Joe Rogan Experience #1739 - Philip Goff
Philip Goff (guest), Joe Rogan (host), Narrator
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Philip Goff and Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan Experience #1739 - Philip Goff explores panpsychism, Physics, and Whether Consciousness Pervades All of Reality Philosopher Philip Goff explains and defends panpsychism: the view that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the physical world, present in extremely simple forms even at the level of particles or fields.
Panpsychism, Physics, and Whether Consciousness Pervades All of Reality
Philosopher Philip Goff explains and defends panpsychism: the view that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the physical world, present in extremely simple forms even at the level of particles or fields.
He argues that standard materialist science, which describes reality in purely quantitative, mathematical terms, cannot fully explain the qualitative feel of experience (like pain or the redness of red), and that Galileo’s original move to mathematize nature deliberately set consciousness aside.
Rogan and Goff explore questions about plant and animal minds, illusions of consciousness, quantum physics, evolution, and whether phenomena like ghost stories or “energies” in places might hint at broader forms of experience.
Goff suggests panpsychism offers a unified worldview that accommodates both successful physical science and the undeniable reality of subjective experience, even though it may never be empirically “proven” in the usual experimental sense.
Key Takeaways
Panpsychism reframes the hard problem by starting from consciousness, not matter.
Instead of trying to get experience out of non-conscious matter, panpsychism treats very simple forms of experience as the intrinsic nature of the physical, using them to “breathe fire into the equations” of physics.
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Physical science describes what matter does, not what it is.
Goff, following Russell and Eddington, argues that physics gives us mathematical structure and causal relations (mass, charge, spin) but is silent on the intrinsic, qualitative nature of those entities—leaving a natural “slot” for consciousness.
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Qualitative experience resists full reduction to quantitative brain science.
You can map brain states and chemical correlations, but the felt qualities (e. ...
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Consciousness is not publicly observable, so experiments alone can’t settle the theory.
Because we only know consciousness directly from first-person experience, any theory (materialist, dualist, or panpsychist) must be judged by explanatory power and coherence, not straightforward lab tests.
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Panpsychism can stay fully naturalistic while rejecting “spooky” dualism.
On Goff’s view, there are no extra non-physical souls or forces; the same particles and fields recognized by physics are also, at their core, configurations of simple consciousness, preserving scientific causality while expanding what ‘physical’ means.
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Evolutionary stories don’t obviously explain why experience should exist at all.
A perfectly behaving ‘zombie’ system without inner life could in principle survive and reproduce just as well, raising the question of why consciousness ever appeared if only behavior matters for natural selection.
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Adopting a consciousness-inclusive science could reshape our worldview and values.
Goff thinks a framework that takes experience as fundamental might reduce existential alienation, influence how we see minds in animals and nature, and redirect some people away from empty consumerism or rigid ideologies toward a more integrated sense of meaning.
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Notable Quotes
“Consciousness is what it’s like to be you.”
— Philip Goff
“Physical science tells you what chemicals do; it doesn’t tell you what they are.”
— Philip Goff
“If you start with just physics, there’d be no need for experience.”
— Philip Goff
“We’re at a very strange period of history where our official worldview denies the existence of the thing that’s most evident and that gives life value and meaning.”
— Philip Goff
“What if consciousness is just sort of a mathematical component of the biological systems of these animals that have this imperative?”
— Joe Rogan
Questions Answered in This Episode
If consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous, how should that alter our ethical treatment of animals, ecosystems, or even seemingly inanimate systems?
Philosopher Philip Goff explains and defends panpsychism: the view that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the physical world, present in extremely simple forms even at the level of particles or fields.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Can panpsychism generate concrete, testable predictions in neuroscience or physics, or will it always remain a primarily philosophical framing of existing data?
He argues that standard materialist science, which describes reality in purely quantitative, mathematical terms, cannot fully explain the qualitative feel of experience (like pain or the redness of red), and that Galileo’s original move to mathematize nature deliberately set consciousness aside.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How might a panpsychist view of reality change the way we think about death, personal identity, and the possibility of uploading minds or creating conscious AI?
Rogan and Goff explore questions about plant and animal minds, illusions of consciousness, quantum physics, evolution, and whether phenomena like ghost stories or “energies” in places might hint at broader forms of experience.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Does accepting that science was originally designed to exclude consciousness force us to rethink what we mean by a “complete” scientific explanation?
Goff suggests panpsychism offers a unified worldview that accommodates both successful physical science and the undeniable reality of subjective experience, even though it may never be empirically “proven” in the usual experimental sense.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Could certain anomalous experiences—mystical states, feelings of places having an ‘energy,’ or some parapsychological reports—be better understood, or at least reinterpreted, within a panpsychist framework without abandoning scientific rigor?
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Transcript Preview
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music) Yeah? Yeah. Well, it started out as a plain, clean table-
Uh-huh.
... because it was a new studio. And then along the line, people give you a bunch of shit.
Uh-huh.
And then it just starts piling up.
(laughs)
And you have to figure out when, like, "When do I empty this ashtray?"
Uh-huh.
"When do I throw out some of these objects? When do I move them into storage?" And then when I move them into storage, there's always, there always seems to be new ones that show up.
So these are things, these are all things people have bought? Brought?
Yes.
Right.
Everything is something someone's given me.
Oh, I should have brought something. I feel bad now.
Uh, except the, the deer head. Oh, please don't give me anything.
(laughs)
We're good. Thank you. Just, just your-
You're kidding.
... pretty self is fine.
Aw. It's fine.
Um, so, uh, thanks for doing this, man. Appreciate it.
No worries. Thanks for having me.
It's a very fascinating subject 'cause I've always wondered. Um, let's, let's just expla- uh, tell everybody what you do and who you are.
My name's Philip Goff. I'm a philosophy professor from Durham University in the north of England. And I spend most of my time thinking about consciousness. And specifically, I guess, I defend this view, panpsychism, uh, which is roughly the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world. So, so it doesn't, doesn't literally mean that everything is conscious necessarily. The basic commitment is that the fundamental building blocks of reality, maybe fundamental particles like electrons and quarks, have incredibly simple forms of experience and then the, the very complex experience of the human or animal brain is somehow rooted in or derived from this very simple experience at the level of fundamental physics. So, sounds kinda wacky, but I think, uh, more and more philosophers and even some neuroscientists are thinking this might be our best hope for addressing the hard problem of consciousness and the, the, the scientific and philosophical challenges consciousness raises.
Well, we are starting to challenge whether or not other things have something akin to consciousness, like plants, right?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
There's, uh, there's real evidence that plants-
Mm-hmm.
... um, both, uh, feel something when they're being eaten and react to it. Um, the r- the real evidence that they react to it, they actually change their, the profile, the chemical profile, to make themselves, uh, taste disgusting so that animals will not eat them.
Mm-hmm.
And that could actually be replicated with noises of the leaves being chewed on, which is really fascinating.
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