Panpsychism, Philip Goff, Jack Preston King and Me
This is an invitation for Medium readers to comment on a discussion I’m having with Jack Preston King about Philip Goff’s book Galileo’s Error¹. Recently I wrote a series of articles on the Hard Problem of Consciousness, offering a spiritual solution to it. My starting point was Goff’s book, in which he offers panpsychism as his own solution to that problem.
As many readers will know, Jack Preston King was a popular and prolific writer on Medium, but last year withdrew in order to pursue other projects. (This was disappointing for me personally, as he was my favourite writer there.) However, since it was he who had introduced me to Goff’s book, I took a chance and asked him to read the article, in the hope that he would find time to comment on it. In the past we have agreed on just about everything each other writes — as the expression goes, we seem to sing from the same hymn sheet. I was surprised therefore that, when he replied, he completely disagreed with my assessment of Goff’s book, and thought that I had completely misunderstood it. He said “it’s almost as if we read two different books”.
This is interesting in itself. Goff presumably thought he was expressing himself clearly, and yet two readers interpreted his message in completely different ways. I’m writing this article therefore in the hope that other Medium readers with philosophical leanings can offer helpful comments.
Jack and I share the same, or very similar, worldview; we both believe that consciousness is the fundamental reality, and that everything that exists is a manifestation of this ultimate consciousness. (Someone who has recently argued for this viewpoint from a scientific perspective is Bernardo Kastrup in The Idea of the World² — highly recommended. See also an interview with Kastrup about the book in this excellent Medium article.) One difference is that Jack may be closer to the Buddhist viewpoint of no-self, whereas I favour the Hindu concept of Atman, that there exist individual selves, something like spiritual essences of the same nature as God (i.e. this ultimate consciousness). These essences are, of course, also manifestations of this.
Our difference over Goff is that, while he seems to be making a tentative step in that direction, I think his panpsychism does not reach anywhere near far enough. Because he can see no other solution to the Hard Problem, he is forced to conclude that consciousness must be a fundamental feature of matter, but not its ultimate nature. This is therefore merely a philosophical speculation in order to avoid a difficulty; he offers no explanation, scientific or otherwise, to back this up.
I think therefore that he does not come close to Jack’s and my shared understanding which, in my opinion, is better called idealism, philosophically speaking, rather than panpsychism. Jack, on the other hand, thinks that Goff is expressing more or less perfectly our shared view, that consciousness is the fundamental reality, and matter is a manifestation of it: “Yes, this is the whole argument of Goff’s book”.
Why does all this matter? That’s a good question, and I imagine that some readers may be wondering whether this is an obscure philosophical discussion, merely an argument over semantics. My response would be that, in a nutshell, it is one version of the conflict between the standard scientific and spiritual understandings; it really matters because we need to break the stranglehold that so-called science has over us.
Here are Goff’s statements which led me to my conclusion. The clue is in his subtitle, Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. Because materialist science is incapable of explaining consciousness, Goff is forced to the conclusion that consciousness must be “a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of physical reality”. He is therefore trying to find a way out of materialist science’s dilemma by saying that we need to expand our understanding of matter to include consciousness: “Panpsychism… does not postulate consciousness outside of the physical world… The panpsychist places human consciousness exactly where the materialist places it: in the brain”. That statement is, for me, the clearest evidence for my interpretation; the brain is Goff’s starting-point, and he somehow has to account for consciousness. This would seem to be in contrast with Jack’s and my shared viewpoint that consciousness does indeed exist outside of the physical world, that it is the true reality, and that all matter, including the brain, is a manifestation of it.
In simple terms, therefore, I believe that Goff is proposing a bottom-up approach, whereas Jack and I favour top-down (to use the terminology of Gerald R. Baron, knowledgeable writer on Medium about these matters). Bernardo Kastrup, in the book mentioned above, also calls panpsychism “bottom-up”.
As I noted above, Goff does not elaborate on how consciousness can be a fundamental aspect of matter; no scientific explanation is offered. On the contrary, he concedes that “the main attraction of panpsychism is not its ability to account for the data of observation, but its ability to account for the reality of consciousness” (p115). He is therefore saying that its appeal is not empirical, rather theoretical; it is a kind of get-out clause, because he rejects both materialism and dualism. It therefore remains a philosophical speculation, appealing to Goff because, so it would seem, he wants to avoid spiritual or immaterial explanations; he says, “we must somehow find a way of making consciousness… the business of science” (p23).
Again this seems to contradict Jack’s understanding, and sounds slightly desperate. Actually we don’t have to find a way to make consciousness the business of science, because science, at least in its materialist version, will never be able to account for it. That is because consciousness is a spiritual phenomenon.
Jack completely disagrees with this assessment, however. On the latter point, he thinks that, when Goff says he is seeking a foundation for a new science, he is advocating a radically new approach to science, obviously one that incorporates a spiritual understanding like his. On the main point Jack thinks that:
- Goff “is not stating that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of matter, but rather that matter is an expression of consciousness”
- “Goff’s nondual Pansychism goes a long way toward bridging that divide by hypothesizing that the physical world is an expression of consciousness”
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Why I think Jack is wrong
Because Goff advocates a nondual panpsychism, and Jack is also a non-dualist, I believe that he has been seduced by this word into thinking that Goff is closer to our shared worldview than he actually is. When I offer as evidence for my position Goff’s statement that “the panpsychist places human consciousness exactly where the materialist places it: in the brain”, Jack thinks that “Goff is breaking from classical dualist Pansychism in this book, and proposing a nondual model in which consciousness is all there is”. He thinks that Goff’s panpsychism is “very different”, and that I consider it dualist, in that I say that it is “only a watered down version of scientific materialism”.
I certainly don’t consider it dualist; my comment was intended to suggest that it is an attempt to accommodate consciousness within the scientific worldview. Furthermore, I can see no evidence of this in the text; on that page Goff seems to me to be advocating his own version of panpsychism, and I’m not aware of any use of the term ‘classical panpsychism’ in the book. I think what Jack is referring to is rather what Goff calls ‘naturalistic dualism’, the idea that consciousness and matter are of a fundamentally different nature. That is something different from panpsychism.
That is a basic outline of our differences. Jack has been kind enough to write some lengthy responses to the later articles in my series. I haven’t studied them in detail, but I haven’t seen anything yet to persuade me to change my mind. So I would be grateful if any Medium readers can offer helpful thoughts or responses, whether having read Goff’s book or not. This is not intended to be a competition between me and Jack, a battle of egos. If I’ve got it wrong, please let me know.
Respect to Jack Preston King and all his great work!
Footnotes:
- Rider, 2019
- iff Books, 2019
