The Institute of Art and Ideas
The Institute of Art and IdeasPhilip Goff argues for panpyschism as a solution to the problems of materialism and dualism.
Watch the full talk at https://iai.tv/video/the-consciousness-puzzle-panpsychism?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=pinnedcomment
Could all matter in the universe be conscious? Professor of Philosophy Philip Goff argues that panpyschism is real and solves the deep problems of materialism and dualism that have plagued philosophy for centuries.
#panpsychism #consciousness #philosophy
Philip Goff is a philosopher and consciousness researcher at Durham University, who is a leading defender of panpsychism. ‘Suddenly the universe appears in a new and much more revealing perspective.” Phillip Pullman
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39 Comments
@TheInstituteOfArtAndIdeas
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMWhat do you think of Phillip Goff's ideas? Leave a comment below
You can watch the full talk at https://iai.tv/video/the-consciousness-puzzle-panpsychism?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=pinnedcomment
@ExpensiveGun
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMNot paying for the rest
@logical-machine
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PM3:35 "but what we've forgotten I think is that it was never intended that physics should be a complete description of reality the whole project was premised on putting consciousness outside of the domain of science"
No. Consciousness is still part of science/physics. It's just not what your intuition tells you it is. You're the one that's defining consciousness as something outside the domain of science. That's an assumption YOU are making, not science. Perhaps you should put less stock on what your intuitions tell you consciousness is and just stick with science. Functionalism explains consciousness just fine. The only problem you have with it is that it's not what you feel consciousness should be. So you come up with panpsychism to appeal to your intuitions, which doesn't actually explain consciousness, and creates a bunch of problems in the process. Get some humility and acknowledge that your intuitions can be wrong.
6:30 "consciousness is not publicly observable"
Consciousness is publicly observable. You actually mean it's not publicly experienceable. Consciousness IS the functional processes of the brain. You can look at someone else's brain, but your brain is not doing what that brain is doing. So you won't experience the same thing. If your brain did the same thing the other brain did, you would experience the same thing. This makes perfect sense.
We have an answer to the philosophical question of what consciousness is. But we have yet to completely answer the scientific question of how the brain works. The brain is such an amazing thing that it feels like it has to be magic, but I assure you it's not.
@ALavin-en1kr
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMPanpsychism does not explain consciousness it just banishes it to the earth making it earthly and the companion of nymphs like the mythological god Pan. We would expect more of consciousness,, something that would free us from the earth not banish us into it. Let consciousness remain the hard problem, let us give it that respect, until we know better.
@CanwegetSubscriberswithn-cu2it
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMPanpsychism doesnt explain consciousness at all. It's a lot of hand-waving and vagueness and avoiding the whole question in it's entirety. It's a complete waste of time.
@HazYyy
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMOh god, another case of Are the carnists okay? Of course, rabbits know their existence 🤦🏼
@kokolanza7543
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMBy the way, how does panpsychism explain consciousness? Did I miss that part?
@Lmaoh5150
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMThis video had everything to do with consciousness and nothing to do with Panpsychism
@jamesruscheinski8602
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMMight the neural correlates of conscious experience turn energy into quantum field(s), so that mathematical information of physical world in brain becomes probabilities of mental world in mind?
@jamesruscheinski8602
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMCould consciousness have something to do with mathematics becoming probabilities in quantum fields?
@nyworker
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMThe problem of consciousness?
Consciousness was put there by nature to solve the problems of survival?
Or consciousness is for problem solving or learning new ways to survive in nature.
@TheAtheist22
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMIt is a Scientific problem because….we all identify the quality of colour wave lengths, same goes for sounds etc. So there are things that are objective about consciousness. Which must be then related to the fact that we have brains.
@Dharma20941
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMConsiousness is observer not experience. Experience is knowledge between observer and observed.
@aryanknowledgeseeker9945
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMAs far as known and understandble the universe constructed a being as humans that is the pinnacle and masterpiece that has been constructed over billions of years. The mention fact constitutes that we define the truth by facts and observations.
If we analyze the pinnacle of the universe it has to be said that these species developed a need for knowing from an intrinsic curiosity. We abserve a less developed curiosity in lower stages of the animal kingdom. If the modern explanatory of evolution is right and if man is the pinnacle of the known universe and if consciousness is an undeniable phenomenon then we must agree that consciousness is not only the aim of the universe but its also the motive and at the sametime the instrument by wich it crawled from the depths to to surface.
To comprehend this view in a small frame all we need is to imagine a small particle that travels trough the universe and eventually bind’s by physical law until it becomes a part of living three that gives life to other combined matter.
This particle is the building block that forms the tree fruit and and later being obsorbed by the human and becomes the light that we call consciousness. The question are 2 namely.
Is matter part of consciousness?
Is consciousness the law that governs the universe?
My answer is that both are one and the samething. There is now law without matter and a dead matter has no properties.
From this point of view we can suggest that consciousness is one but has degrees that flows from the tiny particle to this article that you are reading. The only barrier is limitation to grasp to fullness of that one consciousness. I call this the Alpha-conscious. We only comprehend a portion of that fullness wich is restricted by the evolution of our kind.
One may use a subjective example by using the psychosocial domain to pointing out the adult that became an Infant by an disability has no value in the relm of consciousness becaus the infant has is happy as it should be.
Objectivly the motive and the aim of the Alpha-conscious is to be known by itself if we observe and consider the humane as pinnacle. Hereby is the evolutionary chain reversed and reduced in a descending degree from adult to infant. Thats a degradation and therefor bad .. as einschtein said in his kast words in his biography God is great -Allahu Akbar
@stoicsveganage
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMDisappointing that to learn you are non vegan
@SquidDesign
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMI'm trying to stare at my own eyeball.
@davelondon9432
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMWe know all this in our water.Sadly,when Spinoza expressed it explicitly he had to shut up because of a detrimental effect on collections.
@InTheRhettRow
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMSounds like Animism and phenomonolgy.
@wabisabi3343
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMThis is a tired and disingenuous argument given by people with absolutely no understanding of neuroscience
@Patriot_Pod
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMThis dude babbled for 3 hours on Rogan lmao
@jeremyfirth
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMTo me this appears to be a problem of recursion. Using consciousness to study consciousness causes the topic to unravel in your hands.
@KllswtchOvrDrv
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMHow is this about panpsychism??
@nickolasgaspar9660
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PM"How Panpsychism Explains Consciousness".
-Well any magical made up "explanation" can be shaped to appear as such! Its not like we can actually study it and identify its limitations…we make the rules and we make it feet!
@nickolasgaspar9660
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMWhy all the crackpot philosophers think they can answer a scientific question about a biological phenomenon without any scientific training or education???? Really sad….
@its9001
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMI can't believe people are actually panpsychists. What a shame
@RTew021
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMSuspicions confirmed: I 've been thinking for a while that my cellphone is conscious, and it's not even the most advanced one.
@georgewhite1674
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMThe tree falling in the woods did make a sound. It was experienced by consciousness around it, but not by the one asking the question. We have to get over the thought that we are the center of the Universe. We are only part of the whole. All the critters in the forest heard the tree fall. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.
@daivambrosia6647
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMThe idea that science has become so quantitatively-focused (to the detriment of qualitative concerns) makes a lot of sense once you draw upon Marxian base/superstructure theory. The so-called modern era of the last few centuries has pushed capital and exchange (fundamentally quantitative ways of relating to people and to the economy) into a place of dominance/hegemony, where everything is given a price and everything is objectified into a resource that can be turned into a commodity that in turn can generate capital. Capitalism is the quantitative impulse colonizing all avenues of life. The framing and focus of modern science reflects this, insofar as it's argued that the whole universe can be broken down into quantitatively-defined pieces of dead matter/exploitable resources. Without rejecting the quantitative, I believe that we absolutely need a rebirth in the qualitative dimensions, which is advocated in philosophies like panpsychism and in political ideologies like eco-socialism (which imbues nature with intrinsic value and democratically organizes the economy around qualitative use-values rather than quantitative exchange-values; i.e. we should put people in homes because homes are part of a qualitatively well-lived life and because we have the means to do so, and not because selling houses can generate capital for a choice few property owners).
@sgt7
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMFor anyone new to this topic, when we claim that the lone tree falling in the woods does not make a sound, we are not claiming it does not emit sound waves that have the potential to create a noise within the consciousness of a potential hearer.
@scalperbot
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMThis video is not complete and does not even mention panpsychism. Thumbs down.
@don-tay3963
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMI watched this video earlier and this man said that the universe was consciousness its self and us humans were gifted with the capability to experience this level of consciousness. He said consciousness exist everywhere around the universe, so say u flew out of the universe somehow, and consciousness didn’t exist out of it, you would lose your perception of reality, either be turned to ai, just a animalistic human with no ego or u would disappear, ion fuckin know. but compare us to every other being on this planet, notice how we are at top of the food chain, were smarter, more conscious, we know how to perceive our world more, etc. He said that animals have conscious and that they are sentient(can feel ), but not to a degree we are. cool lil theory but who knows
@hellucination9905
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMSo could one break down panpsychism to a kind of fundamental ontological RELATIONISM? Wouldn't be the name PANRELATIONISM a better description then?
@bajajones5093
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMPhil you need a lifeline. CALL BERNARDO!
@ciao-cj5in
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PM"If a tree falls in a forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?" No, but a wave is still there. A sound is what your brain makes out of it – your subjective interpretation of that wave. If I put a tomato in the fridge is it still red? The world of experience that is in our heads is different from the actual objective reality that isn't. We live in the world of experience whilst stuck in true objective reality that we can never truly experience.
@josephcollins6033
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMI am a devout atheist, of course. Please help me to know that I will see my beloved husband again or I will probably go mad here. You begin with "consciousness" ; isn't that an argument from "ignorance"? How do we know it is not all simply the brain? I will listen to this again. I like you.
@bhaskarjyaachatterjee
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMShame on this channel.
This is a stolen concept from Advaita Vedanta Philosophy which is 2000 years.
@Ben-pj8rt
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMPhilip Goff says early on that by what he means by consciousness is the existence of experience. He uses the example of pain, if he is to equate consciousness on this level then the reaction of the nerve system is a form of consciousness and Mutatis mutandis; everything with a form of sensory input is conscious. He then makes a leap to the idealist notion of consciousness in the mind. How did he arrive at this conjecture? It would be interesting to hear the arguments that he uses to get there.
@slomoy2k
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMWTF – this so-called 'panpsychism' is at best appropriated and at worst plagiarized from Hindu thought. The sanatana dharma tradition (what you now call Hindusim) has discussed, dissected, taught, and experienced individual, universal & unity consciousness for thousands of years. We have been there and done that at-least 5K years ago. Can the West stop plagiarizing and repackaging Hindu ideas, and acknowledge the source, at least once? "Consciousness studies" is 20th c. Quantum Mechanics revolution deja-vu all over again (pun intended).
In fact, Europe (& West) had made an industry out of milking & lifting Hindu thought without acknowledgement (while cleverly wrapping westernized jargon & frameworks to make it sound original & give an out if questioned) in countless areas of knowledge from middle ages onwards, cf. Yoga, Pranayama, Ayurveda, Jyotisha…
Shame!
@SabiazothPsyche
03/06/2025 - 3:57 PMIndeed, even without awareness, a branch will fall, and still be instinctively heard. For to hear is instinctive; but, to listen, is to be aware of.