How to Be a Materialist

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If Mary knows everything about the neuroscience of color that is to say what exactly happens in a human brain when a human being Looks at something that is red Clearly that is different from experiencing red no one argues with that right. And I don't see anything in there that gets in the way of being a materialist Yeah, but if you learning the theory of black holes, soYeah, look I completely agree I think this is I think there's a little bit of it People say always think the argument is about I've heard about the change in Mary You know that that Oh, how come she can't she knows all the neuroscience howcome she can't experience red? That's that's not

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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