Philip Goff: Panpsychism and the Mystery of Consciousness | Robinson's Podcast - Rebuttal

Today, British philosopher, Philip Goff was on Robinson Erhardt's podcast talking about Panpsychism.

BTW Robinson Erhardt's podcast, which one of my most favorite podcasts. I highly recommend it.

Here are my thoughts on Philip's take on Panpsychism and Physicalism arguments during the Podcast. Philip has been tweeting about Fine-tuning on X.

Panpsychism

It is tautology when one says many times "to my mind I am not convinced". That is called incredulity. Many times Philip has said that science says what electron does (spin, mass, charge), but does not say what electron IS, and he has said electron IS (made of) consciousness. But here he said that every small particle HAS some form of experience or consciousness. So he changed what he has said from IS to HAS. Second if he insist on asking what electron IS, then it should be perfectly fine to ask what that consciousness IS that he claims electron IS. What is good for the goose, is good for the gander. Also if he wants to get into answering what electron IS, it is very dodgy then to say this is not a scientific question. Science is not a finished project. it will continue to look into those aspects.

Scientific experiments have two components - target under study and the experimenter.

Unlike other experiments where the target is not conscious, the advantage of consciousness related experiment is that the targets of the experiment are conscious and can tell the experimenter about their first person experience. This is a feature not a but. It is true that we cannot, and nor should we do destructive, invasive experiments with Human subjects for obvious reasons. But doing destructive, invasive experiments is not the only methodology of scientific experiments. With damage due to injuries or effect of drugs or brain deceases also allows us to study destructive scenarios. Thus first person account of the self experience by the subjects of the experiment combined with third party instrumentation observation can be a powerful tool to do consciousness research.

In any case, even in the case of other experiments scientists do not perform the analysis based on their first person experience of the experimental results. It appears that there is some misunderstanding of experimental methodology in science. Therefore we should reject Philip's point that consciousness cannot be studied because of the private nature of self experience. This will make sense only if subjects of the experiment refuse to talk or lie.

This is discussed in this video to some degree:

The progress in understanding of quantum physics was hindered by the dogma "shut up and calculate" which came out of Copenhagen interpretation. It did a real damage. Read Adam Baker's book "what is real?". While a generation of scientists were discouraged by the "shut up and calculate" dogma, we may have been deprived of the next Einstein who could have solved the QM (e.g. so called measurement problem). David Chalmer's dogma "hard problem of consciousness " which says that consciousness cannot, in principle, be explained by Physicalism, has had similar effect to some (fortunately to less) degree on consciousness research. Scientists now have rejected the "shut up and calculate" dogma and are charging ahead with trying to understand QM. It is time to reject "hard problem of consciousness" dogma and like Anil Seth says get on with chipping away at, and eventually dissolving, what Anil calls, the "real problem of consciousness"

Physicalism

It appears that Philip thinks that science is like religion and Galileo is its Pope or something. He seems to think that because Galileo may have set aside consciousness, which I am not sure he did, but OK, therefore all scientists will follow his approach or to continue the analogy, his commandments and set aside consciousness. I hope Philip knows many many many scientists are working on consciousness studies ignoring Science Pope - Galileo.

It was news to me that Physicalism has failed announced many times by some one who is not Physicalist and not even a scientist. Let us tell Anil Seth and Michael Graziano to stop working on their consciousness related research projects.

Fine-tuning

If consciousness is not physical according to Panpsychism, then presumably it is not affected by fine tuning in any way because the setting of physical constants are meant to have an effect on physical systems. Thus it is not clear why Philip (IMO in a mis-characterizing manner) finds fine tuning interesting. I guess it is possible that he independently finds the fine tuning appealing. Consciousness could have existed no matter what the conditions in the universe were, or may be consciousness requires the same fine tuning? Now about mis-characterization:

Incorrect: Universe is fine tuned (presumably by someone or something or itself) for life (on earth?).

Correct: Life on earth is constantly trying to fine tune itself (thru the process of evolution) with the contemporary environmental (gravity strength, pressure, temperature, the abundance of given set of elements, how long earth has survived) conditions on Earth. This is the well known process of evolution.

Earth formation is -> solar system is -> milky way is consistent (I am avoiding the word fine tuned) with laws of physics in this universe.

On a different Earth, with different gravity strength, pressure, temperature, the abundance of given set of elements, potentially life based around different chemistry is constantly fine tuning itself to keep up with contemporary environment on that planet.

If the environment rapidly changes or there is a catastrophic change due to asteroid strike the life may get destroyed completely or reset and then go down a different evolutionary path. Ah, now I remember, it happened to dinosaurs on earth.

Your thoughts?