The Mystery of Water Consciousness

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The mystery is how consciousness fits into our theory of the world. We keep getting simpler and simpler forms of inorganic life, but it seems at least coherent that as we get simpler and simpler you have more simple experiences. An electron has an unimaginably simple form of experience so that seems to me a coherent view. I think there's reason to take it seriously because We know that consciousness is realWe have to fit it into reality somehow if you think materialism and dualism I have got such deep problems that they're not really Gonna make it happen then this gives us a way of doing it that avoids all the problems and it feels a bit weird I guess I will Yeah,

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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