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Bezig met laden... Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousnessdoor Philip Goff
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. On (Cartesian) dualism: philosopher Goff decisively and rather handily rejects, as anyone should, this approach to explaining consciousness (but he cuts some slack for naturalistic dualists like David Chalmers). On (eliminative) materialism: he seems to think that he refutes it as logically and indubitably as Galileo refuted Aristotelian falling motion, but I just don't see that he does (or that the illusionist ideas of people like Daniel Dennett are disproved). On (nondualistic) panpsychism: this approach, advanced by Bertrand Russell and Arthur Eddington in the 1920s, is the one he plunks for. It comes in both a reductionist variety and an emergentist variety, the latter seeming to be compatible with the quantitative Integrated Information Theory of consciousness. Meaty and eye-opening stuff. I think Goff's call for a "post-Galilean" scientific paradigm that doesn't exclude subjective qualities may be intriguingly consonant with positions taken by some of the physicists advocating psi-epistemic interpretations of quantum mechanics. This is a review of Philip Goff’s book Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. I was intrigued by the idea that we could consider consciousness to be a sort of universal fabric that comprised even sub-atomic particles. But, alas, I think Goff’s idea is not well supported by his argument. Pansychism is vulnerable to David Hume’s devastation of the mediaeval notion of ‘substance’: an ‘intrinsic stuff’ that the schoolmen thought lurked beneath the empirical qualities of matter and the experiences of the ‘soul’. See more at petergallagher.com.au/panpsychism/ geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
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. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)128.2Philosophy and Psychology Philosophy Of Humanity The Human Condition MindLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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If you are coming to this book the same way I did - with curiosity about panpsychism, a school of thought that sounds so outlandish at first consideration - I think you will be rewarded. Goff does a great job laying out compelling arguments of why we should consider other options when it comes to tackling the problem of consciousness. This is no polemic or apologia - Goff is aware of the counterintuitive nature of what he is describing here, and does a good job of keeping his explanation of panpsychism down to earth. That being said, there are several passages in this book that I had to read more than once to truly wrap my head around - maybe they won’t be a problem for all the quantumheads out there, but a lot of the bizarre characteristics of quantum entanglement and the various theories about conscious are so alien to the mainstream way of thinking that I had a hard time comprehending. That’s not to say that Goff writes in an obscure way - actually I think he does a good job describing some of these brain busting phenomena and theories.
There is a passage near the end of the book where Goff says panpsychism has the power to “re-enchant the world.” Part of me really wants the view of reality Goff describes in this book to be real, simply because it brings a sense of wonder to a world that seems to be more and more quantized and quantified with every passing hour. To expand our conception of consciousness would almost certainly bring along with it a more compassionate and careful outlook on our planet, and make the grand ideals of humanity a little bit more exigent. The negative reviewer of this book might say that wanting something to be true isn’t good enough in the academic climes that this book was spawned from, and it Goff’s favor he definitely covered all his bases by engaging with many salient critiques of panpsychism. But for a simple layman like myself, with absolutely no skin in the game, I appreciate this book for its clear depiction of a school of thought that deserves consideration, and contrary to so much of the feeling in the world now, presents us with a workable, and dare I say optimistic vision of reality. ( )