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Bertrand Russell wrote that “the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it”. If so, Philip Goff’s latest book has got the point of philosophy perfectly — although the result may make you wonder if it has one.
Why? The Purpose of the Universe reads appreciate an attempt to argue for as many preposterous positions as possible in the shortest space of time possible. First there is panpsychism, the idea that “consciousness pervades the universe and is a fundamental feature of it”. This old idea had long been out of favour, but in recent years has enjoyed a revival in academic philosophy. But Goff goes advance and also argues for pan-agentialism — the hypothesis that nothing is entirely inert and passive and “the roots of agency are present at the fundamental level of physical reality”. Even particles “are never compelled to do anything, but are rather disposed, from their own nature, to reply rationally to their go through”.
If you find this hard to swallow, what follows will make you choke. Goff advocates the “Value-Selection Hypothesis”, the claim that it is so improbable that the laws of physics are just right for conscious life to evolve that it can’t have been an accident. Goff agrees, but denies that a benevolent God is the best explanation. Instead, he believes that the universe itself has a built-in purpose, the disappointingly vague goal of which is “rational matter achieving a higher realisation of its nature”.
All this adds up to Goff’s final bold theory that the universe is conscious and is acting towards a purpose of realising the full potential of its consciousness. The radicalism of this “teleological cosmopsychism” is made clear by its implication that “during the first split second of time, the universe fine-tuned itself in order to allow for the emergence of life billions of years in the future”. To do this, “the universe must in some sense have been aware of this future possibility”.
The one thing you can’t say about this book is that it lacks ambition. “I wanted this book to be both a significant contribution to philosophy and accessible to a broader audience,” Goff writes in the preface. How he thought it would be possible to do so in just 150 pages is a mystery as deep as consciousness itself. Goff appears to believe that his arguments are simple and their validity obvious. If it seems otherwise, it is only because “we are so used to the idea that science has done away with cosmic purpose” that we are incapable of dispassionately considering the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Goff’s main method of argument is to reduce the solution to a problem to two or three options and argue that his preferred one is more likely. Not only are his calculations of the odds dubious, the choices themselves are questionable. Many would argue that there are options other than accepting that life is objectively meaningful or not meaningful at all; that there are objective fundamental facts about what has value or we have to adopt nihilism; that a system is either conscious or not, with no borderline cases, and so on. Nor is the only viable form of materialism the “micro-reductionism” which holds that everything human beings do is fully determined by the basic laws of physics operating at the smallest level of reality.
Even if Goff is right, it is hard to see why the universe’s purpose should give our lives one. Indeed, to believe one plays an infinitesimally small part in the unfolding of a cosmic master scheme makes each human life look insignificant. The meanings we give our own lives may seem petty from the point of view of the universe, but they are big enough for us cosmic specks.
Why? The Purpose of the Universe? by Philip Goff Oxford University Press, £14.99, 208 pages
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