What Is Consciousness? - Philip Goff | Modern Wisdom Podcast #272

1. 0:00 – 1:04

   Intro

   1. PGPhilip Goff0:00

      Consciousness is not publicly observable. Right? You can't look inside my head and see my feelings and experiences. We know about consciousness not from observation experiment, but just from our immediate awareness of our feelings. If I'm in pain, I'm just directly aware of my pain. You can't get at it. Science is used to dealing with unobservables, but there's an important difference. In- in all these other cases, we postulate unobservables in order to explain what we can observe. That the whole explanatory enterprise is explaining publicly observable data. In the case of consciousness, the thing we are trying to explain is not publicly observable, and that is just a totally different explanatory enterprise, and I think it really constrains our capacity to deal with it experimentally. (wind blows)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:49

      We're only a couple of miles away from each other and yet, I've had to use the internet to communicate. If you reached out of your window, I could probably just shout- shout the podcast to you-

   3. PGPhilip Goff0:57

      (laughs) .

   4. CWChris Williamson0:57

      ... I think just stick a recorder in the middle of it.

   5. PGPhilip Goff0:59

      Ah, it's a crazy times we're living in. Some future time, we'll have to get together.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:03

      It is indeed.

2. 1:04 – 3:48

   What is Consciousness

   1. CWChris Williamson1:04

      Uh, you're a philosopher. What are you doing talking about consciousness? Isn't this the job of a neuroscientist or a biologist? Like, why are you here?

   2. PGPhilip Goff1:14

      Excellent question. Yeah. So I guess, yeah. I mean, there's- it's broadly agreed that there's some big profound challenges surrounding consciousness. You know, we- w- despite our scientific understanding of the brain, we don't have even the beginnings of an explanation of how complicated electrochemical signaling could somehow produce this inner s- subjective world of colors, and sounds, and smells, and tastes. So a lot of- most people are on board with that now. But in line with what you've just said, I mean, a very common reaction is to say, "Okay, it is a problem, but let's just plug away with our standard ways of investigating the brain and, you know, we'll crack it." Um, so I don't think that's right. I don't think this is just another scientific problem. I think there's number of ways in which the problem of consciousness is radically different from any other scientific problem, and that our current scientific approach is really not, on its own at least, fully equipped to deal with it. So should I say more about that?

   3. CWChris Williamson2:23

      Why is it different?

   4. PGPhilip Goff2:24

      Okay, so here's- here's the most straightforward point. Consciousness is not publicly observable. Right? You can't look inside my head and see my feelings and experiences. We know about consciousness not from observation experiment but just from our immediate awareness of our feelings. If I'm in pain, I'm just directly aware of my pain. You can't get at it. Uh, but I- I'm directly aware of it. Now, science is used to dealing with unobservables. Right? Fundamental particles, for example, can't be directly observed. But there's an important difference. In- in all these other cases, we postulate unobservables in order to explain what- what we can observe. So fundamental particles are postulated part of the standard model of particle physics that, you know, explains a huge lot of publicly observable data. So that the whole explanatory enterprise is explaining publicly observable data. In the case of consciousness, the thing we are trying to explain is not publicly observable, and that is just a totally different explanatory enterprise, and I think it really constrains our capacity to deal with it experimentally. So yeah-

   5. CWChris Williamson3:39

      Is that the- is- is consciousness the only thing that we have that's in that category, or is there anything else?

   6. PGPhilip Goff3:45

      I- I think so. I'd be interested to know if you think there are

3. 3:48 – 6:36

   Armchair Philosophy Experiment

   1. PGPhilip Goff3:48

      any others.

   2. CWChris Williamson3:48

      No. Uh, uh, uh, not that I can think of, but I wondered if there was a- an armchair philosophy experiment- thought experiment that had come up that created something similar.

   3. PGPhilip Goff3:57

      Well, well, there are- I mean, I suppose there are other things that some philosophers think we need to make sense of that aren't straightforward scientific data. Maybe like the reality of free will, or value, facts about value. A lot of philosophers think we need to somehow make sense of facts about right and wrong, and good and bad. Or abstract objects like mathematicians talk about numbers and sets, and lots of philosophers think, "How do we- how do we fit- fit them into the world?" But what's u- what's unique about consciousness I think, and is makes it just so fascinating is, in all these other cases, it's always an option to say, "Maybe the phenomenon doesn't exist." Right? Maybe we're not really free in the way we think we are. You know, maybe there aren't really facts about good and bad. Maybe it's just the way we sort of project our feelings onto the world. Uh, maybe abstract objects don't really exist. Maybe it's just a useful fiction. But with consciousness, you know, the idea that nobody's ever really felt pain or seen red, that just seems absolutely insane. And some philosophers do take that line. My good friend Keith Frankish, um, takes the line, "We can't explain consciousness in conventional scientific terms, so it doesn't exist." It's just like fairy dust or magic. You know, we don't... but, you know, most philosophers think, you know, that- that really is beyond the pale. So there- there is this datum that's- that we need our theory to account for, but it's not... unlike any other scientific datum. It's not a datum of public observation experiment.

   4. CWChris Williamson5:39

      Yeah.

   5. PGPhilip Goff5:39

      And so, you know, I mean, for a lot of the 20th century, consciousness was a sort of taboo topic. Uh, it wasn't sort- seen as good, you know, proper focus for proper science. Uh, that perhaps the high point was the behaviorists in the 1940s who thought, you know, the only proper science of the mind is what- is behavior. You know, what you can observe and measure and quantify.Uh, and, and you can understand, I think in a sense they were right to, to think this isn't a normal scientific thing because it's, you know, it's this kind of invisible thing we can't get at through observation and experiment. Now, since I think the '90s, people have thought, "No, it is science. You know, we've got, we've got to deal with it." But they've forgotten how radically different it is from any other scientific phenomenon. So we're in a kind of... I think we're in a phase of history where in a weird middle phase where people do wanna deal with it scientifically, but haven't quite got to the point where they realize to do that, we have to really rethink what science is.

4. 6:36 – 8:16

   The Job of Science

   1. PGPhilip Goff6:36

   2. CWChris Williamson6:36

      Yeah. I can't remember who it is, the quote I'm taking, but I remember reading something that said, "If it wasn't for the fact that we experience it, the universe would give us no clues that consciousness exists."

   3. PGPhilip Goff6:49

      Exactly. Exactly. That's very ni- ... That's ... I don't know who said that, but it's a nice quote. So like a lot of people think the job of science is to account for the data of observation and experiment, right? Once we've done that, if we can have our grand unified theory that can account for all of observation and experiment, that's it. Job done. Uh, now if you ... But if you take that religiously, you wouldn't believe in consciousness, because it's not known about in that way. Now someone who's wonderfully consistent on that is Daniel Dennett who, you know, says, "Science is about publicly observable stuff. Consciousness doesn't fit in, so it doesn't exist." And I li- ... You know, he's wonderfully consistent. I think most people, you know, me and Dennett are at extremes, most people I think are in a confused in the middle where they do think ... They, they don't wanna say, "Consciousness doesn't exist," but at the same time they do want to say the only things we believe in and known about on the, uh, on the basis of experiment. Those two things don't fit together. So I think either I un- ... Uh, you know, more and more philosophers are coming to this point. Either you say, "Consciousness doesn't exist. It's a, an illusion," like Dennett does or Keith Frankish, or you say, "We need to rethink science." So the subtitle of my book is Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. So I'm not doing science, but I think we need to rethink our scientific approach before we can start making serious explanatory theoretical progress of consciousness.

5. 8:16 – 11:27

   Theoretical Progress of Consciousness

   1. PGPhilip Goff8:16

   2. CWChris Williamson8:16

      Going back to the why are philosophers here question I had earlier on, no matter how you create a theoretical framework around how we should view consciousness, that doesn't actually change what consciousness is.

   3. PGPhilip Goff8:30

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson8:31

      So the phenomenological experience, the way that it manifests, all of this stuff, it's still going to continue going on whatever way it does, which we currently don't have a satisfactory explanation for.

   5. PGPhilip Goff8:43

      Mm-hmm.

   6. CWChris Williamson8:43

      But no matter what you guys come up with, no matter how weird and wonderful and plausible the theories are, nothing's actually going to change about the way that consciousness works. So can we get a satisfying explanation-

   7. PGPhilip Goff8:56

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson8:56

      ... of consciousness from a purely theoretical framework?

   9. PGPhilip Goff9:01

      Yeah, that's a good point. So some people put the problem by saying, "It's a mystery what consciousness is." You often hear that. It's, "Nobody knows what consciousness is." I don't like that way of putting it, because I think nothing is more obvious and, uh, familiar than con- ... You know, you know what pain is when you feel it. It's not a mystery what consciousness is. Uh, so, so what are we ... I mean, it's come to the point, what are we trying to do here? What, what is the, what is the, the task, the explanatory task? So I, I think ... I mean, the way I've spoken so far is almost as though science doesn't have a role to play. I don't, I don't think that's true. We have a robust and well-developed experimental science of consciousness and we have a interdisciplinary consciousness group here at Durham, and I, you know, I work with neuroscientists all the time. But what ... So, so how does that work? Um, well, you, you can't directly observe someone's feelings, but you can ask them, right? So you can ask them what they're feeling and what they're experiencing, and you can scan their brains at the same time and, with an fMRI scanner, and you can start to establish correlations. Or sometimes you can stimulate a bit of the brain if we'll ... And, and ask someone, "What," you know, "what did you feel then?" So we start to establish these correlations and we can try and get systematic about it, with, uh ... In the early days in trying to put together a general theory of, you know, what in general is, is necessary and sufficient for conscious experience. So that's, so that's the ex- the, the experimental task we're making progress on, that consciousness is correlated with certain kinds of brain activity. And that's really important data. But that's not the full story, because what we then want is an explanation. You know, why is, why are certain kinds of brain activity go along with certain kinds of feelings and experience? Why should that be? And I, I don't think you can answer that question with an experiment, because consciousness is not publicly observable. So all you can do with experiments is just get more correlations. So at that point, I think we have to turn over to philosophers and just look at the, the various proposals philosophers have offered for explaining why certain forms of brain activity go along with certain forms of experience. So that's what I see is, is the, is the task really, explaining why, why is it that brain activity goes along with experience? And there, and there are various different proposals, and we just have to try and assess them and try and work out which one works

6. 11:27 – 21:25

   Dualism

   1. PGPhilip Goff11:27

      best.

   2. CWChris Williamson11:27

      Give us the rundown then. What's the ... I think you talk about three main approaches to answering-

   3. PGPhilip Goff11:33

      Right.

   4. CWChris Williamson11:33

      ... the mystery of consciousness. Dualism.

   5. PGPhilip Goff11:36

      Yeah. Okay. So yeah, when I studied philosophy there were just two, and I got very disillusioned and left for a little bit, and then I discovered this third approach, which is the one I like. So dualism, um, so dualism is the, is the idea that consciousness is non-physical, outside of the physical workings of the body and the brain. And we tend to associate this with, this with religion or something spiritual. But actually the most popular cont- the most well-known contemporary dualist, the Australian philosopher David Chalmers, calls himself a naturalistic dualist.... because, um, he wants to bring... He thinks consciousness is not physical, but he wants to bring it into the domain of science and think of it as a normal, law-governed phenomenon. So, so what he does is he thinks the aim of a science of consciousness w- once we've got these correlations from neuroscience, we then postulate psychophysical laws of nature linking up physical brain activity to conscious experiences. Right? So neuroscience tells us, you know, a certain kind of activity in the, uh, hypothalamus leads to a feeling of hunger. Chalmers would say, "Okay, so we postulate a law of nature saying whenever you get that kind of, um, brain activity, you get that kind of feeling." This is the fundamental law of nature. So Chalmers thinks if there was just the laws of physics, there wouldn't be consciousness, we'd all just be sort of mechanisms. But because there are these special psychophysical laws connecting up the physical to consciousness, uh, that ends up in ce- with the result that certain forms of brain activity give rise to consciousness. So, so that's one proposal. I guess the more familiar proposal, just to get two on the table, the materialist proposal says, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That..." There aren't two things here. Feelings just are patterns of neuronal activity. So like water just is H2O, right? So I've got a pint of water here, you know, that there aren't two things in here, the water and the H2O. Water just is H2O. So, you know, if you consider your feeling of pain and the corresponding pattern of neural- neuronal activity, the materialist says there aren't two things there, that your feeling just is a pattern of neuronal activity. So you see, so you see they're, they're two different wo- very different ways of accounting for the same scientific data. You know, the scientific data is brain activity and experience goes together. Chalmers says they're different things tied together by natural laws. The materialist says they're just the same thing. Uh, so they're, uh, they're the two, I guess, most popular options.

   6. CWChris Williamson14:25

      What's the mechanism that Chalmers proposes is, uh, is happening?

   7. PGPhilip Goff14:29

      Hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson14:29

      Because there must be some sort of signal going, neurotransmitters, chemicals, et cetera.

   9. PGPhilip Goff14:34

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson14:34

       Is it... Is this where Deepak Chopra comes in and starts talking about quantum mechanics? I feel like this is where he-

   11. PGPhilip Goff14:40

       (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson14:40

       ... he begins going all woo-woo about the, the energies and the vibrations.

   13. PGPhilip Goff14:44

       Uh, well, I mean, the fir- first thing to say just before I answer the question is David Chalmers is the most un-woo person you can meet, you know? I mean, he's a-

   14. CWChris Williamson14:52

       (laughs)

   15. PGPhilip Goff14:52

       ... complete, he's absolutely total atheist secularist. I once asked him, I think I said this in my book, you know, "Do you have any spiritual or religious feelings?" And he said, "Only the universe... Only that the universe is cool." Right? So he's...

   16. CWChris Williamson15:05

       (laughs)

   17. PGPhilip Goff15:05

       And, and actually-

   18. CWChris Williamson15:05

       What a G.

   19. PGPhilip Goff15:07

       Another, uh, contemporary dualist, Martin Anita Rumeland, who's passionately anti-religious and hates it being connected... So the- these guys, they don't believe in any transcendent spiritual reali- They just believe in feelings, pain, pleasure, and they think, "You know, we need to account for this, and we can't do it in the normal way." Anyway, but, so what's the connection? So yeah, wh- wh- again, when I was an undergraduate, we were taught the big problem with dualism was what's the connection, how to make intelligible-

   20. CWChris Williamson15:33

       Must be a mechanism, right? Yeah.

   21. PGPhilip Goff15:34

       ... how, how the mind... Right. This was actually what, um, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia challenged Descartes on. You know, the most famous dualist historically was Descartes, and she said... Oh, I'll, I'll, I'll try, I'll, I'll mess up the quote if I try to remember it. But she just, she was just mystified by how something utterly non-physical could impact on the brain. And for a lo- a long time, people took that seriously. I don't think people take that worry seriously anymore for this reason, that, um, well, a- about 100 years later, the great Scottish philosopher David Hume pointed out that actually when it comes to fundamental causal interactions or laws of nature, no one has any explanation. So take the l- you know, take the laws of physics. You... I mean, to take a simple example, uh, Newton's, uh, law of gravity, right? Newton came up with this law of gravity that, um, tells us that objects is at- attract each other with a force that's dependent on the distance between them and the, and the mass, and gave us a nice bit of maths. And then people said to him, "Uh, okay, why does that happen though?" And he famously said, "Hypothesis non fingo." You know, showing off in Latin. "I don't frame hypotheses." He says, "You know, it's not the job of a, of a physicist to say why things happen, we just give mathematical laws that describe that it happens." Now, uh, and, you know, later Einstein gives a deeper explanation of gravity in terms of matter curving spacetime, and, and then, and then matter follows the simpler, the geodesics through spacetime. But he didn't explain, you know, why that happens. He gave the equations, took him a long time, 10 years, but he, he doesn't explain why matter curves spacetime. You know, when it gets down to the fundamental laws of physics, you just have to say, "That's just the way it works." So the naturalistic dualist says, "Well, if you can do that, I can do that. I just think this is a basic law about our universe." If you're, if you're saying that's not fair, that you're applying, David Chalmers would say, "A kind of double standard." You don't ask the physicist to explain why laws of physics hold, so why should I have to explain why... and, you know, w- w- why the psychophysical laws hold. They're just basic, fundamental facts about our universe, I would say.

   22. CWChris Williamson17:51

       Okay. What are the main criticisms or what are the reasons why you find dualism and materialism unsatisfying?

   23. PGPhilip Goff18:02

       Yeah, which one do you want first? You going for dualism first?

   24. CWChris Williamson18:04

       Let's go for dualism first.

   25. PGPhilip Goff18:06

       Um, yeah, so a, a lot of people think there are just straightforward scientific empirical worries with dualism. And the thought is something like...If there was, you know, non-physical consciousness impacting on the brain every second of waking life, that 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'd be like a poltergeist was playing with the brain, and we just don't seem to find that. And so that, that builds a, a kind of disconfirmation of dualism. Actually, the more I talk to neuroscientists, uh, uh, the less I think we're actually in a, in a position to assess that, because, you know, the more I figure, I, I find, actually, we really don't know that much (laughs) about how the brain works. And, you know, people get very excited about brain scans, but, um, you know, what you have to remember brain scans is every pixel, the tiniest pixel corresponds to 5.5 million neurons. And, um, you know, so I think, I think what we've got to... Here's how I think the current state of our scientific knowledge is that, you know, I think we understand the basic chemistry, how neurons fire and, uh, various kinds of neurotransmitter, and we understand a fair bit about... So that's the bottom stuff, and a fair bit about the top stuff, like what large-scale bits of the brain do, their functions. What we all know almost nothing about, very little about is how those large-scale functions are realized at the cellular level, how it works basically. And I think until we, you know... To make, to put it in perspective, we're about 70% through putting together a connectome for the maggot brain, which is, you know, smaller than a dot on an i, you know? We're just so far from, you know, really understanding the, the workings of the 85 billion neurons in the brain. So I'm not... I don't know. The more I talk to neuroscientists... This is the objection I've always made to dualism, but I'm, I'm maybe less sure that... I think we'd have to know a lot more about the physical workings of the brain before we could really be in a position to assess whether there's non-physical influences or not. But anyway, uh, so I'm kind of more agnostic about that the more I go on. But the most straightforward worry is as scientists or philosophers, you want as simple and unified a theory as possible. In dualism, you've got this radical division in nature between the physical things and the non-physical things, and, uh, it's very ugly and disunified. If that's what we end up with, that's what we end up with. But all things being equal, it's nicer to go for a more simple and unified theory of reality, and I think there are alternatives.

   26. CWChris Williamson20:50

       Got you. Materialism, why are you not happy with that?

   27. PGPhilip Goff20:51

       Materialism. Yeah, so I mean, I guess, I, I... You know, being a science-y kind of guy, I initially wanted to be a materialist and just eventually came to the conclusion that this is, this is, this is a nonstarter really, um, and was a bit lost for a long time. So-

   28. CWChris Williamson21:09

       That was like me when I tried to enjoy Take That's music when I was about 11. I was like, "Well, everyone else seems to think that this is cool, but I just, just can't get into it, man."

   29. PGPhilip Goff21:17

       (laughs) I had a problem when, when I was a little bit younger with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I just... When they first came on, and I thought, "This is just absolutely ridiculous."

7. 21:25 – 24:50

   Physical science and consciousness

   1. PGPhilip Goff21:25

      And I-

   2. CWChris Williamson21:25

      Did you get Biker Mike- Biker Mi- Mi- Mice from Mars? Was it, was that your thing?

   3. PGPhilip Goff21:29

      Biker Mice from Mars. That was, I think that was a bit later. Um, but then it, but then it ended up all my friends were into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I was really left out for ages and that. And then I, I sort of pretended-

   4. CWChris Williamson21:39

      Don't conform. Don't conform, Philip.

   5. PGPhilip Goff21:40

      I did, I'm afraid. I pretended that, uh, I liked them all along. And anyway, that was a long time ago. What were we talking about? Materialism. Um, yeah, so I think the core... It's a big debate, but the core of the issue is that physical science works with a purely quantitative vocabulary, whereas consciousness is an essentially quality involving phenomenon if you think about, you know, the redness of a red experience, the smell of coffee, the taste of mint. You just can't even describe those qualities in the purely quantitative vocabulary of physical science. And so as long as your description of the brain is framed in that, in the purely quantitative vocabulary of neuroscience, you're essentially just leaving out those qualities, and, and that's really just leaving out consciousness itself. And, you know, so what, and what I've tried to press my, you know, the reason for the title of my book, Galileo's Error, is that, you know, we shouldn't be surprised that our standard scientific approach can't account for consciousness, because our standard scientific approach was designed explicitly to exclude consciousness. So in 1623, key moment in the Scientific Revolution, Galileo, the father of modern science says, "Right, if we're gonna make progress here, we need a purely mathematical science," right, purely quantitative. S- Stop all this kind of fuzzy, unclear, imprecise stuff. We just want it all to be in maths. But he understood quite well from the start that you can't capture the qualities of experience in these terms. You know, you can't capture an equation, the, you know, the, the redness of a sunset, that ex- that experience, the quality in your experience. So he said, "Right, well, if we want a quantitative science, we need to take consciousness outside of the domain of science." So Galileo set up this world view in which there's this radical division between the quantitative domain of science and the qualitative domain of consciousness, consciousness with its colors and sounds and smells and tastes. Uh, and that, that was the start of mathematical physics. It was only once consciousness with its qualities was out of the way that mathematical physics is possible. So I think just, just finally, I think this is so important because I think what really motivates people to materialism I think is this sense that, "Look! Physical science is great. Look at... It's done such amazing things. Of course it'll one day explain consciousness." I think that's rooted in a misunderstanding of the history of science. Physical science is amazing, but it's been amazing precisely since Galileo designed it to exclude consciousness, right? And the fact that it's done well since it put consciousness on one side doesn't mean it's gonna do well-... when we bring consciousness back in. So, yeah, so, so physical science alone just wasn't desi- it's, it's all part of that thing that it's, it's a, it wasn't designed for this explanatory task. It was designed for dealing with publicly observable phenomena with mathematics. It was designed for this thing that's in, this thing that's not publicly observable, that involves qualities and trying to explain these unobservable qualities of consciousness. It's a totally different explanatory task.

8. 24:50 – 29:25

   Emergent quality

   1. PGPhilip Goff24:50

   2. CWChris Williamson24:50

      Mm. I'm trying to think about ... Since reading the book, I was, uh, I was trying to sort of consider my position. I think I probably came into this as what would be classed as a materialist. And presuming that an emergent quality of a bunch of different neurons firing can be the phenomenon of experiencing something more than just the neurons firing. In the same way as when you get a color wheel, and you got all the colors of a rainbow, and you look at them and you go, "Okay, this is a bunch of things," but then if I spin it, something inherent changes. It's no longer individual colors. It turns white. Does it turn white?

   3. PGPhilip Goff25:28

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson25:28

      I haven't done this experiment since I was about seven.

   5. PGPhilip Goff25:30

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson25:30

      Um, I'm gonna be abused on the internet for not knowing something a seven-year-old knows.

   7. PGPhilip Goff25:33

      (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson25:34

      Um, yet, it, uh, uh, it turns white.

   9. PGPhilip Goff25:37

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson25:38

       So perhaps individually if you were to look at the makeup of the brain, this is what it is-

   11. PGPhilip Goff25:42

       Mm-hmm.

   12. CWChris Williamson25:42

       ... but when things combine together, there is an emergent property, something that is a phenomenon of being that particular connection of things. Is that insufficient?

   13. PGPhilip Goff25:52

       That's a, it's a very nice analogy. Yeah, yeah, so that's, that sounds like the materialist position. But what, I don't know. So the word emergence is, is, is a bit slippery, so I like to distinguish-

   14. CWChris Williamson26:03

       Feeling like Deepak Chopra again. Deepak's ears are burning tonight.

   15. PGPhilip Goff26:07

       (laughs)

   16. CWChris Williamson26:07

       (laughs)

   17. PGPhilip Goff26:08

       Is Deepak ... Well, I think, yeah. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta precisely define these things. There's, so there's strong emergence and weak emergence. So s- so strong emergence is the David Chalmers view that, yeah, he thinks consciousness emerges in the physical, but only 'cause of these extra laws of nature that bridge the gap. Whereas weak emergence is you don't need extra laws of nature. You just, you know, it's just like w- water, th- the liquidity of water, you know? So I think if it, if ... I, I, I would ... If you're going for that weak emergence as materialist position, what's the problem? So I think what we need is, is, is an explanation. We need an explanation of the qualities of consciousness in terms of the purely quantitative story of electrochemical signaling. Of the kind, to take an analogy, the kind of explanation we have about the boiling point of water, right? If you study the chemistry of water, you have a totally satisfactory explanation of why water boils when it does. We want that kind of explanation, right? Now, but I think to do that, if you were to come up with that kind of explanation, you'd have to be able to describe the qualities of experience in your theory. So say you give me your theory explaining the redness of red experience in elec- terms of electrochemical signaling. Your theory would have to describe, in the language of physical science, the redness of the red experience and then account for it in more fundamental terms, and I, and I just don't think you could do that. I don't ... It's, it's, it's the wrong kind of concept-

   18. CWChris Williamson27:47

       Do we even have a language-

   19. PGPhilip Goff27:49

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson27:49

       ... at the moment that you could do that in?

   21. PGPhilip Goff27:52

       Well, yeah, it's, it's, it's famously kind of ineffable, isn't it? Meaning you, you can't ... You, you have to actually have the experience to be able to do it. You can't ... So yeah, if we, if we, if we could do that, you could convey to a, a blind-since-birth neuroscientist the character of a red experience, and you can't do that. You have to actually have the experience. So, so, so it's a kind of two-stage thing. I think there's an expressive or descriptive limitation to physical science that it, it can't even describe these qualities, and I think that entails an explanatory limitation, because I think if we were to explain the qualities, we'd have to be able to describe them first in the theory, and we can't even do that. So it's not just, "Oh, we haven't worked it out yet." It's, it's, in principle this couldn't be done because they're just totally different kinds of-

   22. CWChris Williamson28:41

       Yeah.

   23. PGPhilip Goff28:41

       ... concept. And, and more, and just to make the point one more time that this was never what physical science was in the business of.

   24. CWChris Williamson28:48

       Mm-hmm.

   25. PGPhilip Goff28:48

       It's, it's never been the point of it. I think ... Yeah. So I think we're going through a phase of history where we're so blown away by how well it's gone-

   26. CWChris Williamson28:55

       Look, we're winning. We're just continuing to win every single match that we enter.

   27. PGPhilip Goff28:59

       (laughs) Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson28:59

       It's 10-nil, 10-nil, 10-nil.

   29. PGPhilip Goff29:01

       Yeah. (laughs)

   30. CWChris Williamson29:01

       And then you come up against-
9. 29:25 – 33:51

   The wrong questions

   1. PGPhilip Goff29:25

   2. CWChris Williamson29:25

      I think my view of the human brain and consciousness was informed quite heavily by getting into a lot of evolutionary psychology last year, um, and I realized, upon reading your book, that I've been asking myself the wrong questions. Or I've been giving myself a explanation of consciousness which is satisfactory for how it feels phenomenologically but insufficient to explain why it is the way it is. So for instance, learning a lot about pair bonding and the reason that we have reciprocal altruism, or the reason that pain feels like pain, or the reason that we have abstract thought. Like one of the, um, explanations which I'm sure you're familiar with, the reason that we have abstract thought is so that we can plan doing a thing and see the potential outcomes without having to do it. It also means that we're able to predict what us saying a thing-... to another person, which would have been we're a highly social species. I can predict what Philip's response to me saying this thing will be, and then I'm able to gauge this theory of mind, right? I'm able to gauge how I should, this sort of metacognizant game, I can play this persona and I can cultivate myself toward it. But it seems like that, that can all be fine. And also based on evolutionary psychology, doesn't seem to massively be debated about why we have those particular ... Like, it, it makes sense, it's a fairly satisfactory explanation, that by having those particular abilities for abstraction, we're able to do these things. And everybody knows what it's like to make a plan and to think about how it might go or how it might fail, and et cetera, et cetera. But that, that doesn't actually seem to be the same question that we're talking about here. Um, and that kind of was uncomfortable and interesting for me to see at the same time. Where I was like, "I've answered the wrong question correctly."

   3. PGPhilip Goff31:25

      That, I, I wouldn't say it's the wrong question. Yeah, that's really ... I, I think these are just different questions.

   4. CWChris Williamson31:30

      Yes.

   5. PGPhilip Goff31:30

      It depends what, what you're interested in and what you're trying to do. That, that stuff you can turn about is all great and important. So my colleague, Chiara Braso, is interested in, you know, how the brain, you know, constructs a theory of mind. That is to say, an understanding of the mental states of others and the role of mirror neurons and what mirror neurons tell us about. And it's, it's quite good. We teach together, so I, she does the more grounded science-y stuff and I'm more sort of the more abstract philosophical. So, you know, cater to both pre- preferences among the students. But I mean, the, these, it's not either/or, it depends what you ... So, depends what we're trying to do. So one way of explaining consciousness as a sort of historical explanation is, you know, why the kinds of consciousness, the kinds of mental state we have are adaptive and good for survival and, and that's why they've, they've, they've e- evolved. So that's a different kind of explanation to that sort of historical explanation is different to what Thomas Nagel calls a constitutive explanation, which is just, you know, right now ... Just what is it that makes the stuff in my brain right now produce feelings and experiences? So that's not a historical question about how we got here, it's just, you know, what's, what's going on when I wake up in the morning? That, uh, how do we bridge that explanatory gap between the purely quantitative story of the brain and the qualities we immediately apprehend in our experience? It's just, it's just a different task. And, uh, you know, talking about evolution, I think early on after Darwin, many philosophers and psychologists actually saw the connection to, um, well, the view we haven't got onto, that I defend panpsychism, people like William James saw it fitted very well with a Darwinian framework. So if, you know, if you're not a panpsychist, you have to think, and this might be a good way to sort of enter the view, you just have to think there's just utterly non-conscious stuff getting more and more complicated and then suddenly a miracle happens.

   6. CWChris Williamson33:31

      Poof.

   7. PGPhilip Goff33:32

      Consciousness appears. Whereas if you're a panpsychist, the idea would be what there was before life would ... Un- unimaginably simple forms of experience and then natural selection molds them into more complicated forms of experience. Uh, so, you know, the- these aren't competing stories

10. 33:51 – 36:08

    Time racism

    1. PGPhilip Goff33:51

       at all.

    2. CWChris Williamson33:52

       Before we get into panpsychism, I learned the terms chronological chauvinism and time racism from you.

    3. PGPhilip Goff34:01

       (laughs)

    4. CWChris Williamson34:01

       I can't believe that that's even a thing.

    5. PGPhilip Goff34:04

       Oh, you've, you've definitely, you've, you've read my book about that thing. (laughs) Um, yeah. Um, well, I guess, I guess I came up with that actually teaching Philosophy of Time and trying to sort of get it across in a vivid, jokey way for the students. So, uh, yeah, I mean, there's, there's ... Well, this is kind of a tangent, but for, in Philosophy of Time, I guess, there are broadly speaking two views. One is which, one, one i- one of which is only the present moment exists. You know, the past has ceased to be, the future's not yet here, is sort of common sense view. So on that view, there's something really special about 20- I was gonna say 2020, 2021, it's the only year that actually exists. Whereas the other sometimes called four-dimensionalist view is that all moments of time exist equally, you know? The people fighting the Battle of Hastings in 1066, people setting up colonies on Mars in 4000, you know, it's all, they're all equ- their bodies are equally solid, their experiences are equally real. And then the thought being on that view, if you think there's something special about 6th of January 2021, your kind of time racist, this is chronological chauvinism.

    6. CWChris Williamson35:17

       (laughs)

    7. PGPhilip Goff35:17

       You think there's something special about your time.

    8. CWChris Williamson35:21

       I love those terms-

    9. PGPhilip Goff35:22

       But, uh-

    10. CWChris Williamson35:22

        ... so much, man.

    11. PGPhilip Goff35:22

        ... I mean, it's, it's-

    12. CWChris Williamson35:23

        I love those terms.

    13. PGPhilip Goff35:24

        It's not an actual thing in the sense that, you know, people are kicking up a fuss about this and demanding their right, people in the past are demanding their rights.

    14. CWChris Williamson35:31

        (laughs)

    15. PGPhilip Goff35:31

        And I think it was just a jokey way I sort of thought that.

    16. CWChris Williamson35:33

        I love it. I, and if-

    17. PGPhilip Goff35:35

        Get the point.

    18. CWChris Williamson35:35

        ... if you are listening, Carlo Rovelli, please reply to my emails, 'cause I wanna get you on to talk about the philosophy of time-

    19. PGPhilip Goff35:41

        Yeah.

    20. CWChris Williamson35:41

        ... from your perspective.

    21. PGPhilip Goff35:41

        Oh, he's, he's writing and he's contributing to ... I've got a special issue of, uh, academics, uh, scientists, philosophers, uh, special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies responses to my, my book and he's one of, one of the contributors.

    22. CWChris Williamson35:54

        No way.

    23. PGPhilip Goff35:55

        Very.

    24. CWChris Williamson35:55

        That's cool. That guy's a-

    25. PGPhilip Goff35:56

        And then I'll-

    26. CWChris Williamson35:56

        That guy's an animal.

    27. PGPhilip Goff35:58

        I, I think he'll be slightly critical.

    28. CWChris Williamson36:00

        (laughs) He'll be, he'll be No, you're not. We'll hear about it. Okay. So we've, we've sort of skirted around it and we've s- we've laid the landscape. We have two

11. 36:08 – 42:27

    Pan psychism

    1. CWChris Williamson36:08

       popular, but as far as you're concerned, insufficient theories-

    2. PGPhilip Goff36:11

       (knock on door)

    3. CWChris Williamson36:11

       ... or just incorrect theories. What do you propose?

    4. PGPhilip Goff36:16

       Yeah. So, the panpsychist view I propose is it's a very specific form of panpsychism, and so there's been a resurgence of interest in this view, um-... you know, I guess for a lot of the 20th century it was kind of laughed at in so far as it was thought of at all. But, uh, i- in academic philosophy, there's been a real resurgence of interest in the last five or 10 years, largely due to the rediscovery of certain important work by, uh, from the 1920s by the philosopher Bertrand Russell and the scientist Arthur Eddington, who was incidentally the first scientist to experimentally confirm Einstein's theory of general relativity after the First World War. Um, so yes, I, as I often say, I'm inclined to think these guys did for the science of consciousness in the 1920s what Darwin did for the science of life in the 19th century. And it-

    5. CWChris Williamson37:08

       I've heard you say-

    6. PGPhilip Goff37:08

       ... is a tragedy of history.

    7. CWChris Williamson37:09

       I, I, I have heard you say before, um, it was lost and people didn't... Like what-

    8. PGPhilip Goff37:12

       Mm-hmm.

    9. CWChris Williamson37:12

       ... what, what do you mean it was lost?

    10. PGPhilip Goff37:14

        Well, it just, uh, it just was almost totally forgotten about for, I guess... I mean, you, look, you've got the- it was 1927, 1928, and then you've got, you know, this was a real heyday, I think, of really interesting philosophy connecting up science and philosophy. And, and then we have, what, the Great Depression, Second World War, people have a lot on their minds (laughs) after the Second World War.

    11. CWChris Williamson37:35

        So it's not as if-

    12. PGPhilip Goff37:36

        And every-

    13. CWChris Williamson37:36

        ... it was like physically lost-

    14. PGPhilip Goff37:38

        Oh, no, not lost in that sense.

    15. CWChris Williamson37:38

        ... um, books that were then res-

    16. PGPhilip Goff37:40

        No.

    17. CWChris Williamson37:40

        It was just something-

    18. PGPhilip Goff37:40

        No.

    19. CWChris Williamson37:41

        ... which didn't land with the academic community-

    20. PGPhilip Goff37:42

        It was not-

    21. CWChris Williamson37:42

        ... didn't get absorbed.

    22. PGPhilip Goff37:43

        It was not

    23. CWChris Williamson37:43

        ... didn't get developed.

    24. PGPhilip Goff37:45

        After, after the, after the war, Second World War, I think you've got a real kind of anti-philosophy zeitgeist. People like the logical positivists who thought... who tried to have this idea where that any question that can't be answered by an experiment is meaningless gibberish. And so this dominates for a long time in a very kind of hard materialist viewpoint. And then, um, and as, as I said, consciousness was not really seen as a serious scientific stuff. So I think it's only once people... People dealt with consciousness by pretending it didn't exist (laughs) . And then I think from the end of the 20th century, people started to think, "Hold on, it does exist. I feel pain," you know, this... And so we, we start to get a resurgence of interest and people have eventually found their way, I think because of finding deep difficulties with these conventional options of dualism and materialism, and there's been a lot of excitement that this is a, a middle way that sounds a bit wacky, but that avoids the difficulties of these two traditional options. Um, okay, should I, should I describe... So the, the starting point of Russell and Eddington was that physical science doesn't really tell us what matter is. And I thought that was just the most absurd thing I'd ever heard when I first heard it, because, you know, you, you read a physics textbook, you seem to learn all these incredible things about the nature of space and time and matter. But actually on, on reflection, it turns out that for all its richness, physics is confined to telling us about the behavior of matter, what it does. You know, physics tells us, for example, that particles have mass and charge, and these properties are completely defined in terms of what they do. Things like attraction, repulsion, resistance to acceleration, it's all about behavior, what stuff does. Um, so, so what's wrong with that? So that... Intuitively at least there's, there's, there's more to, to what something is than what it does. So I like to give a kind of chess piece analogy, right? If you're playing chess, you're interested in what the pieces do, right? You're interested in the moves you can make, the pieces you can take. But if you're... suppose you're someone who collects high-end luxury chess pieces, then you're interested in the substance of the pieces themselves. Do you want pieces made of gold or silver rather than plastic or cheap metal? Uh, so this is what philosophers call the intrinsic nature of a thing. You know, what, what it is in... what it is considered independently of what it does. So now think about fundamental particles like an electron. You know, you might very well be interested in what physics tells us about the, about the behavior of an electron, what it does, but you might also be interested in the intrinsic nature of an electron, what an electron is considered independently of what it does. And about this, physics just has nothing to say. So the thought is, there's actually this huge hole in our standard scientific theory of the universe. Physics gives us this rich information about what stuff does, but tells us nothing about its intrinsic nature. So what's this got to do with consciousness? So I think the genius of Russell and Eddington was to bring together two problems. The problem we've just been discussing, the problem of intrinsic natures, that physics doesn't tell us the intrinsic nature of stuff, and the problem of consciousness, to bring them together and to see that they can be given a unified solution. So, so problem number one, um, physical science tells us a purely quantitative story of the brain and leaves out the qualities we know and experience. Problem number two, physical science just describes the behavior of matter and doesn't tell us anything about its intrinsic nature. So the unified solution is given by the hypothesis that maybe the qualities of experience are the intrinsic nature of matter. So we answer... we solve both problems at once. So we, we find a place for consciousness, for those qualities that physical science leaves out, and we have an answer to the question, what is the intrinsic nature of matter? Um, so, so this is... it's, it's a beautifully... so the idea... it's a beautifully simple, elegant way of integrating consciousness into our scientific story. It's not dualism, right? There's, there's... there's just matter, just particles or fields, but matter can be described from two perspectives. Physics describes it, as it were, from the outside in terms of what it does, but matter from the inside, in terms of its intrinsic nature is constituted of the qualities of consciousness. So that's the basic idea.

    25. CWChris Williamson42:26

        How does

12. 42:27 – 44:42

    Fundamental particles

    1. CWChris Williamson42:27

       that manifest? How does the internal state manifest? It, it can't be any more than can be described in a materialistic worldview, no?

    2. PGPhilip Goff42:36

       So-So let's start with... So coming, you know, thinking about fundamental particles. So, so the, the view is that fundamental particles are, have some kind of very, very, very simple experience. Now when people hear that, they always interpret it dualistically. So they always think of the electron has its physical properties that science studies, like mass, spin, and charge, and these weird consciousness properties. The phy- the physicist Sabine Hossenfelder had a recent, a blog post, about a year ago now probably, a blog post criticizing panpsychism, but she was interpreting it in this dualistic way. And she was saying, "Physics doesn't show any sign of these weird non-physical properties." But that's, that's not the view. The view is that mass, the physical properties, mass, spin and charge, are forms of consciousness because how, how do we make sense of that? Because physics doesn't tell us what these properties are, it just tells us what they do. Uh, and so that leaves open the theoretical possibility that they are forms of consciousness. So coming up to take your pain at that, that level of the brain, your pain and the pattern of neuronal firings that corresponds to it. The idea here is that in, in a sense, they're just the same thing. When w- when the, when the neuroscientist studies your brain, it's just, it, it's... She's not really studying what it is, she's just studying what it does and what its parts do. When you attend to the qualities of your experience, that is the intrinsic nature of your brain, the intrinsic nature of the brain states. So they're just two sides of the same coin. So I mean, let me come back to you. Your question was, how does it manifest itself? Well, it manifests itself as the behavior that physics studies. Ma- uh, matter is what consciousness does, right? There's just consciousness. Th- there's nothing but consciousness. But physics describes what consciousness does. That's the view. So there aren't two things.

13. 44:42 – 47:02

    Bottom rung for consciousness

    1. CWChris Williamson44:42

       What is the bottom rung for consciousness in your opini- in your opinion then? Do, does the soil have consciousness? Do plants have consciousness? What about a rock? What about a, a tree that's now been chopped down? What about a tree that's about to die?

    2. PGPhilip Goff44:59

       Yeah, so I mean, one common misunderstanding, it doesn't literally mean that everything is conscious despite the etymology of the word. You know, pan means everything, psyche means mind. Everything has mind. But the basic commitment of panpsychism is that the fundamental building blocks of reality have incredibly simple forms of experience. So it could be fundamental particles. That's the way I guess it's conventionally, standardly talked about it. But actually, many, many physicists, many theoretical physicists tend to think that actually, the fundamental entities are not little particles, but universe-wide fields, and then particles are understood as sort of local excitations of fields. So if you interpret that kind of view in a panpsychist way, then the, the fundamental forms of consciousness would be the intrinsic nature of those universe-wide fields. So that's the basic commitment of the view, and the idea would be that the consciousness of the human or animal brain is somehow derived from those more fundamental forms of consciousness. But your question you asked was which other things are consciousness? So, so the fundamental things are conscious, whether they're particles or universe-wide fields, or whatever. Humans and animals are conscious. What other things are conscious? I, I think that's an, an open scientific question that we're in the very early days. And I don't think it's a question for philosophers like me to answer. I think it's a question for scientists to answer. And how do they do that? By studying the correlations between brain activity and consciousness, and trying to get systematic. There are a couple of proposals, the integrated information theory or the global workspace theory that we could perhaps talk about. But I mean, I, to be honest, I think it's such early days that we're really, you know, in the dark at the moment. So it's, it's an open empirical question. Uh, so I, I guess I'm inclined to think, you know, like anybody else, that tables and rocks probably aren't conscious, but that just that they're made up of little things that probably are conscious.

14. 47:02 – 48:58

    Criticisms of panpsychism

    1. CWChris Williamson47:02

       What are the strongest criticisms that you see of panpsychism?

    2. PGPhilip Goff47:08

       Yeah, good question. So, so I guess the, um, what's, what's generally seen as... There, there are a lot of different things, but what's generally seen as the biggest problem, the so-called combination problem, which I mean, there's a couple of different ways of making this precise, but the basic idea is, you know, the panpsychist wants to account for my consciousness in terms of the consciousness of the particles ultimately making up my brain. How, how does that work? You know, we feel like we understand how you put together parts of a car engine, and you get a functioning car engine. We have a grip on that. But how do you put together lots of little minds and make a big mind? M- That seems hard to make sense of. It seems almost unintelligible. You can't build a mind in the way you can build a house. Um, so there are various, um, you know, I, I, I'd say that, that the energies of the contemporary panpsychist research program are, are, uh, focused on, uh... You know, I could, I could run you through a, through some options and, and my own favored view. But I mean, I would say, I guess I'd say like, n- nobody's got a total complete theory of consciousness. It's such early days, but it seems to me that the, the problems facing the panpsychist are more tractable than the problems facing these other views. You know, if you're a materialist, you've got to bridge the gap between the purely quantitative properties of physical science and the qualities, the subjective qualities of experience. If you're a panpsychist... Did I say panpsychist the first time? If you're a panpsychist, you've got to br- you just got to bridge the gap between simple forms of experience and more complex forms of experience. Um, you know, I could talk about some of my favorite solutions and the different approaches people take, but I think-... it a problem we can potentially make progress on, and are in the business of making progress on. In the process, sorry, of making progress on.

    3. CWChris Williamson48:57

       Is

15. 48:58 – 50:53

    Consciousness emerging from AI

    1. CWChris Williamson48:58

       your view of panpsychism compatible with consciousness emerging from artificial general intelligence if and when we manage to create it?

    2. PGPhilip Goff49:08

       Uh, it's certainly compatible with artificial consciousness. Um-

    3. CWChris Williamson49:13

       What's that mean?

    4. PGPhilip Goff49:15

       Well, just m- man made, human made things becoming conscious, that you know. So as I said, I think it's an empirical question. We're trying to work out what kinds of physical activity bring about emergent... So I think there's always consciousness at the fundamental level, but I don't think there's always consciousness at the emergent level. So it's an empirical question. If we can work out, I think we're a long way from doing so, but if we can work out what is necessary and sufficient for consciousness, then we can maybe build a thing that, that has that. That's, you know, that there's... Now this is why the, the panpsychists may be much closer to, you know, we don't believe in souls or something, you know, extra like that. But, uh, I mean, you, the way you phrased it there, you said artificial general intelligence. So I mean, I guess I would want to sharply distinguish consciousness from intelligence, at least the way that's standardly understood in AI, is, um, something functionally defined, uh, in, in terms of certain kinds of sophisticated behavioral response. So I think that's not necessarily anything to do with consciousness. You could have a computer with very high levels of intelligence in that sense without having any kind of inner conscious experience at all. So there's two different questions. You know, what is required for something to be intelligent? And what is required for something to be sentient, or conscious? But yeah, I mean, I, I certainly, I, I think panpsychists would probably say all the same things as a, as a materialist, or probably even a dualist, about, um, artificial consciousness, the possibility of.

    5. CWChris Williamson50:52

       Yeah,

16. 50:53 – 54:31

    Will the internet become conscious

    1. CWChris Williamson50:53

       that, I mean, that question of whether or not consciousness comes along for the ride, so to speak, and it's just, there is some sort of point that you get to where there's enough intelligence or, or enough processing-

    2. PGPhilip Goff51:06

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson51:06

       ... going on, um, for it to happen. That's the switch that you were talking about before, right? It's like either, is it a gradation of levels of con- of slightly less conscious to slightly more conscious? Or is there a, a point, something that you hit? Are we going to get a point where the internet is so big that it becomes conscious, there's simply so much information processing around? Uh, and these questions from Nick Bostrom and the other guys at the Future of Humanities Institute have been something I've really enjoyed thinking about ever since I read Superintelligence. Um, I'm just trying to... I'm making a pig's ear of it-

    4. PGPhilip Goff51:38

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson51:38

       ... but I'm trying to work out how this-

    6. PGPhilip Goff51:40

       No, no-

    7. CWChris Williamson51:40

       ... maps on to what you do.

    8. PGPhilip Goff51:41

       I see. Good. Okay, I get what you're saying. So yeah, I mean, well, just in terms of the internet being conscious as a slight digression. I mean, the integrated information theory, one of the dominant neuroscientific models that connects... I mean the basic idea is that consciousness cor- that consciousness corresponds to the level at which you have most integrated information. So in this view, this cup of tea isn't conscious probably because there's more integrated information in the individual molecules than there is in the, the liquid as a whole. In the brain there's, there's consciousness because there's much more integrated information in parts of the brain than in the, in, in the, um, in the individual neurons.

    9. CWChris Williamson52:19

       I really like that.

    10. PGPhilip Goff52:20

        So-

    11. CWChris Williamson52:20

        I really like that distinction.

    12. PGPhilip Goff52:21

        Go on.

    13. CWChris Williamson52:21

        I think that's really useful.

    14. PGPhilip Goff52:23

        So if you could one day have, if the in- if there becomes so much integrated information in the internet that there's more in the internet than the human brain, this theory predicts... You know, we don't know if it's true or not, but it predicts, it has some empirical confirmation, that, um, the internet would be absorbed into sort of a, an internet mind and we'd cease to be conscious in our own right. But, um, how, how does it connect to Bostrom? But I guess Bostrom is very much a materialist and so as an... I don't think consciousness arises from, um, just in, you know, in intelligence and information-

    15. CWChris Williamson53:05

        Processing.

    16. PGPhilip Goff53:06

        ... processing.

    17. CWChris Williamson53:06

        Yeah.

    18. PGPhilip Goff53:06

        And I, because I think that's the materialist story, that it's the, the purely quantitative story of information processing. I don't think you can get consciousness out of that, because I think consciousness is something qualitative. It's to do with the underlying intrinsic nature of matter. But it could be just a matter of empirical fact that, you know, the two could end up going together. It could end up, it's just a sci- open scientific question that it could be that certain types of sophisticated, um, information processing do give rise to emergent consciousness. But, uh, in my view, that wouldn't be because of the information processing per se, but because of the intrinsic nature of matter underlying that information processing, if that makes sense.

    19. CWChris Williamson53:47

        Yeah, it does.

    20. PGPhilip Goff53:47

        That might come off a bit abstract.

    21. CWChris Williamson53:48

        No, it do-

    22. PGPhilip Goff53:48

        All right, brilliant.

    23. CWChris Williamson53:49

        It does, um...

    24. PGPhilip Goff53:50

        It's, yeah, it's whether you think consciousness is, I think consciousness is sort of the stuff of matter.

    25. CWChris Williamson53:55

        Mm-hmm.

    26. PGPhilip Goff53:55

        It's the kind of intrinsic, it's real concrete. You know, if you... A vivid example, you know, if you smell a really bad smell, that horrible smell is the stuff of your brain at that moment. So it's that, it's a real concrete, uh, it's not just some kind of more abstract notion of information processing. It's the stuff of the world. I should say that more often.

    27. CWChris Williamson54:19

        (laughs)

    28. PGPhilip Goff54:19

        And do that at the same time. People will start thinking I'm profound and it takes the stuff of the world-

    29. CWChris Williamson54:23

        You are mate. You need a, you need a, a skull or a bust, you need a bust in your hand.

    30. PGPhilip Goff54:29

        (laughs)
17. 54:31 – 1:09:13

    Why does consciousness matter

    1. CWChris Williamson54:31

       s- wrapping all of this up, why does this really matter? Like how does consciousness relate to the meaning of life for us?

    2. PGPhilip Goff54:37

       Hmm. Okay, nice simple question to finish with. Um, yeah, so yeah, I mean look, the final chapter of our book, the first four chapters are sort of building the, um, cold-blooded scientific philosophical case for this view. The final chapter explores the kind of meaning of life, implications for human existence, and, um-I mean, you know, look, the first reason this mattered, the very straightforward reason this matters, I, I think it's intrinsically important to try and work out the ultimate nature of reality. (laughs) Not for everyone, but it's, I think it's, it's important that some people are doing that, trying to have our best guess at what reality is like. I guess most people think that's a purely scientific question. I, I disagree with that slightly. I think there's a real role for philosophy, at lea- especially in the case of consciousness. But, so that's just important. But, but I do think this isn't... It's more than that in, with consciousness. It's not just an abstract puzzle, because, you know, consciousness is at the root of human identity, I think. Fundamentally, we relate to each other as creatures with feelings and experiences. Consciousness is sort of the basis of everything, I think, that's important and of value in human existence. And yet, I believe, I would argue our official scientific worldview doesn't have a place for it. So, and you know, to see that just, if you just consider for a moment what it's like to be you right now, the colors, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, those qualities. You know, our official scientific worldview tells you, tells us that all that's really going on in your head is the purely quantitative story of electrochemical signaling. I think that's just equivalent to saying those qualities you encounter in your experience don't really exist. And that's just kinda crazy. I think, you know, nothing is more evident than the, th- the qualities of experience, the pleasure, the pain. And so I think we're in a crazy period of history where our official s- story of reality denies the existence of the one thing that's most evident and the one thing that is, gives value to human life. And I think, you know, at some kind of subconscious level, that, I think that does lead to a profound sort of alienation and sense that we don't belong to the world, we don't fit in, um, part of what Max Weber called the disenchantment of nature. So I mean, li- you know, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on at the moment and there's lots of different reasons for that. But I think this is a small part of it. And so, you know, I think the attraction of panpsychism is, is that, you know, um, it, it accommodates both what we know about the world scientifically through public observation experiment and what we know about ourselves through our immediate awareness of our feelings and experiences. It, it brings both together in a single, elegant picture of reality. So I think it's a, it's a worldview that's, um, it's, it's both healthier and more true conception of reality. Um, yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson57:41

       I've got a theory that I've been working on for the last year or so about why we're seeing the sort of increase of... I would go as far as to say sort of pettiness and existential angst, so all of the abstract problems that people make for themselves, um, and given the fact that for the first couple of million years of our evolution, all of the bottom things of Maslow's hierarchy of needs were super, super important and yet unfulfilled meant that we didn't have... Like oddly, an existential crisis is a very luxurious bourgeois position to be in. Like you can only afford-

    4. PGPhilip Goff58:19

       (laughs) .

    5. CWChris Williamson58:19

       -to have an existential crisis if all of the bottom levels of that hierarchy of needs are already met. And now we've got the Amazon Prime, the TV to watch the world's best shows on Netflix while you Deliveroo a Michelin star steak to your house.

    6. PGPhilip Goff58:35

       (laughs)

    7. CWChris Williamson58:35

       Like, we have so much luxury and abundance that we're actually afforded the opportunity to, the bliss to have an existential crisis-

    8. PGPhilip Goff58:43

       Sure.

    9. CWChris Williamson58:43

       -and wonder, "Why am I here? What am I doing? What is my purpose? Why do I feel the things I feel? Why do I think the things I think?" If you're being chased down by a tiger or a lion, you don't really have the opportunity to do that.

    10. PGPhilip Goff58:54

        Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm, I'm, I'm sure that, th- that, that is a part of it. Um, I mean, I think there's lots of different reasons. I mean, what I feel, what I do feel comfortable about that historians of the future looking back, one thing that will be obvious to them is there was this huge crash in 2008 that brought the world to its knees and then the longest period of waist squeeze since the Napoleonic War and then all sorts of crazy politics. You know, no shit, shell. You know? (laughs) Why, it's fucking obvious. And sorry.

    11. CWChris Williamson59:26

        As we're doing this, I need to say, as we're doing this, Trump is leading a protest to Capitol Hill, like, as we're talking right now. And I've got... I don't know whether he's actually there. I think he was trying to flee to Scotland-

    12. PGPhilip Goff59:40

        Yep.

    13. CWChris Williamson59:40

        -and Nicola Sturgeon said like, "Piss off. I don't want you here." Um...

    14. PGPhilip Goff59:44

        Oh my god.

    15. CWChris Williamson59:45

        But yeah, like, I've just got this image of him with the MAGA hat on and a, a, like a, a flag over his shoulder, marching, marching down, like Melania in arm.

    16. PGPhilip Goff59:55

        (laughs) .

    17. CWChris Williamson59:55

        Um, so yeah, you, you're, you're right. There are a lot-

    18. PGPhilip Goff59:58

        Absolutely crazy stuff.

    19. CWChris Williamson59:58

        -of crazy things going on.

    20. PGPhilip Goff59:59

        But yeah, I mean it's, uh, since the crash. And, you know, I mean, if you just go back a bit further, 20... You know, after the war, we had 30 years where we had very controlled capitalism. We put high taxes on the wealthy and we had 30 years where society got more prosperous, got more equal. We had the '60s and then the '80s onwards, we had Wild West capitalism, cut all the taxes on the wealthy and, um, you know, gross inequality. The bottom 50% in developed countries stag- their, their percentage of national income's gone from, you know, 25% to 12% in the US. You know, it's, it's... when the center left parties haven't responded to that. I think, I think, you know, to an extent that there are straightforward economic causes. But yeah, there, I mean, there are all sorts of different things going on here. You know, we, we don't know the loss of religion. We don't know what the hell we're doing, what it's all about, um-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:00:52

        I think that's a huge, a huge part that in some circles feels trite to say and then in other circles feels novel, like depends on who I'm speaking to.

    22. PGPhilip Goff1:01:00

        Mm-hmm.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:01:01

        Um, but that...... inner compulsion that people have to be connected to something greater than them to give-

    24. PGPhilip Goff1:01:10

        Mm-hmm.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:01:10

        ... themselves a sense of scale and wonder. You know, it's why you're seeing a resurgence of minimalism, I think. You know, like, Diogenes the Cynic, two and a half thousand years ago, was living out of a pot with a robe to wear. And 2020, one of the most popular YouTube channels on the internet is The Minimalists, the guys from The Minimalists. Like, what is that if it's not, like, a modern day-

    26. PGPhilip Goff1:01:31

        Yeah.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:01:31

        ... reincarnation of what Diogenes was doing? Or people that decide to go and live out in the woods, or people who decide-

    28. PGPhilip Goff1:01:37

        Mm-hmm.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:01:37

        ... to go and have transcendent experiences with psychedelics in the middle of the Amazon jungle, people who go and lie on the, uh, uh, a, a darkened, uh, night and look at the sky.

    30. PGPhilip Goff1:01:46

        Yeah.

Episode duration: 1:09:13