How Modern Science Got Consciousness Wrong From the Start | Philip Goff

Description

What if consciousness isn't something that emerges from complex brains, but a fundamental feature of reality itself, present, in some rudimentary form, all the way down to electrons and quarks? In this episode, Craig Smith sits down with Philip Goff, a philosopher at Durham University and one of the leading contemporary advocates for panpsychism, to explore that radical idea and what it means for how we think about minds, machines, and the universe itself. Goff lays out his argument from his book Galileo's Error: that modern science's foundational move solved one problem while creating another that we still haven't resolved. The conversation moves through the "combination problem" facing panpsychism, the related idea of cosmopsychism (that the universe itself might be the fundamental conscious entity), and a direct, often skeptical look at whether AI systems like large language models could ever be conscious. Goff argues they're unlikely to be, not because consciousness is magical, but because his framework treats it as something closer to the physical "flesh and blood" of reality than an abstract computational process - though he's careful to note that whether AI or animals are conscious is ultimately a scientific question still without clear rules for how to settle it. Key Topics Covered: ● Panpsychism explained: why consciousness may be a fundamental property of the universe, present in even the simplest physical entities ● Galileo's foundational decision to separate consciousness from the mathematical language of science, and why that move, while productive, may have left a permanent blind spot ● The "combination problem": how simple forms of consciousness in particles could combine into the complex consciousness of a human mind ● Why Goff is skeptical that large language models could ever be conscious, and what kind of artificial system he thinks could be ● The unresolved mystery of why consciousness evolved at all, if sophisticated behavior is possible without any inner experience ● How quantum mechanics, wave function collapse, and consciousness might be connected, and why Goff diverges from the well-known Penrose-Hameroff theory As AI systems become more sophisticated and conversational, the question of whether they could ever be genuinely conscious - not just convincingly humanlike - is moving from philosophy seminars into urgent public debate, and this conversation offers one of the clearest, most rigorously argued perspectives on why that question may be much harder to answer than either AI optimists or skeptics assume. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI. Craig Smith on X: https://x.com/craigss EYE On A.I. on X: https://x.com/EyeOn_AI Connect with Philip Goff Website: https://philipgoffphilosophy.com Timestamps 00:00 Is Consciousness Fundamental to the Universe? 02:14 Galileo's Error and the Problem of Consciousness 10:00 Why Panpsychism Challenges Modern Science 14:05 Cosmopsychism and the Conscious Universe 18:14 Could AI Ever Become Conscious? 25:03 Are Large Language Models Actually Aware? 33:20 Why Consciousness May Have Evolved 38:04 Can Science Detect Subjective Experience? 45:33 Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness 54:28 The Three Major Theories of Consciousness 57:00 Does Everything Have Some Form of Awareness?