Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about panpsychism

Philip: > But when I use the word consciousness, I simply mean experience: pleasure, pain, visual or auditory experience, et cetera.

But that just kicks the can again. What is "experience"? What is pain versus pleasure?

Ultimately we have to arrive at a reductionist definition that doesn't reference undefined terms. After many years of thinking about this problem, here's my best shot:

Experience is equivalent to state change, e.g. the state change induced in a thermometer or a radio receiver due to stimuli. Consciousness is ultimately a system of modeling that is complex enough to have developed a model of itself, thus "realizing" that the system is separate from the environment that produces stimuli.

Humans arrived at consciousness through evolving larger and larger brains whose main goal is to model the environment and behavior of other individuals in order to predict what will happen next, in order to make plans for survival.

Panpsychism is then scientific, and perhaps inescapable, if we use these definitions. But, it doesn't mean that rocks and black holes are conscious. Only those things that undergo state change in response to stimuli and are complex enough to have models of themselves. There is no evidence that rocks have information-processing capabilities at all, and worms' brains are too small to have a model of themselves, however simplified.

If we can, then indeed consciousness comes from the collective function of individual cells. But maybe there's more to the workings of the brain?

Nobody cares if they are conscious, people care if they pay taxes and follow the law :)

I understand your standpoint. I feel pretty frustrated with these questions too - especially when people throw large assumptions around like panpsychism. However, I gotta disagree with the idea notion that no qualities exist in the universe. Afterall, isn't every single thing a part of the universe, including thoughts, feelings, and experience?

Here is a thought experiement:

Think about experiencing pain and what it feels like to you. Really try to simulate it in your thoughts. Probably sucks. Now think about happiness and what that feels like to you. Probably doesn't suck as much. Without watching a scan of your brain, and without collecting any sort of scientific data about your nervous system, you were most likely able to discern the difference between those two feelings just now. You didn't do this by any type of measurement of quantity, just by quality of experience (qualia).

So I would argue that either quality definitely exists, or everyone reading this just experienced something that is extra-universal, which in my opinion is just as fantastic and assumptive as panpsychism.

Also, I am not a theoretical physicist nor do I have half of a firm understanding of even classical physics, but apparently there has been advances in theoretical physics to include consciousness into the same theory as quantum and classical physics. Might be interesting for some readers to check out - The Causal Theory of Views: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338544509_The_Causa...