Our ‘Spotlight On’ series highlights some of our pioneering researchers who are leading transformative work. Professor Philip Goff from our Department of Philosophy is challenging the long-held quantitative focus of physical science through his work on consciousness.
From seeing colours to feeling pain – we understand ourselves and the world around us through our consciousness. But, why does brain activity lead to feelings and experiences?
What some may see as a bit of a mystery, Professor Philip Goff sees as a challenge – he’s on a mission to understand consciousness. What’s more, he believes unresolved philosophical issues, especially the exclusive focus on purely quantitative science, are holding us back.
Philip is driven by a desire to understand things that are hard to fit into the standard scientific worldview. While philosophers study many such “troubling phenomena” (free will, objective value, abstract objects like numbers and sets to name but a few), for Philip, consciousness is the most troubling. It is hard to deny it exists, and yet it remains shrouded in mystery.
Philip argues that the way in which Galileo excluded the qualities of consciousness - like tastes, sounds, smells and colours - from our picture of the physical universe has had many benefits but has also limited our ability to understand the world more deeply.
The alternative? Philip advocates for a view called ‘panpsychism’ – the idea that consciousness goes all the way down to the fundamental building blocks of reality.
Through his work Philip has become an authority on panpsychism – helping to take it from being a fringe, almost mocked, idea to a serious, widely taught and published school of thought.
This commitment to open up middle-way options – escaping the binary schools of thought that can limit understanding – is a driving force of Philip’s career.
Having published over 50 academic papers, in 2017 he wrote a definitive book defending panpsychism which has become a widely cited, core text. A follow-up version aimed at a general audience sparked enduring public interest.
Philip has appeared on major broadcast and podcast shows, ranging from BBC Radio 4 to the Joe Rogan Experience. An interview with Scientific American conducted by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Gareth Cooke, was one of their most viewed articles of 2020
Philip joined Durham University six years ago and now has graduate students from across the world applying to study panpsychism with him.
As a passionate believer in the importance of philosophy, Philip argues that properly trained philosophers are vital to answering the questions that scientific experiments alone cannot.
His quest to look at things from a new perspective does not stop at consciousness. His latest research delves into the philosophy of religion, challenging long-held ideas on both sides of the perennial debate between believers and secular atheists.
Through his work Philip hopes to lay the framework for an intellectually credible reimagining of religion, that embraces uncertainty and is compatible with modern science and liberal values.
/prod01/prodbucket01/media/durham-university/central-news-and-events-images/83431-1920X290.jpg)