The Pan-Psychist View of Consciousness

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Everything has an aspect of consciousness everything at the fundamental level. So the pan-psychists need not hold it like rocks and socks and you know beds are conscious Not every arbitrary collection of things is conscious, but everything has components Or its most basic parts are conscious or or the physical reality that underlies it at least has a consciousness involving nature That's the view but but okay, but I'm just trying to get straight with this one.

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.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

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.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.