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Philip Goff (philosopher)
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Philip Goff (philosopher)
Philip Goff is a British author, panpsychist philosopher, and professor at Durham University whose research focuses on philosophy of mind and consciousness. Specifically, it focuses on how consciousness can be part of the scientific worldview. Goff holds that materialism is "incoherent" and that dualism leads to "complexity, discontinuity and mystery". Instead, he advocates a "third way", a version of Russellian monism that attempts to account for reality's intrinsic nature by positing that consciousness is a fundamental, ubiquitous feature of the physical world. "The basic commitment is that the fundamental constituents of reality—perhaps electrons and quarks—have incredibly simple forms of experience."
Goff has written that he has been obsessed with the problem of consciousness for as long as he can remember.[citation needed] At the age of 14, he declined to undergo Catholic confirmation and came to negatively associate philosophical dualism with his religious upbringing.
As a philosophy undergraduate at the University of Leeds, he felt he had to choose between dualism and materialism; he became a committed materialist. He passionately debated religious dualists, defending the view that the mind and the brain are synonymous. Later, he began to doubt the coherence of this position because it failed to account for personal experiences that have subjective qualities we know firsthand.[citation needed] This cognitive dissonance finally peaked one evening in a bar when the thrum of vivid sensations clashed with his assumed worldview. "I couldn't deny it anymore. I'd already accepted that if materialism was true, then I was a zombie. But I knew I wasn't a zombie; I was a thinking, feeling human being. I could no longer live in denial of my consciousness." Yet he had to finish his studies, so Goff became a "closet dualist" while continuing to write a dissertation in which he argued that the problem of consciousness was unresolvable. Disenchanted with philosophy, he went on to teach English in Poland.
Later, when he came across Thomas Nagel's article "Panpsychism", Goff discovered a neglected third way of connecting matter and consciousness, rekindling his interest in academic philosophy.
Goff got his PhD at University of Reading under Galen Strawson, one of the few proponents of panpsychism at that time, who was rediscovering Bertrand Russell's and Arthur Eddington's earlier work on monism. Goff then did postdoctoral work at the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University.
Goff was at The University of Hertfordshire and King's College London. He was an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Central European University and the Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham.
Goff is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University.
In 2014, Goff attended the Consciousness Cruise off Greenland, sponsored by Dmitry Volkov and the Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies. It was a floating conference that featured prominent philosophers of mind such as David Chalmers, Paul Churchland, Patricia Churchland, Andy Clark, Daniel Dennett, Keith Frankish, Nicholas Humphrey, Jesse Prinz, and Derk Pereboom. Goff gave a talk about his developing position on and defense of panpsychism.
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Philip Goff (philosopher)
Philip Goff is a British author, panpsychist philosopher, and professor at Durham University whose research focuses on philosophy of mind and consciousness. Specifically, it focuses on how consciousness can be part of the scientific worldview. Goff holds that materialism is "incoherent" and that dualism leads to "complexity, discontinuity and mystery". Instead, he advocates a "third way", a version of Russellian monism that attempts to account for reality's intrinsic nature by positing that consciousness is a fundamental, ubiquitous feature of the physical world. "The basic commitment is that the fundamental constituents of reality—perhaps electrons and quarks—have incredibly simple forms of experience."
Goff has written that he has been obsessed with the problem of consciousness for as long as he can remember.[citation needed] At the age of 14, he declined to undergo Catholic confirmation and came to negatively associate philosophical dualism with his religious upbringing.
As a philosophy undergraduate at the University of Leeds, he felt he had to choose between dualism and materialism; he became a committed materialist. He passionately debated religious dualists, defending the view that the mind and the brain are synonymous. Later, he began to doubt the coherence of this position because it failed to account for personal experiences that have subjective qualities we know firsthand.[citation needed] This cognitive dissonance finally peaked one evening in a bar when the thrum of vivid sensations clashed with his assumed worldview. "I couldn't deny it anymore. I'd already accepted that if materialism was true, then I was a zombie. But I knew I wasn't a zombie; I was a thinking, feeling human being. I could no longer live in denial of my consciousness." Yet he had to finish his studies, so Goff became a "closet dualist" while continuing to write a dissertation in which he argued that the problem of consciousness was unresolvable. Disenchanted with philosophy, he went on to teach English in Poland.
Later, when he came across Thomas Nagel's article "Panpsychism", Goff discovered a neglected third way of connecting matter and consciousness, rekindling his interest in academic philosophy.
Goff got his PhD at University of Reading under Galen Strawson, one of the few proponents of panpsychism at that time, who was rediscovering Bertrand Russell's and Arthur Eddington's earlier work on monism. Goff then did postdoctoral work at the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University.
Goff was at The University of Hertfordshire and King's College London. He was an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Central European University and the Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham.
Goff is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University.
In 2014, Goff attended the Consciousness Cruise off Greenland, sponsored by Dmitry Volkov and the Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies. It was a floating conference that featured prominent philosophers of mind such as David Chalmers, Paul Churchland, Patricia Churchland, Andy Clark, Daniel Dennett, Keith Frankish, Nicholas Humphrey, Jesse Prinz, and Derk Pereboom. Goff gave a talk about his developing position on and defense of panpsychism.
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