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Books
Galileo’s Error by Philip Goff
Raymond Tallis questions an argument for panpsychism.
Philip Goff, consciousness researcher at Durham University, is one of the most fearless of contemporary philosophers. His latest book Galileo’s Error: A New Science of Consciousness is a defence of panpsychism – a philosophical position that until recently was dismissed as simply crazy.
As Goff defines it, panpsychism is the view that “consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality,” such that everything has consciousness, even down to electrons and quarks. This does not mean that all the arrangements of fundamental particles – socks and clouds and pebbles – are conscious. Nor does it claim that this universally present consciousness is necessarily remotely similar to human consciousness, with thoughts and emotions and the like.
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