Philip Goff discusses some of Galileo's insights into the nature of matter. He then goes on to discuss his own view about consciousness, panpsychism. Goff believes that matter is conscious at some level.
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Panpsychism is the belief that all material things, however small, have an element of individual consciousness.
On the face of it, it sounds like a bizarre doctrine, but Philip Gough believes that it's better than all the alternative theories about consciousness.
He argues that consciousness cannot be understood in physical, scientific terms, and he traces the origins of this position to the italian polymath Galileo.
Philip Goff, welcome to philosophy bites.
Thank you very much.
Good to be here.
The topic we're going to focus on today, today is Galileo and consciousness.
Now, Galileo is often thought of as an astronomer.
What's he got to say about consciousness?
Well, Galileo is known as the father of modern science, and I think it's because it's Galileo that really shapes the philosophical foundations of the scientific revolution.
Galileo's declaration that mathematics was to be the language of the new science, that the new science was to have a purely quantitative vocabulary.
In many ways, this is the philosophical move that kickstarts the scientific revolution.
What's less focused on is the philosophical work Galileo had to do to get there and how.
As well as being a great scientist, he was also a great philosopher, so.
I'm not familiar with that.