Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness

Philip Goff

From a leading philosopher of the mind comes this lucid, provocative argument that offers a radically new picture of human consciousness—panpsychism.

Understanding how brains produce consciousness is one of the great scientific challenges of our age. Some philosophers argue that consciousness is something “extra,” beyond the physical workings of the brain. Others think that if we persist in our standard scientific methods, our questions about consciousness will eventually be answered. And some even suggest that the mystery is so deep, it will never be solved. Decades have been spent trying to explain consciousness from within our current scientific paradigm, but little progress has been made.

Now, Philip Goff offers an exciting alternative that could pave the way forward. Rooted in an analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of modern science and based on the early twentieth-century work of Arthur Eddington and Bertrand Russell, Goff makes the case for panpsychism, a theory which posits that consciousness is not confined to biological entities but is a fundamental feature of all physical matter—from subatomic particles to the human brain. In Galileo’s Error, he has provided the first step on a new path to the final theory of human consciousness.

(Goodreads.com)

David Hume’s Argument Against Miracles with George Williams

New Thinking Oct 12, 2023 George Williams, PhD, has a wide, interdisciplinary background. As an undergraduate, he studied engineering at Vanderbilt and worked at IBM for 8 years. He switched to a different direction and studied literature at Maharishi International University, where he also became very curious about the notion of group consciousness. Then, he pursued a doctorate in economics at Northwestern University. Since the late 90s, he has worked for a government agency.. But during that time, he began to focus on what the parapsychological data can tell us about the nature of consciousness. Here he focuses on the influential eighteenth century, Scottish philosopher, David Hume, his philosophy of naturalism, and his argument against religious miracles. He examines how that argument has been wrongly used by those hostile to parapsychology. 00:00 Introduction 02:05 David Hume 05:43 Naturalism 09:13 Miracles 13:33 Parapsychology 24:41 Consciousness 29:33 Religion 33:05 Paradigms 42:05 Ground of being 45:19 Non-locality 48:38 Conclusion Edited subtitles for this video are available in Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German, French, and Spanish. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. (Recorded on September 20, 2023)