The Hidden Variable Approach to Quantum Mechanics

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The road from there to explaining the world of our experience is long and fraught with peril, right? That's the Evoradian perspective where you just have one vector in a big Hilbert space. But I have no trouble believing that it will eventually happen because materialism is so beautiful and elegant and so powerful. Do you think work do you think when we when we get the final physical explanation it will be able to convey to a Congenitally blind neuroscientist what it's like to see read by Stephen Hawking? Share your thoughts on this story at iReport.com.

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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