What Is Consciousness? - Philip Goff - #272

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Philip Goff, Professor of Philosophy at Durham University and an author. We are talking about one of my favorite topics today, which is consciousness. Consciousness is the most evident of all phenomenons. It's literally the one thing that we can be sure of that exists. And yet we have a very limited understanding of what it is and why it's here. So today, expect to learn the main philosophical positions on consciousness, why Philip thinks the old proposals are insufficient, what time racism means, why Deepak Chopra just won't leave me alone and much more. Honestly, I feel like I could have a discussion on this for days. I love getting a philosopher on, like Philip, who's been in the literature and thinking about this topic for years and years. And then we just get to hear over the space of an hour, everything that he's learned over decades of research. And then we're fully up to speed. We're mostly up to speed about what it is that he's found out. If you enjoy this episode, please share it with a friend. That is the best way to support the show. The only way it grows is people like you sharing it with people like you. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Manscaped, the best in men's below the waist grooming. Get yourself some precision engineered tools for your family jewels. Manscaped has just launched in the UK, so you are finally able to trim your body with all the sensitivity and accuracy that it deserves. But modern Wisdom at manscaped.com works worldwide and includes free shipping with 20% off. So if you are in America or if you are a slightly hairier German fellow, you can also get it as well. Look, here is the thing. You need to trim yourself as a gentleman. You need to keep yourself neat down below. And the options are pretty limited on how you can do it safely. Manscaped Lawn Mower 3 has a quiet stroke technology fueled 7,000 RPM motor to reduce grooming accidents, a 90 minute battery so you can take a longer shave, waterproof technology which allows you to groom in the shower and an LED light which illuminates grooming areas for a closer and more precise trim. On top of that, you can get 20% off and free shipping worldwide at manscaped.com using the code MODERNWISDOM. Hairy nuts are still gross in 2021 and using your old face shaver, it should be illegal. It is far too dangerous and it just don't, did you get a tool for the job? Get a tool for your tool for the job. manscaped.com and the code MODERNWISDOM for 20% off and free shipping. Whew, for now, please give it up for the wise and wonderful Philip Goff.
It's a shame, we're only a couple of miles away from each other, and yet, I've had to use the internet to communicate. If you reached out of your window, I could probably just shout the podcast to you, I think, just stick a recorder in the middle of it.

**Philip Goff** (3:09)
Oh, it's a crazy time to live in, some future time we'll have to get together.

**Chris Williamson** (3:13)
It is indeed. You're a philosopher, what are you doing talking about consciousness? Isn't this the job of a neuroscientist or a biologist? Like, why are you here?

**Philip Goff** (3:23)
Excellent question, yeah. So I guess, yeah, I mean, there's, it's broadly agreed that there's some big, profound challenges surrounding consciousness, you know, we, despite our scientific understanding of the brain, we don't have even the beginnings of an explanation of how complicated electrochemical signaling could somehow produce this inner subjective world of colours and sounds and smells and tastes. So a lot of, most people are on board with that now, but in line with what you've just said, I mean, a very common reaction is to say, okay, there's a problem, but let's just plug away with our standard ways of investigating the brain and we'll crack it. So I don't think that's right. I don't think this is just another scientific problem. I think there's a number of ways in which the problem of consciousness is radically different from any other scientific problem, and that our current scientific approach is really not on its own at least fully equipped to deal with it. So should I say more about that?

**Chris Williamson** (4:32)
Why is it different?

**Philip Goff** (4:34)
Okay, so here's the most straightforward point. Consciousness is not publicly observable. Why you can't look inside my head and see my feelings and experiences. We know about consciousness not from observation experiment, but just from our immediate awareness of our feelings. If I'm in pain, I'm just directly aware of my pain. You can't get at it, but I'm directly aware of it. Now, science is used to dealing with unobservables, right? Fundamental particles, for example, can't be directly observed. But there's an important difference. In all these other cases, we postulate unobservables in order to explain what we can observe. So fundamental particles are postulated part of the standard model of particle physics that explains a huge lot of publicly observable data. So the whole explanatory enterprise is explaining publicly observable data. In the case of consciousness, the thing we are trying to explain is not publicly observable. And that is just a totally different explanatory enterprise.