Guest blog by Emma Hickling
Amidst all the doom and gloom of Covid-19, I decided to read a recently published book about the philosophy of consciousness, which has the engaging title of “Galileo’s Error”. The author, Philip Goff, is an academic who manages to make a complex subject very accessible to the lay reader. The nature of consciousness is a fascinating topic for reflection upon in these turbulent times, when all we can do is sit and think.
We are all conscious and experience feelings, emotions, and thoughts: we all have a subjective inner life. Consciousness is fundamental to us as human beings. But what is consciousness? And how do we integrate consciousness into our scientific story of the universe?
Goff discusses in depth the two predominant world views on consciousness, namely Materialism and Dualism. Dualism states that reality is made up of physical things and immaterial minds; it is the mind that bears consciousness and it is the mind, not the brain, that thinks and feels. Materialism states that everything is physical and that ultimately consciousness can be explained by physical processes (although this has not yet been done).
In 1623 Galileo declared that mathematics was to be the language of science; this enabled all the physical properties of matter to be quantified. But he left the subjective qualities, such as emotions, feelings and senses out of this, as they could not be quantified. Yet these are the components of consciousness. Describing nature as a set of equations has enabled us to predict how matter operates and has enabled us to manipulate the natural world and ultimately brought about the technological revolution. Physics has been extraordinary successful in telling us what matter does, but not what matter is. It does not tell us about the intrinsic nature of matter.
Goff goes on to promote a third view: that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality – it is the intrinsic nature of matter. In academic circles this view is given the fancy name of “panpsychism”. It describes a world view where we are conscious creatures embedded in a world of consciousness. We live in a physical universe whose intrinsic nature is constituted of consciousness.
So, what is the link to climate change? One of the knotty problems of climate change is that, although many people are now agreeing that it exists, extraordinarily little action has been taken to ameliorate it. Compare this to the Covid-19 crisis where the response has been swift and dramatic. So why? Goff posits that one reason could be that the predominant worldviews of consciousness, which are supported by all major civilisations through their religious, education and cultural systems, promote the view that humans are separate from the rest of the natural world; that we have nothing in common with a tree and that nature has no value in and of itself. All major civilisations promote the view that nature is there to be exploited. Goff argues that if we accept that consciousness is an inherent part of everything, then it has the potential to transform our relationship to the natural world, to the extent that we would want to look after it rather than exploit it. Understanding that we are conscious creatures embedded in a world of consciousness could transform our ability to act upon the threats of climate change.
But, at present, the notion of panpsychism remains a philosophical line of enquiry embedded in the academic system, and thus unlikely to break out into the mainstream world. Panpsychism is also an academic description of an ancient world view supported by many indigenous people, who have always known that all of life is conscious: a worldview that major religions and the scientific community have spent many centuries trying to supress. Maybe it is a time for a change of heart?
Footnote: What was Galileo’s Error? According to Goff, Galileo thought that mathematics could provide insight into the nature of physical reality, and that the nature that it revealed was incompatible with the reality of the sensory qualities (which must therefore reside in the soul). But mathematical models do not tell us anything about the intrinsic nature of matter and nor do they exclude the reality of the sensory qualities. A book well worth reading to get a deeper insight into this
transformativefuturelearning.home.blog 