Review of Why? The purpose of the Universe by Philip Goff

Why are we here? What’s the point of existence? Oxford University Press says that For those who are unsatisfied by the answers of traditional religion, and equally by the lack of answers from atheism, Philip Goff opens up a path between the two… This may well be true, but is it the only path? And how valid is this particular path?

Now for Science Fiction aficionados into science, and scientists into SF (the principal target audience for SF² Concatenation), there is a hunger for answers to such BIG questions be they: is there life elsewhere than on Earth, can we create a truly artificial (general) intelligence, what of non-human intelligence, states of mind/perception and, indeed, the nature of reality. With this in mind Philip Goff's book is very much in the wheelhouse for those interested in the science-SF interface, and indeed I appreciate having read this.

It should be stressed that the author is a philosopher (not a scientist) and equally I must emphasise that philosophy has contributed much to science, including providing some of the toolkit needed for things like bioethics that have come to the fore in issues I have had to confront in my own career: genetic modification, climate change, animal experimentation, etc. So I came to this book with genuine interest.

What Philip Goff is presenting is the case for panpsychism: that is the notion that 'consciousness' is a fundamental feature of reality, including all physical matter.

Now, this is quite a concept, and worth your briefly reflecting on before continuing… It is quite an idea.

Goff begins stating his belief in there being "overwhelming evidence for the existence of cosmic purpose", which straightaway rang a number of alarm bells: his 'belief' in itself is not hard 'evidence' let alone 'overwhelming' and, even if it is, it tells us nothing of the cosmic purpose – '42' anyone?

He then goes on to look at science pointing to the Universe having 'purpose', starting off with Darwinian evolution's success and physicists' standard model and that there is 'over whelming evidence for the 'value selection' hypothesis. And there's that word again, 'overwhelming': keeping on saying that there is 'overwhelming evidence' does not make it so…

And along the way we get the fine-tuned Universe argument (that the Universe's physics constants [speed of light, electron charge and so forth] are set to values that allow life, and – in this book's case – consciousness, to flourish. Now, the fine-tuned Universe proposition is itself controversial and at this point I wondered whether Philip Goff had heard of, say, Victor Stenger's counter arguments (he gives no mention of such counter arguments).

And then there is an attempt to apply Bayes Theorem to validate the 'value selection' hypothesis at which point I wished that David Kipping was there to check Goff's homework. (Statisticians and computer scientists at this point may reflect, garbage in, garbage out. The excellent physicist, Lee Smolin's estimate of the probability of a fine-tuned universe is just that: an 'estimate' and not hard fact or certain probability so it is highly inappropriate to apply Bayes.)

Moving on, there is a more sound attempt to show that consciousness points to purpose. However it should be noted that even if this is true (and Goff makes a fair fist of this) this does not mean that the reverse is true: that purpose points to consciousness.

Here though, along the way we look at Turing and his test for artificial intelligence, zombies (for SF readers the Heinlein story 'All You Zombies' filmed as Predestination) and free will (physicists' superdeterminism, though neither are mentioned.) And a toe is dipped into quantum mechanics with Goff giving a shout out to Pilot Wave, or de Broglie–Bohm theory. Now, I too have a passing (I am not a physicist) penchant for de Broglie–Bohm but do note that it can be considered to be a variation of the many worlds hypothesis (not sure if the author is aware of this). Goff's interest in de Broglie–Bohm is that he considers that a particle's wave function causes it to have conscious inclinations… (whatever these are).

Here, one of the things that troubles me is that Pilot Wave theory really is more of a conjecture than established theory: it is an unproven hypothesis. So Goff using an unproven conjecture to underpin his own belief that consciousness pervades the Universe is more than a bit of a stretch.

Philip Goff then moves on to surer ground with a chapter on why an all powerful (omni-) god probably does not exist, presenting the standard arguments that such a thing if it existed would be truly evil given all the suffering in the world. We then move on to consider a conscious Universe and living with purpose.

Actually, it is here that the book becomes useful in that it addresses that there are things more important than an individual and that the individual needs to (is obliged to) contribute to the greater good. Here, the book ends with a reprint of one of Goff's articles on the importance of tax and whether or not tax is theft. This case is beautifully, lucidly and concisely presented and very relevant in the scenes of early 21st century western Europe and N. American politics.

There were some things I was surprised to find missing from the book. No physicist John Wheeler 'it is bit' or his notion of the participatory Universe. And if the Universe is conscious then you might reasonably expect some information processing and if there is information processing then you might expect information content to be increasing as the Universe evolves. So why no mention of the Earth, across deep-time seeing, an increase in both abiotic and biotic information?

The other thing that is missing is a summary bringing all the book's points together so we can see the logical chain of thought. My suspicion is that the author has not done this because if he had readers would more easily see the smoke and mirrors (as entertaining as they are) underpinning his case. The author, at the end of the book's introduction ('How to read this book'), says he is leaving it to academic philosophers to piece together his argument from his narrative. I guess the author does not think it worth piecing his case for either philosopher academics or other readers even though earlier in the introduction he does claim for trying to make it accessible for a broader audience… Hence my suspicion.

What Goff has presented us is an elegant construction at which we can truly marvel. But it is a structure built in a series of premises of different strengths, and if one or more fails then the whole thing collapses. It is a house of cards built on sand: elegant but with all the tensile strength of a wet paper bag. (God, how I hate wet paper bags.)

One of my biggest problems with this book (you will gather by now I have a few) is that – despite it claiming that it has some science on its side – is that it is non-scientific. I mentioned earlier that philosophers have made some valuable contributions to science with bioethics. One of my favourite philosophers is Karl Popper and the idea for a hypothesis to be scientific it must be falsifiable, that is to say that it must be possible to observe something (and others observe it too) or conduct an experiment (which others can do too – replicability) to see whether the hypothesis can be shown to be false or alternatively has some possible merit necessitating more refined observation/measurement for further detail or falsification under greater scrutiny. The thing with panpsychism is that it is difficult (I am being kind – as it stands it is imporssible) to do this and I, for one, am not convinced that Philip Goff has done so; though, no doubt, he would disagree.

Further, towards the book's end, the author notes that our adoption of a scientific approach, focuses exclusively on observation and experiment at the cost of ignoring other sources of data… Which sort of undermines the point of science in that it exclusively uses verifiable data of a known provenance. Ignoring woo-woo, unverifiable populist rants, myth and made-up snake-oil ideas, the ravings of false prophets, and the like, has served science and humanity well. I, for one, am not giving up on that. Besides, as Terry Pratchett once mused that trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Yet, while Philip Goff has not sold me on his panpsycist thoughts (even though, he himself has consciousness) it was interesting as a scientist to see how present-day philosophers operate. Here I note that the inside cover has encouraging quotes from half a dozen professors of philosophy, so I am guessing that this must be a well regarded book. Alas, if that is truly the case then I fear for the state of contemporary philosophy as a discipline.

OK, so Why? The purpose of the Universe was an interesting peak behind the present-day curtain of university philosophy academics, even if a disappointing one (I hope it is not representative). And while it did not convince me as to panpsychism's merit (indeed if anyone else now comes along banging this particular drum they are going to have to work a lot harder to gain my attention let alone trust) I was grateful for the appendix on whether tax is theft and the need to have it. This last means that this review copy is going in the collection, and not to recycling.

As said, I have had in my time to tackle controversial issues. One such is climate change and as I write this review we have a President in the US who does not seem to believe that human-induced climate change is taking place, and here in Britain we have a fast-growing political party that does not understand the urgency and socio-economic benefit of 'net (fossil carbon) zero', yet science has provided 'overwhelming evidence that humans are affecting the global climate and the climate trajectory we are on (see the various IPCC Assessments' first Working Group reports). This really is 'overwhelming evidence' (and still folk vote for Trump and Reform). Alas, with Why? The purpose of the Universe, Goff has not even begun to present 'overwhelming evidence', though clearly, from the promotional quotes this book has accrued, he has a number of academic philosophers on his side… This means that any readers are going to have to make a decision…

Non-Fiction Reviews

Why? The purpose of the Universe