Various metaphysical positions have been tied (or linked) to ideologies or political positions. The latest contender for this role is panpsychism. The panpsychist Philip Goff, for example, ties panpsychism to a politics of a very particular kind. This isn’t an unfair claim because there are many explicit statements from Goff which make this crystal clear. Not only that: in this essay readers will see that Goff himself ties (or links) rival metaphysical positions to specific ideological or political positions. (Dualism and materialism are good examples of this.)
“My goal is to understand consciousness, not to advocate for policies. Panpsychism is a philosophical tool, not a manifesto.”
— David Chalmers (Source: Mind & Matter podcast with Nick Jikomes, 2021.)
At a prima facie level, it may seem odd that panpsychism can be tied to politics. In simple terms, that’s because panpsychism is a metaphysical position. Of course, metaphysical positions have been connected to political positions in the past. Indeed, some metaphysical positions were actually seen as being political positions. Dialectical materialism is one good example of this. (Stephen Jay Gould, who was a palaeontologist and biologist, tied his science to dialectical materialism.) If we flip to science, then many would argue that “the science of race” has always been an arm of politics. In addition, all this is still happening today, so there’s no need to name names…
The problem is that when philosophers or scientists get hooked on political causes, issues or concerns, they then attempt to place philosophical or scientific round pegs into political square holes. What’s more, their philosophies and science often becomes corrupted. In other words, what if the science or philosophy doesn’t really back a political position up? Would the scientist or philosopher then need to push a round peg into a square hole?
Of course, for all those who believe that “all science is political”, and, indeed, that literally “everything is political”, there will be no problem here.
Is Panpsychism a Political Movement?
The panpsychist philosopher Philip Goff wants to inspire a political movement. In Mind Chat (2021), he said:
“If we see trees and rivers as conscious, it changes the way we legislate and act politically. Panpsychism could inspire a movement where environmental protection becomes a moral imperative, not just a pragmatic choice.”
As Karl Marx put it: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
The quote from Goff above, similarly, just makes it seem as if truth doesn’t really matter. What matters is what works… politically. And Goff clearly believes that panpsychism may work when it comes to “inspiring a movement”. Yet Goff himself must be well aware of those legions of poststructuralist and postmodernists philosophers who’ve explicitly stated that truth isn’t the issue: political change is the issue. So, at its extreme, falsehoods may bring about political change. (Thus, we have “lying for justice” and “the ends justify the means” too.)
So there’s absolutely no doubt that Goff is tying panpsychism (or his own version of panpsychism) to political concerns and causes. There are very many quotes that make that very clear.
Early Goff
Goff says that panpsychism “speaks to people on a deeper level — emotionally, ethically” (The Ezra Klein Show, 2023). That said, he needed to to do the technical work before speaking to people on a deeper level. If he hadn’t done so, then he’d have simply come across as a fluffy New Age guru.
In terms of that early technical work, let Goff speak for himself:
“Looking back, my early papers were dense and maybe a bit inaccessible. Over time, I realized panpsychism isn’t just a solution to the hard problem of consciousness — it has implications for how we live, how we treat the planet. That’s where my focus has shifted.”
Elsewhere, in an interview with Ricardo Lopes, he said:
“When I first started writing about panpsychism in the mid-2000s, it was all about the combination problem and the intrinsic nature of matter — very dry, very analytical. I was trying to solve philosophical puzzles, not change the world.”
Goff’s socialism predates his panpsychism by many years. In specific terms, he started tying panpsychism to socialist politics roundabout 2017. However, his commitment to socialism dates back to the 1980s. This isn’t only my take, it’s Goff’s too. In an interview with Lex Fridman, Goff said that “[a]s a socialist dating back to my teens, I believed in equal worth long before metaphysics”.
Now let’s get down to brass tacks.
Goff spoke the following words:
“The terrible mass destruction of forests we witnessed in Brazil in recent years under Bolsonaro have a different moral character if we see them as the burning of conscious organisms.”
Here’s the kind of thing which might have happened here.
Goff was shocked at what was happening to the forests in Brazil. However, he’s not a politician or even a political activist. So the next best thing is to do his bit through philosophy — through a commitment to panpsychism.
Of course, this could be classed as psychologising on my part. However, it’s definitely not tangential. After all, Goff himself has said that he
“agree[s] on the benefit of panpsychism to eco-philosophy and have in the past made similar arguments”.
Human Persons and Trees
Goff was at his most honest and explicit when he stated the following words on Mind Chat:
“If we see trees and rivers as conscious, it changes the way we legislate and act politically. Panpsychism could inspire a movement where environmental protection becomes a moral imperative, not just a pragmatic choice.”
Sceptically, this can be read as Goff implying that he doesn’t actually believe that trees and rivers are conscious, However, he does believe that it would be a good thing if we all believed this.
To put is simply, Goff wants to further various political causes which he sees as being righteous and profoundly important. (In this case, it’s the exploitation of the world’s resources.) However, Goff is both a philosopher and a panpsychist. Thus, in an interview with Joe Rogan in 2022, Goff stated the following words:
“The capitalist mindset treats nature as a resource to exploit, but if everything has some degree of consciousness, that exploitation becomes ethically and politically indefensible. Panpsychism challenges the economic status quo.”
Readers may wonder what would happen if people took Goff’s position to its furthest point, or to its logical conclusion. Thus, if literally all entities instantiate consciousness to some degree, then what about the carrots we eat, or the flies we kill with fly spray? Goff may argue that the various degrees of consciousness need to be taken into account when such questions are asked. So does a tree in a rain forest instantiate a higher degree of consciousness than a carrot? If it does, then why does it do so?
Goff again explicitly expressed his politics when he mentioned “the idea that the other has equal worth to yourself is to overcome individualism and ego”. Can we move from seeing other human persons as having equal worth, to seeing trees as having equal worth to persons? Perhaps Goff would say that he’s not demanding that we go that far. He may well stress his “levels of consciousness” argument here.
In a similar vein, Goff said that
“[i]t would be nice if reality as a whole was unified in a common purpose [ ] what would be nice needs to be backed up with some science and some philosophy”.
It would be nice if reality as a whole was unified in a common purpose. What if bogus science or bogus philosophy could help with that job?
Naomi Klein and Goff on the Politics of Dualism and Materialism
In an interview, Goff mentioned the political writer Naomi Klein. A commentator said:
“Noting that Naomi Klein blames dualism for our degradation of the environment, Goff speculates that children reared in a panpsychist tradition would be less indifferent to and more protective of the environment.”
Oddly enough, Goff used to be a dualist. Of course, there’s been a long tradition of tying “Western dualism” to our treatment of the environment and other animals. So some of what is said is based on truth. There are problems here though... However, that doesn’t matter at this juncture because Goff is basically arguing that dualism led to bad things, and panpsychism will lead to good things.
As just stated, Naomi Klein mentioned dualism, Goff quoted Klein, and both tie it to the mistreatment of animals and to capitalism.
What about materialism?
Goff rejects dualism and materialism, and he cites political and ethical reasons for rejecting both. Wikipedia tells its readers that Goff
“holds that materialism is ‘incoherent’ and that dualism leads to ‘complexity, discontinuity and mystery’”.
Dualism can also be (or has been) tied to anthropocentrism. Goff discussed anthropocentrism with Ricardo Lopes in 2012. He said: [Quote]
“Anthropocentrism has led us to a crisis of empathy. Panpsychism offers a way out by recognizing consciousness in all things, forcing us to rethink our ethical priorities.”
Philip Goff’s Religion
This essay has so far focused on Goff’s politics. He’s religious too. So just as he ties his panpsychism to politics, so he also ties panpsychism to religion…. but not to “conventional religion”. Here’s Goff explaining himself on The Infinite Monkey Cage (BBC Radio 4):
“I don’t subscribe to traditional religion, but panpsychism offers a spiritual perspective where the universe itself has a kind of mind or purpose, which resonates with ancient intuitions about a living cosmos.”
Elsewhere, Goff goes into detail as to why he doesn’t like Western monotheism, and why he does like other “spiritual traditions”. In Lex Fridman’s Podcast, Goff said:
“The idea of a conscious universe suggests a purpose that aligns with what many spiritual traditions have sought — a unity that transcends the material. I find that spiritually compelling, even if it’s not God in the traditional sense.”
In terms of spirituality, if not religion, Goff said:
“There are those such as Hedda Hassel Mørch, Itay Shani, and myself who do have certain convictions which may be called spiritual or at least which depart more radically from our standard naturalistic picture of reality than bog standard panpsychism.”
Goff seems to be saying that naturalism has no place for the spiritual. He may be right, or he may be wrong. However, humanists would certainly disagree with him on this.
Animism has been deemed to be a (proto) religion.
Goff tells us that that he thinks that “some folks can maybe conflate [panpsychism] with something akin to animism”. (Stated on the Tim Ferriss Show.) It’s not as clear as Goff believes that panpsychism can be distinguished from animism. After all, take the positions of the panpsychist Rudy Rucker.
Oddly enough, Goff himself has used the words “associate”, “meaningless”, “preferential treatment”, “for their young”, “mother”, “kin”, “prejudice”, “reciprocal support”, “passing along” “egalitarian redistribution” and “dinnertime” when referring to trees and their behaviour. (These words can all be found in Goff’s book Galileo’s Error.)
Rudy Rucker’s Panpsychism
In ‘Mind is a universally distributed quality’ , Rudy Rucker says that “[e]ach object has a mind”. That is, “[s]tars, hills, chairs, rocks, scraps of paper, flakes of skin, molecules” all have minds. (Note: not consciousness or “proto-consciousness”: minds!)
Rucker then adds his political slant:
“If the rocks on my property have minds, I feel more respect for them in their natural state. If I feel myself among friends in the universe.”
As for religion and the afterlife, we have the following words:
“If my body will have a mind even after I’m dead, then death matters less to me.”
If readers believe it’s odd to discuss rocks, flakes of skin, etc. in this kind of way, then this is Goff himself discussing rocks, oceans and air with Robert Lawrence Kuhn:
“If panpsychism is true, we have a moral duty to extend compassion not just to humans and animals, but to all aspects of the universe — rocks, oceans, even the air we breathe. It redefines what it means to live ethically.”
Philip Goff’s Feelings
Where there is politics, there are strong feelings. Here’s Goff on his own feelings, which he expressed on the Ezra Klein Show in 2023:
“The fact that consciousness might permeate everything fills me with a sense of wonder. It’s not just an intellectual exercise; it’s a feeling that drives me to explore this idea further.”
Goff added more to that when talking with Sam Harris. He said:
“When I walk in the forest and consider that the trees might be conscious, it stirs something deep inside me — a connection that materialism can’t provide. That emotional pull is part of why I defend panpsychism.”
One wonders, then, if materialists don’t have feelings, don’t care, and don’t enjoy walks in the forest.
Part Two: David Chalmers’ Apolitical Panpsychism
Some of the upcoming passages quoted from David Chalmers could have been aimed directly at Philip Goff. This isn’t to say that they were aimed at Goff: it’s simply to say that they could have been.
Throughout his career, Chalmers’ primary concern has been the nature of consciousness. Thus, it’s not a surprise to hear him saying that “[p]anpsychism is about explaining consciousness, not reforming society”. In more detail, he said:
“The hard problem of consciousness is to explain how and why we have qualitative experiences. [ ] This is a problem about the nature of experience, not about societal structures.”
Of course, panpsychism is very different to many other theories, and Chalmers would happily admit that. Chalmers himself tells us that the big difference is that consciousness may be distributed, which, of course, ties into panpsychism. In Closer to Truth (Season 19, Episode 5), he said:
“Panpsychism is an interesting hypothesis about the distribution of consciousness. Whether it has practical implications depends on how it’s interpreted, but that’s not my focus.”
The words “depends on how panpsychism is interpreted” seem to be an example of Chalmers admitting that given a certain interpretation, then panpsychism may well have practical implications. However, even within the domain of interpretation, surely some interpretations are like square pegs being forced into round holes.
It’s also no doubt true that an acceptance of panpsychism may well have practical political implications. However, what if such implications are driving the commitment to panpsychism itself?
