Kind: captions
Language: en
i believe our official scientific world
view is incompatible with the reality of
consciousness do you think we're living
in a simulation we could be in the
matrix this could be a very vivid dream
there's going to be a few people that
are now visualizing a pink elephant a
hamster has consciousness except for
cats who are evil automatons that are
void of consciousness consciousness is
the basis of moral value moral concern
do you think there will be a time in
like 20 30 50 years when we're not
morally okay turning off the power to a
robot
the following is a conversation with
philip gough philosopher specializing in
the philosophy of mind and consciousness
he is a pan psychist which means he
believes that consciousness is a
fundamental and ubiquitous feature of
physical reality of all matter in the
universe he is the author of galileo's
error foundations for a new science of
consciousness and is the host of an
excellent podcast called mind chat
this is the lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now here's my
conversation with philip gough
i opened my second podcast conversation
with elon musk
with a
question about consciousness and pan
psychism the question was
quote does consciousness permeate all
matter i don't know why i opened the
conversation this way he looked at me
like what the hell is this guy talking
about
so he said no because we wouldn't be
able to tell if it did or not so it's
outside the realm of the scientific
method do you agree or disagree with
elon musk's answer
i disagree i guess i i guess i do think
consciousness pervades matter in fact i
think consciousness is the ultimate
nature
of matter
so
as for whether it's outside
of the scientific method
i think there's
a fundamental challenge at the heart of
the science of consciousness that we
need to face up to which is that
consciousness is is not publicly
observable
all right i can't look inside your head
and see your feelings and experiences
we know about consciousness not you know
not from doing experiments or public
observation
we just know about it from our immediate
awareness of our feelings and
experiences
so it's qualitative not quantitative as
you talk about yeah that's another
aspect of it so there are a couple of
reasons consciousness
i think is not susceptible to the
standard or not fully susceptible to the
standard scientific approach one reason
you've just raised is that it's
qualitative rather than quantitative
another reason is it's not publicly
observable so i mean science science is
used to dealing with
uh unobservables right you know
fundamental particles quantum wave
functions other universes none of these
things are
observable
but there's an important difference
with all these things
we postulate unobservables
in order to explain what we can observe
right in the whole of science
that's that's the that's how it works in
the case of consciousness
in the unique case of consciousness the
thing we are trying to explain
is not publicly observable and that is
utterly unique if we want to fully bring
science into consciousness we need a
more expansive conception of the
scientific method so it doesn't mean we
can't explain consciousness
scientifically
but we need to rethink what science is
what do you mean publicly the word
publicly observable is there something
interesting to be said about the word
publicly i suppose versus privately
yeah it's tricky to define but i suppose
the data of physics are available to
anybody if um you know if there were
aliens who visited us from another
planet maybe they'd have very different
sense organs maybe they'd struggle to
understand our
art or our music
but if they were
intelligent enough to do mathematics
they could understand our physics they
could look at the data of our
experiments they could run the
experiments themselves whereas
consciousness
is it observable is it not observable in
a sense it's observable as you say we
could say it's
privately observable
i am directly aware of my own feelings
and experiences if i'm in pain
it's
it's just right there for me my pain is
just totally directly evident to me
but you from the outside
cannot directly access my pain you can
access my pain behavior
but or you can ask me
but you can't
access my pain in the way that i can
access my pain
so i think
that's a distinction
it might be difficult to totally pin it
down
how we define those things but i think
there's a fairly clear and very
important difference there so you think
there's a a kind of direct observation
that you're able to do of your pain
that i'm not so my observation
all the ways in which i can sneak up to
observing your pain is indirect
versus yours is direct
can you play devil's advocate is it
possible for me to get closer and closer
and closer
to being able to observe your pain
like all the subjective experiences
you're yours
in the way that you do
yeah i mean
so it's of course it's not that we
observe behavior and then we make an
inference
we are hardwired
to instinctively
interpret smiles as happiness
crying as
as sadness and
as we get to know someone we find it
very easy to adopt their perspective get
into their shoes
but
strictly speaking
all we have perceptual access to
is someone's behavior and
if you were just strictly speaking if
you were trying to
explain
someone's behavior that those aspects
that are publicly observable
i don't think you'd ever have recourse
to attribute consciousness you could
just postulate some kind of mechanism if
you were just trying to explain the
behavior so someone like daniel dennett
is very consistent on this
so i think for most people
what science is in the business of
is
explaining
the data of public observation
experiment if you religiously followed
that
you would not postulate consciousness
because it's it's not
a datum that's known about in that way
and daniel dennett is really consistent
on this he thinks
my consciousness cannot be empirically
verified and therefore it doesn't exist
dennett is consistent on this i think
i'm consistent on this but i think a lot
of people
have a slightly confused
uh
middleweight position on this on the one
hand
they think um
the business of science is just to
account for public observation
experiment
but on the other hand
they also believe in consciousness
without appreciating i think that
that implies that there is another datum
over and above the data of public
observation experiments namely just the
reality of feelings and experiences as
we walk along this conversation you keep
opening doors i don't want to walk into
and i will but i want to try to stay
kind of focused so you mentioned daniel
dennett let's lay it out since he sticks
to his story
upon unintended and then you stick to
yours what is your story what is your
theory of consciousness versus his can
you clarify his position
so
my view i defend the view known as pan
psychism which is the view that
consciousness
is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature
of the physical world
so it doesn't literally mean that
everything is conscious despite
the meaning of the word pan everything
psyche mind so literally that means
everything has mind
but
the typical commitment of the panzykist
is that
the fundamental building blocks of
reality
maybe fundamental particles like
electrons and quarks
have
incredibly simple forms of experience
and that the very complex experience of
the human or animal brain
is somehow rooted in or derived from
this much more simple consciousness at
the level of fundamental physics
so i mean that's that's a theory that i
would justify on the grounds that it can
account for this
datum of consciousness that it that we
are immediately aware of in our
experience
in a way that i don't think other
theories can if you asked me to contrast
that to daniel dennett i think he would
just say there is no such datum
dennett says the data for science of
consciousness is what he calls
heterophenomenology
which is
specifically defined as what we can
access from the third person perspective
including what people say
but crucially we're not treating what
they say we're not relying on their
testimony
as evidence for some unobservable uh
realm of feelings and experiences we're
just treating their what they say as
a datum of public observation
experiments that we can account for in
terms of underlying mechanisms i feel
like there's a deeper view of what
consciousness is
so you have a very clear and we'll talk
quite a bit about pan psychism
but you have a clear view of what
you know almost like a physics view of
consciousness he i think has a kind of
view that
consciousness is almost the side effect
of this
massively
parallel computation system going on in
our our brain that the the the brain is
has a model of the world and it's taking
in perceptions and it's constantly
weaving multiple stories about that
world
that's integrating the new perceptions
and the multiple stories are somehow
it's like a google doc collaborative
editing and that collaborative editing
is the actual experience
of uh
what we think of as consciousness
somehow
the editing is consciousness of this of
this
story i mean that that's that's a theory
of consciousness isn't it
the narrative theory of consciousness or
the multiple
versions editing collaborative editing
of a narrative theory of consciousness
yeah he calls it the multiple drafts
model incidentally there's a very
interesting paper just come out by a
very good philosopher luke roloff's
defending a pan psychist version of
dennett's uh multiple drafts model um
like a deeper turtle that that
establishes the difference being that
this is luke roloff's view all of the
drafts are conscious so i guess i guess
um
i guess for uh
dennett
there's sort of no fact of the matter
about which of these drafts is the
correct one
on roloff's view maybe there's no fact
of the matter about which of these
drafts is my consciousness
but
nonetheless all the drafts correspond to
some consciousness and i mean it just
sounds kind of funny i guess i think he
calls it uh danetti and pan psychism but
this but luke is a
one of the most rigorous uh and serious
philosophers
alive at the moment i think and i hate
having luke roloff's in an audience if
i'm giving a tour because he always cuts
straight to the the weakness in your
position that you hadn't thought of and
so it's nice you know psychism is
sometimes associated with fluffy
thinking but you know
contemporary pant psychists have come
out of this tradition we call analytic
philosophy which is rooted in you know
detailed rigorous argumentation and
and it is defended in that manner
yeah
those analytic philosophers are
sticklers for terminology it's very fun
very fun group to talk talk shit with or
yeah well i mean it gets boring if it's
if you just start and then defining
words right yeah i think starting with
defining words is good actually the
philosopher derek parfit said when
when he first was thinking about
philosophy he went to a talk in analytic
philosophy and he went to a talking
continental philosophy
and he decided that the problem with the
continental philosophy if it was really
unrigorous really and precise the
problem with the analytic philosophy is
it was just
not about anything important and he
thought there was more chance of working
within analytic philosophy and asking
some more meaningful some more profound
questions than there was in working
continental philosophy and making it
more rigorous now they're both horrific
stereotypes and you know i don't want to
get nasty emails from either of these
groups but that there's something
there's something to what he was saying
i think just a tiny tangent on
terminology
i do think that there's uh
a lot of deep insight to be discovered
by just asking questions what do we mean
by this word i remember i was taking a
a course on algorithms and data
structures in computer science and the
instructor
shout out to him ali shakafande amazing
professor i remember he asked some basic
questions like what is an algorithm
the pressure of pushing students to
answer to think deeply you know you just
woke up hungover in college or whatever
and you're tasked with answering some
deep philosophical questions about what
is an algorithm these basic questions
and they sound very simple but they're
actually very difficult and one of the
things i really value in conversation is
asking these dumb simple questions of
like
you know what is intelligence
and just continually asking that
question over and over
of um
some of the sort of biggest research in
the
researchers in the artificial
intelligence computer science space it's
actually very useful at the same time
you know it should start a terminology
and then progress where you kind of say
ah fuck it we'll just
we'll just assume we know what we mean
by that otherwise you get the the bill
clinton situation where it's like
what is the meaning of his is whatever
he said it's like hey man did you do the
sex stuff or not
yeah
so
there's you have to both be able to talk
about
the sex stuff and the meaning of the
word is with consciousness because we
don't currently understand you know
very much
terminology discussions are very
important because
it's like you're almost trying to sneak
uh
sneak up to some deep insight by just
discussing some basic terminology
you know like what is consciousness or
even defining the different aspects of
pan psychism is fascinating but just to
linger on the um the daniel dennett
thing
what do you think about
narrative
sort of the mind constructing narratives
for ourselves so
there's nothing special about
consciousness
deeply it is some property of the human
mind
that's just
is able to tell these pretty stories
that we experience as consciousness and
that's unique perhaps to the human mind
which is i suppose what uh danielle
dennett would argue that it's
either deeply unique or
mostly unique to the human mind
it's just on the question of terminology
before right um
yes i think it used to be
the fashion among philosophers that we
had to come up with utterly precise
necessary and sufficient conditions for
each word
and then i think i think this has gone
out of fashion a bit partly because it's
just been
you know such a failure
the word knowledge in particular people
used to define knowledge as true
justified belief and then this guy
gettier had this very short paper where
he just produced some pretty conclusive
counter examples to that i think you
know he wrote very few papers but this
is just you know you have to teach this
on a on an undergraduate philosophy
course and then after that
you had a huge literature of people
trying to
address this and propose a new
definition but then someone else would
come out with counter examples and then
you get a new definition of knowledge
and counter examples and it just went on
and on and never seemed to get anywhere
so i think the thought now is
let's work out how precise we need to be
for what we're trying to do and i think
that's a healthier attitude so precision
is important but you just need to work
out how precise do we need to be for
these purposes
coming to dennett and narrative theories
i mean i think
i i think narrative theories are
a plausible contender for a theory of
the self
theory of my identity over time what
makes me
the same person in some sense today as i
was
20 years ago given that i've changed so
much physically and psychologically
one running contender is is something
like connected to the kind of stories we
tell about ourselves or maybe some story
about the psychological the chains of
psychological continuity i'm not saying
i accept such a theory but it's
plausible i don't think these theories
are good
as theories of consciousness
at least if we're taking consciousness
just to be
subjective experience pleasure pain
seeing color hearing sound
i think you know a hamster has
consciousness in that sense there's
something that it's like to be a hamster
it it feels pain if you stand on it if
you're cruel enough to do i don't know
why i gave that stand people always give
i don't know philosophers give these
very violent examples to to get the
cross consciousness and it's yeah i
don't know why that's coming probably
but anyway say mean things to the
hamster let's let's look back
it experiences pain experiences pleasure
joy
um i mean but there are some limits to
that experience of a hamster but there
is nevertheless the presence of a
subjective experience yeah consciousness
is just something i mean it's a very
ambiguous word but if we're just
using it to mean some kind of experience
some kind of in a life
that is pretty widespread in the animal
kingdom a bit difficult to say where it
stops where it starts but
you don't you certainly don't need
something as sophisticated as the
capacity to self-consciously tell
stories about yourself to be
to just have experience except for cats
who are
evil automatons that are void of
consciousness they're the fingertips of
the devil oh absolutely yeah well that
was i was taking that as read i mean
descartes thought animals were
mechanisms and humans are unique so so
animals are robots essentially in the
formulation of the car and humans are
unique
yeah so in which way would you say
humans are unique
versus
even our closest uh ancestors like is
there something special about humans
what is in your view under the pan
psychism i guess we're walking backwards
because we'll we'll have the big picture
conversation about what is pan psychism
but given
your kind of broad theory of
consciousness
what's unique about humans do you think
as a pan psychist
there is a great continuity between
humans and the rest of the universe
there's nothing
that special about human consciousness
it's just a highly evolved form
of what exists throughout the universe
so so we're very much continuous with
the rest of the physical universe what
is unique about human beings i suppose
the capacity to
reflect on our conscious experience um
plan for the future
um
the capacity i would say to respond to
reasons
as well um i mean animals in some sense
have motivations
but when a human being makes a decision
they're responding to
what philosophers call normative
considerations you know if you're saying
should i take this job in the u.s you
weigh it up you say well you know i'll
get more money i'll have maybe a better
quality of life but if i stay in the uk
i'll be closer to family and you weigh
up these considerations
i'm not
sure um
any non-human animals
quite respond to considerations of value
in that way i mean i might be reflecting
here that i'm something of an
objectivist about value i think there
are
objective facts about what we have
reason to do and what we have reason to
believe and humans have access to those
and humans have access to them and can
respond to them that's a controversial
claim you know um
many of my pan psychist brethren might
not uh
they would say the hamster
too
can look up to the stars and ponder
theoretical physics maybe not but i
think it depends what you think about
value if you have a more
humane picture of value by which i mean
relating to the philosopher david hume
who said um
reason is the slave of the passions
really we just have motivations
and what we have reason to do arises
from our motivations i'm not a human i
think there are objective facts about
what we have a reason to do and i think
we have access to them i don't think any
non-human animal
has access to
objective facts about what they have
reason to do what they have reason to
believe they don't weigh up evidence
reason is a slave of the passions that
was david hume's view yeah i mean
yeah do you want to know my problem with
fumes i had a radical conversion this is
this might not be connected it's not
connected to pan cycling but i don't i
had a radical conversion i used to have
a more humane view
uh when i was a graduate student
but i was persuaded
by uh some professors at the university
of redding where i was
that if you have a human view you have
to say
any basic
life goals are
equal
equally valid
so for example let's take someone whose
basic goal in life
is counting blades of grass right
and crucially they don't enjoy it right
this is the crucial but they get no
pleasure from it that's just their basic
goal to spend their life counting as
many blades of grass as possible not for
some greater gold that's just their
basic goal
i i want to say that that is objectively
stupid that is objectively pointless i
shouldn't say stupid movie it's
objectively pointless
uh in a way that
pursuing pleasure or pursuing someone
else's pleasure or pursuing scientific
inquiry is not pointless as soon as you
make that admission you're not a
follower of david hume anymore you think
there are
objective facts about what goals are
worth pursuing
is it possible to have a goal without
pleasure so this kind of
idea that you disjoint the two
so the
david foster wallace idea of you know
the key to life is to be unborable isn't
it possible to discover the pleasure in
everything in life
the counting of the the blades of grass
once you see the mastery the skill of it
you can discover the pleasure therefore
you know
um i guess what i'm asking is
why and when and how did you lose the
romance in grad school
[Laughter]
is that what you're trying to say
i think it may or may not be true that
it's possible to find pleasure in
everything
but i think it's also true that
people don't act solely for pleasure and
they certainly don't actually for their
own pleasure people will
suffer for things they think are
worthwhile i might you know i might
suffer for some scientific cause for
um
finding out a cure for the pandemic or
um
and in terms of my own pleasure i might
have less pleasure in doing that but i
think it's worthwhile it's a worthwhile
thing to do i don't i just don't think
it's the case that
everything we do is is rooted in
maximizing our own pleasure i don't
think that's even psychologically
plausible but pleasure then that's a
narrow kind of view of play that's like
a short-term pleasure but you can see
pleasure as a kind of uh
ability to hear the music in the
distance it's like yes it's difficult
now it's suffering now
but there is some greater thing beyond
the mountain
that would be joy i mean that's kind of
uh even if it's not in this life
well you know the warriors will meet in
valhalla
right the feeling that gives meaning and
fulfillment to life is not necessarily
grounded in pleasure
of like the counting of the grass it's
something else i don't know um the
struggle is a source of
deep fulfillment so like i think
pleasure needs to be kind of
thought of as
a little bit more broadly it's just kind
of
gives you this sense
it uh for a moment allows you to forget
the terror of the fact that you're going
to die
that that that's pleasure like that's
the broader view of pleasure that you
get to kind of uh
play
in the little illusion that all of this
has deep meaning
that's pleasure yeah well
but i mean you know people
sacrifice their lives uh atheists may
sacrifice their lives for the sake of
someone else or for the sake of
something important enough and
clearly in that case they're not um
doing it for the sake of their own
pleasure that's a rather dramatic
example but they can be just trivial
examples where
um
you know i i choose to
be honest rather than um
lie about something can i lose out a bit
and i um i have a bit less pleasure but
i thought it was worth doing the honest
thing or something i mean i just think
so that's a
i mean maybe you can use the word
pleasure so broadly that you're just
essentially meaning something worthwhile
but then
i think the word pleasure maybe maybe
loses its meaning
sure wow
but what do you think about the blades
of grass case what do you think about
someone who spends their life counting
blades of grass and doesn't enjoy it
so i think i personally think it's
impossible or maybe i'm not
understanding
even like the philosophical formulation
but i think it's impossible to have a
goal and not draw pleasure from it
make it worthwhile forget the word
pleasure
i think
the word gold loses meaning if i say i'm
going to count the number of pens on
this table
if i'm actively involved in the task i
will find
joy in it i will find out like i think
there's a lot of meaning and joy to be
discovered in the uh
in the skill of a task in mastering of a
skill
and and taking pride in and doing it
well i mean that's
i don't know what it is about the human
mind but there's there's some
um
joy to be discovered in the mastery of a
skill
so i think it's just impossible to count
blades of grass and not sort of have the
giro dreams of sushi
uh compelling like draws you into the
mastery of the simple task
um
yeah i suppose i mean
in a way you might think it's it's it's
just hard to imagine someone who would
spend their lives doing that but then
maybe that's just because it's so
evident
that that is a pointless task whereas
if we take this david humebu seriously
it ought to be you know a totally
possible life goal whereas i mean i
yeah i guess i just find it hard to
shake the idea that
some ways of
um some life goals are more worthwhile
than others and it doesn't mean you know
that there's a one single way you should
lead your life but
pursuing knowledge helping people um
pursuing your own pleasure to an extent
are a worthwhile things to do
in the in a way that you know for
example i have i'm a little bit
ocd i i still feel inclined to
walk on cracks in the pavement or do it
symmetrically like if i
step on a crack with my left foot i feel
the need to do it my right foot and
um
i think that's kind of pointless it's
something i feel the urge to do but it's
pointless whereas
other things i choose to do i think
there's
it's worth doing and
um it's hard to make sense of
metaphysically what could possibly
ground that how could we know about
these facts but
that's the starting point for me i don't
know i think you walking
on the sidewalk in a way that's
symmetrical
brings uh order to the world like if you
weren't doing that the world might fall
apart and you it feels like that
i think there's there's um there's
meaning in that like you
embracing the full
like the full experience of that you
living the richness to that as if it has
meaning will give meaning to it and then
whatever genius comes of that as you as
a one little intelligent aunt will make
a better life for everybody else perhaps
i'm defending the the blades of grass
example because i can literally imagine
myself enjoying this task as somebody
who's right ocd in a certain kind of way
and quantitative but now you're ruining
the exam because you imagine someone
enjoying it i'm imagining someone who
doesn't enjoy it we don't want a life
that's
just full of pleasure like we just sit
there you know
having a big sugar high all the time we
want a life where we do things that are
worthwhile
if
for something to be worthwhile just is
for it to be a basic life goal
then
um
that
that mode of reflection doesn't really
make sense we can't really think did i
do things worthwhile on the on the david
hume type picture
all it is for something to be worthwhile
is it was a basic goal of yours or
derived from a basic goal and
yeah
yeah i mean i i think goal and
worthwhile aren't
i think goal's a boring word a more sort
of existential is like
did you ride the roller coaster of life
did you fully experience life
that
and in that sense i mean the blaze of
grass
is something that could be deeply joyful
and that's
in that way i think suffering can be
joyful in the full context of life it's
the rollercoaster of life like without
suffering without struggle without pain
without depression or sadness there's
not the highs i mean that's just yeah
that's the fucked up thing about life is
that um
the lows
really make the highs
that much
richer and deeper and
and like tastes better right like the
like i was i tweeted this i was i
couldn't sleep and i was like late at
night
and i know it's like uh obvious
statement
but
like every
love story
eventually
you know ends in loss
in tragedy
so like this feeling of love
at the end there's always going to be
tragedy even if it's the most amazing
lifelong love with another human being
one of you is going to die
and i don't know which is worse
but both both are not going to be pretty
and so
that
the sense that it's finite the sense
that it's going to end in a low
that gives like richness
to those kind of evenings when you
realize this fucking thing ends this
thing ends
the the feeling that it ends
the the that that that bad taste that
bad feeling that it ends gives meaning
gives joy gives i don't know pleasure
this loaded word but
gives some kind of uh deep pleasure to
the experience when it's good
and i i mean and that's the blades of
grass
you know they they have that to me
um
but you're perhaps right that it's uh
like uh reducing it to a set of goals or
something like that
is is um kind of removing the magic of
life because i think what makes counting
the blaze of grass joyful is
it's just because it's life
okay so it sounds like you it sounds
like you reject
the david hume type picture anyway
because you're saying
just because you have it as a goal
that's what it is to be worthwhile but
you're saying no it's because it's
engaging with life riding the roller
coaster
um
so that does sound like in some sense
there are facts
independent of our personal goal choices
about what it means to live a good life
and i mean coming back full circle to
the start of the start of this was what
makes us different to animals i don't
think at the end of a hamster's life
it thinks did i ride the roller coaster
did i really live life to the full that
is not a mode of reflection that's
available to non-human animals so
what do you think is the role of death
in uh in all of this
the the fear of death
does that interplay with consciousness
does
this self-reflection
do you think
there's some
deep connection between this ability to
contemplate the fact that the our flame
of
of uh
consciousness eventually goes out
yeah i don't think unfortunately pan
psychism
helps particularly with life after death
because you know for the pan cyclist
there's nothing supernatural there's
nothing
beyond the physical all there is really
is ultimately particles and fields it's
just that we think the ultimate nature
of particles and fields is consciousness
but
i guess when um
when the uh
the matter in my brain
ceases to be ordered in a way that
sustains the particular kind of
consciousness
uh i enjoy in waking life then
in some sense i will i i will cease to
be although i do that the final chapter
of my book galileo's era is more
experimental so the first four chapters
are the
cold-blooded case for the panzerkist
view is that the best
solution to the hard problem of
consciousness the last chapter we talk
about meaning yeah i talk about meaning
talk about free will and i talk about
mystical experiences so
i always want to emphasize that
pan psychism is not necessarily
connected to anything spiritual you know
a lot of people defending this view like
david sharma's or luke roloffs are just
total atheist secularists right they
don't believe in
any kind of transcendent reality they
just believe in
feelings you know mundane consciousness
and think that needs explaining in our
conventional scientific approach can't
cut it
but
if
for independent reasons you are
motivated to some spiritual
picture of reality then maybe a
panzerkiss view is is more consonant
with that so if you
if you have a mystical experience where
you um
it seems to you in this experience that
there is this
higher form of consciousness at the root
of all things
if you're a materialist you've got to
think that's a delusion you know there's
just something in your brain making you
think that it's not real
but if you're a pan psychist and you
already think
the fundamental nature of reality is
constituted of consciousness it's not
that much of a leap to think that
this higher form of consciousness you
seem to apprehend in the mystical
experience is part of that underlying
reality
and you know in in many different
cultures experienced meditators
have claimed to have experiences
in which it becomes apparent to them
that
there is an element of consciousness
that is universal so this is sometimes
called universal consciousness
so
on this view
your mind and my mind are not
uh totally distinct
uh each of our individual conscious
minds is built upon the foundations of
universal consciousness and universal
consciousness as it exists in me is
one and the same thing as universal
consciousness as it exists in you
so
i've never had one of these experiences
but if one is a pancychist i think one
is more open to that possibility i don't
see why it shouldn't be the case that
that is part of the nature of
consciousness and maybe something that
is apparent in certain
deep states of meditation and so what i
explore in the experimental final
chapter of my book is that could allow
for
a kind of impersonal
life after death because if that view is
true then even when the
particular
aspects of my conscious experience fall
away
that
element of universal consciousness at
the core of my identity would continue
to exist
so i'd sort of be as it were absorbed
into universal consciousness so i mean
buddhists and hindu mystics
try to meditate to get rid of all the
bad karma to
be absorbed into universal consciousness
it could be that
if uh if there's no karma if there's no
reverb maybe everyone gets enlightened
when they die maybe you uh just
sink back into universal consciousness
so i i also coming back to morality
suggests this could provide some kind of
basis for
altruism or non-egotism because if you
think
egotism implicitly assumes that we are
utterly distinct individuals whereas on
this view we we're not we overlap to an
extent that something at the core of our
being is even in this life we overlap
that would be this view that
some experienced meditators claim
becomes apparent to them that there is
something at the core of my identity
that is one and the same as
the thing at the core of your identity
uh this universal consciousness
yeah there is something very
like you and i in this conversation
there's a few people listening to this
all of us are in a kind of
single mind together
there's some small aspect of that
and
or maybe a big aspect about us humans
so certainly in the space of ideas we
kind of um
meld together
for time at least in a conversation
and kind of play with that idea and then
we're clearly all thinking like if i say
pink elephant
there's going to be a few people that
are now visualizing a pink elephant
we're all thinking
about that pink elephant together
we're all in the room together thinking
about this pink outfit and we're like
rotating it um like you know in our
minds together what is that
that pink out does that
is there a different instantiation of
that pink elephant in everybody's mind
or is it the same elephant and we have
the same mind exploring that elephant
now if we in our mind start petting that
elephant like touching it that
experience that we're now like thinking
what that would feel like
what's that is that all of us
experiencing that together or is that
separate so like there's some aspect of
the togetherness that almost seems
fundamental to civilization to society
hopefully that's not too strong but to
like some of the
fundamental properties of the human mind
it feels like the social aspect is
really important
we call it social because we think of us
as individual minds interacting but if
we're just like one collective mind
with like fingertips they're like
touching each other as it's trying to
explore the elephant
but that could be just in the realm of
ideas and intelligence and not in the
realm of consciousness and it's
interesting to see maybe it is in the
realm of consciousness yeah so
it's obviously certainly true in some
sense
that there are these phenomena that
you're talking about of
collective consciousness in some sense i
suppose the question is
how
ontologically serious do we want to be
about those things by which i mean are
they just a construction of out of our
minds and the fact that we interact in
the
standard standardly scientifically
accepted ways
or is as someone like rupert sheldrake
would think that there is some
metaphysical reality there are some
fields beyond the scientifically
understood ones that are somehow
communicating this um
i mean i think that i mean the view i
was describing was that this element
we're supposed to have in common is
is some sort of pure impersonal
consciousness or something rather than
so actually i mean an interesting figure
is the the australian philosopher mirial
buhari who defends a kind of
mystical conception of reality rooted in
uh advice of a dante mysticism
but like me she's from this tradition of
analytic philosophy and so she defends
this in this you know incredibly precise
rigorous way she defends the idea that
we should think of experienced
meditators as
uh providing expert testimony
so you know i think
humans cause a causing climate breakdown
i have no idea the science behind it you
know i but i trust the experts or you
know that the universe is 14 billion
years old you know most of our knowledge
is based on expert testimony and she
thinks we should think of
experienced meditators these people who
are telling us about this universal
consciousness at the core of our being
as a relevant kind of expert and so she
wants to defend you know the rational
acceptability of this mystical
conception of reality so it's what you
know i think
we shouldn't be a shame you know we
shouldn't be worried about
dealing with certain views as long as
it's done with rigor and seriousness you
know i think sometimes terms like i
don't know new age or something can
function a bit like racist terms you
know a racist term
picks out a group of people but then
implies certain negative characteristics
so people use this term you know to pick
out a certain set of views like mystical
conceptual reality and and imply it's
kind of
fluffy thinking or but you know you read
mirial bahari you read luke roloff's
this is serious rigorous thought whether
you agree with him or not obviously it's
hugely controversial and so you know the
enlightenment ideal
is to follow the evidence and the
arguments where they lead
but it's kind of very hard for human
beings to do that i think we get stuck
in some conception of
how we think science ought to look um
and
and um you know people talk about
religion as a crutch but i think a
certain kind of scientism
a certain conception of how science is
supposed to be gets into people's
identity and their sense of themselves
and their security um
and
makes things hard if you're a panzerkiss
and even the word expert
becomes a kind of uh
crutch i mean you use the word expert
uh you have some kind of conception of
what expertise means
uh oftentimes that's
you know connected with a degree a
particularly prestigious university or
something like that or
or um it's it's you know uh expertise is
a funny one i i've i've noticed that
anybody sort of that claims they're an
expert is usually not the expert the the
biggest quote unquote expert
that i've ever met are the ones that are
truly humble so the humility is a really
good sign
of somebody
who's traveled the long road and been
humbled by how little they know
so some of the best people in the world
at whatever the thing they've spent
their life doing are the ones that are
ultimately
humble in the face of it all so like
just being
humble
how little we know even if we travel a
lifetime
i do like the idea
i mean treating sort of uh like what is
it psychonauts like an expert witness
you know people who have traveled
with the help of dmt to another place
where they
got some deep understanding of something
and their insight is perhaps as valuable
as the insight of somebody who ran
rigorous psychological studies at
princeton university or something
like those those psychonauts they have
wisdom if it's done rigorously
uh which you can also do rigorously
within the university within the studies
now with the with psilocybin and those
kinds of things yeah that's
fascinating still probably the best one
of the best works on mystical experience
is
the chapter in william james's varieties
of religious experiences
and most of it is um just a
psychological study of trying to define
the characteristics of mystical
experience as a psychological type
but at the end he considers the question
if you have a mystical experience is it
rational to trust it to trust that it's
telling you something about reality and
he makes an interesting argument he says
if you say no
you're kind of applying a double
standard
because we all think it's okay to trust
our
normal sensory experiences
but we have no way of
getting outside of ourselves to prove
that our sensory experiences correspond
to an external reality we could be in
the matrix this could be a very vivid
dream uh you know you could say or we do
science but
a scientist only
gets their data by
experiencing the results of their
experiments and then the question arises
again how do you know that corresponds
to a real world so he thinks there's a
sort of double standard in saying
it's okay to trust our ordinary sensory
experiences but it's not okay for the
person on dmt to trust those experiences
it's very philosophically difficult to
say
why is it okay in the one case
and
not the other so i think there's an
interesting argument there but i would
like to just defend experts a little bit
i mean i agree it's very difficult
but especially in an age i guess where
there's so much information
i do think it's important
to have
some
protection of
sources of information academic
institutions that we can trust
and then that's difficult because of
course there are non-academics who do
know what they're talking about but like
if i'm
interested in knowing about biology you
know you can't research everything
so i think we have to have
some sense of
who are the experts
we can trust the people who've spent a
lot of time reading all the material
that people have read written um
thinking about it
having their
their views torn apart by other people
working in the field i think that is
very important and also to protect that
from conflicts of interest there is a
so-called think tank in the uk called
the institute of economic affairs who
are always on the bbc as
experts on economic questions and they
do not declare who funds them right so
we don't know who's paying the piper i
think you know you shouldn't be allowed
to call yourself a think tank if you're
not totally transparent about who's
funding you so i think that's the and i
mean this connects to pan psychism
because i think the reason people
you know
worry about unorthodox ideas is because
they worry about how do we know when
we're just losing control or losing
discipline so i do think we need to
somehow protect
um
academic institutions as
sources of information that we can trust
and you know in philosophy there's
there's um you know there's no not much
consensus on everything but you can at
least know
what people
who have put the time in to read all the
stuff
what what they think about these issues
i think that is important to push back
in your pushback
who are the experts
on covet
they're getting into dangerous territory
now well let me just speak to it because
i am walking through that dangerous
territory
i'm allergic to the word expert
because
in my
simple mind
it um
kind of rhymes with ego
there's uh something about experts
if we allow too much
to to have a category expert and place
certain people in them those people
sitting on the throne start to believe
it
and they start to communicate with that
energy and the humility starts to
dissipate
i think there is
a
value in a lifelong mastery
of a skill and the pursuit of knowledge
within a very specific discipline but
the moment you have your name on an
office the moment you're an expert
i think you destroy the very
aspect
the very value of that journey towards
knowledge so some of it probably just
reduces to like skillful communication
like of
communicate in a way that shows humility
that shows an open-mindedness
that shows an ability to really hear
what a lot of people are saying
so in the case of kovid what i've
noticed and this is true this is
probably true with pan psychism as well
is
so-called experts
and they are extremely knowledgeable and
many of them are colleagues of mine
they dismiss
what
millions of people are saying on the
internet
without having looked into it
with empathy and rigor honestly
understand what are the arguments being
made they say like there's not enough
time to explore all those things like
there's so much stuff out there
yeah i think that's intellectual
laziness if if you don't have enough
time then don't speak so strongly with
dismissal
feel bad about it be apologetic about
the fact that you don't have enough time
to explore the uh the evidence for
example with the heat i got with francis
collins
is that he kind of said that um lab
league
he kind of
dismissed it
showing that he didn't really deeply
explore all the sort of the the the huge
amount of uh circumstantial evidence
that's out there the battles that are
going on out there there's a lot of
people really tensely discussing this
and being um
showing humility in the face
of that battle of ideas i think is
really important and i i just been very
disappointed in
so-called expertise in the space of
science in showing humility and showing
humanity and kindness and empathy
towards other human beings that's that's
at the same time obviously
i love
jira dreams of sushi lifelong pursuit of
like getting
like in computer science don knuth
like some of my biggest heroes are
people that like when nobody else cares
they stay on one topic
for their whole life and they just find
the beautiful little things about their
puzzles they keep solving and yes
sometimes a virus happens or something
happens where that person
with their puzzles
becomes like the center of the whole
world because that puzzles becomes all
of a sudden really important but still
there's possibilities on them to show
humility and to be open-minded to the
fact that they even if they spent their
whole life doing it even if their whole
community
is telling them giving them awards and
giving them citations and giving them
all kinds of stuff where like they're
bowing down before them how smart they
are they still know
nothing relative to all the stuff the
mysteries that are out there yeah i
wonder how much we're disagreeing i mean
these are totally valid issues and of
course
expertise goes wrong in all sorts of
ways it's totally fallible i suppose i
would just say
what is the alternative what do we just
say
all information is is equal because i
you know as a voter
i've got to decide who to vote for and
that you know i've got to evaluate
um and i can't look into
all of the economics and all of the
relevant science and
um
so
i just think there's i think in
maybe it's like um churchill said about
democracy you know it's the worst system
of government apart from all the rest
i think about psychisms actually it's
the worst theory of consciousness apart
from all the rest but um you know i just
think expertise the peer review system i
think
it's terrible in so many ways
yes people should show more humility but
i i can't see
a viable alternative i think philosopher
and williams had a really nice nuanced
discussion of the the problems of titles
but then how they also function in a
society
um they do have some positive function
the very first time i lectured in
philosophy
um
before i got a
a professorship um
was
teaching at a at a continuing education
college so it's kind of kind of retired
people who want to um
learn some more things and i just
totally pitched it too high and gate
talked about bernard williams on on
titles and hierarchies and these kind of
people in the 70s and 80s were just
instantly started interrupting saying
what is philosophy and um it was a
disaster
and i just remember in the break
a sort of elderly lady come up and said
i've decided to take egyptology instead
so but that was uh that was my uh
introduction to teaching anyway but sort
of titles and accomplishments
is uh is a nice is a nice starting point
but doesn't buy you the whole
thing so and
you don't get to just say this is true
because because i'm an expert you still
have to convince people one of the
things i really like to practice martial
arts yeah
and uh
for people who don't know it's
brazilian jiu jitsu is one of them and
you you sometimes wear these pajamas
pajama looking things and you wore a
belt so i happen to be a black belt and
in brazilian jiu jitsu and i also train
in what's called nogi so you don't wear
the pajamas
and when you don't wear the pajamas
nobody knows what rank you are
nobody knows if you're a black bolt or a
white belt or if you're a complete
beginner or not right and when you um
wear the pajamas called the ghee uh you
wear the rank and people treat you very
differently when like when they see my
black belt they treat me differently
they kind of
defer to my expertise if if they're
kicking my ass
that's probably because
uh like i am working on something
like new or maybe i'm letting them win
but when there's no belts and there's it
doesn't matter if i've been doing this
for 15 years it doesn't matter none of
it matters what matters is the raw
interaction of just trying to kick each
other's ass and seeing like what is this
chess game
like of human chess
who what are the ideas that we're
playing with and i think
there's a dance there
yes it's valuable to know a person as a
black belt when
you take consideration of the advice of
different people me versus somebody
who's only practiced for like a couple
of days
but at the same time
the raw practice of i