference being that, this is Luke Roloff's view, all of the drafts are conscious. So I guess-

   25. LFLex Fridman11:34

       (laughs)

   26. PGPhilip Goff11:34

       ... I guess, um, I guess for, uh, Dennett there's sort of no fact of the matter about which of these drafts is the correct one. Um, on Roloff's view, maybe there's no fact of the matter about which of these drafts is my consciousness, but nonetheless all the drafts correspond to some consciousness. And I mean, it does sound kind of funny. It's, I guess, I think he calls it, uh, Denettian panpsychism, but this... But Luke is a, one of the most rigorous, uh, and serious philosophers alive at the moment, I think. And, um, I hate having Luke Roloff's in an audience if I'm giving a talk 'cause he always cuts straight to the, the weakness in your position that you hadn't thought of. And so it's nice, you know, panpsychism is sometimes associated with fluffy thinking, but, you know-... contemporary panpsychists have come out of this tradition we call analytic philosophy, which is rooted in, you know, detailed, rigorous argumentation and, and it, it is defended i- in that manner.

   27. LFLex Fridman12:34

       Yeah. Those analytic philosophers are sticklers for terminology. It's very fun, a very fun group-

   28. PGPhilip Goff12:39

       (laughs)

   29. LFLex Fridman12:39

       ... to talk, talk shit with over some beers.

   30. PGPhilip Goff12:40

       Yeah. Well, I mean, it gets boring if it's, if you just start and end defining words, right?
3. 34:40 – 45:04

   Death, mystical experiences and collective consciousness

   1. LFLex Fridman34:40

      What do you think is the role of death in, uh, in all of this? The, the fear of death? Does that interplay with consciousness? Does this self-reflection, do you think there's some deep connection between this ability to contemplate the fact that the, our flame of, of, uh, consciousness eventually goes out?

   2. PGPhilip Goff35:08

      Yeah, I don't think, unfortunately, panpsychism helps particularly with life after death, because, you know, for the panpsychist, there's nothing supernatural, there's nothing beyond the physical. All there is really is ultimately particles and fields. It's just that we think the ultimate nature of particles and fields is consciousness. But I guess when, um, when the, uh, the, the matter in my brain ceases to be ordered in a way that sustains the particular kind of consciousness, uh, I enjoy in waking life, then in some sense I wi- I, I, I will cease to be. Although, I do think that the final chapter of my book, Galileo's Error, is more experimental. (laughs)

   3. LFLex Fridman35:57

      (laughs)

   4. PGPhilip Goff35:57

      So the first four chapters are the cold-blooded case for the panpsychist view as the, the best solution to the hard problem of consciousness. But-

   5. LFLex Fridman36:05

      The last chapters where you talk about meaning.

   6. PGPhilip Goff36:07

      Yeah, I talk about meaning, I talk about free will, and I talk about mystical experiences. So, I always want to emphasize that panpsychism is not necessarily connected to anything spiritual, you know. A lot of people defending this view, like David Chalmers or Luke Roloffes are just total atheist secularists, right? They don't believe in any kind of transcendent reality, they just believe in feelings, you know, mundane consciousness and think that needs explaining and our conventional scientific approach can't cut it. But if for independent reasons you are motivated to some spiritual picture of reality, then maybe a panpsychist view is, is more consonant with that. So if you, if you have a mystical experience where you, um, it seems to you in this experience that there is this-... higher form of consciousness at the root of all things. If you're a materialist, you've got to think that's a delusion, you know, there's just something in your brain making you think that it's not real. But if you're a panpsychist and you already think the fundamental nature of reality is constituted of consciousness, it's not that much of a leap to think that, um, this higher form of consciousness you seem to apprehend in the mystical experience is part of that underlying reality. And, you know, i- in, in many different cultures, experienced meditators have claimed to have experiences in which it becomes apparent to them that there is an element of consciousness that is universal, so this is sometimes called universal consciousness. So on this view, your mind and my mind are not, uh, totally distinct. Uh, each of our individual conscious minds is built upon the foundations of universal consciousness, and universal consciousness as it exists in me is one and the same thing as universal consciousness as it exists in you. So I've never had one of these experiences, um, but if one is a panpsychist, I think one is more open to that possibility. I don't see why it shouldn't be the case that that is part of the nature of consciousness and maybe something that is apparent in certain deep states of meditation. And so what I explore in the experimental final chapter of my book is that could allow for a kind of impersonal life after death because if that view is true, then even when the particular aspects of my conscious experience fall away, that element of universal consciousness at the core of my identity would continue to exist, so I'd sort of be, as it were, absorbed into universal consciousness. So, I mean, Buddhists and Hindu mystics, uh, try to meditate to get rid of all the bad karma to be absorbed into universal consciousness. It could be that if, uh, if there's no karma, if there's no reverb, maybe everyone gets enlightened when they die, maybe you, uh, just sink back into universal consciousness. So I al- I also, coming back to morality, suggest this could provide some kind of basis for altruism or non-egotism because if you think... egotism implicitly assumes that we are utterly distinct individuals, whereas on, on, on this view, we d- we're not. We overlap to an extent that something at the core of our being is-

   7. LFLex Fridman39:46

      Even in this life, we overlap.

   8. PGPhilip Goff39:49

      That would be this view that some experienced meditators claim becomes apparent to them, that there is something at the core of my identity that is one and the same as the thing at the core of your identity, uh, this universal consciousness.

   9. LFLex Fridman40:05

      Yeah. There is something very... Like, you and I in this conversation, there's a few people listening to this, all of us are in a, in a kind of single mind together. There's some small aspect of that, and, or maybe a big aspect, about us humans. So certainly in the space of ideas, we kind of, um, meld together, for a time at least, in a conversation, and kind of play with that idea, and then w- clearly all thinking... Like, if I say "pink elephant," there's going to be a few people that are now visualizing a pink elephant. We're all thinking about that pink elephant together, and we're all in the room together thinking about this pink elephant, and we're, like, rotating it, um, like, you know, in our minds together. What is that?

   10. PGPhilip Goff40:56

       Mm-hmm.

   11. LFLex Fridman40:56

       That pink ele- does that... Is there an i- different instantiation of that pink elephant in everybody's mind, or is it the same elephant and we have the same mind exploring that elephant? Now, if we in our mind start petting that elephant, like touching it, that experience that we're now, like, thinking what that would feel like, w- what's that? Is that all of us experiencing that together or is that separate? So, like, there's some aspect of, of the togetherness that almost seems fundamental to civilization, to society.

   12. PGPhilip Goff41:24

       Mm.

   13. LFLex Fridman41:24

       Hopefully that's not too strong, but to, like, some of the fundamental properties of the human mind, it feels like the social aspect is really important. We call it social because we think of us as individual minds interacting, but if we're just, like, one collective mind with, like, fingertips that are, like, touching each other as it's trying to explore the elephant, but that could be just in the realm of ideas and intelligence-

   14. PGPhilip Goff41:52

       Yeah.

   15. LFLex Fridman41:52

       ... and not in the realm of consciousness, and it's interesting to see maybe it is in the realm of consciousness.

   16. PGPhilip Goff41:58

       Yeah. So i- it's obviously certainly true in some sense that there are these phenomena that you're talking about of collective consciousness in some sense. I suppose the question is, how ontologically serious do we want to be about those things? By which I mean, are they just a construction of out of our minds and the fact that we interact in the standard, standardly scientifically accepted ways? Or is, as someone like Rupert Sheldrake would think, that there is some metaphysical reality, there are some fields beyond the scientifically understood ones that are somehow communicating this. Um, I mean, I think the, the, I mean, the view I was describing was that this element we're supposed to have in common is, is some sort of pure, impersonal consciousness or something rather than...

   17. LFLex Fridman42:47

       Mm-hmm.

   18. PGPhilip Goff42:47

       So actually, I mean, an interesting figure is the, the Australian philosopher Mirial Bahari who defends a kind of mystical conception of reality rooted in, uh, Advaita Vedanta mysticism. But, like me, she's from this tradition of analytic philosophy, and so she defends this in this, you know, incredibly precise, rigorous way. She defends the idea that we should think of experienced meditators as...... uh, providing expert testimony. So, you know, I think humans cause- are causing climate breakdown. I have no idea of the science behind it, you know. I- but I trust the experts so, you know, that the universe is 14 billion years old. You know, most of our knowledge is based on expert testimony and she thinks we should think of e- experienced meditators, these people who are telling us about this universal consciousness at the core of our being, as a relevant kind of expert. And so she wants to defend, you know, the rational acceptability of this mystical conception of reality. So it's fun- you know, I think we shouldn't be ashamed, you know, we shouldn't be con- worried about dealing with certain views as long as it's done with rigor and seriousness. You know, I think sometimes terms like, I don't know, new age or something can function a bit like racist terms. You know, a racist term picks out a group of people but then implies certain negative characteristics. So people use this term, you know, to pick out a certain set of views, like, mystical conception of reality, and- and imply it's kind of fluffy thinking or ... But, you know, you read Miri Albehari, you read Luc Roelofs, this is serious, rigorous thought. Whether you agree with it or not, obviously it's hugely controversial. And so, you know, the enlightenment ideal is to follow the evidence and the arguments where they lead, but it's kind of very hard for human beings to do that. I think we get stuck in some conception of how we think science ought to look, um, and- and, um, you know, people talk about religion as a crutch, but I think a certain kind of scientism, a certain conception of how science is supposed to be gets into peoples' identity and their sense of themselves and their security. Um, and makes things hard if you're a panpsychist

4. 45:04 – 1:06:00

   The authority of expertise

   1. PGPhilip Goff45:04

      (laughs) .

   2. LFLex Fridman45:04

      A- a- and even the word expert becomes a kind of, uh, crutch. I mean, you use the word expert-

   3. PGPhilip Goff45:12

      Mm-hmm.

   4. LFLex Fridman45:12

      ... uh, you have some kind of conception of what expertise means. Uh, oftentimes that's, you know, connected with, uh, a degree at particularly prestigious university or something like that. Or- or, um, it's- it's, you know, expertise is a funny one. I- I've- I've noticed that anybody sort- sort of that claims they're an expert is usually not the expert. The- the biggest, quote unquote, "expert" that I've ever met are the ones that are truly humble. So, the- humility is a really good sign of somebody who's traveled the long road and been humbled by how little they know. So some of the best people in the world at whatever the thing they've spent their life doing are the ones that are ultimately humble in the face of it all. So like, just being humble, how little we know, even if we travel a lifetime. I do like the idea (laughs) , I mean, treating sort of, uh, like what is it? Psychonauts, like an expert witness. You know, people who have traveled with the help of DMT to another place where they, uh, got some deep understanding of something and their insight is perhaps as valuable as the insight of somebody who ran rigorous psychological studies at, uh, Princeton University or something.

   5. PGPhilip Goff46:28

      Mm-hmm.

   6. LFLex Fridman46:29

      Like tho- those psychonauts, they have wisdom, if it's done rigorously, uh, which you can also do rigorously within the university and within the studies now, with, uh, with psilocybin-

   7. PGPhilip Goff46:40

      Uh-huh.

   8. LFLex Fridman46:40

      ... and those kinds of things. Yeah, that- that's a fact that's fascinating.

   9. PGPhilip Goff46:42

      I mean, I think still probably the best- one of the best works on mystical experience is the- the chapter in William James' Varieties of Religious Experiences, and most of it is, um, just a psychological study of trying to define the characteristics of mystical experience as a psychological type. But at the end he considers the question, if you have a mystical experience is it rational to trust it? To trust that it's telling you something about reality? And he makes an interesting argument, he says, "If you say no, you're kind of applying a double standard." Because we all think it's okay to trust our normal sensory experiences, but we have no way of getting outside of ourselves to prove that our sensory experiences correspond to an external reality. We could be in the matrix, this could be a very vivid dream. Uh, you know, you could say, "Oh, we do science," but a scientist only gets their data by experiencing (laughs) the results of their experiments, and then the question arises again how do you know that corresponds to a real world? So, he thinks there's a sort of double standard in saying it's okay to trust our ordinary sensory experiences, but it's not okay for the person on DMT to trust those experiences. It's very philosophically difficult to say why is it okay in the one case and not the other. So I think there's an interesting argument there. But I- I would like to just defend experts a little bit. I mean, I agree it's- it's very difficult, but especially in an age, I guess, where there's so much information I do think it's important to have s- some, uh, protection of, um, sources of information, academic institutions that we can trust. And then that's difficult because of course there are non-academics who do know what they're talking about. But, like if I'm interested in knowing about biology, you know, you can't research everything. So I think we have to have some sense of who are the experts we can trust. The people who've spent a lot of time reading all the material that people have read, written, um, thinking about it. Having their- their views torn apart by other people working in the field. I think that is very important, and also to protect that from conflicts of interest. There is a so-called think tank in the UK called the Institute of Economic Affairs who are always on the BBC as experts on economic questions and they do not declare who funds them. Right? So-... we don't know who's paying the piper. I think, you know, you shouldn't be allowed to call yourself a think-tank if you're not totally transparent about who's funding you. So, I think that's the, and I mean this connects to panpsychism because I think the reason people, you know, worry about unorthodox ideas is 'cause they worry about, "How do we know when we're just losing control or losing discipline?" So, I do think we need to somehow protect, um, academic institutions as sources of information that we can trust. And, you know, in philosophy there's, there's, um, you know, there's, there's no, not much consensus on everything. But you can at least know what people who have put the time in to read all the stuff, what, what they think about these issues. I think that is important.

   10. LFLex Fridman50:05

       T- push back on your pushback.

   11. PGPhilip Goff50:07

       (laughs)

   12. LFLex Fridman50:07

       Who are the experts on COVID?

   13. PGPhilip Goff50:11

       Oh, we're getting into dangerous territory now. (laughs)

   14. LFLex Fridman50:12

       Well, let me just speak to it-

   15. PGPhilip Goff50:14

       Okay, go on.

   16. LFLex Fridman50:14

       ... because I am walking through that dangerous territory. I'm allergic to the word "expert" because in my simple mind it, um, it kind of rhymes with ego. There's, uh, something about experts, if we allow too much to, to have a category expert and place certain people in them, those people sitting on that throne start to believe it. And they start to communicate with that energy and the humility starts to dissipate. I think there is, um, value in a lifelong mastery of a skill and the pursuit of knowledge within a very specific discipline. But the moment you have your name on an office, the moment you're an expert, I think you destroy the very aspect, um, the very value of that journey towards knowledge. So, some of it probably just reduces to like, skillful communication, like of, communicating in a way that shows humility, that shows an open-mindedness, that shows an ability to really hear what a lot of people are saying.

   17. PGPhilip Goff51:37

       Mm.

   18. LFLex Fridman51:37

       So, in the case of COVID, what I've n- noticed, and th- this is true, this is probably true with panpsychism as well, is so-called experts, a- and they are extremely knowledgeable and many of them are colleagues of mine, they dismiss what millions of people are saying on the internet without having looked into it with empathy and rigor, honestly, understand what are the arguments being made. They say like, "There's not enough time to explore all those things, like there's so much stuff out there." Eh, yeah, though I think that's intellectual laziness. If, if you don't have enough time then don't speak so strongly with dismissal. Feel bad about it. Be apologetic about the fact that you don't have enough time to explore the, uh, the evidence. For example, with the heat I got with Francis Collins is that he kind of said that, um, lab leak, he kind of dismissed it. Showing that he didn't really deeply explore all the sort of, the, the, the huge amount of, uh, circumstantial evidence that's out there. The battles that are going on out there. There's a lot of people really tensely discussing this. And being, um, sh- showing humility in the face of that battle of ideas I think is really important. And I, I've just been very disappointed in so-called expertise in the space of science, in showing humility, in showing humanity and kindness and empathy towards other human beings. That's, that's, at the same time obviously I love Jiro Dreams of Sushi lifelong pursuit of like getting... Like in computer science, Don Knuth. Like, some of my biggest heroes are people that like when nobody else cares (laughs) they stay on one topic-

   19. PGPhilip Goff53:32

       (laughs)

   20. LFLex Fridman53:32

       ... for their whole life and they just find the beautiful little things about.

   21. PGPhilip Goff53:35

       Mm.

   22. LFLex Fridman53:35

       There's puzzles they keep solving. And yes, sometimes a virus happens or something happens with that person with their puzzles, becomes like the center of the whole world because that puzzle's, becomes all of a sudden really important. But still, the responsibility-

   23. PGPhilip Goff53:51

       Yeah.

   24. LFLex Fridman53:51

       ... is on them to show humility and to be open-minded to the fact that they, even if they spent their whole life doing it, even if their whole community is telling them, giving them awards and giving them citations and giving them, uh, all kinds of stuff where like they're bowing down before them, how smart they are, they still know nothing relative to all the stuff, the mysteries that are out there.

   25. PGPhilip Goff54:16

       Yeah, well I'm, I don't know how much we're disagreeing. I mean, these are totally valid issues. And of course expertise goes wrong in all sorts of ways. It's totally fallible. I suppose I would just say, what is the alternative? What do we just say all information is, is equal? Because I, you know, as a voter, I've got to decide who to vote for, and that, you know, I've got to evaluate, um, and I can't look into all of the economics and all of the relevant science. And, um, so I just think there's, I think in, maybe it's like, um, Churchill said about democracy, you know, it's the worst system of government apart from all the rest. I think about panpsychism actually is the worst theory of consciousness apart from all the rest.

   26. LFLex Fridman55:02

       (laughs) That's a good line.

   27. PGPhilip Goff55:03

       But, um, you know, I just think expertise, the peer review system, I think it's terrible in so many ways. Yes, people should show more humility, but I, I can't see a viable alternative. I think philosopher Bernard Williams had a really nice nuanced discussion of the, the problems with titles, uh-But the ne- how they also function in a society, um, they do have some positive function. The, the very first time I lectured in philosophy, um, before I got a, a professorship, um, was teaching at a, at a continuing education college, so it's kind of, kind of for retired people who want to, um, learn some more things. And I just totally pitched it too high and g- talked about Bernard Williams on, on titles and hierarchies (laughs) . And these kind of people in their 70s and 80s were just, instantly started interrupting, saying, "What is philosophy?" And, uh, it was a disaster.

   28. LFLex Fridman56:03

       (laughs) Yeah.

   29. PGPhilip Goff56:04

       And in the, I just remember in the breaks, a sort of elderly lady came up and said, "I've decided to take Egyptology instead."

   30. LFLex Fridman56:10

       (laughs)
5. 1:06:00 – 1:34:45

   Panpsychism and physics

   1. PGPhilip Goff1:06:01

   2. LFLex Fridman1:06:01

      We've talked about it a million times but, uh, let, let's try to sort of do that old, uh, basic terminology definitions. What is panpsychism? Like, w- what are the different ways you can, uh, try to, to think about, to define panpsychism, maybe in contrast to, uh, uh, naturalistic dualism and materialism, the other kind of views of, uh, consciousness?

   3. PGPhilip Goff1:06:27

      Yeah, so the... You've basically laid out the different options so I guess probably still the dominant view is materialism, that roughly that we can explain consciousness in, in the terms of physical science, wholly explain it just in terms of the electrochemical signaling in the brain. Dualism, the polar opposite view, um, that consciousness is non-physical outside of the physical workings of the body and the brain, although closely connected. Um, and you know, when I studied philosophy, we were taught, basically they were the two options you had to choose, right? Either you thought it, you were a dualist and you thought it was separate from the physical or you thought it was just electrochemical signaling. And yeah, I became very disillusioned 'cause I think there are, there are big problems with both of these options. So I think the attraction to panpsychism is, it's kind of a middle way. It agrees with the materialists that there's just the physical world, ultimately there's just particles and fields-... but the pan- panpsychist thinks there's, there's more to the physical than what physical science reveals and that the ultimate nature of the physical world is constituted of consciousness. So consciousness is not outside of the physical, as the dualist thinks. It's embedded in, um, underlies the kind of description of the world we get from physics.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:07:56

      What, what to you are the problems of materialism and dualism?

   5. PGPhilip Goff1:08:00

      Starting with materialism, I, it's a huge debate, but I think that the core of it is that physical science works with a purely quantitative description of the physical world, whereas consciousness essentially involves qualities. If you think about the smell of coffee or the taste of mint or the deep red you experience as you watch a sunset, I think these qualities can't be captured in the purely quantitative language of physical science. And so as long as your description of the brain is framed in the purely quantitative descript- quantitative language of neuroscience, you'll just leave out these qualities and hence really leave out consciousness itself.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:08:46

      And then dualism?

   7. PGPhilip Goff1:08:47

      So I've actually changed my mind a little bit on this since I wrote the book. So I mean, I argued in the book that we have pretty good experimental grounds for doubting dualism. And roughly the idea was if dualism were true, if there was say an, an immaterial mind impacting on the brain every second of waking life, that this would really show up in our neuroscience. You know, there'd be all sorts of things happening in the brain that had no physical explanation. It would be like a, a poltergeist was playing with the brain. Um, but actually, and so the, you know, the fact that we don't find that is a strong and ever-growing inductive argument against dualism. But actually, the, you know, the more I talk to neuroscientists and read neuroscience, and we, you know, we have at Durham, my university, uh, an interdisciplinary consciousness group. I, I don't think we know enough about the brain, about the workings of the brain to make that argument. Um, I think we know, we know a lot about the basic chemistry, um, how neurons fire, neurotransmitters, action potentials, things like that. We know a fair bit about large-scale functions of the brain, what different bits of the brain do. Uh, but what we're almost clueless on is how those large-scale functions are realized at the cellular level, how it works. Um, you know, people get quite excited about brain scans, but it's very low resolution, you know. Every pixel on a brain scan corresponds to 5.5 million neurons and we're only, um, we're only 70% of the way through constructing a connectome for the, for the maggot brain, which has, is it 10,000 or 100,000 neurons, but, you know, the brain has 86 billion neurons. So I think we'd have to know a lot more about how the brain works, how these functions are realized, um, before we could assess whether they can be, th- the dynamics of the brain can be completely explicated in terms of underlying chemistry or physics. So, um, you know, we'd have to do more engineering (laughs) before we could, uh, figure that out. And there are people with other proposals. Um, someone I got to know, Martin Picard at Columbia University, who has the, uh, psychobiology mitochondrial lab there and is experimentally exploring the hypothesis that mitochondria in the brain should be on the sort of, sort of social networks, perhaps as an alternative to reducing it to underlying chemistry and physics. So, so I, I'm less... It is ultimately an empirical question whether dualism is true. I'm less convinced that we know the answer to that question at this stage. I think still as scientists and philosophers we want to try and find the simplest most parsimonious theory of reality. Um, and dualism is still a pretty inelegant, unparsimonious theory and our reality is divided up into the purely physical properties and these consciousness properties and they're radically different kinds of things. Whereas the panpsychist offers a much more simple unified picture of reality. So I think it's still the view to be preferred. You know, to put it very simply, why believe in two kinds of thing when you can just get away with one?

   8. LFLex Fridman1:12:08

      Y- and materialism is also very simple but you're saying-

   9. PGPhilip Goff1:12:12

      Yeah.

   10. LFLex Fridman1:12:12

       ... it doesn't explain something that seems pretty important.

   11. PGPhilip Goff1:12:16

       Yeah, so m- I think materialism can't ex- You know, we try, science is about trying to find the simplest theory that accounts for the data. I don't think materialism can account for the data. Maybe dualism can account for the data, but panpsychism is simpler. It can account for the data and it's simpler.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:12:33

       What is panpsychism?

   13. PGPhilip Goff1:12:37

       So in its broadest definition it's the view that consciousness is a fundamental, um, and ubiquitous feature of the physical world.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:12:47

       Like a law of physics? Or what should we be imagining? What do you s- What do you think the different flavors of how that actually take shape in the context of what we know about physics and science and the universe?

   15. PGPhilip Goff1:12:57

       So in the simplest form of it, the fundamental building blocks of reality, perhaps electrons and quarks have incredibly simple forms of experience, and the very complex experience of the human or animal brain is somehow rooted in or derived from these very simple forms of experience at the level of basic physics. But I mean the, maybe the crucial bit about the kind of panpsychism I defend, what it does is it, it takes the s- the standard approach to the problem of consciousness and turns it on its head, right? So the standard approach is to think, um-We start with matter and we think, "How do we get consciousness out of matter?" So, I don't think that problem can be solved for reasons I've kind of hinted at. We could maybe go into more detail. But the panpsychist does it the other way around. They start with consciousness and try to get matter out of consciousness. So, the idea is basically at the fundamental level of reality, there are just, um, networks of very simple conscious entities. Um, but these conscious entities, because they beha- they, they have very simple kinds of experience, they behave in predictable ways. Through their interactions, they realize that in mathematical structures, and then the idea is those mathematical structures just are the structures identified by physics. So, when we think about these simple conscious entities, in terms of the mathematical structures they realize, we call them particles, we call them fields, we call the- their properties mass, spin, and charge. But really, there's just these very simple conscious entities and their experiences, so in this way, we get physics out of consciousness. I don't think you can get consciousness out of physics, but I think it's pretty easy to get physics out of consciousness.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:14:50

       Well, I'm, I'm a little confused by why you need to get physics out of conscious. I- I mean, to me it sounds like panpsychism u- unites consciousness and physics. I mean, physics is, is the, um, mathematical science, uh, describing everything.

   17. PGPhilip Goff1:15:11

       Yeah.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:15:11

       So, physics should be able to describe consciousness. Panpsychism, in my understanding proposes is that physics doesn't currently do so, but can in the future. I mean, it seems like consciousness... You have like Stephen Hawking who's, uh, all these people who are trying to develop, um, theories of everything, um, mathematical frameworks within which to describe how we get all the reality that we perceive around us. To me, there's no reason why that kind of framework cannot also include some, uh, accurate, precise description of whatever simple consciousness characteristics are present there at the lowest level if, uh, panpsychist theories have, uh, truth to them. So, like to me it is physics. You said kind of physics emerges, you, by which you mean like the, the basic four laws of physics that as we currently know them. The standard model, quantum mechanics, general relativity that, that emerges from the base consciousness layer. That's what you mean?

   19. PGPhilip Goff1:16:16

       Yeah. So, maybe the way I phrased it made it sound like these things are more separate than they are. What I was trying to, uh, address was that a common misunderstanding of panpsychism, that it's a sort of dualistic theory.

   20. LFLex Fridman1:16:30

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

   21. PGPhilip Goff1:16:30

       That, um, the idea is that particles have their physical properties like mass, spin, and charge, and these other funny consciousness properties. So, the, the physicist Sabine Hossenfelder had a blog post critiquing panpsychism maybe a couple of years ago now, that got a fair bit of traction. And she was interpreting panpsychism in this way and then her thought was, "Well, look, if particles had these funny consciousness properties, then it would show up in our physics like the standard model of particle physics would make false predictions 'cause its predictions are based wholly on the physical properties. If there were also these consciousness properties, uh, we'd get different predictions." But that's a misunderstanding of the view. The view is, it's not that there are two kinds of property that mass, spin, and charge are forms of consciousness. How do we make sense of that? Because actually when you look at what physics, physics tells us, it's really just telling us about behavior, about what stuff does. I sometimes put it by saying, uh, "Doing physics is like playing chess when you don't care what the pieces are made of. You're just interested in what moves you can make." So, physics tells us what mass, spin, and charge do, um, but it doesn't tell us what they are. So, so the idea-

   22. LFLex Fridman1:17:46

       (laughs) The experience of mass.

   23. PGPhilip Goff1:17:48

       So, the idea is, yeah, mass in its nature is a very simple form of consciousness. So, yeah, physics in a sense is complete, I think, because it tells us what everything at the fundamental level does. It describes its causal capacities. But for the panpsychist at least, physics doesn't tell us what matter is. It tells us what it does, but not what it is.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:18:12

       To push back on the thing I think she's criticizing, is it also possible... So, I understand what you're saying, but is it also possible that particles have another property like consciousness? I don't understand the criticism we would be able to detect it in our, uh, experiments. Well, no, if you're not looking for it. I mean, (laughs) there's a lot of stuff that are, uh, orthogonal. Like, if you're not-

   25. PGPhilip Goff1:18:35

       Yeah.

   26. LFLex Fridman1:18:35

       ... looking for the stuff, you're not going to detect it, because like all of our basic empirical science through its recent history, and yes, the history of science is quite recent, uh, has been very kind of focused on, uh, billiard balls colliding, a- and, uh, from that, understanding how gravity works. But like, we just haven't integrated other possibilities into this. I, I don't think there'll be conflicting, whether you are observing consciousness or not, or exploring some of these ideas, um, I don't think that affects the rest of the physics. The, the mass, the energy, the, all the different kind of like, uh, hierarchy of different particles and so on, how they interact. I, I don't think... It feels like consciousness is something orthogonal, like the, very much distinct.

   27. PGPhilip Goff1:19:26

       Mm-hmm.

   28. LFLex Fridman1:19:26

       It's, it's the quantitative versus the qualitative. There's, there's something quite distinct that we're just, uh, almost like another dimension that we're just completely ignoring.

   29. PGPhilip Goff1:19:35

       There might be a way of responding to Sabine and to say, "Well, no, there could be properties..."... of particles that, that don't show up in the specific circumstances in which physicists investigate particles. My, you know, my, my colleague, the philosopher of science, Nancy Cartwright, has got this book, How The Laws of Physics Lie, where she says, you know, physicists explore, uh, things in very specific circumstances and then, in an unwarranted way, generalize that. But, I mean, I guess I was thinking Sabine's criticism actually just misses the mark in a more basic way. Her point is we shouldn't think there are any more properties to particles other than those the standard model attributes to them. Panpsychists will say, "Yeah, sure, there aren't." There are just the properties, the physical properties like mass, spin, and charge, that the standard model attributes to them. It's just that we have a different philosophical view as to the nature of those properties. Yeah.

   30. LFLex Fridman1:20:28

       Yeah. So, tho- those properties are turtles that are sitting on top of another turtle and that big turtle is consciousness. That's what you're saying. But-

Episode duration: 2:46:30