Trilobite eyes (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, March 28, 2013, 17:22 (4049 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Although the "panpsychist" alternative I have offered naturally demands a similar leap of faith, at least it has the merit (in my eyes) of NOT depending on chance or on an unknowable God. -Your 'panpsychist alternative' has no basis as a proposal from what we know about the genome of life. The leap it requires is much more than faith. It would mean simplifying all of organic chemistry. The genome contains information which drives the chemicals of life to act like automatons, but the chemicals have no thoughts of their own as your term inplies. When an organism becomes uncomfortable in its environment, by which I mean it has chemical signals of difficulty in pursuing living, the genome chemically recognizes this problem and begins to arrange for epigenetic adaptations, all following a built-in coded mechanism in the genome. This is Shapiro's point. It is also why he is still an atheist. He is still willing to accept this degree of complexity from chance mutational changes. And it is why the ID people love him, since they cannnot accept the concept of chance for this much complexity.- Nagel would jump at your 'third way' pan-psychism, but he knows it is not reasonable. The issue remains, unsolved for those who won't accept God, as the source of the information. Only a thinking mind can create complex information or invent a code like DNA! I believe your problem is that you have just a vague knowledge of biochemistry, so you do not see the depth of the complexity. I think Shapiro is trapped because he is committed to methodologic reductionist naturalism in his role as a University professor.