Is Consciousness Everywhere?

Essays on Panpsychism
Philip Goff and Alex Moran

Introduction
The mind-body problem, broadly speaking, is the challenge of understanding how
the conscious mind relates to the physical world. On the one hand, it seems that
there is nothing more familiar to us, nothing we know better, than the phenome-
non of consciousness. On the other hand, there is much about consciousness that
has defied our understanding. In particular, there seems to be a special difficulty
when it comes to reconciling the subjective and qualitative aspects of consciousness
with our objective and quantitative, scientific picture of the physical world. One major
task for science and philosophy, therefore, is to find a way to bridge this gap,
thereby explicating the place of consciousness in nature.
Historically, two main positions have been defended in answer to the mind-
body problem. One is dualism, the view that consciousness lies outside the physical
domain, and therefore has a wholly non-physical nature. The other is materialism
(or physicalism), the doctrine that since reality is wholly physical in nature, con-
sciousness must ultimately be thought of as a part of the material world. The pre-
sent volume, however, focuses on an alternative theory, namely, panpsychism. Like
the dualist, the panpsychist claims that consciousness is irreducible and fundamen-
tal, and hence cannot be understood in other, more basic terms. Like the material-
ist, however, the panpsychist also thinks that consciousness does not lie outside of
the rest of nature, but is rather firmly located within the material world. Indeed,
the panpsychist makes the radical claim that consciousness is ubiquitous in nature,
insofar as it is a property instantiated, not just by humans and some animals, but
even by the most fundamental constituents of physical reality. The panpsychist
thus takes nature to be permeated by consciousness, rather than viewing conscious-
ness as a derivative phenomenon that only emerges at higher levels.
One central thought motivating the panpsychist position is an observation
about our understanding of the physical world itself. The key idea is that physics
only describes the relational or dispositional properties of matter, not its intrinsic
nature: what matter does rather than what it is. This then raises a question about
what the intrinsic nature of matter actually is. According to the panpsychist, the
intrinsic nature of basic matter is constituted by rudimentary kinds of conscious-
ness. This then allows us – or so it is hoped – to explicate the more familiar phe-
nomenon of human consciousness in terms of the more basic kind of conscious-
ness instantiated by fundamental physical things. Proponents of panpsychism ar-
gue that the theory enables us to make significant headway with the traditional
mind-body problem, while avoiding the well-known problems that dualists and
materialists face. Its detractors, meanwhile, urge that the theory faces substantial
problems of its own. The papers in this volume explore these and related issues,
from the perspectives of science, philosophy, and theology. Some papers focus on
further motivating and developing the panpsychist position. Others explore vari-
ous challenges that the panpsychist faces. Collectively, they shed new and im-
portant light not only on panpsychism, but on the fundamental question of the
place of consciousness in nature more generally.

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 As stalking horse, many of the papers focus on Philip Goff’s book Galileo’s
Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, which offers an important and
accessible defence of the panpsychist view. The volume also includes a response
piece from Goff to these various articles.

The Scientists

Our first three papers are by theoretical physicists. Carlo Rovelli has previously
defended a relational interpretation of quantum mechanics, according to which
quantum mechanics concerns not how physical entities are in themselves, but how
they are in relation to one another. In his paper, Rovelli suggests that this relational
conception of physics is itself a – very mild – form of panpsychism; and moreover
that it may help address the intuitions underlying the ‘hard problem’ of conscious-
ness, as the differences between the mental and the physical are now less stark than
they might previously have appeared.
The next two papers share a common focus. Panpsychists believe that con-
sciousness is a fundamental feature of reality. Both of the next two papers (the first
by Sean Carroll, the second by Marina Cortes, Lee Smolin, and Clelia Verde), agree
that this conviction requires rewriting current physics, as the understanding of the
basic physics in brains given to us by the ‘Core Theory’ (the standard model of
particle physics combined with the weak-field limit of General Relativity) does not
make reference to consciousness. From this point of agreement, they go in differ-
ent ways. Carroll infers that consciousness is not a fundamental feature of reality,
but rather an emergent property of certain complex systems. Cortes, Smolin and
Verde, in contrast, present a new interpretation of fundamental physics in which
qualia – as well as the passage of time – play a fundamental role.
The next two papers are by neuroscientists, one pro panpsychism and one op-
posed. Anil Seth believes that rather than focusing on the ‘hard problem’ of where
consciousness came from in the first place, it is more profitable to focus on the
‘real problem’ of explaining, predicting, and controlling the various properties of
consciousness in terms of physical processes in the body and brain. Moreover, he
rejects panpsychism as an untestable and therefore unfruitful hypothesis. Whilst
Christof Koch is much more sympathetic to panpsychism, like Seth, he emphasises
the importance of experimental science and testable predictions. Koch outlines and
defends the integrated information theory of consciousness, a theory which entails
that consciousness is ubiquitous in the physical world and hence can be seen as a
form of panpsychism. Koch also expresses disagreement with Philip Goff’s exege-
sis of Galileo in Galileo’s Error.
We often forget that there are philosophical assumptions lying at the bedrock
of any scientific worldview. In his work as an experimental psychologist, Jonathan
Delafield-Butt has found that dropping the philosophical assumptions of materi-
alism, and adopting in their place panpsychist assumptions, affords deeper insights
into the nature and character of autism. In his paper, Delafield-Butt lays out the
case for this, with reference to the panpsychist framework of Alfred North White-
head.
In our next paper, Robert Prentner defends the interface theory, which he has
developed in collaboration with Donald Hoffman and others. The interface theory
has much in common with panpsychism. Both take fundamental reality to be made
up of consciousness. However, whereas panpsychism holds that the physical world
is also fundamental (because the physical world is made up of consciousness), the
interface theory – or ‘idealism’ as we philosophers have called it for a couple of

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hundred years – holds that there is a more fundamental (mental) reality underlying
the physical world. Prenter pits panpsychism against the interface theory, arguing
that the latter offers a more robust, less dualistic theory of consciousness.
Chris Fields has developed a detailed form of panpsychism: minimal physical-
ism. In his paper in this volume, however, Fields raises some challenges to Philip
Goff’s conception of the science of consciousness. Fields is skeptical that science
can or should be in the business of accounting for the specific character of con-
scious states, e.g., the redness of a red experience, as opposed merely to accounting
for why those conscious experiences exist at all (it is interesting that this approach
seems to be the precise opposite of the ‘real problem’ approach Seth defends in
his paper). Fields also expresses his suspicions that the real motivation for the ‘con-
sciousness war’ between dualists, materialists and panpsychists may be a yearning,
on the part of some opponents of materialism, for human exceptionalism.

The Philosophers

The volume includes nine papers by academic philosophers (excluding the re-
sponse piece from Goff). Two of these papers defend and elaborate the
panpsychist position. Luke Roelofs explores the question as to whether, and to
what extent, panpsychism classifies as scientific worldview. In addition, the paper
offers a nuanced discussion of what exactly it means for a philosophical thesis such
as panpsychism to count as scientific in the relevant way. In the following paper,
Annika Harris explores a fundamental problem that panpsychists face, which has
gained much attention in the recent literature, known as the ‘combination prob-
lem’. Harris diagnoses the problem as resulting from the conviction that, for any
given conscious experience, there exists the ‘subject’ or the ‘self’ that has the expe-
rience. Once we realise that subjects don’t really exist in the first place, she argues,
the problem goes away.
Five further papers focus on raising challenges for panpsychism; a couple also
promote an alternative, physicalist view. Damian Aleksiev argues that while
panpsychists focus on explaining consciousness, they face problems when it comes
to accounting for the physical world. In particular, the argument is that if we con-
ceive of the intrinsic nature of matter in terms of consciousness, then several facts
about physical reality become difficult to explain. Alyssa Ney, meanwhile, argues
that panpsychism is not, contrary to what its defenders maintain, sufficiently well-
motivated by its underlying claims concerning physics and the nature of matter.
She also argues that physicalists are in just as good a position as panpsychists when
it comes to accounting for free will, objective value, and meaning.
The remaining three essays from this grouping challenge panpsychism from a
different angle. Again, panpsychists are primarily concerned with explaining con-
sciousness. However, as these authors point out, there is a related explanatory task,
concerning, not consciousness, but the sensory qualities of external things (such as
the redness of a rose, or the distinctive smell of coffee). Both Keith Frankish and
Michelle Lui argue that panpsychists repeat the ‘Galilean mistake’ of supposing
that the sensory qualities are instantiated ‘in the mind’ rather than by external ob-
jects. Frankish then argues that instead, we should deny that anything instantiates
such qualities, which, he claims, then makes it that much easier to embrace a re-
ductive materialist position. Michelle Lui, by contrast, defends sensory quality re-
alism, i.e., the view external things really possess the full range of sensory qualities
they seem to, and criticises the panpsychist for not respecting this position. In a
similar vein, Moran presupposes precisely the kind of sensory quality realism that

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Lui defends, and then maintains that on this assumption, there is much about the
physical world that panpsychists are not in a position to explain. He also claims
that while certain nearby positions to panpsychism may be able to meet the chal-
lenge he articulates, there is a certain kind of non-reductive physicalism that fares
just as well.
The two final papers by philosophers are concerned with connections between
panpsychism and the more familiar materialist and dualist positions. While sympa-
thetic to Philip Goff’s proposal for a ‘post-Galilean’ science of consciousness, in
which consciousness is taken to be a fundamental feature of reality, Ralph Weir
argues that post-Galileans end up being committed to a radical form of dualism
known as substance dualism. Pushing in a contrary direction, Galen Strawson urges
that panpsychism in fact classifies as a form of materialism, and indeed arguably
the most defensible form. Strawson also provides a helpful, detailed discussion of
what the doctrine of materialism actually amounts to.

The Theologians

Panpsychism is often assumed to be a spiritual doctrine. However, many contem-

porary proponents of panpsychism are resolutely secular. They may not believe in
a transcendent reality but they do believe that people have experiences – they feel
pain, they see colour – and this mundane and everyday reality needs to be ac-
counted for in our overall theory of reality.
Nonetheless, some have argued that there are important connections between
panpsychism and spiritual convictions of some form or another. Joanna Leidenhag,
in her paper, argues that the motivations that lie behind the arguments put forth in
support of panpsychism, if applied consistently, lead to belief in God. The
panpsychist demands an intelligible account of how consciousness emerges. But is
it consistent to demand an explanation of consciousness without also demanding
an explanation of the existence of the universe itself? Leidenhag thinks not, and
suggests this line of reasoning can be satisfactorily concluded only by a commit-
ment to theism.
In the final essay of the volume, Sara Lane Ritchie explores the connections
between panpsychism, psychedelic experiences, and spiritual flourishing. It is com-
mon for the person undergoing a psychedelic experience to feel a connection to
ultimate reality, however that is conceived of (Ritchie examines a number of options,
including panentheism, the view that ‘the entire natural world exists within God,
but also that God is, in some sense, more than the natural world’). Presumably a
materialist must reject these experiences as delusional. However, Ritchie argues
that the worldview of a panpsychist may be consistent with the verdicality, i.e. the
non-delusional nature, of these kinds of psychedelic experiences.

Replies from Philip Goff

In the final essay, Philip Goff responds to the essays of the volume. He also ex-
plores some ideas on what a ‘post-Galilean’ science of consciousness – one which
takes consciousness to be a fundamental feature of reality – might look like.