Philip Goff’s Study Of Panpsychism

In contemporary philosophy of mind,the debate between physicalism and anti-physicalism about consciousness is to some extent deadlocked.On the one hand,we are dissatisfied with the physicalist explanation,which does not adequately explain the phenomenal nature of consciousness.On the other hand,it seems hard to return to the Cartesian dualism of the mind as a physical being.Panpsychism has received renewed attention in recent years as a possible solution to the problem of consciousness.This is the view that the mind,or consciousness,is not only universal but fundamental.Philip Goff,a British philosopher,is one of the main representatives of panpsychism.On the basis of Nagel,Chalmers,Skrbina,Coleman,and Strawson,Goff actively defended panpsychism and put forward an understandable and sudden version of panpsychism,which greatly promoted the study of panpsychism.Goff analyzed the historical root of the ignorance of consciousness in the physicalist explanation.He points out that by the time Galileo opened the way for modern science,consciousness and scientific research had diverged.Galileo’s scientific ideas were primarily concerned with seeking a quantitative description of scientific phenomena independent of any physical explanation.He focused on distinguishing between fundamental properties and measurable content and establishing mathematical relationships between measurable content.In Galileo’s reconstructed picture of the world,physical objects refer to the scientific world that can be captured by four quantifiable characteristics: size,shape,position and motion.Qualitative features such as sight,color,taste,and hearing are free in sensory consciousness,corresponding to the human soul.This distinction suggests that Galileo did not regard physical science as a complete explanation of the world,but limited it to a description of quantifiable physical objects,unable to cover the sensory properties of the soul.Goff believed that if consciousness could not emerge only from its physical basis,it would seem reasonable to accept that consciousness is fundamental and omnipresent,and thus move towards panpsychism.However,the current main form of panpsychism,namely constitutive panpsychism,faces serious challenges of combination problem.By the combination problem,I mean.If consciousness is the property of matter at the micro level,then how can these micro consciousness experiences constitute the macro consciousness property in a particular way? Goff believed that constitutive panpsychism could not solve the combination problem.In order to further reveal the difficulties of constitutive panpsychism,Goff put forward the argument of subject inadjoint,that is,the empirical subject cannot be adjoint to form a higher order empirical subject.Even resorting to phenomenal-binding strategies is difficult to solve this problem because it is not clear that we can develop a proper concept of phenomenal-relation.Goff makes a detailed investigation of the current mainstream Russellian panpsychism.Since the constitutive Russellian panpsychism is not desirable,Goff turns to an emergent version of Russellian panpsychism.Panpsychism takes two main forms.One is the layered emergence theory and the other is the non-layered form,often called "fusionism".Goff supports the theory of layered emergence.He points out that in the traditional sense,the concept of emergence involves an incomprehensible causal relationship or foundation relationship.However,Goff defended the possibility of intelligible emergence by demonstrating a buried formal coherence of causality.Finally,Goff argues that even a layered worldview,the understandable emergence of Russellian-monism,is considered the most elegant way to find the home of consciousness at present.