The Integrative Nature Disagreement

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I Totally would buy the idea that once you've told me what the stuff does You're done. There isn't anything else there is no such thing as the intrinsic nature of stuff, and I don't have a strong opinion about whether or not there are truth claims associated with that. When I say I'm experiencing red that Not only correlates exactly with certain neurons doing something in my brain But is just a way of saying that certain neurons are doingsomething in my brain So I think that that is the same as the intrinsicnature disagreement. That this comes down to whether we need intrinsic natures And so I On this kind of you things are just doings rather than beings, you know once you

The human brain contains roughly 85 billion neurons, wired together in an extraordinarily complex network of interconnected parts. It’s hardly surprising that we don’t understand the mind and how it works. But do we know enough about our experience of consciousness to suggest that consciousness cannot arise from nothing more than the physical interactions of bits of matter? Panpsychism is the idea that consciousness, or at least some mental aspect, is pervasive in the world, in atoms and rocks as well as in living creatures. Philosopher Philip Goff is one of the foremost modern advocates of this idea. We have a friendly and productive conversation, notwithstanding my own view that the laws of physics don’t need any augmenting to ultimately account for consciousness. If you’re not sympathetic toward panpsychism, this episode will at least help you understand why someone might be.

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Philip Goff received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Reading. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Durham. His new book, Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, is being published on Nov. 5.

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