Consciousness and Fundamental Reality

Consciousness and Fundamental Reality develops a sustained academic defence of panpsychism, the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world, with even basic physical entities possessing some primitive form of experience. Its central claim is that experience is a strong candidate for the intrinsic nature of matter.

The argument is Russellian monist: physics describes only what matter does, its relational and structural properties, not what it is in itself, leaving a gap that consciousness can fill. Goff also entertains cosmopsychism, on which the universe as a whole is the fundamental conscious entity.

A careful work of analytic metaphysics, it helped make "consciousness is fundamental" a respectable philosophical position. Goff is explicit that panpsychism does not vindicate New Age mind-over-matter or the claim that thoughts shape external events, a distinction central to its place in this contested branch.