Philip Goff Knihy

From a leading philosopher of the mind comes this lucid, provocative argument that offers a radically new picture of human consciousness—panpsychism. Understanding how brains produce consciousness is one of the great scientific challenges of our age. Some philosophers argue that consciousness is something "extra," beyond the physical workings of the brain. Others think that if we persist in our standard scientific methods, our questions about consciousness will eventually be answered. And some even suggest that the mystery is so deep, it will never be solved. Decades have been spent trying to explain consciousness from within our current scientific paradigm, but little progress has been made. Now, Philip Goff offers an exciting alternative that could pave the way forward. 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.

This book takes up the question of whether past and future events exist. Two very different views are explored. According to one of these views, presentism, the present is special. According to the alternative view, eternalism, our world is a giant four-dimensional block of spacetime in which all times exist.

Why are we here? What's the point of existence? For those who are unsatisfied by the answers of traditional religion, and equally by the lack of answers from atheism, Philip Goff opens up a path between the two. He argues for cosmic purpose: the idea that the universe is directed towards certain goals, such as the emergence of intelligent life.

A core philosophical project is the attempt to uncover the fundamental nature of reality, the limited set of facts upon which all other facts depend. Perhaps the most popular theory of fundamental reality in contemporary analytic philosophy is physicalism, the view that the world is fundamentally physical in nature. The first half of this book argues that physicalist views cannot account for the evident reality of conscious experience, and hence that physicalism cannot be true. Unusually for an opponent of physicalism, Goff argues that there are big problems with the most well-known arguments against physicalismChalmers' zombie conceivability argument and Jackson's knowledge argumentand proposes significant modifications. The second half of the book explores and defends a recently rediscovered theory of fundamental realityor perhaps rather a grouping of such theoriesknown as 'Russellian monism.' Russellian monists draw inspiration from a couple of theses defended by Bertrand Russell in The Analysis of Matter in 1927. Russell argued that physics, for all its virtues, gives us a radically incomplete picture of the world. It tells us only about the extrinsic, mathematical features of material entities, and leaves us in the dark about their intrinsic nature, about how they are in and of themselves. Following Russell, Russellian monists suppose that it is this 'hidden' intrinsic nature of matter that explains human and animal consciousness. Some Russellian monists adopt panpsychism, the view that the intrinsic natures of basic material entities involve consciousness; others hold that basic material entities are proto-conscious rather than conscious. Throughout the second half of the book various forms of Russellian monism are surveyed, and the key challenges facing it are discussed. The penultimate chapter defends a cosmopsychist form of Russellian monism, according to which all facts are grounded in facts about the conscious universe.

Jeden z wiodących filozofów umysłu przedstawia nową teorię świadomości: panpsychizm. Zrozumienie, jak mózg generuje świadomość, to jedno z największych wyzwań współczesnej nauki. Część filozofów uważa, że świadomość jest czymś nadprogramowym, inni twierdzą, że można ją wyjaśnić za pomocą dotychczasowych metod naukowych, a niektórzy sądzą, że zagadki tej nie da się rozwiązać. Philip Goff proponuje teorię, która może rozwikłać tę tajemnicę, odwołując się do filozoficznego zaplecza nowożytnej nauki oraz prac Eddingtona i Russella. Goff argumentuje, że świadomość nie jest ograniczona do istot biologicznych, lecz jest fundamentalną cechą całej fizycznej materii – od cząstek subatomowych po ludzki mózg. Książka ta jest krokiem w kierunku sformułowania ostatecznej teorii ludzkiej świadomości, prezentując współczesną dyskusję na temat natury umysłu oraz argumenty na rzecz panpsychizmu. Autor krytykuje dominujący model badań naukowych, który pomija jakościowe aspekty doświadczenia. Dyskutuje spory między różnymi formami materializmu i dualizmu, przekonując, że panpsychizm, mimo braku pełnych naukowych dowodów, stanowi właściwą ramę dla dalszych badań. Książka jest napisana w przystępnym stylu, łącząc naukową rzetelność z inspirującą treścią.