Phillip Goff
Appearances
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I suppose we've got to start with how do we know about reality? That's a big question. When you look at the world around you, it seems to be filled with colors, sounds, tastes. It's hard to see how you can capture those kinds of qualities in the purely quantitative language of mathematics. In the unique case of consciousness, the thing we are trying to explain is not publicly observable.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Well, this is one of the reasons consciousness is so intractable because it's, as you say, it's not a publicly observable phenomenon. And then people, the pushback I can get to that is people say science deals with loads of unobservable things, you know? quantum wave functions or fundamental particles, maybe even other universes.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
But there's a very important difference in the case of consciousness. In all these other cases, we are theorizing about things we can't observe, like fundamental particles or quantum wave functions. But we're doing that in order to explain what we can observe, in order to explain the data of observation experiments.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
In the unique case of consciousness, the thing we are trying to explain is not publicly observable. We know about consciousness not from experiments. We didn't find it in a particle collider. We know about consciousness just by being conscious, right? Being immediately aware of our feelings of pleasure and pain and seeing color, hearing sound.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So this really limits our capacity to deal with it experimentally. And what we can do if we're dealing with another human being is we can ask them, right? What are you experiencing? And if I do that while I'm scanning your brain... I can start to correlate which kinds of conscious experience go with which kinds of brain state in the human case, although it's already a bit of a mess even there.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And then as we try and extrapolate to other mammals, to lizards, to other kinds of inanimate objects, it just gets harder and harder to do. But I guess at least our common sense understanding is that As we get to simpler forms of life, we find simpler and simpler forms of conscious experience.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
You know, what it's like to be a snail, if there is something that it's like to be a snail, is much simpler than what it's like to be a sheep or a human being. For the panpsychist, this keeps going down to the fundamental building blocks of reality with...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Maybe fundamental particles like electrons and quarks having incredibly simple forms of conscious experience to reflect their incredibly simple nature. So that sounds a bit weird, but I think it does manage to make sense of a lot of the mysteries we're struggling with at the present moment.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, that really resonates with me, Andre, how you put in that. I suppose you've got to start with... How do we know about reality? That's a big question. And I think in a way we know about reality in two different ways, at least two different ways anyway. We know about consciousness just by being conscious. As you say, it's the one thing we're directly in contact with.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
If you're in pain, you're just directly aware of your pain. But then we know about the physical world. somewhat indirectly by using our conscious experience. And then as we do that a bit better, we get science. And then the fundamental challenge is how do these two things we know about in very different ways fit together? Is the physical world fundamental?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And maybe consciousness emerges from physical processes in the brain. Or is it the other way around, as the panpsychist thinks? Is mind or consciousness fundamental and physical reality emerges from some more fundamental story about mind or consciousness? This is one of the big questions. And unfortunately, there is no experiment you can do to decide which of those is correct.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
All of our scientific data is It's just neutral. It's compatible with both of those possibilities. So what do we do? We could say, we don't know. Maybe we just don't know. Or we can just try and evaluate these different hypotheses, maybe in terms of simplicity, maybe in terms of how well they do with their explanatory aspirations, and just try and work out which looks more plausible.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And I think when we do that, panpsychism, the view that mind or consciousness is the fundamental basis of reality, starts to look like the more plausible contender.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah. Well, this is seen as one of the big challenges to panpsychism. Okay, you postulate these simple forms of consciousness at the level of fundamental physics, maybe conscious particles. but how do they come together to make our consciousness, the complex consciousness of the human or animal brain, which is, after all, at the end of the day, what we want explained.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And, I mean, there are lots of different research programs at the moment exploring this in different ways, and I don't want to get into too much of the technical details. Where I've ended up with this, I suppose, is...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, no, I think you're so right. I think that there's always philosophical assumptions in the background. Whenever we're doing science, whenever we're investigating reality, and they're so omnipresent, you almost forget they're there. And you just think, no, science is just doing the experiments, getting the data.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I think the problem looks a lot harder when you assume a very reductionist story, when you assume that everything that's happening is really reducible to what's going on with fundamental physics, you know, particles or fields, um, And then we need to tell a very reductionist story about my consciousness or your consciousness.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
How does my consciousness arise from the interactions of conscious particles? And that's hard to make sense of because one distinctive thing about consciousness is it seems to involve this deep unity. You know, if you think about your consciousness right now, it has all sorts of different aspects, colors, the sound of my voice, the tactile sensations of your clothes against your body.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
But these don't come in kind of isolated packets, right? Intuitively. there's a fundamentally unified experience that involves all these different sub-experiences. So how does that arise from bumping around of conscious particles? But I'm more and more inclined to think that that very reductionist story is not what science is teaching us.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
It tends to be more popular among philosophers and among theoretical physicists. I've debated Sean Carroll on this But actually, when you talk to, for example, condensed matter physicists who actually deal experimentally with complex systems, they don't tend to think this very reductionist story works.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
They tend to think there are irreducible forms of complexity that involve their own causal principles that can't be boiled down to the basic equations of quantum mechanics. So once you embrace that story, I think this combination problem becomes less of a problem. We can accept a more layered view of reality where new forms of consciousness, new forms of experience arise at higher levels.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And that's just the basic story about how our universe works. So I'm more and more inclined to think, actually, that less reductionist story fits well with what science is currently telling us. And... really resolves a lot of the weight of this combination problem for panpsychism.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I think in a way what you're pressing is a way of articulating this fundamental question of whether mind or matter are more basic or more fundamental. So with physics, we get this purely mathematical story With consciousness, we get this story of subjective qualities of experience. Which is more fundamental? Which comes out of which, chicken or egg, as you say?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
But there are always these worldview assumptions in the background of what we're doing. And Galileo, the father of modern science, did a lot of work in the intellectual, philosophical foundations of the emerging scientific revolution. So I think it is so important to reflect back and see what was going on there and see how it informs what we're doing now and where we're going now.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And I think we've had more success of trying to make sense of how the mathematical story of physics could emerge from some more fundamental story about mind or consciousness. We've had more success with that than doing it the other way around. So maybe we could connect to, I mean, here...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
It's the influence of the great philosopher and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell from the 1920s, his very important work in his book, The Analysis of Matter, that is a really important inspiration for the contemporary panpsychist research program. I think of Russell as sort of the Darwin of consciousness. I think he sort of solved all the mysteries.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So Russell's great insight was, as you say, that physics is purely mathematical and And so in a sense, physics doesn't really care what fundamental reality is like. That sounds like weird. I remember when I first heard that and I thought, what are you talking about? Physics gives you this rich story of space and time and matter. But...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Because physics is purely mathematical, all physics cares about, whatever's down there, all that matters is that it has the right mathematical structure, right? Whatever's at the base of reality, if it has the right mathematical patterns, you get physics out of that.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
This is what Stephen Hawking famously summed up by saying, even final physics won't tell us what breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe. So panpsychists exploit this. So they hypothesize that at the fundamental level of reality, we have very simple forms of consciousness interacting in simple, predictable ways.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Through their interactions, they realize certain patterns, certain mathematical structures. And then the thought is, those mathematical structures just are what we call physics. It's consciousness that breathes fire into the equations. So we get physics out of this more fundamental story about consciousness. We can't get consciousness out of mathematics.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
At least no one's ever managed to even have the beginnings of an explanation of how we could do that. And I think Galileo was right that it's not really a coherent project. But we can do it the other way around. We know that can be done. The mystery has been solved. And so I think, you know, the only reason we're not embracing this more successful explanatory project is just cultural reasons.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
You know, it feels a bit weird. It feels a bit mystical or magical or something. But, you know, I think it delivers the goods.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
What we need to distinguish here, I think, is the question of correlation from the question of explanation. This is what I struggled talking to Joe Rogan a few years ago with, right? And I should have put it this way, I think. Take two. I'll put another shot at this, see if this works better.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So by correlation, I mean which kinds of brain activity go along with which kinds of conscious experience. I think of that as the scientific task. Yeah, the neural correlates that give rise. And yeah, of course, no one would dispute that we have established some truths here. You make certain changes to your brain. You get certain kinds of conscious experience.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
But yeah, I mean, one key move of Galileo was his big declaration in 1623 that from now on, science was going to be purely mathematical, was going to have a purely quantitative language to describe reality. And that was a radically new step, you know, that had never been done before. But he had to do a lot of philosophical work to make sense of that.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Actually, we didn't need to do any science, right? I just hit you over the head. You lose consciousness, right? But here's another question. The question of explanation. Why? Why is brain activity, electrochemical signaling, correlated with conscious experience? That's another question. And it's that question that I don't think we can answer with an experiment.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
We have to look at the different possibilities. Here's one possibility. Physical world is fundamental. Particles come together to make atoms, to make molecules, to make electrochemical signaling. Somehow a miracle happens. Consciousness pops out of that. Here's another story. Simple forms of consciousness are fundamental.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
They combine together to make atoms, to make molecules, to make brain states. And at each level, there are new unified forms of consciousness emerging, ultimately getting our consciousness. Now, both of those stories... will give us the facts about correlation that we have established, that certain kinds of brain activity give us conscious experience. A panpsychist explains that.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
The more traditional scientific view we call physicalism tries to explain that. If it works out, it explains that. So the scientific data of correlation is just neutral on which of these stories is true. And that's frustrating, but... How can we assess them? Well, we just have to say, which one of these theories has lived up to its explanatory aspirations?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So the more traditional scientific story, what it's obliged to do is to explain how consciousness emerges from electrochemical signaling in the brain. The hard problem of consciousness, as David Chalmers called it. On that expoundry project, we've got absolutely nowhere by universal admission, despite decades of trying.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
What the panpsychist does is the mirror image of that expoundry project, right? Rather than starting with physical reality and trying to get consciousness out, you start with consciousness and try and get physical reality out. With that expoundry project, I would say we've done the job. We've solved the mystery. So yeah, so that's...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
That's the nuanced point that the scientifically established facts about correlation don't settle these matters, sadly.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
That's a great question. And I think when we're getting to the core of this right now, I think we need to think very carefully about what physical explanation is all about, what it's in the business of. And I think what it's in the business of is explaining behavior, explaining publicly observable behavior. Let's take a concrete example of where we have a nice physical explanation.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
The boiling point of water, right? Why does water boil at this temperature and bubble and stuff? What are we trying to explain there? We're trying to explain this behavior of the system, why it bubbles in this way. We tell a story about the behavior of the molecules and the atoms. we get a very satisfying explanation. We say, ah, I see why that happens.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And we could wonder why the molecules and the atoms behave the way they do. We go to the behavior of the particles. Maybe we go to string theory. But it's all about explaining behavior, explaining publicly observable behavior. I think, see if you agree or disagree, when it comes to consciousness, that's not what we're trying to do.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So one big problem for Galileo is when you look at the world around you, using your conscious experience, it seems to be filled with qualities, colors, sounds, smells, tastes. And Galileo thought, I think rightly, that it's hard to see how you can capture those kinds of qualities in the purely quantitative language of mathematics.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
We're not trying to explain why a system behaves the way it does or why its parts behave the way they do. We're trying to explain why it feels. And that's just a very different explanatory question. Now, there's nuance here, which is why you need to think very carefully about this. Of course, there's an intimate connection between feeling and behavior. When we're in pain or
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
That's a way of feeling, but it obviously is intimately connected to screaming and trying to get away. That's consistent with what I'm saying. All I'm saying is, let's put it this way. If I want to say, why is my wife in pain? Why is she feeling in pain? I am not asking a question about her behavior or the behavior of her parts. I'm asking a question about why she feels.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And it's just a very different explanatory question. So here's an analogy. I think it's like, imagine someone saying, wow, telescopes, really good in astronomy. Let's apply them in pure mathematics. No, they're just totally different expansion projects. So I think people are doing something similar with, look, physical explanation has been so good at explaining so much.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Let's just plug that into consciousness. But what has it been good at explaining? It's been good at explaining publicly observable behavior, why a system behaves the way it does. But when we're interested in consciousness, we're interested in something different, why a system feels. And that is not... as Galileo understood what physical science is set up to deal with.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, it's a good question. Every time I write a book, most of the book is the sort of cold-blooded scientific philosophical arguments. But then the final chapter is, what does this mean for us? What does this mean for the meaning and purpose of human existence? And I have this slogan, we should be interested ultimately in not what we'd like to be true, but what's most likely to be true.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Actually, I think with panpsychism or views in this ballpark, I think not only is there a very good case for them probably being true, but they're probably also a a couple of different things. I mean, I think panpsychism potentially leads to a better relationship with the environment. Um, If you think of a tree as just a mechanism, then it doesn't really have any value in its own right, does it?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
It's just... It's a piece of wood. Yeah, it's something. It's a mechanism, right? Hugging a tree doesn't really make much sense. A tree's not conscious. It's like, you know, hugging your computer or something. I don't think that's the way most of us engage with forests and trees and plants, you know? So I think if you think of a tree as...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
When you look at what physics seems to be pointing at now, its story of what's going on at the fundamental level of reality is wildly esoteric. But here's another question. The question of explanation. Why? What does this mean for us? What does this mean for the meaning and purpose of human existence? That's another question. And it's that question I don't think we can answer with an experiment.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
a conscious entity in its own right, albeit of a very alien kind, then a tree has value in its own right.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah. I mean, I'm actually a panpsychist who doesn't quite think everything is conscious. That's why I think I disagree with Annika. I think Annika thinks that literally everything is conscious, including rocks and tables and chairs. I'm probably more inclined to think consciousness exists at the fundamental level of at the level of physics, but at higher macroscopic levels, it's much rarer.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
There are only certain very specific circumstances in which conscious particles come together to form things with unified consciousness in their own right. And it's a partly scientific task to try and work that out, thinking about the neural correlates and so on.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
An equation can't capture that deep red you experience as you watch a setting sun, for example. So this was the big puzzle for Galileo and perhaps what had stopped people before having a purely mathematical science. So his solution was, well, if we want science to be mathematical, we need to take consciousness and its qualities
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I'm inclined to think this is something that natural selection discovered and exploited the circumstances in which simple conscious entities come together to form new kinds of consciousness, new kinds of causal dynamics, which were presumably better for survival. It's a big mystery actually that's not focused on enough. Why did consciousness evolve?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
You know, natural selection is just interested in behavior, right? Because that's what matters for survival, right? Why didn't natural selection make us complicated survival mechanisms, right? That can sort of mechanically track features of the environment and initiate survival conducive behavior.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
You know, we now know with AI and robotics that you can have incredibly complex information processing and behavior without any kind of inner life. So why is natural selection given us inner life, rich, conscious understanding? I think the kind of
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
non-reductionist panpsychism I go for has a good answer for this, that natural selection was exploiting the emergence of new forms of unified conscious experience that are presumably better for survival than just mechanistic forms of behavior. But I think like a politician, I've sort of dodged your question about how this helps. I suppose also connecting to more spiritual issues, perhaps there's
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
maybe more of a consonance between panpsychism and certain spiritual convictions about reality. And actually, I should say... before I say any more about this, the panpsychist community is very much split on this issue. Maybe it's a little bit like the split in the early psychoanalytic community.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
You know, you had followers of Jung who were into spiritual collective unconscious and archetypes and things. And then the followers of Freud who said, that's all superstitious nonsense. We want this to be real science. Similarly, Some panpsychists, like maybe David Chalmers, insofar as he's inclined to panpsychism, or Luke Roloffs, are very atheist, secular reductionists. Angela Mendelovici.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Whereas others, like Hedda Hasselmerk or Itai Shani... Those are just three great names you rattled off. All panpsychists have great names. Do you see a certain consonance... with this supposed conflict. A lot of people think there's a conflict between a scientific story of reality and a spiritual story of reality. I think for a panpsychist, that conflict just dissolves. Oh, one thing.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
It's all one thing. And look, I mean, let me give you an example. Suppose I have a mystical experience and it seems to me in this overwhelming mystical experience that there's some higher form of consciousness underlying all things. And then I wake up and I think, oh my gosh, this profound insight into reality. But then I remember my physics lessons and I think, hold on,
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
The story you get from cosmology, that doesn't seem to be talking about this consciousness and that's our best understanding of the universe. So there's a conflict. Well, it depends how you're interpreting the scientific story, right? If you're a panpsychist, that wonderful mathematical story we get from physics and cosmology is grounded in underlying forms of consciousness. And this
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
higher form of consciousness you seem to have been acquainted with in your mystical experience might have been part of that more fundamental consciousness story. We shouldn't be too quick here. That doesn't mean mysticism is true or there is some higher form of consciousness or mystical experiences are telling us about reality, but it's less of a leap. It removes the conflict, right?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
out of the domain of science right there in the soul consciousness with all its funny sounds and smells and colors and they're all they're all in the soul and after we've stripped the world of its qualities its colors and its smells everything else we capture in mathematics so that was this that was the start of mathematical physics so that you know that was a good move that's produced incredible technology and incredible scientific progress
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
There are still questions to debate, but there isn't this fundamental conflict that we have on a more conventional scientific picture, I think.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I love it. I love it. I've had a few conversations, public conversations with the novelist Philip Pullman. One thing that really stuck with me in my conversations with Philip Pullman was him saying that panpsychism is very Copernican. Copernicus taught us that our planet isn't in the centre of the universe, right? It's just one planet going around one of a trillion stars, you know.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Similarly, I think for panpsychists, In an analogous sense, our consciousness isn't the blueprint, isn't the model of all consciousness, right? We're not saying if a rock is conscious, it's sort of feeling existential angst or, you know, wondering if it's Tuesday. For a panpsychist, our consciousness is very weird, cosmically speaking, right?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
It's this really highly evolved form, been moulded by natural selection in this very peculiar, very specific... survival situation. Whereas our consciousness is really just a very highly evolved form of what exists throughout the universe. So we really need to sort of
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
don't anthropomorphize our consciousness onto the consciousness of particles or something it's going to be a very different kind of subjective experience but yeah does reality have an ethical structure again like would there be could there be something as objectively right or wrong or preferred in terms of our relation to other life in conscious forms you know is that possible even
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, there does seem to be the hope of grounding morality in reality in some way does look more promising on a panpsychist view of things. Because, I mean, I think it's fundamentally value does arise from consciousness, right? There's no consciousness in the world... Things don't really matter if something doesn't have consciousness.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Okay, it might be majestic and wonderful, but if there's nothing there to experience that, then... doesn't really matter, does it? I think it's when we get experience, when we get pleasure pain, when we get conscious understanding, that is when real value emerges.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So I think it is a more promising story for some kind of objective story of ethics that's not rooted in something supernatural, a kind of old guy in the sky commanding you what's right and wrong, but is nonetheless objective and flows out of the ultimate nature of reality.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And I mean, something I've talked about a lot in my recent work, in my book modestly titled Why the Purpose of the Universe, one bit of the scientific story of recent times that I can't stop thinking about, for better or worse, is the fine-tuning of physics for life. This surprising discovery of recent decades that certain numbers in physics are against improbable odds just right for life.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
They're like Goldilocks porridge, right? Not too big, not too small, kind of exactly in the right narrow range necessary for life.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I think the cosmological constant is the one that's most baffled physicists, I think. This is connected to dark energy, which powers the accelerating expansion of the universe. I remember when we discovered this. I wasn't involved. I was a teenager interested in black holes things. And, you know, when I was a teenager, we thought we didn't know if the universe was speeding up or slowing down.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
what we've maybe forgotten. in our enthusiasm with how well it's gone, is that it was aimed at a very limited focus, one that took consciousness outside of the domain of science. And so if we want to bring consciousness fully back into the scientific story, maybe we need to rethink those philosophical assumptions that Galileo bequeathed to us.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Maybe it would collapse back on itself. But we discovered in 1998, I think, that it is accelerating in its expansion. And therefore, physicists postulate some repulsive force pushing it apart that we call dark energy. And when we worked out what the value is of that force, it turned out to be very surprising in lots of ways.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
From what else we know in physics, you'd expect it to be very big, a very strong force. In fact, in the relevant units, it's incredibly small. It's nearly zero. It's nearly zero, but not quite zero, which many physicists already find a bit odd. But actually, it's fortunate it is that way, because if it had been a slightly bigger number,
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Everything in the early universe would have shot apart so quickly that no two particles would have ever met. We wouldn't have had stars, planets, we wouldn't have had anything. Nothing would have interacted. Whereas if it had been less than zero, it would not have counteracted gravity and the entire universe would have collapsed back on itself a split second after the Big Bang.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So for there to be any kind of structural complexity, it had to fall in this really narrow range of being really, really, really small, but not quite zero or not quite negative. And it is just... It just seems hard to make sense of that that could have just been by chance that it had a number in that range. And there are many numbers like this. So, you know, I guess... Yeah, sorry.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, I think it's hard to get it because these are so abstract. It's hard to connect. This is why it's good to have these concrete examples that I'd forgotten I'd given in my book. Thank you. I mean, suppose like suppose let's say because I do find people often say, oh, it's just chance. But suppose, you know.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
robbers break into a bank and there's a 20-digit combination and they get it right first time. And now we're considering two hypotheses, right? Hypothesis one, they guessed it. They just got it right. 20 digits, got it right. Lucky lads. Yeah, lucky, lucky young guys. Hypothesis two, they had inside information. Now, which one are you going to go for?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Nobody is going to say, oh, they just guessed. It's just too improbable. But if you think that's improbable, it is nothing compared to the more than astronomical improbabilities of these numbers being right by chance. So if there is another explanation...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
analogous to the robbers having inside information, another explanation that removes the improbability, then you've got serious evidential support for the eyeballs. That's just how evidence works. We know how evidence works with a little bit of mathematics called Bayes' theorem. And, you know, that is how evidence works.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And I'm inclined to think really there's cultural bias going on here that we don't want to touch the other explanation because it feels a bit goddish. I don't think it doesn't have to be the traditional god, but it feels too goddish. And it's like, no, science has ruled that out. I mean, I talked to loads of physicists about this. And Generally, they don't say, oh, this isn't true.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Maybe we need to find a way to bring back together what Galileo separated.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
This is not controversial physics. I'm not a physicist. I wouldn't be defending fringe physics. What they say to me is, I think the evidence will change. Yes, current physics is fine-tuned for life, but that will go away. And of course, It might go away, right? Future physics, when we bring quantum mechanics and general relativity together, maybe there won't be any fine tuning.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
But maybe there'll be more fine tuning, correct? All you can ever do is work with the evidence you currently have. And I think it's the definition of a bias. to just say, well, I'm going to wait until we get evidence that fits the view I feel more comfortable with. So I think there's a sort of secular bias going on here. We're well trained to be alert to religious biases, aren't we?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
You just want to believe that. Every generation absorbs a worldview it can't quite see beyond. And I think future historians looking back will think, Why did they just ignore this fine-tuning stuff for so long?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, I mean, I don't like the very traditional God hypothesis either. I mean, I do think it would explain this. So I do think that is a point in support of traditional views of God. It fits better with those views. But there are other things that don't fit well with the traditional God hypothesis.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
the most obvious one being the horrific suffering we find in the world you know why would a loving god who can do anything choose to kill people regularly with hurricanes and cancer and so on you know i think that's you know if there isn't loving or powerful god they're committing mass murder every day that tends to wind up some traditional religious anyway um so so i
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
The way I think of it, I think there's two teams here that both have things they can't explain. You know, the traditional atheist view struggles with fine tuning. Traditional theism struggles with suffering. And they're both tying themselves up in knots trying to deal with that. Whereas I think there are middle ground options that can deal with both of these data.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, it's like, who's side are you on? Richard Dawkins or the Pope? Make your mind up. And I do find, actually, if I'm like... talking to someone in some social setting. I tend to bore people with philosophy at a party or something. You find people, they're trying to categorize you, which team are you on?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I mean, there are ways of dealing with this, I think, that make it very close to a standard scientific hypothesis. A couple of leading philosophers, John Hawthorne and Daniel Nolan, have given a really, really rigorous and precise account of what they call teleological laws of nature. I was going to ask you about this.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So this is from the Greek word telos, purpose. So these are sort of laws of nature with purposes built into them. So it's a different way of thinking about laws of nature.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, so there are laws of nature that on this kind of view... in some way, push the universe towards these goals. As they think of it, when there is some indeterminacy in the more normal laws of physics and two possible outcomes, let's say X and Y, the outcome which is closer towards
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
say, the emergence of life is the one that comes to pass through these teleological laws, this teleological drive, as it were, nudging us towards these goals. And they're not thinking of this as some kind of mind behind the universe. They're just thinking this could be the causal principles that operate in our universe. I mean, after all, we used to think of laws of nature as
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
inherently tied to god that was the idea right it's the the laws that god has instituted but now we think we can make sense of laws of nature without god so maybe we can make sense of these purposeful laws of nature without some divine being behind them so from that perspective you would view something like natural selection um being pushed by the teleological kind of
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I'm not suggesting that we need these teleological laws for evolution, right? I mean, what Darwin gave us is an account of how evolution emerges without needing any purposeful teleology or directedness through the mechanism of natural selection. And I mean, maybe some story like that will come out in fine-tuning as well.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Well, Lee Smolin, wonderful scientist and friend of mine, Lee Smolin, has a sort of cosmological natural selection story. Many other physicists I talk to have big problems with Smolin's story. I mean, look, I think we should be open-minded on all of these options. But I think as things stand at the moment...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
The fine-tuning of physics for life should at least make us take seriously these kind of teleological laws. I mean, another option is coming back to panpsychism. I think this fits well with a panpsychist view of things. If you already think, for example, that the universe is conscious, which is the case on some forms of panpsychism,
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
It's not so much of a leap to think that this conscious universe may have some form of goal-directed activity. So we don't need to postulate a supernatural intelligent designer outside the universe. Maybe the conscious universe can, as it were, design itself, fine-tune itself.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I suppose where I ended up in the why book I think we should all think these matters are inherently very uncertain. But I suppose I think things like fine-tuning, things like panpsychism fit better with a more hopeful picture of the universe in which there is some sort of directedness, there is some sort of underlying purpose emerging here. What that is, who knows? And if it's even real.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
But I suppose ultimately, I think if we come to the question of faith or spiritual practice, if you are somebody who is engaged in some form of religious or spiritual practice... I think it's not about certainty, right? Nobody knows what the hell is going on in this life. I think a faith more is about trust. It's about trusting your spiritual experiences and trusting...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
a certain framework for interpreting and acting on those spiritual experiences so so a hindu mystic maybe in the advaita vedanta tradition they will interpret their experiences as revealing to them the divine brahman at the core of their being and they'll meditate to realize their identity with it or a christian will interpret their spiritual experiences as
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
a loving God, and they will pray to connect with that loving creator. I think we should think of all this as about trust, as a decision to trust one of these frameworks. And There's no certainties, but I think we should think, is this a credible possibility?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And I think if we're in a universe with panpsychism and fine-tuning, then certain spiritual convictions are probable enough for it to be rational to trust in them.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, well, I love Advaita Vedanta and I think there's certainly a lot of wisdom and spiritual depth in this tradition. I used to think for a long time that there was spiritual depth in Buddhism and in Advaita Vedanta, but... Christianity and Islam and Judaism. It was very unspiritual. It was just about doing what God wants so you get to heaven, right?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I think there is a lot of truth in what you're saying and I'm totally with you, but I wonder how much of that is a more modern... corruption in a way. I mean, so what I've been researching recently is the mystical traditions in all the Abrahamic faiths that have been there right back to the start. I mean, in the Eastern church, for example, there's much less emphasis on sin, right?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, I think there's often an almost naive assumption that we can just read off the nature of ultimate reality from experimental data. And I think if philosophy has taught us anything, it's not so simple. That can't really be done. You know, I mean, it depends what question you're trying to ask, right? If you've got a very focused question, like, I don't know, does smoking cause cancer, right?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
God is not interested in finding someone to punish for our sins, right? God's interested in becoming one with humanity, becoming one with the entire physical universe. It's all focused on this oneness and unity. When I first came across this, it's not something I heard absolutely nothing about in my Catholic upbringing, but it is, I think, something that
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
deeply resonates with me in a way that Advaita Vedanta deeply resonates with me with that focus on oneness. I think a lot of people think, especially in the US, that here's what Christianity is, right? We're all sinners. We deserve to go to hell. But fortunately, Jesus is going to take the rap for us. Jesus is going to be punished so we can go to heaven. That view was invented 500 years ago.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
by the protestant reformers right it it does not go back to the origins of christianity um and i think people think that and i did for so long that is what christianity is but you know you just look further back into history someone who i've been researching recently a very influential fifth century mystical Christian. His name's a bit of a tongue twister. Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
He had this... fundamental story of the god who is beyond human understanding he had this spiritual practice which he called the affirmations and the denials right and it started off with affirming certain characteristics of god right so we say god is good god is powerful god is all-knowing
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
But then Dionysius thought that that's misleading because God is radically different to anything in the world we observe. God isn't good in the way a human being can be good or powerful in the way a king is powerful. So then in the next stage of the spiritual practice, we deny these characteristics. We say God is not good. God is not powerful. God is not all-knowing.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And Dionysius thought this gets us closer to understanding. But he's still worried that even when we're denying, we're led into a false sense that we're still getting some understanding. So in the third and final stage of this spiritual practice, we deny the denials. And he had this wonderful idea that language needs to stop subvert itself.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
We need to use language to undermine language to really understand this transcendent reality that is beyond words, that is beyond human concepts. And this guy was incredibly influential on all big theologians in medieval Europe. And I think it says something about our time that nobody's heard of it these days. So I think there is spiritual depth
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Back in, you know, in Islam, you have Sufism, in Judaism, Kabbalah. So, yeah, I think this understanding of the Abrahamic faiths that I've discovered is really resonating with me. I think it's, you know, this idea of this sort of big mind, God is a big mind idea. I think that, what is it that I don't like about that? I think ultimately it doesn't solve the riddle of existence, does it?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Okay, there's this big mind, who created the big mind, right? I think if there is going to be a solution to the riddle of existence, it's going to be something totally beyond human understanding. I don't even like using the word God, maybe the transcendent or something beyond human categories. But I think that that always has been there in all the Abrahamic faiths going back to the beginning.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
We maybe just need to reclaim it.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
The absolute, yeah. The absolute is, yeah.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Okay, then you can do the experiments or make the observations. You can get an answer, at least with a high probability. But when we're asking these very big questions about the ultimate nature of reality, is mind or matter fundamental? I don't know. Does God exist? Whatever. I don't think there is no experiment you can do to just settle that. But you know, don't get me wrong.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah. A lot of what you just said really resonates with me. And I mean, so I recently become religious. I went public as I self-identify as a heretical Christian. I did this interview on a Christian YouTube channel and got a whole load of response videos. The first wave were from kind of conservative US Christians saying, I'm not really a Christian. I don't really have the right beliefs.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And then I got this wave from atheists saying I'd lost my mind. But I suppose... I'm not religious to get the answers, to get the certainty. I think fundamentally for me, being religious is about connecting my spiritual life to the life of the community through rituals that mark the seasons, the changing seasons of the year and the big moments of life, birth, coming of age, marriage, death.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I found a wonderful... Holism can come out of engaging in a spiritual practice with a rich tradition, with a community. And I understand the dangers. I understand the dangers of people are worried about dogmatic certainty. People are worried about conflict with science. People are worried about backward ethical views on women and sexuality. And And it's not for everyone, right?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I'm not here to say this is the one true faith, I suppose. But I am interested in... suggesting there is a way of engaging with traditional religion that can avoid some of these dangers and that can have real benefits in terms of community, structure, tradition, and so on. I guess that's where I'm up to. I'm trying to give that slightly different perspective on it.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So we need both. We need the science. We also need the philosophy. We really need them to be working together, hand in hand.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
You can approach this in two ways. It's like head questions or heart questions. I suppose... In terms of the heart questions, what I found resonates with me is the way the Eastern Orthodox Church think of these fundamental spiritual matters. And it is all about God and the universe coming into unity. So their view is that the whole point of the Jesus stuff was...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
God sharing in our form of existence so that we can share in God's form of existence. That us and God are very different, but they are coming through a process of coming into alignment, coming into deeper unity. Connects with, for example, Jesus has this analogy of the vine and the branches. We are supposed to be the branches and he is the vine and that sense of deep organic unity.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So there's a sort of, I suppose there's a sort of oneness there that we find in all the mystical traditions. Perhaps the difference to Advaita Vedanta is that the oneness incorporates differentiation as well. In Advaita Vedanta, when you become enlightened, you are completely absorbed in the divine. An analogy one mystic gives is it's like an ice cube melting in the ocean.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Experiments are absolutely crucial. We should start with the experiments. But when it comes to these all-encompassing worldview questions, the experimental data, as crucial as it is, leaves open many options. And there is a role, therefore, judgment calls in how best to interpret the data in which of these options looks more plausible. I think that's what philosophy is, really.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Whereas the oneness of Eastern Orthodox Christianity is maybe more like the oneness of a couple. A sort of deep, organic intimacy and unity is the oneness between us and God and the whole of physical reality. So I suppose that is the spiritual vision I engage with in my spiritual practice. Do I know it's true? I don't know.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
These matters, as I say, are inherently uncertain, but I suppose I think it's a credible possibility and I get a lot out of engaging with it. I mean, in terms of the... the more the head stuff. As I said, I've always worried about the problem of evil and suffering with the very traditional idea of God. Why would a loving or powerful God allow so much suffering?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
But I think there are these slightly heretical understandings of God as maybe beyond human understanding, maybe not being all powerful. That's something I've explored. Remove these worries, these more intellectual worries. and I think fit better with this very inspiring spiritual vision of the Eastern Church. I mean, I'm not a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
The view is that there is a cosmic process of God and the physical universe coming into a deeper unity. And the thought is that this had some climactic moment in the events surrounding Jesus. So it is, I'm not sort of, I'm not Jordan Peterson thing, you know, it's all metaphorical and no, I am engaging.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
with a possibility that there was something ontologically special about those events surrounding the historical Jesus. And I do think historically, something kind of weird happened after Jesus died, you know, that I don't have a traditional view on it. I'm inclined to think what the early Christians thought of as the resurrection experiences were visionary rather than seeing and touching a body.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
But there's a lot of credible biblical scholars who think that's actually what the first Christians believed and that the stuff about Jesus eating fish and stuff is a later development. So yeah, I suppose I do. My
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
spiritual understanding would be that there was yes something some important moment in this unifying of god and the physical universe around around the events of jesus but again i mean i'm very uncertain i don't you know i i think it's a credible possibility yeah that's why
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, when it's a bit of the creed, I mumble over the virgin birth bit.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Well, it's not simply the view, oh, you know, he was a great moral teacher. Although I do think he was a very important moral teacher. And one thing that's very important to me about Christianity is... the turning upside down of worldly values, this idea that we're not identifying God with the king in the castle. We're identifying God with the naked, humiliated, executed peasant.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Crucifixion was the most cruel, humiliating death of the peasant. It was a weird, radical idea that this is what we're were worshipping and the historian Tom Holland has done wonderful work showing what a radical idea that was to Roman aristocrats when the Roman Empire became Christian. Suddenly the poor and the weak have some kind of moral status. Oh my God, we can't just rape them.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I think we're going through a phase of history where where people are understandably so blown away by how well science has gone and experimental investigation that we think, that's it, that works, that's the thing that we go for, and everything else seems kind of intangible and unsatisfying. But again, we need to remember there's always the worldview assumptions in the background.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
You know, how important, actually, it was eye-opening for me how important Christian sexual ethics were at a time where women and slaves had no rights. That saying, you know, you can't have sex until you're married was some limited protection against rape. You know, obviously very limited. Maybe...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Now we're in a period where women have more rights, where we don't have slavery, at least not institutionalized in the way it was then. Maybe we can modify that sexual ethics that had some value at the time. But anyway, yeah, it's not just that Jesus was a great martyr. Just to say that I think there was some, I would say I believe in the resurrection in some sense.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I think there was some profound spiritual event there. after Jesus died, something weird happened that lots of people had experiences that persuaded them to vigorously defend this conviction that reality had changed against violent opposition, against death in certain cases we know of. I mean, even our atheist historians of this time period, they accept that this was rooted in experiences.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I think a lot of people think, oh, it was a later legend, but... I don't think that's an option because of the letters of St. Paul in the Bible, which is kind of gold dust by the standards of ancient history, that there are 13 letters ascribed to him. And all scholars think at least seven of them are genuine. And he didn't know Jesus, but he knew Jesus.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Peter, he knew James, the brother of Jesus, he knew John, one of the original 12 disciples, and he talks about what happened. So I think even atheist scholars of Christian history like Bart Ehrman think there was some powerful experience as they kickstarted this. So I would say that to me is the resurrection, that in some sense reality changed, but it was part of this ongoing process of
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
the transcendent in the universe coming into harmony.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I would say that the two characteristics I think we find in all the mystical traditions are one, that whatever you want to call it, God or ultimate reality. I like William James's term, the more with a capital M, the more that it is beyond human understanding, beyond human concepts. And I think the second thing is that
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
transcendent or whatever word you want to use for it is not something completely supernatural completely distinct from the physical universe that in some sense the transcendent and the universe overlap perhaps god pervades the universe in some sense And I think that's something that fits with mystical experiences we find in all cultures. Fits very well with panpsychism. We've come full circle.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah. So I suppose, yeah, I think what I like about the Christian version of it maybe is just that in the final end goal, there is still love because there is still difference of persons. Whereas I think in Advaita Vedanta, in the end, there isn't love in the sense of intimate connection between persons because we all just become one.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
You know, so I think if Galileo were to time travel to the present day... and hear about these struggles to explain consciousness in the terms of physical science, he'd say, of course you can't do that. I designed physical science to exclude consciousness. You've forgotten about the philosophy. So we need both. We need the science. We also need the philosophy.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Whereas, as I say, in the Christian mystical tradition, it's not that we all become one as in the same thing. We all become one as in intimately, organically unified, but still distinct. So I suppose that's what resonates about it for me, that there's still love there at the end. But I don't know whether it's true.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Who does?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Another Sufi mystic whose name escapes me right now who was burned for saying... I am God. And what he meant by that was he felt he'd reached this stage where there was no reality other than God. And we find this in Kabbalah as well. And all of them have this view where ultimately there's just some deep unknowable unity and somehow multiplicity emerges from that.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Or to take another Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart of the 13th century, who was on trial for heresy, partly because he said the Trinity is not fundamental. This deeper unknowable unity is deeper than the Trinity. So there is a real commonality here in Sufism, Kabbalah and Christian mysticism that there's a deep unknowable unity at the base of things.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Eckhart, when he was accused of heresy, he said, well, I want to distinguish between heresy and error, right? So error is where you make a mistake. Heresy is where you willfully make a mistake. And he said, if I'm wrong, then I will give it up. So I can't be a heretic. I might be an error. He died before the trial was completed. But on the basis of that, the Pope of the time after his death,
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
convicted him of error, but not heresy. But anyway, again, a hugely wonderful mystic who was, like many mystics, very much connected to the people. He did sermons in German as well as Latin and was very much connected with the ordinary affairs of life. I think I've been reading about it, Kabbalah became more connected
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Kabbalah very much reinvented itself in the 15th century when Jews were thrown out of Spain. And that experience of trauma led to another re-understanding of Kabbalah. I think before that... Kabbalah mystics had been more focused on lofty mystical issues. But through reflecting on that trauma, they connected these lofty issues to the real business of life.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And yeah, I suppose that's what something like the resurrection signifies for me. It's bringing transcendent reality into the intimate, ordinary details of lived human experience, love, humility, kindness, and so on.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And we really need them to be working together, hand in hand.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah. Never trust the person with dogmatic certainty. That glint in the eye that they know they've got the truth. Nothing's ever going to shake it. And I think that can come from the militant atheist as much as the fundamentalist believer. I mean, my hero here is William James in so many respects, but his wonderful paper,
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
the will to believe, which he later thought should have been called the right to believe, which I think he was right about. And he was engaging with people in his time who said, you know, never believe beyond the evidence. Bertrand Russell, another hero of mine, said that later, you know, never believe beyond what the evidence states.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And he said, James said, well, I can understand what the worry is there. You don't want to believe things that are false. But here's another worry. You might fail to believe something that's true. And there's, you know, it's just something you need to balance here. So I think... There's a lot of uncertainty here.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
No one knows what the one true faith is or including humanism in that mix of different faiths. But I think people should explore what works for them, what works for their deepest experiences, what makes sense of their deepest experiences and think of it more in the realms of trust and hope rather than belief or certainty.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, I guess this is the more academic scientific project I've been engaged with recently. I've been working with... I would never work on quantum mechanics on my own because I don't have a physics background, but I've been collaborating with a very good philosopher of physics, Kelvin McQueen, and we've been re-examining a neglected...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
interpretation of quantum mechanics from the 1990s by the physicist Ewan Squires that sort of got a bit forgotten about. And we're not necessarily arguing it's true, but we're just trying to clarify some things Squires left a bit unclear, kind of give a rigorous analysis of this to kind of bring out the pros and cons. I think there's intellectual value in that.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Can you set the stage for the listeners for... Here's what people need to know about quantum mechanics. It's very simple, and I think a lot of the public don't quite get this point. Quantum mechanics is our best scientific theory. So much of our technology is based on it. But there is no consensus on what it is telling us about reality. And that's kind of weird.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
You know, normally with a scientific theory, it's kind of obvious what it's saying.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So there are these different interpretations. And what this shows is, again, the importance of philosophy. Because here we have a situation where the equations leave open a number of options. And there's a role for judgment call in which is the most plausible. Yeah. Why is there this situation? You can think of it in a way as a clash between, in a sense, a clash between theory and observation.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
If you take the basic bit of mathematics in quantum mechanics, the Schrodinger equation, On the face of it, it tells this story of this weird world of superpositions, right? Where particles are multiply located. Can you explain that for people who maybe don't know? Nobody knows what a superposition is, but it's...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
something like a single particle is not just here and not just there, but in some sense in many different locations at the same time. But of course, that's just what the equation seems to suggest. But of course, when we actually observe... a given particle, it's only ever in one particular location.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I mean, this is made vivid with the wonderful Schrödinger's cat experiment, thought experiment, which, I don't know if people know, was created by Schrödinger to kind of ridicule quantum mechanics. Even though he was one of the founders, he had some suspicions of it, and it was his way of saying, something not right going on here. So I'm sure...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
viewers know something of the setup here we we have a randomly decaying isotope so there's like a let's say a 50 percent 50 50 chance it's going to decay in a certain time period and it's connected to a vial of poison and it's in a box with a cat so if the substance decays the poison will come out the cat will die if it doesn't the cat's going to live to fight another day
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Why are we thinking about this? The point is, if you just took the Schrodinger equation, the basic mathematical bit of quantum mechanics, and applied it to this system, it would tell you that that would evolve into a scenario where the substance is decaying and not decaying, the poison is out and not out, the cat is alive and dead. And yet that's not what we observe, right?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
We lift up the lid, the cat's either definitely alive or definitely dead. And so you might think, well, how can this be a good scientific theory if the theory doesn't fit what we observe? That's because there's another bit to quantum mechanics.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
something called the Born Rule, which is a sort of bridging law, which takes us from this weird world of superpositions to what we're actually going to observe, or at least the probability of what we're going to observe. And those two things together The Schrodinger equation and the Born rule are the best predictive tool anyone has ever devised. Incredibly successful.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
But for people like me interested in the ultimate nature of reality, there's some questions this prompts, you know. Are these superpositions real? And if so, why do we never see them? Why do we never see many cats living and dead? And if they're not real, why do we have to take this weird route through this fiction of superpositions to find out what we're actually going to observe?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So that's the kind of mystery. And this is actually the founders of quantum mechanics, like Niels Bohr, did not want you to ask these questions. He's this extraordinary figure. People who knew him... compared him to Jesus or Socrates. And he was just this incredibly charismatic figure. But he also ruled like a communist dictator in crushing opposition.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So if you ask questions like, what's going on in reality? Your career was over. Anyway, but fortunately, although there is something of a taboo still there, more and more people asking these questions. So, well, come into the many worlds. Yeah, what's that all about?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So I think, I mean, this is among theoretical physicists and philosophers of physics, this is actually an incredibly popular view among people who don't normally like wacky stuff. So this is the view that reality is continuously branching into different versions of itself. So in the case of the Schrodinger's cat. That's a good way of illustrating it, isn't it? Yeah.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So in the Schrodinger's cat theory, if we actually did that,
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
at some point reality including the the observer will branch and so one if you're doing it one version of you will be seeing a living cat one version of you will be seeing a dead cat but these these emerging possibilities never interact with each other so what's the overlap so then if in one scenario you open the box the cat's dead the other one the cat's alive um
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I guess it's a form of the multiverse, but these are not... totally separate parallel universes it's it's a kind of emerging universe where what is you now will split into different versions of you and they will go off and live their lives and do different things and it's in theory and infinite different possibilities Is it infinite or is it a very high number? You'll have to ask a physicist.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Thanks, Andre. It's great to be here. I'm glad we managed to sort this out.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, I mean, it doesn't necessarily correspond to choosing. This is another complexity here. It would depend actually on whether the brain is a classically chaotic system in the sense that outcomes are dependent on very specific initial circumstances. And I think that's something we don't know enough about the brain to establish at this time.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
But it happens, for example, a lot with the weather because the weather is a chaotic system. Or it happens when we make a quantum measurement experiment. Sean Carroll's got this app where you can split the universe remotely. You can, if you want to make a decision, should I get married or not? It will do a quantum measurement and tell you on the basis of that measurement whether to get married.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And if many worlds is right, the universe will split and there will be one version of you that, if you follow what the app says to do, at least one version of you that gets married and one version of you that doesn't. But why do people take this seriously? I think there's a good case that it's the simplest interpretation of quantum mechanics. And that sounds kind of weird.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
There's all these branching universes. How can it be simple? But I think you should judge the simplicity of a theory on the simplicity of its axioms. And what's attractive about many worlds is it's the only version of quantum mechanics that just has the Schrodinger equation. It just sticks with that. All the other interpretations...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
add something, add another axiom to explain what happens to the superpositions, what happens to the many cats, right? What gets rid of the many cats? We have spontaneous collapse theories where something new happens to make all the many living and dead cats collapse into one. But the many worlds theorists say, we don't need to do that. All the cats are still there.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
It's just because reality is branched We don't observe them. We're just one observer that's branched as well. So they have an explanation of why we don't see these superpositions that doesn't require somehow getting rid of the superpositions. I should qualify that slightly.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Not all interpretations get rid of the superpositions, but they at least add something to explain why we never observe them, whereas the many worlds people think we don't need to. But there's a big problem. How the hell do you make sense of probability if everything is going to happen? So, I mean, come back to Schrodinger's cat again.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
We could set that up so that there's a 75% chance you'll get a living cat and a 25% chance you'll get a dead cat. But it looks like if you're a many worlds theorist, you should just say, well, there's 100% chance a version of me will see a living cat and 100% chance a version of me will see a dead cat. So whereas probability seems to evaporate.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And this is important because the evidential basis for quantum mechanics involves these claims about probability, the probability of what we're going to observe. So if many worlds can't make sense of probability, it looks like it undermines its own probability. base. That's the worry at least.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, just before I answer that question, going back to the Vienna Circle you mentioned then, and it was making me think, you know, I think so many people still have this idea that we can throw out philosophy. And we tried that in the 1930s and 40s with the Vienna Circle, what became known as logical positivism.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
That's an interesting thought. Could you have a teleological solution to quantum mechanics? Maybe you should write a paper on this.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Well, I mean, I am persuaded that we do need to add something to make sense of probability. Quantum mechanics relies on claims about probability. If you just have many worlds where everything's happening, there's no probability. That's my view. People debate that, but it's a popular worry. So we do need to add something.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And here we finally get to this neglected interpretation that me and Kelvin are exploring. Maybe what we can add is consciousness, right? Maybe it's that that makes the difference. Now, there's a classic way of doing this. People might have heard of this idea that consciousness collapses the wave function. This was defended by Wigner in the 1960s, Nobel Prize winning quantum theorist.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So this is the idea that, well, it's when consciousness interacts with the cat in the box function that the many living and dead cats collapse into one definitely living or one definitely dead cat. So that's one option. Has certain problems, but that's one possibility.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Yeah, all of these views have... ways of making sense of that in some way it's it's a popular misconception that that that finding establishes the the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics but all of these live options on quantum mechanics have some clever way of making sense of that yeah the bizarre finding um
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
originally foretold by Bell, who should have got a Nobel Prize, died a bit early, sadly, I think probably the reason. Anyway, but this possibility we're exploring is that we just take the many world story, right? So the physical universe is branching, but consciousness just goes down one of the branches.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So if you're doing Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, your body will branch into a version that's interacting with a living cat and a version that's interacting with a dead cat. But your conscious mind will just go into one of those bodies. You're looking skeptical. Before you come up with skepticism, let me just... And I'm not saying this view is correct, but it's interesting to explore.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So Squires, you and Squires hope with this. What's the point in taking this seriously? we can get probability back, right? Because how do we analyze the idea that there's a 75% chance you'll see a living cat and a 25% chance you'll see a dead cat? Well, there's a 75% chance your conscious mind is going to go down the living cat branch and a 25% chance your mind will go down the dead cat branch.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So the hope is, look, for people with certain philosophical starting points who think you need to add consciousness, you somehow need to add consciousness to the purely mathematical story of physics, And you need to add something to many worlds to get probability. If we could add one thing and get both... that would be a saving, you know? That would be more bang for your buck.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And they had this view that any statement which can't be experimentally empirically verified is meaningless gibberish, right? This was called the verification principle. And this was supposed to allow us to just focus on science and banish all that metaphysical gibberish, right? Well, it's pretty much universally accepted by philosophers of science that this didn't work out.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So there are lots of challenges with this view, but that's the view we've been exploring.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
You persuaded?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Let me say, though, I do think there's a big problem that... But physics students are not taught about this core philosophical mystery of quantum mechanics. I talk to physicists a lot and a lot of them just don't get what's mysterious about quantum mechanics because it's a philosophical issue. right? The equations work fine, right?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
You take the Schrodinger equation, the Born rule, you apply them, you know what's going to happen, or you know the probability of what's going to happen. But these questions of what is going on in reality, I think every physics undergraduate should have a philosophy-based course that delves into that a little bit. And it's part of
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
the problem with our time that we've forgotten the importance of philosophy. And I don't think we're going to make progress on consciousness, on quantum mechanics, or this fundamental, what's called the measurement problem, this fundamental challenge of quantum mechanics, or fine tuning until we take both the experiments and philosophical conceptual reflection on them. We take both seriously.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
where can we end well I suppose you know I mean what I'm focused on at the moment my current projects are academically it's what we've just been talking about this quantum mechanics stuff but in terms of my public engagement I've just started a new book on this issue of
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
engaging traditional religion and other ways of engaging traditional religion that avoid these understandable worries many people have and so yeah that's what i'm exploring at the moment delving into the mystical traditions and the radical roots of all the great religions and
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I mean, I think it is so important. Polarization is a deep worry. So whether you're religious or not, I think it would be good to... not end up in a situation where just one bit of society has religion and the other bit totally rejects it. I think there can be a natural balance in society between more conservative thinkers and more progressive thinkers. We've got the progressive thinkers
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
wanting to update in terms of new scientific or ethical discoveries, but then conservative thinkers saying, oh, hold on, don't, as you say, throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's think what we can preserve. So there can be a natural harmony there. I think at the moment, especially in the US, maybe, religion is much more slanted towards conservative traditionalists.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I mean, actually, I remember one of my first philosophical experiences, if you could put it that way, doing philosophy at high school and learning one of the big problems with this view of this anti-metaphysics view of the Vienna Circle was that it's kind of self-defeating because they have this principle that
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And, you know, I don't hate conservatives, but it would be good to have a more healthy balance there. You know, just to take a concrete example, it used to be all Christians thought loaning for interest was a sin, right? In the light of our understanding of the modern economy, that's no longer held. Why haven't we had the same transition with sexuality, right?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Our modern understanding of gay attraction. I think that's because there is more of a slant in religion at the moment to conservatives against progressives. And I think people think, oh, that's what religion's always been like. But no, religion has always... reinvented itself in the light of the science and philosophy of the time. Aquinas was radically new philosophy.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
The Protestant reformers, a radically new understanding of what it is to be religious, what it is to be Christian in that case. So I think, yeah, I think it's very important for polarization, whether you're religious or not, to bring a bit of a more natural balance. How do we do this? With humility. It's all about, I suppose, being happy with embracing uncertainty.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
And I know, I can understand why that's difficult. That is difficult. Certainty would be nice, especially if we're talking about what you're going to trust in with how you're going to live your life, how you're going to engage with your community and so on. But that is the human situation. And
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
We need to find ways of engaging it with trust and hope rather than chasing after ephemeral uncertainty that we're never going to get. Being comfortable with uncertainty, living in the present moment.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
you very much yeah we just need different experiments in living see what bears fruit yeah that's what i'm trying to do and yeah i think that's what we should all try and do well let's keep on doing it let's carry on the conversation who wants to tune into more of your work you know they can pick up
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
the verification principle that any statement that can't be experimentally verified is meaningless. But what about that statement itself? What about the verification principle? It looks like, what's the experiment you do to verify that? And so it sort of pulls the bridge from under itself. And, you know, that I always just remember just being, wow. And seeing...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I mean, I think that the starting point to happiness in a meaningful life is learning to be rooted and happy and present in the present moment. I've heard a lot of people think Being religious is about the afterlife, you know, and you just want to get to heaven or something.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I've actually found living in hope of a greater purpose has actually freed me up to be less bothered about my own personal success and failure and just...
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
freed me up to just enjoy being in the present moment with friends family conversations like this um so there are a lot of uncertainties here but the starting point i think has to be continuous it's bloody hard isn't it actually the continuous effort to just be happy and rooted in the present moment
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
How careful thought can reveal the incoherence in a project people had been occupied with for 10 or 20 years. So, yeah, I mean, in the present day, unfortunately, some people... didn't get the memo that logical positivism didn't work out. But I think we now know we need to be doing both the science and the philosophy. But yeah, in terms of connecting to reality, I'm very good friends with Don.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
I really like what he's doing. I suppose I have some small disagreement with him in his evolutionary-based arguments that the world as it's revealed through our senses is so radically deceptive. And my worry there is it's based in the viewpoint that we evolved. And as Don puts it, our senses evolve for survival rather than for getting at the truth. And that is the foundation of his argument.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
But I suppose my question on that basis is, well, how do we know we evolved? we know we evolved through using our senses, right? Going out fighting fossils. And so if we're not careful, I do worry Don's argument will undermine its own base. If our senses are so radically deceptive, then we're going to lose our ability to justify the fact that we evolved, which is foundational to his argument.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
So yes, I wouldn't go quite as far as Dom, but certainly coming back to Galileo, so much of how we see the world, the colours, the sounds, the smells that seem to fill the air, I don't think that's really out there. That is part of the way we've evolved to survive and interact with the world. And, you know, one of the big questions we're facing is,
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
When you look at what physics seems to be pointing at now, its story of what's going on at the fundamental level of reality is wildly esoteric. Things like the wave function, this very peculiar high dimensional entity that seems to have gone beyond space and time. How do we connect the world of our conscious experience, the world of
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
the passing present moment, the world of probability, the world of time and space with this very peculiar story that science seems to be telling us as what's going on down there at the base of reality. And I think that's one of the fundamental challenges of our time, really.
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
Panpsychism is the view that consciousness goes all the way down to the fundamental building blocks of physical reality. Perhaps a way into that is to start with human consciousness, which is incredibly rich and complicated, the results of millions of years of evolution. But consciousness comes in all shapes and sizes, right?
Know Thyself
E144 - Phillip Goff: Why Does The Universe Exist? Panpsychism, Fine-Tuning & Cosmic Purpose
What it's like to be a sheep is a bit simpler to what it's like to be a human being. We presume, right? Yeah, we might actually, we might want to debate that, but I guess at least working with our common sense understanding.