Panpsychism (Evolution)

by romansh , Thursday, December 20, 2012, 23:49 (4134 days ago) @ dhw

ROM: You did not answer my question, about the consciousness of cities.
> 
> The only answer I can give you is that family, community, city, country are collectives, and so they must be split. The people in them will be conscious to the degree of self-consciousness, the other living creatures will be less conscious, the materials of which the cities are built...hm, well, perhaps a panpsychist would allot them the lowest possible degree of consciousness. If pushed, I'd say that inorganic material has no consciousness of its own. Any apparent consciousness will be the result of association with a different form of (conscious) energy.
I find a few contradictions here dhw. 
Are you suggesting the potassium, calcium and sodium ions play no part in your consciousness? The various bits of a city are more connected than ever, therefore your observation they are split does not work for me.-> Then why not acknowledge that there are degrees of consciousness? A zombie by definition ("someone who is not aware of what he/she is doing"), just like a drunkard, can be considered conscious but not to the degree of self-awareness. If a zombie's behaviour (ordinary humans aren't confined to responses) is EXACTLY like a human's, then of course we won't be able to distinguish it.
Why would i assign something degrees of consciousness when I am not even convinced consciousness even exists.
 
> dhw: I'm proposing panpsychism as a theory midway between theism and atheism, dependent neither on a self-aware Father Creator nor on Chance, but on the same impersonal intelligence that has enabled life to evolve from the more rudimentary to the more complex. I'm not saying I believe it, but I don't think it's any less likely than eternal uncaused Genius or eternally floundering Chance.-I don't buy into panpsychism especially like that proposed by Deepak Chopra-> What do you mean by "colder"? If we take the uncaused genius as maximum consciousness (= 100), and chance as no consciousness at all (= 0), and if we agree that the first cause is energy of some kind, where on the scale of consciousness would you put first cause energy?-If consciousness exists it is simply akin to energy exchange.
> 
> Rom, I've copied and pasted your announcement about Agnostics International onto the first entry, as it'll be more prominent there. Sorry you had such trouble!
Thanks dhw