Conscience and Consciousness

The 2020 PhilPapers Survey of Anglophone academic philosophers’ views has just been published. On the philosophy of mind, physicalism (AKA materialism) remains the view of the majority, but only just, with 51.9% of philosophers professing to accept/lean towards physicalism about the mind. However, a very large minority of 32.1% align with non-physicalism about the mind (15.9% are undecided, accept an alternative to both, or think the question is too unclear to answer*). There was also a more specific question on ‘Consciousness’ which allows us to dig a bit deeper. Among those who accept/lean towards non-physicalism, approximately 3/4 are dualists and 1/4 are panpsychists.

How do I feel about these results? I didn’t doubt that materialism would come out the most popular position, although I hoped it would be under 50% this time. I was also hoping that, among non-physicalist positions, panpsychism and dualism would be a bit closer to 50/50. However, panpsychism did not even feature in the 2009 survey: it’s gone from being a view that hardly anyone took seriously option to being one of the standard options to consider.

There’s a prima facie inconsistency in the data. The ‘Other Minds’ questions asks which things are conscious, and only 2% accepted/leaned towards particles being conscious, a much lower percentage than accept/lean towards panpsychism in the ‘Consciousness’ question. I suspect this is because when addressing the ‘Other Minds’ question, people were generally considering what is suggested by the empirical data concerning the neural correlates of consciousness, whereas when addressing the ‘Consciousness’ question, people are giving their opinion on the best solution to the hard problem. The case for panpsychism is built on the latter not the former.

Of course, ultimately this isn’t a popularity contest. I think there are good reasons to take panpsychism to be the most plausible option, and those reasons would still be there even if nobody accepted them. But it’s nice to see that the Anglophone philosophical community is very slowly inching its way towards the truth 😉

Incidentally, the only view of consciousness less popular than panpsychism was eliminitivism, the view of Daniel Dennett and others that consciousness doesn’t really exist.

*A smaller % of the ‘other’ accept a combination of the two, think there is no fact of the matter, or reject all of the above.

I’m really looking forward to my first in person philosophy talk since the start of Covid, which will take place at the ‘How the Light Gets In‘ festival’ Sunday 19th March. It’s a festival of philosophy and music, which is going to be held in the glorious grounds of Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath in London. I’m going to talk about the science of consciousness, and how the supposedly ‘easy problem’ of establishing neural correlates of consciousness is actually harder that the ‘hard problem’. I’ll also outline a couple of ways forward.

I used to sing in a band in my teens and 20s, performing ‘guitar explorations of the human condition’. But then everyone had babies and we haven’t played for ages. Because this festival does music as well as philosophy, I tried my luck and asked if my band could play. To my surprise, they said yes! So we’re hurriedly trying to remember the songs…worried I’m too old for this caper…

I’m also doing a few other events on the Sunday: breakfast chatting about fine-tuning and the multiverse, a neuroscience and consciousness school with Joanna Bryson, and a panel on the small topic of ‘Life, the Universe and Everything’. I’ve listed all the events I’m doing below.

Most of all, I’m really looking forward to chatting about philosophy in person again…come along if you can!

https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/september

Saturday 18th

– 6:30pm: ‘Number and Number’ (my band) will perform in the ‘Stage’ venue

Sunday 19th

– 9am: Philosophy Breakfast on Cosmological fine-Tuning and the Multiverse

– 12pm: IAI School with Joanna Bryson – Neuroscience and Consciousness

– 2pm: Solo talk – The Many Voices of Consciousness

– 5.30pm: Life, The Universe and Everything panel

Tickets available here: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/september

In October, there will be a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies consisting of 19 essays responding to my work (by scientists, philosophers, and theologians) and one essay in which I respond to these essays. My response also discusses what a post-Galilean science of consciousness might look like. Ten of these essays (including the introduction, which gives an overview) are already online, and are linked to in the contents below:

1. Introduction, by Philip Goff and Alex Moran

The Scientists

1. Carlo Rovelli – ‘Relations and Panpsychism,’ Centre de Physique Théorique de Luminy, Aix-Marseille University.
2. Sean Carroll – ‘Consciousness and the Laws of Physics,’ California Institute of Technology and Sante Fe Institute
3. Lee Smolin & Clelia Verde – ‘Physics, Time and Qualia,’ Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics
4. Anil Seth – ‘The Real Problem(s) with Panpsychism,’ Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Programme for Brain, Mind and Consciousness, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
5. Christof Koch – ‘Reflections of a Natural Scientist on Panpsychism,’ Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle
6. Jonathan Delafield-Butt – ‘Autism and Panpsychism: Putting process in mind,’ University of Strathclyde
7. Robert Prentner – ‘Dr Goff, Tear Down This Wall! The interface theory of perception and the science of consciousness,’ Center for the Future Mind, Florida Atlantic University
8. Chris Fields – ‘What is a Theory of Consciousness For?,’ independent researcher

The Philosophers

10. Luke Roelofs – ‘Is Panpsychism at Odds with Science?’ New York University
11. Annaka Harris – ‘A Solution to the Combination Problem and the Future of Panpsychism,’ New York Times bestselling author.
12. Keith Frankish – ‘Galileo’s Real Problem,’ Sheffield University.
13. Michelle Liu – ‘Qualities and the Galilean view,’ University of Hertfordshire
14. Alex Moran – ‘Grounding the Qualitative: A New Challenge for Panpsychism,’ Oxford University
15. Alyssa Ney – ‘Panpsychism and the Limits of Physical Science,’ UC Davis
16. Damian Aleksiev – ‘Missing Entities: Has Panpsychism Lost the Physical World?’ Central European University
17. Ralph Weir – ‘Can Post-Galilean Science of Consciousness Avoid Substance Dualism?’ University of Lincoln
18. Galen Strawson – ‘Oh, You Materialist!’ University of Texas at Austin

The theologians

19. Joanna Leidenhag – ‘Why a Panpsychist Should Adopt Theism: God, Galileo and Goff,’ University of St Andrews
20. Sarah Lane Ritchie – ‘Panpsychism and Spiritual Flourishing: Constructive Engagement with the New Science of Psychedelics,’ University of Edinburgh

Replies from Philip Goff

21. ‘Putting Consciousness First’ University of Durham

As a philosopher, I like to use thought experiments. Suppose a BBC newsreader tweeted that there were more and more black families moving into their area and it was really bringing down the tone of the neighbourhood. I don’t know about you, but I’d be outraged. I’d probably want to express my outrage through social media, and I’d enthusiastically sign a petition to get that newsreader sacked from their job. This seems like a totally normal reaction to someone in a position of public responsibility making such an abhorrent statement.

Would that make me part of the ‘woke mob’ intent on destroying free speech that many on the right of politics have been railing against of late? The intro video on the ‘Free Speech Union’ (FSU) website presents the firing of Danny Baker for tweeting an image of a couple with a chimp to accompany the birth of the first mixed race royal baby as an example of suppressing free speech. But was Baker’s tweet any less abhorrent than the tweet of my imagined newsreader? I suspect Toby Young – Secretary General of the FSU – would argue that it is. He’d be free to do so. But those who do find that tweet deeply morally abhorrent are also free to express their view and to lobby for consequences. That’s how free speech works. What is singularly lacking from the FSU is a consistent and principled policy on when moral outrage is and is not warranted.

The right-wing free speech warriors are also pretty inconsistent about real world cases of free speech infringement. There wasn’t much to be heard from these valiant heroes when the General Secretary of the Labour party barred MPs and Labour party members from discussing Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension – a literal ban on free speech. Nor when an outraged mob of 26 MPs and 2 peers took their pitchforks to the National Trust for daring to produce a report on the links between the Trust’s properties and the slave trade. And when the government took the scarily authoritarian step of ordering schools not to use resources from organisations opposed to capitalism? Not a peep. It seems that their concern with free speech is conditional on what is being said.

This blatant lack of consistency was also apparent recently when Deputy Research Director of the Free Speech Union Emma Webb went on Talk Radio to express her support for the decision of the International Olympic Committee to ban athletes from taking the knee. Webb seemed not even to register the tension in a campaigner for free speech advocating the quashing of free expression. I tweeted about this, and actually received a polite response from Webb. For some reason, however, Webb deleted her response to me a short while later. In the absence of someone to talk to on twitter, I decided to write this article instead.

Webb defended her position by saying that her point was that rule 50 – that ‘no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas’ – was being consistently applied, and that what she had said was consistent with thinking that rule 50 should be scrapped. However, what Webb actually said in the interview was that the committee’s action was the ‘right decision’, not merely that it was a consistent application of rule which may or not be a good one. If I said that the Taliban’s decision to stone a particular individual for adultery was ‘the right decision’, it would be reasonable to interpret me as asserting not merely that they were consistently applying a law, but that that law was appropriate. Why would anyone bother to praise the consistent application of a rule they didn’t agree with?

Indeed, Webb went on to defend rule 50, on the basis that 70% of athletes surveyed wanted to keep the rule. Do the FSU decide all of their policies based on surveys of non-members? Wouldn’t it be better to defend a principled stance of their own? Perhaps the Free Speech Union could develop a consistent policy that there should be safe spaces where sensitive souls can be protected from certain kinds of speech. But it would take some work to make that consistent with Toby Young’s attack on a workplace in which football talk was banned from the work environment. It’s all a bit of mess.

If at any point the FSU is interested in formulating a coherent statement on what they stand for, I’d recommend taking some time to reflect on the important distinction between ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘having a platform.’ Most of the so-called infringements of free speech they focus on are actually just instances of people being declined a platform. The fact that I don’t have as many twitter followers as Toby Young doesn’t mean my speech is being curtailed. That’s not to say there aren’t important ethical issues regarding who gets a platform. We surely want a range of views to be aired, and minority voices to be heard. But if that’s really your concern, then you’d make better use of your time focusing on issues of media plurality. You might, for example, be concerned with the fact that there are hardly any trans columnists at our national newspapers. And you would certainly be worried that exploitation of the UK’s antiquated libel laws might be about to destroy the only radical left print magazine left in this country.

It’s not for me to look into the hearts of Young and Webb, to judge whether their motives are pure. But my job is to spot incoherence and inconsistency, and I can see a mile off that the policy platform of the FSU needs a lot of work. I wish them well and would be happy to offer philosophical consultancy at a modest fee. But if they are serious about developing a consistent stand on free speech, then they should be prepared to find themselves in a very different Free Speech Union from the one that exists today.

Our best current science suggests that our universe is fine-tuned for life. That is to say, certain numbers in basic physics – e.g. the strength of gravity, the mass of electrons, etc. – are, against improbable odds, exactly as they need to be for life to be possible. Many scientists and philosophers think this is evidence for a multiverse, but I disagree. What we have evidence for us that our universe is fine-tuned and postulating a huge number of other universes doesn’t explain this.

I recently wrote a Scientific American article on this, and there have been two blog posts from Skeptics Guide to the Universe in response. Earlier this week, host Steve Novella and I got together to discuss the issue, and an edited version of our discussion will be going up on their podcast tomorrow. The discussion prompted me to clarify my argument in my own mind, and I’d like to share here how I’m thinking about it now.

Steve accuses me of committing the lottery fallacy. But what is the lottery fallacy? Suppose against improbable odds my lottery numbers come up. Clearly there’s something going wrong if I think there needs to be some special explanation of the fact that I won. Steve suggests that the error consists in focusing on the particular person who won – Philip Goff – rather than merely the fact that someone won. Similarly, by focusing on the fact that our universe – rather than just some universe – is fine-tuned, he thinks I’m committing the same fallacy.

I don’t think this is the right explanation of the lottery fallacy. Sometimes a focus on the particular person is appropriate. Suppose, for example, that the partner of the person who picked the numbers wins on a billion to one odds. Then it does seem we want to focus on the particular person who won.

What’s the difference between the two cases? The fact that Philip Goff won the lottery is improbable, but it’s not improbable that it happened by chance. Why is that? Because there’s no (non-ad hoc) non-chance hypothesis that would render it much more probable. Whereas when it comes to the fact that the partner of the person who picked the numbers won, this is just as improbable as Philip Goff winning, but in this case it’s not only improbable but improbable that it happened by chance. Why? Because there is a (non-ad hoc) non-chance hypothesis that would render it more probable, namely the hypothesis that there was collusion between the person who chose the numbers and her partner. Assuming that hypothesis, it’s much more likely that the partner would win that it is on the hypothesis that the numbers were picked randomly.

What about the fine-tuning case? I think we’re struck by the fine-tuning not because it’s improbable – whatever numbers had come up would be equally improbable – but because it’s improbable that it happened by chance. And, again, this is because there’s a non-chance hypothesis that would render it much more probable, namely the hypothesis that considerations of value were involved in determining the values of the constants. If the process that determined the constants was sensitive to the value of the resulting universe, then it wouldn’t be surprising that the constants would end up fine-tuned, much less surprising that it would be if they were selected at random.

So I don’t think the lottery fallacy is anything to do with focusing on the particular individual rather than the general fact; rather it’s a matter of fallaciously inferring from the fact that something is improbable to the fact it’s improbable that it happened by chance. But the fact that our universe in fine-tuned is not only improbable, it’s also improbable that it happened by chance. Therefore, focusing on the fact that our universe is fine-tuned – rather than that some universe is fine-tuned – does not commit the lottery fallacy.

So that’s why I don’t agree with Steve’s argument against my position. Let me try a different way of making the case for my position (this is a modified form of the argument White defends in the postscript to a reprint of this article). We can only gain support for a hypothesis with the evidence we in fact have. We can either think of evidence as our actual observations, or as the concrete, physical states of affairs we know about through observation. Whether you think of the fine-tuning evidence as our actual observations, or you think of it as the concrete fine-tuned physical universe we live in, in either case our evidence is not made more probable by the multiverse hypothesis. Yes, the existence of some fine-tuned universe is made more probable by that hypothesis. But we have to work with the evidence we in fact have, and the evidence we in fact have is constituted by the properties of this concrete, physical universe (or our observations of it), and this is not made more probable by the multiverse hypothesis

Many people have worried about the Joker analogy I make in my Scientific American article, on the grounds that, in this thought experiment, you pre-exist the flukey event. In the discussion I had with Steve, I got around this with a different thought experiment. Suppose your conception came about through IVF. And suppose you discover as an adult that when the doctor fertilised the egg, she rolled twenty dice to see whether she’d do it, committing only to fertilise the egg if they all came up sixes. Does your discovery that your birth was dependent on this improbable event provide you with evidence that the doctor did the same in many other IVF cases, rolling dice to decide whether to fertilise the egg? I don’t think so; all you have evidence for is that your conception was decided in this way, and whether or not the doctor did this in other cases has no bearing on how likely it was that the right numbers would come up with your conception. By analogy, all we have evidence for is that the right numbers came up for our universe, and whether or not there are other universes has no bearing on how likely it was that the right numbers came up for our universe.

In correspondence after our discussion, Steve proposed tweaking the thought experiment: suppose I’m considering whether the doctor rolled dice many times or only once to decide whether to fertilise the egg that made me. I agree in that case you would have evidence for that hypothesis, as that hypothesis makes *your* existence more likely, and your existence constitutes your evidence. But that modified IVF hypothesis corresponds to a sci fi scenario in which our universe had a number of shots at fixing its constants (i.e. random processes reset them numerous times) and the Guardian of the Universe only allowed it to proceed if they came up fine-tuned. That hypothesis would make our evidence (our fine-tuned universe) more likely. But that’s not the multiverse hypothesis. According to the standard multiverse hypothesis (eternal inflation + string theory) our universe had only one shot at fixing its constants. That corresponds to a scenario in which there is only one dice roll to determine whether the egg that produced you gets fertilised.  

In our discussion, Steve came up with another thought experiment. Suppose the mischievous god Loki has just brought you into existence, and he tells you that he rolled twenty dice to decide whether or not to create a person, committing only to create a person if they all came up six (I’ve modified the example a little to make it similar to mine, but the substance is the same). Do you have grounds to think Loki has done this many times, on the assumption that each time he creates a person it’s a distinct person? I admit I did have to think about this one, and my intuitions are less firm that in the IVF case. So we need an explanation of why intuitions are different in these two cases. I suggest it’s because in the IVF case, it’s totally clear that the hypothesis I’m considering is one in which other babies would be born who aren’t me, whereas in the Loki case, it’s easy to slip into thinking he’s been having lots of shots at creating me. If I’m considering the scenario in which Locki had numerous shots at creating me, then I do find evidential support. But this is analogous to the tweaked IVF thought experiment in which the doctor rolled dice numerous times to decide whether to create me, and, as I argued above, this does not mirror the real-world fine-tuning case.

In summary: the fine-tuning is very puzzling, but it’s not evidence that we live in a multiverse.

Do the laws of physics rule out free will? Neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell has a recently argued (paper and blog post):

• If the laws of physics are deterministic, then free will is ruled out
• If the laws of physics are indeterministic, then this makes room for the reality of free will.

It’s a really interesting paper but I have some disagreements, which I would like to outline here.

A quick preliminary remark: there is a huge debate in philosophy as to whether or not human freedom is compatible with determinism (we can define determinism as the thesis that the initial state of the universe, in conjunction with the laws of nature, determine everything that will happen subsequently). Compatibilists believe is that free will and determinism can happily co-exist. Mitchell is well aware of this debate, and briefly motivates his commitment to incompatibilism: that view that if the universe is determined, we’re not really free. For the purposes of this blog post I will assume incompatibilism.

Given the assumption of incompatibilism, Mitchell argues that the way to avoid the clash between freedom and indeterminism is to embrace the indeterminism entailed by many interpretations of quantum mechanics. Now, many have pointed out that mere randomness isn’t what we need to make sense of freedom, and Mitchell acknowledges this. But he thinks that the absence of total determinism in fundamental physics provides some ‘causal slack’ that mental processes at the neurophysiological level can then take advantage of:

“The inherent indeterminacy of physical systems means that any given arrangement of atoms in your brain right at this second, will not lead, inevitably, to only one possible specific subsequent state of the brain. Instead, multiple future states are possible, meaning multiple future actions are possible. The outcome is not determined merely by the positions of all the atoms, their lower-order properties of energy, charge, mass, and momentum, and the fundamental forces of physics. What then does determine the next state? What settles the matter?”

Mitchell’s answer this posed question is the agency of the organism: physics leaves certain options open, the organism then decides from among those options.

It sounds intuitive, but I don’t think this strategy ultimately works. Even among indeterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics, although the physics doesn’t conclusively settle what will happen, it does determine the objective probability of what will result from any given physical circumstance. Although we can’t predict with certainty, say, where a given particle will be located when we make a measurement, the Born rule tells us, for any given location in the universe, precisely how likely we are to find the particle in that location. It’s not determinism, but it’s not a ‘free for all.’

Mitchell worries that if the physics determines what I’m going to do, then I’m not really free. But physics determining the objective probability of what I will do is no less constraining. If whether I water Susan (my Madagascan dragon tree) is really up to me – in the strong incompatibilist sense – then surely the physics can’t fix how likely it is that I will water Susan. If it’s just totally up to me, then it could go either way depending on my radically free choice.

Here’s a little thought experiment to make the point clear. Take the moment when I’m about to decide whether or not to water Susan. Let’s say the Born rule determines that there’s a 90% change my particles will be located in the way they would be if I watered Susan and a 10% chance there’ll be located in the way that corresponds to not watering Susan (obviously this is a ludicrously over-simplistic example, but it serves to make the point). Now imagine someone duplicated me a million times and waited to see what those million physical duplicates would decide to do. The physics tells us that approximately 900,000 of the duplicates will water Susan and approximately 100,000 of them will not. If we ran the experiment many times, each time creating a million more duplicates and waiting for them to decide, the physics tells us we would get roughly the same frequencies each time. But if what happens is totally up to each duplicate – in the radical incompatibilist sense – then there ought to be no such predictable frequency. The number that do and don’t water the plant should change each time, as the radically free choices of each individual varies.

In other word, indeterministic quantum mechanics doesn’t provide the kind of causal slack Mitchell is seeking. The problem is that objective probabilities constrain our choices as much as deterministic laws. After all, a deterministic law is just a law that yields an objective probability of 1 that a given outcome will occur.

All is not lost, however. I think Mitchell is conflating two claims:

• The laws of physics are deterministic
• The universe as a whole is deterministic

How could these come apart? They come apart if the laws of physics are ceteris paribus laws, i.e. laws that tell us what will happen in the absence of other causal influences. On this interpretation of physical law, the probabilities yielded by the Born rule are the objective probability of what will occur in the absence of some other causal influence. Such other causal influences might include the kind of irreducible causal powers Mitchell believes reside at the level of neurobiology. Mitchell seems to be concerned to avoid a violation of the laws of physics. But if the laws of physics are ceteris paribus laws, then higher-level causal powers should be thought of as complementing the laws of physics rather than contradicting them. If physics basically tells us ‘X will happen unless there are some higher-level causal forces,’ and X doesn’t happen precisely because there are higher-level causal forces, then nothing occurs that is inconsistent with physics.

It does not follow that there are no empirical challenges for a proponent of incompatibilist free will. Some philosophers have argued that we have strong empirical grounds for thinking there are no irreducible causal influences of the kind Mitchell believes in, that everything that happens at higher levels can be reduced to the causation we find in physics. But this is an empirical question about neurobiology. My point here is just that the question of whether the laws of physics are deterministic has no bearing on the question of whether the universe as a whole is deterministic, and hence no bearing on the question of whether or not we have free will.

The success of natural science over the last five hundred years has been truly mind-blowing. It doesn’t follow, however, that science is well-suited to answering all questions. Sam Harris has suggested that science can answer the questions of ethics as well as our questions about the nature of reality. But like many, it seems to me that there are many ethical questions which are just not suited to being answered scientifically. There’s no experiment that will tell us whether ethics is ultimately about maximizing good consequences or about fundamental rights and duties.

It is commonly assumed that the task of explaining consciousness is scientific rather than philosophical. I think that’s half right. It’s the job of neuroscience (among other things) to establish the neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs), that is, to work out which physical states of the brain are correlated with which subjective experiences. We have a robust and well-developed experimental approach for answering these questions.

However, establishing the NCC is just one half of a theory of consciousness. We also want to explain those correlation, to work out why certain physical states are correlated with experiences. As things stand, I think this is a philosophical rather than a scientific question. Philosophers have offered a number of different answers to this question. Here are three of them:

• Naturalistic dualism – A subjective experience is a very different kind of thing from a physical brain state, but the two are bound together by natural law. In addition to the laws of physics, there are fundamental psycho-physical laws of nature which ensure that, in certain physical circumstances, certain experiences emerge.
• Materialism – Each subjective experience has a purely physical nature. Having subjective experiences – feeling pain, seeing red – wholly consists in having certain complex patterns of neuronal firing.
• Panpsychism – Each physical state has a purely experiential nature. Physical science tells us what matter does whilst leaving us in the dark about what it is. Having physical states – being negatively charged, being a certain pattern of neural firing – wholly consists in having certain kinds of subjective experience.  

All of these theories are empirically equivalent: there is no experiment that can decide between them. That’s not really a surprise, as this is not a purely empirical question. It’s rather a question of why something that is publicly observable (brain activity) always goes together with something that is not publicly observable (subjective experience). This is isn’t the kind of question an experiment can answer, just as questions about the fundamental character of ethics can’t be answered experimentally.

One option is agnosticism. If we can’t decide between these views experimentally, then maybe we should simply say that we don’t know which is true. Another option is to try to decide between them on the basis of non-experimental considerations. In other words, to do philosophy.

If I don’t think explaining the NCC is a scientific question, why is my book subtitled ‘Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness’? The task of explaining the NCC is currently in the domain of philosophy. But when a broad consensus arises as to how to address a question, philosophy turns in to science. The aim of my book is precisely to develop such a methodology for that bit of the science of consciousness which is currently in the domain of philosophy.  

So is it the job of science or philosophy to explain consciousness? As things stand, the task of accounting for consciousness is partly scientific (establishing NCCs) and partly philosophical (explaining the NCCs). If we one day achieve societal consensus on how to address the latter half of the puzzle, the task of accounting for consciousness will move entirely into the domain of science. I think this is starting to happen, but – just as at the start of the scientific revolution – there needs to be some serious engagement with philosophy before we get there.

The BBC’s recent documentary of ‘The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty’ is worth watching. However, two important details from the history it conveys were missed out:

1. During 2011, Murdoch was attempting to buy all of BskyB (as reported in the documentary). The then culture secretary Jeremy Hunt was put in charge of assessing ‘on a quasi judicial basis’ whether Murdoch’s plan was compatible with media plurality. In 2012, the Leveson enquiry revealed a lengthy record of emails, texts and phone calls showing a secret communications channel between Hunt and James Murdoch devoted to pushing the deal through and giving Murdoch what he wanted. In one email, Frédéric Michel, James Murdoch’ chief lobbyist, wrote to Murdoch of Hunt ‘He said we would get there in the end and he shared our objectives.’

• When Prime Minister David Cameron was still refusing to speak out against Murdoch, Labour leader Ed Miliband made the decisive intervention of declaring that Murdoch’s empire should be broken up. This was the first time in a long time a leader of a major political party had challenged Murdoch’s power. Without this detail, the audience is left with the impression that both former Labour and Conservative leaders have been equally subservient to Murdoch.

There was also no discussion of how Murdoch is ensuring his grip on UK politics continues in spite of failing newspaper sales through the establishment of talkRadio and Times Radio (Murdoch is also planning to launch a Fox News-style show in UK, although perhaps this was announced after the documentary was made). We are not left with the awareness that this is still going on and is something we can challenge.

I’ll leave to readers to decide whether the BBC is reluctant to criticise a still prominent Conservative MP or to praise of a Labour leader significantly more left wing than Tony Blair.

I’m delighted to announce that there will be a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies on my book Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, which will be edited by Alex Moran (Oxford University) and myself. The issue will feature short papers (4-6,000 words) on the themes of the book, contributed by leading physicists, neuroscientists, theologians and philosophers, as well as a response piece by me commenting on each of the papers. Publication will probably be in October 2021. Current contributors are:

Carlo Rovelli, Centre de Physique Théorique de Luminy of Aix-Marseille University

Lee Smolin, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

Christof Koch, Allen Institute

Joanna Leidenhag, St. Andrews

Sara Lane Ritchie, University of Edinburgh

Annika Harris, New York Times bestselling author of CONSCIOUS: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

Chris Fields, Independent researcher

Alyssa Ney, University of California

Michelle Lui, University of Hertfordshire

Alex Moran, University of Oxford

We have a few other scientists and philosophers tentatively on board time allowing, who I’ll hopefully confirm in due course. Very excited about what looks like it’s going to be a really great, interdisciplinary volume on consciousness!

I have just published a piece in the Institute of Art and Ideas, raising some objections to Bernardo’s Kastrup’s analytic idealism. One aspect of the disagreement between Bernardo and I is whether the following conditional is true: if physicalism is true, conscious states are epiphenomenal (i.e. have no causal effect on the physical world). Bernardo thinks it’s true; I think it’s false. I gave my reasons for thinking this in the IAI piece, but I would also like to counter-respond to some responses Bernardo raised in this blog post. I thought it better not to include this in the IAI piece, as it’s a somewhat peripheral concern. But I would recommend reading the IAI piece before reading the discussion below.

Bernardo argues for the claim <if physicalism is true, conscious states are epiphenomenal> by appealing to the work of David Chalmers on this topic, which is generally taken as canonical. Bernardo said:

“David Chalmers recapitulates the mainstream physicalist argument that, because the physical world is putatively causally-closed, phenomenal states must be physical states. In other words, because they have no causal efficacy, phenomenal states cannot exist as phenomenal states; instead, all the qualities they entail must be reducible to the quantities of physics.”

The first sentence above is correct. The second sentence, however, is not only not a correct interpretation of the first, but it contradicts the first. Again, we’re back to the logic of identity (see the IAI article). If phenomenal states are – are identical with – physical states, it follows – from Leibniz’s law – that, if physical states have causal efficacy, then phenomenal states have causal efficacy. I suspect from what he says elsewhere in the post that Bernardo will think I’m playing academic games. But the laws of logic don’t play games for anyone.

I think Bernardo may be confusing identity with elimination. Some physicalist hold that phenomenal qualities should be eliminated, in which case they don’t have causal efficacy but only because they don’t exist. The more common physicalist position is that conscious states are identical with, or wholly constituted of, physical states, in which case they have causal efficacy because they are identical with/wholly constituted of physical states. Bernardo seems to be trying to get to a middle way option for the physicalist: phenomenal states exist, but they don’t exist ‘as phenomenal states’ because they’ve been ‘reduced’. But what on earth would it mean for a phenomenal state to exist but not to exist as a phenomenal state? When physicalists say that they’ve reduced phenomenal states, they mean that phenomenal states really exist (as phenomenal states, how else would a phenomenal state exist?), but that they’re either identical with or wholly constituted of physical states.

In any case, the mainstream argument for physicalism that Chalmers is discussing claims that if dualism is true, then phenomenal states have no causal efficacy (because the physical world is causally closed), and hence that the only way we can ensure that phenomenal states have causal efficacy is if physicalism is true. I don’t buy that argument as panpsychism also gives us a way of ensuring that phenomenal states have causal efficacy (Chalmers agrees with this, which is one of the main points of the article). But the point is that Bernardo is misunderstanding what the causal closure argument is trying to show. If you don’t believe me, I recommend asking Chalmers, or any other academic philosopher working in this area, on either side of the debate. This is not a point of controversy.