Strawson and Goff

Strawson's 2006 paper "Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism" is the most cited modern argument for the view.^[1] It runs as follows.

1. Experience is real. Nothing is more certain.
2. Everything real is physical. Strawson accepts this.
3. Experience cannot arise from what is wholly non-experiential. That would be a brute, unintelligible emergence, unlike the way liquidity arises from molecules.
4. So at least some of the basic physical constituents of the world must be experiential.

The striking feature of the argument is that it presents panpsychism as the consequence of taking physicalism seriously, and not as an alternative to it.

Goff has written both technical and popular defenses.

• Consciousness and Fundamental Reality (2017) works through the options in detail and ends by favoring cosmopsychism: the universe as a whole is the fundamental conscious thing.^[2]
• Galileo's Error (2019) is written for general readers. Its title refers to Galileo's decision to describe nature purely in mathematical terms, setting qualities such as color and taste aside as belonging to the mind. Goff argues that a science built this way was bound to leave consciousness out, and that panpsychism puts it back.^[3]
• Why? The Purpose of the Universe (2023) argues that the universe may be directed toward ends.^[4]

• Many philosophers reject Strawson's third premise. They hold that consciousness can emerge from non-conscious processes, and that our difficulty imagining how is a fact about us.
• Both face the combination or decombination problem, depending on which direction they build in.
• Scientists often object that panpsychism makes no testable predictions.

Their work supplies the philosophical ground floor that Universal Panpsychism stands on: the case that consciousness is fundamental, and in Goff's case that the cosmos is its primary bearer.

Neither philosopher argues for souls, reincarnation, or survival of death. Neither has commented on Universal Panpsychism, and their arguments should not be read as endorsing it. The step from "consciousness is fundamental" to the fuller picture in The Bridge is one the framework takes on other grounds. See Convergent testimony as a method.

1. Strawson, G. (2006). Realistic monism: Why physicalism entails panpsychism. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13(10-11), 3-31.
2. Goff, P. (2017). Consciousness and fundamental reality. Oxford University Press.
3. Goff, P. (2019). Galileo's error: Foundations for a new science of consciousness. Pantheon.
4. Goff, P. (2023). Why? The purpose of the universe. Oxford University Press.