Dualism, the Causal Closure of the Physical, and Philip Goff’s Case for Panpsychism
Metaphysica January 24, 2024 DOI: 10.1515/mp-2023-0022 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that panpsychism, as developed by Philip Goff, does not successfully overcome the causal closure problem better than dualism, and that hybrid cosmopsychism relies on unintelligible assumptions. |
Abstract
Abstract The article discusses Philip Goff’s latest projects of developing panpsychist research program as one that is capable of revealing the place of consciousness in the physical world and accounting for the intrinsic nature of physical reality, while avoiding the problem of the causal closure of the physical that is supposed to be pernicious for psychophysical dualism. The case is made that on the one hand, dualism has pretty good resources to meet the inductive no-gap objection appealing to the causal closure, while on the other hand, insofar as this objection has some force, panpsychism in the forms discussed in Goff’s book Galileo’s Error (Goff, P. 2019. Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. New York: Pantheon Books) faces nearly the same difficulties and its capability of overcoming these difficulties is problematic. While the hybrid cosmopsychism, as developed in Goff’s later manuscript, circumvents the causal closure problem, it does so at the price of relying on assumptions that are hardly intelligible.