''Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness'' is a 2019 book authored by British philosopher Philip Goff. The book presents a defense of the theory of

panpsychism In philosophy of mind, panpsychism () is the view that the mind or a mind-like aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. It is also described as a theory that "the mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throug ...

as the solution to the

hard problem of consciousness In the philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness is to explain why and how humans and other organisms have qualia, phenomenal consciousness, or subjective experience. It is contrasted with the "easy problems" of explaining why and how ...

. The title of the book refers to

Galileo Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei ( , , ) or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a poly ...

inaugurating

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

by dividing the world into two “radically different kinds of entities” — the quantitative characteristics, which became the domain of science, and the qualitative characteristics which are the soul’s response to the physical world.

Synopsis

Goff presents the

dualist Dualism most commonly refers to: * Mind–body dualism, a philosophical view which holds that mental phenomena are, at least in certain respects, not physical phenomena, or that the mind and the body are distinct and separable from one another * P ...

and

materialist Materialism is a form of philosophical monism according to which matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materia ...

views on consciousness and proceeds to demonstrate their respective failures to explain consciousness.

Dualism

Dualism, the idea that consciousness is separate from the physical mind suffers from the apparent lack of unexplained activity in the brain that would be present if it were interacting with a non-physical mind.

Materialism

With regards to materialism, Goff's critique is based on thought experiments that aim to demonstrate that objective knowledge cannot be extended to encapsulate the subjective experience. Therefore consciousness, which is a subjective experience cannot be explained in terms of the physical brain, which is objective.

Panpsychism

He then goes on to present panpsychism as what he describes to be "a way of accepting the reality of consciousness" while being "entirely consistent with the facts of empirical science". The book defines panpsychism as the view that “consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality,” and everything, including

fundamental particles In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a subatomic particle that is not composed of other particles. The Standard Model presently recognizes seventeen distinct particles—twelve fermions and five bosons. As a con ...

, has consciousness. That's not to say, however, that everything has human-level conscious. Instead, it's the complex arrangement of trillions of those conscious particles in the brain that brings that forth.

References

External links

* {{official website, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/599229/galileos-error-by-philip-goff/ 2019 non-fiction books Books about consciousness