How Modern Science Got Consciousness Wrong From the Start | Philip Goff
What if consciousness isn't a byproduct of complex brains, but a fundamental feature of reality itself, present, in some rudimentary form, all the way down to electrons and quarks? Philip Goff, a philosopher at Durham University and one of panpsychism's leading contemporary advocates, joins Craig Smith to make that case, arguing that modern science's founding move - separating the mathematical world physics studies from the subjective experience we know only from the inside - solved one problem while quietly creating another we've never resolved.
The conversation inevitably turns to AI: could a large language model ever be conscious? Goff's answer is a careful, well-reasoned no, not because he thinks consciousness is magical, but because his framework treats it as something closer to the physical substance of reality than an abstract computation, making him skeptical that anything resembling current AI architecture could cross that threshold. Along the way, he tackles one of the genuine open mysteries in his field: if natural selection only cares about behavior, why did evolution bother making us conscious at all, and what would it even mean to find experimental evidence for an answer.
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#261 – Philip Goff: Consciousness, Panpsychism, and the Philosophy of Mind
Philip Goff is a philosopher of mind and consciousness at Durham University and author of Galileo’s Error. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(07:40) – Conscious matter
(41:06) – Death, mystical experiences and collective consciousness
(51:30) – The authority of expertise
(1:12:27) – Panpsychism and physics
(1:41:11) – Suffering, zombies and illusion
(2:13:57) – JRE podcast recap
(2:25:33) – Free will
(2:43:12) – Are we living in a simulation?
(2:47:04) – Meaning of life