Philosopher Philip Goff and entrepreneur Dave Asprey argue that science was built to measure physical things, not subjective experience like consciousness. They suggest the problem isn't that consciousness isn't real, but that we lack the right tools to measure it. Love, they note, can be measured by simply asking people about it.
You know, I think you just need to put ideas on the table and interact and work through it and, you know, it might come to nothing. You know, who knows, who knows what the truth is? But, you know, I think this is, you know, wide shadow presses. This is, I think people are in this, the hardest narrative to get over. I think people think, look how successful science has been, our conventional scientific method in explaining so much of the universe, producing, you know, such incredible technology. Of course it will one day explain consciousness. I think that's how Anil Seth thinks, and that's very understandable. But I just think there's a different way of thinking about the history of science. Yes, it's been incredibly successful, but it's been incredibly successful because it was focused on something quite specific that was never designed to explain. If Galileo time traveled to the present day and heard about this problem of explaining consciousness in the terms of physical science, he'd say, of course you can't do that. I designed physical science to deal with observable, quantitative mathematical stuff, not subjective, unobservable qualities. You know, he was much more clued up. I think we're just getting carried away with the success of this wonderful thing, but which was designed for a specific task.
The scientific dogma has become if it isn't measurable, it doesn't exist and is worthy of disrespect. And that is usually a problem of not having the right measurement tools. Or maybe it doesn't exist. Or maybe in the nature of consciousness, maybe it can't be measured with physical tools, but it can be measured. Because do two people know they're in love with each other? Just ask them. Like there's a measurement. Was that a direct observation? Oh, no. So that's been the fundamental learning for me along the way.
