Hi Jack.

Thanks for taking the time with such a detailed response.

About your first point, perhaps I did not express it very well, but when I said that consciousness does indeed exist outside of the physical world, I meant that it exists independently of, and prior to, the physical world, and in no way needs the physical world in order for it to exist. As you say “the physical world is something consciousness is doing”, which suggests that consciousness is prior to physicality. As you also say, the physical world “is but one ‘location’ within, one expression of, the totality of consciousness”, and “there are many, many worlds beyond the physical, also expressions of consciousness”. That’s what I meant by ‘outside’.

“I do not believe that there is a physical world here, and consciousness over there, and somehow that external consciousness interacts with the physical, like consciousness radio waves being picked up by a physical brain receiver”.

When you put it like that, I don’t quite agree with you, since I do think that the limited ego-consciousness sometimes picks up transmissions from beyond, the most obvious manifestation being dreams. But when you put it like this:

“Spiritual people say consciousness is outside the brain and is somehow received, like those radio waves, or some similar model that treats consciousness (spirit) and matter as two separate things that have to be reconciled”

…then I do agree with you. I’m not sure which spiritual people or systems you are referring to, however. That seems a strange view to me; it would be to confuse consciousness with contents or manifestations of consciousness, i.e. thought-forms.

I agree with what you say about the Hard Problem and the wrong questions.

I regret that I am still at a loss to understand why you think Goff’s views are similar to yours. I can find no evidence in his text. As far as I can remember, nowhere does he say that “the physical world is an expression of consciousness”. I do not think that he says “that the genuinely existing physical world… IS consciousness” (if he does, please provide a quote or a passage), rather that consciousness must be one feature or attribute among others of the physical world. As you say “he stops his speculations at the edge of the physical world”, and “Goff does not go there (to these other worlds)”. “The edge of the physical world is the limit of material science”, and that is where I think Goff remains, and you seem to be agreeing. He is, after all, trying to accommodate consciousness within a scientific, physicalist framework. I deduce, therefore, that there is nothing spiritual about his theory, which our worldviews would require.

I agree with your observations about matter and consciousness but, as I say in the article, I think this viewpoint is better called idealism. I don’t know if you have the time to read it, but the book I mentioned by Bernardo Kastrup would be an interesting read for you. He is a top quality, rigorous thinker, and is arguing for idealism, and rejects panpsychism as being bottom-up (at least the version of it that you call classical, that’s what he thinks panpsychism is). Yet he uses exactly the same language as you to describe his position — whirlpools, ripples, matter as excitations, the behaviour of consciousness — so I suggest that you and he are in agreement, but he rejects panpsychism.

I don’t think that idealism says that the physical world is not real (notwithstanding words like maya, illusion), but like you that it is something that consciousness is doing. The illusion is to mistake that for reality.

“The current iteration of Medium makes lengthy response threads just about impossible to follow. I hope people can figure out how to go back and retrieve all the prior entries in our discussion”.

I’m not sure I have enough followers, or people interested in this stuff, to create that thread. I suspect most people won’t go beyond the main articles. If I do generate some interest, then I’ll point people in the right direction. For what it’s worth, the only other person to have replied so far, Gerald Baron, agrees with me that Goff’s panpsychism is bottom-up.

Isn’t it fascinating that two people who, I think, are just about in complete agreement with each other about the nature of the universe — I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said in this response of yours — can be having such an impassioned debate about someone else.