Atheists continue to advance exotic solutions to consciousness, but here’s what they all show us — in the same way that we need a pilot for ships, we need a pilot of the universe. Now, there’s Philip Goff, who promises the best of theism, yet without theism in his new book Why?.  

But Goff advances the further claim, in the Wall Street Journal, that we can even be spiritually fulfilled surpassing the atheist, and yet without invoking what some scientists consider spooky entities — gods, spirits, angels and demons. 

However, Goff offers us an even more exotic theory of consciousness than his atheistic competitors, and one that he and others think gives us all that we need without the baggage of actually having to believe God exists. On the surface, then, his perceived success of giving us a new scientific theory of consciousness by identifying it’s ultimate explanation with the universal wave function — something growing in popularity amongst some atheistic scientists today — is not altogether surprising. But, we suggest its only perceived this way when compared with the failures of his materialistic cousin, the view that the origins of consciousness are explained by physics. 

Unfortunately, we know where this story ends — in the constant promissory note. Christopher Koch and David Chalmers made a bet that in 25 years we’d arrive at a science of the brain sufficient for mapping the neuro-correlates of consciousness. Well, that time has passed, and we are nowhere closer to arriving at a science of consciousness. Goff thinks he’s better positioned to occupy the place of materialistic (the view that nonconscious physical atoms explain everything) science. But here’s where his view is little more than a promissory note of wishful thinking. 

His scientific sounding theory assumes that atoms (or the fundamental building blocks of physics) are conscious, which depend on the discredited integrated information theory of consciousness (called IIT). IIT was recently discredited by a host of neuroscientists who also reject Goff’s view of conscious atoms as pseudo-science (see here:  https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02971-1; “The IIT Consciousness as Pseudoscience,” “The Worth of Wild Science”.) So far, not so promising. 

What about the universal wave function? There remain significant hurdles when we consider one of two approaches to physics. One is to say that current physical theories actually map onto reality. The other says that current physical theories are merely giving us useful predictions without needing to say that all the bizarre things of physics are part of the real world. According to philosopher Jeff Koperski, every physicist supposes that some physical theories do not map onto reality because current physics is a patchwork of conflicting theories that fail to give us a unified picture of the universe. Like Goff, David Albert takes the exotic view that the wave function is a real, physical object. Yet Albert reports many people find this surprising and appalling. We see no good reason to believe that an appalling physical universal wave function gives Goff the Aristotelian mean of two extremes. 

But here’s another problem for Goff. The famous quantum physicist David Bohm also affirmed the exotic view, which was scandalous at the time. Yet Bohm pointed out that the universal wave function can’t explain all we need. It can’t solve the physical measurement problem, nor can it find the present moment. Instead, Bohm says we need something like a pilot wave. Even more problematic, the theory does nothing to inform us about the place of consciousness and free will in the world. In other words, it does nothing to explain what we actually experience (whereas Goff believes his theory explains). Bohm turned toward Eastern mysticism to solve this, but he didn’t see this as a fuzzy middle. As philosopher Sampsa Korpela argues, Bohm’s theories best fit theism and that historically passé belief in souls. 

Here’s a final problem for Goff, and it’s a whopper. The physical universe came into existence roughly 13.5 billion years ago according to the standard model bringing the wave function with it, so it cannot possibly explain itself. But a wave function (while universal), too, can’t explain itself. Theists, on the other hand, have an explanation — God explains it! Goff, and his colleagues, lack an explanation. At the moment, Goff’s purported success is, once again, little more than a promissory note of wishful thinking. 

Given these reasons, there’s little of substance favoring this new theory of consciousness. We still need something like a god piloting the universe.