Galileo's Error
"Rooted in an analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of modern science and based on the early twentieth-century work of Arthur Eddington and Bertrand Russell, Goff makes the case for panpsychism, a theory which posits that consciousness is not confined to biological entities but is a fundamental feature of all physical matter—from subatomic particles to the human brain. In Galileo's Error, he has provided the first step on a new path to the final theory of human consciousness."--Dust jacket flap.
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- (philosophy and computer science background, but that's long in the past I just do engineering for big corpo)
They're not exactly casually absorbed, as in a wiki or forum. But you can read some books that begin to introduce these ideas. On the topic of consciousness, less academic and more slated towards general audience: Reality+ by David Chalmers and Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel and Galileo's Error by Phillip Goff will give you and interesting gamut of ideas.
The thing about arguments in philosophy is that they span from a very old web of thought that has been refined into very sharp positions over a long time. So you will find yourself ever recursively going back to understand ideas and framing with more precision.
This is why it's difficult to casually get into these topics IMO. There's just been so much said and discussed, to understand the current meta (as the gaming folks might say), you have to understand how we arrived at the current meta. And that's a long journey that's never complete!
- This is good reasoning, but from where did you get the requirements? After having read Annaka Harris’ “Conscious” and Philip Goff’s “Galileo’s Error”, it seems plausible to me (and the most logically simple resolution) that panpsychism explains the universe.
I.e., in the vain search for the place to draw “the line” between what animals or systems are conscious and which aren’t, (viruses? Amoebas? The smallest insect?) what if consciousness can be seen as a property of existence? Then, clearly, different systems (such as humans) have wildly different experiences (a.k.a. contents of consciousness) than rocks or shrimp or trees etc., but if you take Thomas Nagel’s phrasing for this—that if there is something it is like to be a rock or a shrimp or a tree, then that is conscious—then it seems to me that there IS something that it is like to be the cosmos.
- I think panpsychism just needs to be explained well and probably most people would be onboard with the idea or at least comfortable accepting it. I thought it was a little wild at first but after reading "Galileo's Error" by Phillip Goff it seems ok. Panspychism it self covers so many theories too.
In my personal experience psychedelic use seemed to almost solidify materialism for me. The idea that reality, your self and soul is nothing but an illusion is uncomfortable but I think tripping can reinforce that idea.
- Any toddler can ask "why" ad nauseam (at least it seems that way to adults in the vicinity) - and that is a good thing - but answering is the clever part.
Strangely, some philosophers seem to shy away from answering. Philip Goff, for example, whose forays into popularizing include "Galileo's Error", merely declares that consciousness is fundamental, without explaining the second thing about what that means, and he is not, apparently, at all interested in following through; in fact, he seems to think that is a job for scientists - the same scientists who have made the error of adopting mathematical models, apparently - who should gratefully accept his insights and do something (what?) with them.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/599229/galileos-err...
- The purpose of Goff's choice for the title of his book Galileo's Error is explained in the introduction: that Galileo limited science to only things that are quantifiable, and completely ignores qualitative factors. Note the common etymology with the word qualia. Some way to expose evidence of consciousness to external observers may be necessary or it may be impossible given the apparati that science currently provides.
- Galileo's Error is philosopher Philip Goff's book stating his version of panpsychism - pretty impressive to have 20 or so academics interested enough in your idea to take potshots at it in a special journal issue! - but if you wondered as I did what was the specific error, I can save you a visit to google by suggesting this sci-am blog: [1].
> A key moment in the scientific revolution was Galileo’s declaration that mathematics was to be the language of the new science; the new science was to have a purely quantitative vocabulary. This is a much-discussed moment. What is less discussed is the philosophical work Galileo had to do to get to this position. Before Galileo, people thought the physical world was filled with qualities: there were colors on the surfaces of objects, tastes in food, smells floating through the air. The trouble is that you can’t capture these kinds of qualities in the purely quantitative vocabulary of mathematics. You can’t capture the spicy taste of paprika, for example, in an equation.
> This presented a challenge for Galileo’s aspiration to exhaustively describe the physical world in mathematics. Galileo’s solution was to propose a radically new philosophical theory of reality. According to this theory, the qualities aren’t really out there in the world, rather they’re in the consciousness of the observer. [...] when a tree comes crashing down in a forest, the crashing sound isn’t really in the forest, but in the consciousness of an onlooker. No onlooker, no consciousness, no sound.
> Galileo, as it were, stripped the physical world of its qualities; and after he’d done that, all that remained were the purely quantitative properties of matter—size, shape, location, motion—properties that can be captured in mathematical geometry.
I'd be surprised if many people here agreed with this POV, but (to me at least) it's a very interesting way to look at things.
1: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/galileos-b...
