Talk:Galileo's Error

What was Galileo's Error

I tried to improve the description of what exactly Goff is saying was Galileo's error. My version is wordy. Goff makes it clear that Galileo divided the world into the qualitative and quantitative. The purported error is to assume that the quantitative part is complete. But Galileo didn't think that. Nor does Goff say that he thought that. Thus any succinct description is prone to be a straw man. As Goff says on p19 "But what of the sensory qualities? If the yellowness, the citrus smell, and sour taste aren't really in the lemon, then where are they? Galileo had an answer for this too: the soul." DolyaIskrina (talk) 17:23, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

My understanding of the "error" is in the context of Goff establishing the hard problem of consciousness. In pp. 5-7 he presents the view that science will ultimately explain consciousness using the scientific method.

He then proceeds to argue that explaining consciousness is different from, say, using the scientific method to explain life. He does not argue that consciousness is qualitative, and therefore Galileo's science doesn't apply. If that were the argument then instead of there being an "error", Galileo would simply point to the soul. Instead the argument is that unlike the inanimate world, "we cannot divorce the subjective inner world of consciousness from the sensory qualities which populate it", presumably unlike a lemon that can be divorced from its smell and color.

Therefore, even though Galileo had an answer for where the sensory qualities of an object (e.g., a lemon) reside (the soul), it still doesn't explain the nature of consciousness. And while Galileo wasn't a reductive materialist, nothing about his quantitative vs. qualitative dichotomy precludes a materialist (i.e., "scientific") explanation for the phenomenon of consciousness. And there lies the error, because a scientific method that should be able to reason about the true nature of reality cannot do so with regards to the nature of consciousness because of its limitations.

I realize that this doesn't help with your wordiness problem :) aps (talk) 22:24, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Haha. I think I get what you are saying.

This quote from page 22 might help:

"Galileo's error was to commit us to a theory of nature which entailed that consciousness was essentially and inevitably mysterious. In other words, Galileo created the problem of consciousness."

I'm still not sure how to make it more succinct. Also I worry that the value of the book is not so much in dealing with Galileo, but pushing back against modern scientism, or the idea that materialism should be the default position. So I don't want to spend too many words on the Galileo of it all. DolyaIskrina (talk) 17:19, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Maybe upon expanding the synopsis section it would make more sense to have a sentence or two on the error. aps (talk) 18:20, 4 September 2024 (UTC)