Why is Panpsychism gaining popularity? Is it coherent to say consciousness emerged out of non-consciousness? What can we deduce from a universe fine tuned for life?

In this episode we have the important job of finding out what Panpsychism is all about, and why the philosophical position is gaining more and more traction in philosophy, but even with physicists and other scientists. The idea that consciousness is the fundamental nature of the physical world is by no means a new one, and it does seem to resolve some of the problems of how consciously experiencing lifeforms could have evolved out of non-conscious non-living material. But most materialists balk at the idea and consider it absolutely bonkers, for reasons we’ll find out as we attempt to pay respect to the criticisms of the position too.

So fortunately, to navigate this tricky philosophical quagmire we have one of the best known and most passionate supporters of panpsychism, author and professor of philosophy at Durham University Philip Goff. Philip’s research focuses on how to integrate consciousness into our scientific worldview. He argues that the traditional approaches of materialism, that consciousness can be explained in terms of physical processes in the brain; and dualism, that consciousness is separate from the body and brain, face unresolvable difficulties.

His first academic book, Consciousness and Fundamental Reality was published in 2017 and his first book aimed at a general audience, Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, was published in 2019.

He also has a podcast, Mind Chat, which he rightly hosts with a philosopher of a completely opposite point of view. And he’s involved in a book of essays on consciousness which will be out this year called ‘Is Consciousness Everywhere? Essays on Panpsychism’, which is a collection of essays by scientists and philosophers published in Journal of Consciousness Studies. The contributors include Carlo Rovelli, Sean Carroll, Lee Smolin, Anneke Harris, Christoph Koch, and Anil Seth, several of whom appear in this series of Chasing Consciousness.

What we discuss

00:00 Intro

06:00 The unanswerable questions

09:30 Panpsychism explained

12:30 %32 of philosophers are now opposed to materialism

19:30 Neural correlates don’t describe the subjective contents of experiences

21:10 Arguments for Panpsychism

23:00 Consciousness from Non-consciousness: the evolutionary problem

26:20 Materialist counter arguments

44:45 Public observation and experiment is not the full story

54:30 Block Universe implications for panpsychism

01:06:45 Meaning, value and mystical experiences

References:

Galen Strawon: why he believes Panpsychism

Eric Schwitzgebel ‘Crazyism’ article

Sabine Hosselfeld “Electron’s don’t think” article

David Chalmers on Consciousness might collapse the wave function

Full references and show notes at Chasingconsciousness.net