Philip Goff

Philip Goff (1980–present) is a British philosopher (Durham University) and one of the most prominent academic defenders 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.

In Consciousness and Fundamental Reality (2017) and the popular Galileo’s Error (2019), he develops the Russellian monist argument: physics tells us only what matter does (its relational/structural properties), not what it is intrinsically, and consciousness is a good candidate for that intrinsic nature.

He also explores cosmopsychism, the idea that the universe as a whole is the fundamental conscious entity. The crucial distinction for this Atlas: panpsychism claims that matter has an experiential intrinsic nature; it does not claim that human thoughts create external events, that intention is causally magical, or that “you attract your reality.” Goff has been explicit that panpsychism does not vindicate New Age mind-over-matter.

Nonetheless, “philosophers now take seriously that everything is conscious” is frequently lifted into spiritual and manifestation rhetoric as if it supported a participatory, thought-responsive universe. The accurate framing keeps his rigorous intrinsic-nature claim separate from that overreach.

Tier: legitimate-philosophy; cleanly distinct from manifestation; relevant to the “consciousness is fundamental” debate.