The irony of Philip Goff's arguments

Over the past few days, panpsychist philosopher Philip Goff and I have exchanged essays criticizing each other's metaphysical positions. See my latest response here. Since these exchanges, shorter discussions have taken place on Twitter, some of which made me realize how ironic philosophical discussions can be.

I've met Philip for the first time in Shanghai, in 2017, when he was still an idealist-leaning cosmopsychist, who subscribed to the view that there is only one cosmic subject. Since then, he became a constitutive panpsychist who adheres to the view that only microscopic particles are conscious, our ordinary subjectivity being somehow constituted by some kind of combination of microscopic little subjects in our brain.

As I pointed out in my criticism, the notion of subject combination is not only physically incoherent ('particles' are just metaphors for field excitations), but also logically incoherent (there is no discernible sense in stating that two fundamentally private fields of experience can combine to form a single derivative one that subsumes the originals).

To defend his view, Philip repeatedly postulated the possible existence of new, entirely speculative "psycho-physical laws of nature" to try and account for the magic of subject combination. This basically means that, instead of explaining subject combination, he simply labels it a brute fact of nature: it just happens; it doesn't need to be explained (i.e. reduced to something else) because it is fundamental. Methinks this is a copout, but alright.

The first irony here is that someone who seems to reason by shoving every problem into the reduction base (microscopic consciousness, laws of combination, everything of any relevance), and thus fails to offer any explanation whatsoever, now charges me of failing to provide a... well, explanation for how dissociation occurs.

Let me explain. If you start, as I do, from a universal subject, you need to make sense of how that one subject becomes many seemingly separate ones, such as you and me. We call it the 'subject decomposition' problem, and it entails a challenge opposite to that of subject combination. I solve the decomposition problem by appealing to the empirically-established psychiatric phenomenon of dissociation, which is just that: a seeming decomposition of one mind into many separate alter personalities.

But such a powerful appeal to an empirical fact is not sufficient for Philip. He says that I have to conceptually explain how, exactly, dissociation unfolds and does what we know it does (i.e. create the appearance of subject decomposition). Otherwise, according to him, my reference to dissociation has no value for defending the notion that there is just one universal subject, of which we are dissociated alters.

Let us take stock of this. The first point of irony I already mentioned: someone who seems to reason by avoiding explanations now demands a conceptual explanation for an empirically-established phenomenon, before he can accept said phenomenon. Make no mistake, reasoning by shoving things into the reduction base not only fails to provide any explanation, it seeks to forever preempt the need for one; it is the very antithesis of explanation.

Now, the second point of irony is this: when philosophers demand an explicit conceptual explanation for some postulated phenomenon, the point of making such a demand is, by and large, to evaluate the plausibility of the phenomenon actually occurring in nature, as opposed to being merely a theoretical invention.

This way, when we demand from physicalists a conceptual explanation for how arrangements of matter can give rise to consciousness, we want to evaluate whether this plausibly happens in nature or not. When we demand from constitutive panpsychists an explicit explanation for how subject combination takes place, we want to judge whether the occurrence of subject combination in nature is plausible.

But if we can already point, empirically, to actual occurrences of the phenomenon in question, the bulk of the value of a conceptual explanation melts away; for if the point is to know whether it is plausible that the phenomenon occurs, we already have the answer. Of course, it is still nice to have a conceptual explanation so we get intellectual closure, but the questions of plausibility and existence are already settled.

There is no empirical demonstration that matter generates consciousness; only that they are correlated. So we need an explicit conceptual explanation for this physicalist notion, so as to evaluate its plausibility. Alas, there is no such explanation. There are only conceptual demonstrations that the phenomenon is impossible already in principle.

There is no empirical demonstration of subject combination occurring in nature (have you ever met two people who merged together and became one single mind?). So we need an explicit conceptual explanation for this combination, so as to evaluate its plausibility. Alas, there is no such explanation. There are only conceptual demonstrations that subject combination is an incoherent notion.

But there are robust empirical occurrences of one mind believing itself to be many; we call it dissociation. That the corresponding belief is an illusion isn't a problem either; on the contrary: the illusion is precisely what we need to account for the fact that you and I believe to be different, separate subjects.

Therefore, unlike physicalism and constitutive panpsychism, each of which faces an arguably insoluble problem—namely, the hard problem of consciousness and the subject combination problem, respectively—analytic idealism faces nothing of the kind: we know empirically that subject decomposition occurs. There is no question about its plausibility, even if there were no conceptual models at all to explain how it works.

And as it happens, there actually is a tentative conceptual explanation for subject decomposition based on the notion of inferential isolation. Is it sufficient to make complete sense of dissociation? Probably not, as I suspect a better theory of time is required to achieve that goal (Bernard Carr, time for you to help out here my friend, if you already have something publishable). But it is certainly already way better than any attempt to make conceptual sense of subject combination.

Does the arguable incompleteness of my conceptual model of dissociation impair analytic idealism in any significant way? Of course not. For whether we can make complete conceptual sense of dissociation or not, we know that it occurs and does exactly what it needs to do to substantiate analytic idealism. The value of the conceptual model would be mainly to allow us to evaluate the plausibility of subject decomposition happening. But we already know it happens, whether we can conceptualize it fully or not.

Therefore, that Philip acknowledges dissociation as an empirical fact but then turns around and says, "in the absence of an explanation [for dissociation, Kastrup's] critique of panpsychism as not providing such an explanation seems to me to have no force" sounds dangerously close to sophism to me. Philip is comparing (a) the mere failure to provide a complete conceptual model for an empirically-established fact to (b) the veritable appeal to magic entailed by the entirely speculative and arguably incoherent notion of subject combination. There is just no basis for comparison here.

The job of philosophers in metaphysics is largely to provide speculative conceptual models. So I understand Philip's intuitive attachment to these speculations. But I also see two problems with it: first, the risk of losing touch with empirical reality, which must always come first. We cannot replace reality with speculative conceptual models and live just in our heads. Or perhaps we can, but it certainly wouldn't help us achieve anything useful.

Second, if exaggerated emphasis is nonetheless placed on conceptual models over empirical reality, then one should at least be consistent in such a peculiar choice: Philip cannot demand any conceptual models from me (let alone complete ones) when he, himself, not only fails to provide such models, but shoves the relevant issues into the reduction base as if doing so represented progress. If you talk the talk, walk the walk.

The bottom line is this: while Philip is busy adding consciousness and wholly-speculative "psycho-physical laws" of subject combination to the reduction base of physicalism, and thereby providing not even partial explanations for anything, I am busy leveraging an empirically-established phenomenon to substantiate my views, as well as providing at least partial conceptual models for how it works.

I have lost a great deal of intellectual respect for Philip's positions and arguments. Therefore, I have little motivation to continue the engagement with him. But since I had already committed to a debate in a podcast later in the summer, I will go ahead with that.

Ironically, the only hope that something new may emerge in that debate is the fact that Philip, in his latest response to me, is giving multiple signs that he may, after all, return to the notion of one cosmic subject (plus some postulates of new fundamental laws of nature). Since he was a cosmopsychist just a couple of years ago, then a constitutive panpsychist for the duration of one book, and now seemingly something else already again, who knows what his position will be by the time we debate?

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PS: Some readers are getting confused with the terminology. There is no subject combination at the end of dissociation under analytic idealism, because there was only one subject all along (the multiplicity of subjects is illusory). What happens at the end of dissociation is merely the end of an illusion, not a combination of subjects. When you wake up from a dream, or a DID patient is cured, no subjects combine because everything was going on in only one true subject to begin with. We only talk of combination when supposedly true, fundamental micro-subjects allegedly form a non-fundamental macro-subject, as in constitutive panpsychism.