Consciousness and Fundamental Reality

In Consciousness and Fundamental Reality, Philip Goff argues that physicalist views cannot account for the evident reality of conscious experience, and hence that physicalism cannot be true. He argues that there are big problems with the most well-known arguments against physicalism and proposes significant modifications. He then explores and defends a theory of fundamental reality known as 'Russellian monism.' Russell argued that physics, for all its virtues, gives us a radically incomplete picture of the world and tells us only about the extrinsic, mathematical features of material entities, and not how they are in and of themselves. Following Russell, Goff's version of Russellian monism argues that it is this "hidden" intrinsic nature of matter that explains human and animal consciousness.