With coaching a lot of what we do is anchored in the present. We deal with what the reality is for the client and look to move them towards where they’re wanting to get to in the immediate future. The most rewarding coaching work I’ve done has been when the client has had some revelations that have properly shifted their world view. Through sounding out stuff that they’ve never spoken about with anyone before , they’ve gained a new perspective that has enabled them to reshape their future.

Big Stuff. But sometimes it’s important to go EVEN BIGGER. 

Which is where Philip Goff goes in his book – Why? (subtitled “the purpose of the universe”). It has been interesting seeing the reaction of friends (and my partner) when they ask what I’m reading and I tell them. Ranging from “Hey cool – I’d like to borrow that.” through to a perplexed frown and the occasional eyeroll. I like to think that Philip encountered a similar range of reactions when he was telling people about what he was writing. Though as a professor of philosophy at Durham, I’m guessing that there’ll be more people he knows who are in that space (or interested in debating his points) and less of the eye rolliness… But the returning question that you occasionally get to any of the “big questions” debates is “so what???”.

I do see that view. In terms of whether the universe has purpose or not, it’s such a big question that unless it’s the sort of pondering that does pop into your mind at 3am from time to time, the day-to-day relevance to your daily life is likely not to have much bearing.

I was attracted to the book by the promise that Goff is arguing towards a purposive universe. That things haven’t happened purely by chance and that there is a driving force pushing us towards “something”. Maybe. The popularity of the likes of Stephen Hawking and his Brief history of time, Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World and Robert M Pirsig’s Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance suggest that there’s a real intrigue in the debate about those big questions, and why we’re here, from a philosophical and scientific perspective. I do love these diversions but there does seem to be an issue with strawmen arguments being constructed to set theories against. That Goff’s approach mirrors my own conclusions, thus far, means that in many ways this book was pushing at an open door for me. I also thought that his approach of setting the book out into discrete sections which build towards his conclusion, and which are separated out into accessible first sections and ‘digging deeper’ sections in which he addresses the main counterarguments and goes into more depth on the details and the lines of reasoning, was interesting. The book surfs that tricky balance between presenting arguments that are followable and understandable, but which don’t duck the main “but hang on…?” questions and queries that arise when you’re reading through it.

The chapters take a real whistle stop tour through themes on the point of living, how science and the presence of consciousness point towards there being purpose in the universe, why an omni-God probably doesn’t exist and how there can be cosmic purpose without there being a God. This all draws the reader towards Goff’s central argument in favour of panpsychism and his theories on pan-agentialism in which even at the very basic minute building blocks of the universe have a kind of proto-consciousness and purpose.

The tight page length and pithy summarising of the arguments begin on strong footing, taking in a great introduction and discussion of nihilism, the philosophy of David Hume and how to philosophically live a life with meaning. There’s then a much needed overview of the science and probabilities behind the existence of a universe in which life can exist (versus it just being made from hydrogen or just being made from neutrons – how the fine tuning of the physical constants is in a minute region of all the possibilities). 

I think my background as a chemist always makes me wince when I read some of the hand waving arguments about how, given an infinite universe and infinite time, and with the possibility of the multiverse, then everything is possible and everything can happen. Unfortunately, when you crunch the numbers, knowing what we know and bound by the laws of physics as we currently understand them, the possibility of everything happening purely randomly and by chance is pretty much zero.

There’s a great discussion that goes into this in much more detail in another book that I read quite a few years back by the physicist Paul Davies, so if you’re interested in reading more about the science and research and the theories behind the origin of life, I’d strongly recommend you check out Davies’ book the Fifth Miracle.

Goff is more couched in the philosophical theories behind the universe and the purpose behind it. He touches lightly on the value-selection hypothesis, diverts via Bayes probability equations and explores the typical objections that people raise concerning the multiverse and infinity. 

It’s around here that he quotes Douglas Adams’ quip about a puddle (and how, from a puddle’s perspective, its universe would seem perfectly designed for it). But more on that later.

One of the strongest things about how Philip Goff sets up the book is the accessible and conversational way in which he introduces and uses philosophical concepts. The idea of “meaning zombies” is really clearly set up and introduced into the arguments presented. In philosophy, Zombies are a hypothetical being that is identical to a human but lack consciousness. It’s a really interesting counter to the arguments that consciousness has its basis in purely physical processes. 

The concepts covered continue to come thick and fast, taking in considerations on free will, whether we all live in a simulation, what if we’re all in some higher being’s experiment and if “God” is an amoral designer, or if the higher being is not omnipotent, but simply able to kick things off, but not able to influence things once the first domino is toppled. 

The breakneck speed at which these concepts and refutations and arguments against the refutations whistle past does mean that it’s not always possible to really bottom out some of the threads to the depth and level that I’d have liked. The final couple of chapters give a conclusion on how to live with purpose that advocates for using hallucinogens to expand the mind based on the author’s own experience, and an oddly tacked on postscript on taxation, which doesn’t really tie in with the rest of the book.

Setting those aside, the discussion about whether we simply live in a simulation and the arguments that Goff presents against this were probably the point at which I really started to doubt that the book was as rigorous as the contrarian in me wanted it to be. Repeatedly, the argument was put forward that we couldn’t be a computer simulation because any beings advanced enough to create this simulation would likely have some kind of ethics counsel that would veto such cruelty.

I’ve recently read “Breakfast of champions” by Vonnegut, and I think that does a decent job of outlining the myriad difficulties with this position. If a creator (the author) is pushing around the characters like pawns in a plot for their own (or others) entertainment, then the question of ethics wouldn’t come into it in the way Goff asserts. 

As I type this, it does also strike me that this also butts up against his own arguments for pan-agentilism as well. A “higher being” or creator would likely have a different threshold of where ‘proper’ consciousness kicks in, even if they did have a code of ethics. If we take ourselves as a petri dish for this, and assume that pan-agentilism is true, then every bit of matter has a degree of consciousness, and yet we move a cup from here, to there. We treat animals appallingly. The idea that we’d have a stern set of ethics of how to treat simulations that we created entirely is just not what we’ve done. If you’re treating this all as funnelling in the same direction (the particles mini-motivations are aligned to ours and everything is interconnected), then I guess this falls away. 

And with that digression it probably gets to the heart of what this book does superbly, which is not really provide any answers, but provide a blueprint and an overview of a load of things that are the jumping off point for further questions. Which feels very coaching.

Which is also all very Douglas Adams, here’s a bunch of answers, now you need to think a lot harder about what the questions for them might be.