Episode Summary
Executive Summary: Michael Shermer interviews philosopher Philip Goff about his book Galileo's Error, arguing that modern science inherited Galileo’s useful but incomplete move of describing nature in quantitative terms while excluding consciousness. Goff defends panpsychism as a way to integrate subjective experience into a scientific worldview, while also touching on free will, moral realism, model-dependent realism, and the broader implications for how we value nature and understand reality.
Main Topics: Galileo’s legacy and the exclusion of consciousness: Goff argues Galileo helped launch mathematical physics by relocating qualities like color and taste from the external world into consciousness, but this left consciousness outside science and created the modern hard problem. The hard problem of consciousness: The central issue is not whether consciousness exists, but how it fits into our scientific theory of reality given that it is directly known from first-person experience yet resists third-person observation. Panpsychism as the preferred solution: Goff defends panpsychism: reality is fundamentally physical, but matter’s intrinsic nature is consciousness or proto-consciousness, allowing mind and matter to be unified without dualism. Russell, Eddington, and the limits of physics: He revives the Russellian idea that physics tells us only what matter does, not what it is intrinsically, leaving room for consciousness to occupy the inner nature of matter. Free will, agency, and compatibilism: Goff explores whether panpsychism can support a view of proto-agency in nature and discusses compatibilist and libertarian free will, while remaining agnostic on the final answer. Objective moral values and rational norms: The conversation broadens to whether moral truths and norms like evidence, logic, and avoiding cruelty are objective features of reality rather than mere social conventions. Fine-tuning, multiverse, and scientific explanation: Goff previews his next project on cosmological fine-tuning and questions whether multiverse explanations are empirically warranted or philosophically overextended.
Key Arguments: Galileo’s quantitative science succeeded because it deliberately excluded consciousness, so science’s success does not imply it can explain consciousness on its current terms. Consciousness is unique because it is the thing being explained and is itself unobservable from the third person, unlike particles postulated to explain observable phenomena. Dualism struggles to fit consciousness into nature without invoking mysterious interaction, while materialism leaves an explanatory gap between brain activity and subjective experience. Panpsychism avoids the mind-matter split by treating consciousness as the intrinsic nature of matter, not an extra substance or supernatural add-on. The Russell-Eddington view provides a simple ontological framework: physics describes causal structure from the outside, while consciousness describes the inside of matter. A theory of consciousness must satisfy both empirical adequacy and explanatory adequacy; materialism fits data but leaves gaps, while dualism bridges gaps but risks conflict with neuroscience. Free will may be reconceived as proto-agency distributed through nature, though Goff remains uncertain whether this is preferable to compatibilism or determinism. Objective value may be more than preference; claims like ‘evidence matters’ or ‘cruelty is wrong’ seem to function as real constraints, not arbitrary tastes. Scientific models are useful but may not exhaust reality; model choice can shape what we take reality to be, so philosophy still matters. Panpsychism may also have ethical implications, encouraging greater respect for nature by viewing living systems as conscious organisms of some kind.
Data Points: Great Courses Plus trial URL: thegreatcoursesplus.com/salon - Sponsor offer mentioned at the start of the episode for a free trial Native Peoples of North America course: 24 lectures - Shermer describes the course he is listening to in the sponsor read Lecture number: 17 - Shermer says he is up to lecture 17 of the course Free typing speed of Stephen Hawking: about 6 words per minute - Shermer recounts Len Mlodinow’s memoir describing Hawking’s communication speed Percent of gun deaths that are suicides: 60% - Shermer cites an op-ed about gun policy and future-self safeguards Age example in polygamy discussion: 19-year-olds - Shermer discusses young women in fundamentalist communities making constrained choices
Pivotal Quotes: "what can be captured in a quantitative mathematical vocabulary, and it deals with what is publicly observable" — Philip Goff: Goff explains why standard science is powerful but limited in addressing consciousness "the fundamental stuff is conscious and it is physical at the same time" — Philip Goff: Goff summarizes panpsychism as a middle position between materialism and idealism "we need to find the simplest theory that can account for both the data of observation and experiment and the reality of consciousness" — Philip Goff: Goff states his methodological criterion for a successful theory of mind
Implications: If Goff is right, consciousness research needs new philosophical tools alongside neuroscience, and panpsychism could reshape ethics, environmental attitudes, and debates over free will, morality, and cosmology.