Cell Memories (Identity)

by dhw, Sunday, October 13, 2013, 17:32 (3846 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If the brain is the receiver (which you regard as a reasonable hypothesis) and not the producer of consciousness, how can consciousness be the product of biochemical processes? If the brain is the producer, as you believe at the moment, how can consciousness survive the death of the brain?-DAVID: The biochemical processes are in the individual neurons that produce ionized signals that transfer signals back and forth. The entire network of over 100 billion neurons with trillions of connections result in the emergence of consciousness either as a hologram or through quantum connections at that level. This is why I view the receiver concept as viable.-You have described what you believe to be the biochemical mechanism from which consciousness EMERGES. That makes it a producer not a receiver. My two questions remain unanswered.-dhw: Let me get this straight: God pervades everything, which means he pervades our cells, and so although according to you our consciousness (which with all its manifestations constitutes most of our identity) is produced by biochemistry, what is produced is an entity that can live independently of our biochemistry because...because...biochemistry has produced...what? A new piece of the universal consciousness which was already inside the producer? Do you not find this confusing?-DAVID: We are part of God's consciousness. I'm not confused. I have a consistent theory for me. Since you refuse to accept any belief system you are sitting on the outside of understanding wondering how to get in. If you won't accept anything in a step beyond what we fully understand, of course you remain in puzzlement. How the biochemistry acts to allow consciousness is explained above, not that we understand how it emerges.-"Allow" consciousness is a strange expression. I'm not sure what it implies. As for your theory, it is consistent so long as you do not have to explain its inconsistencies. I accept that there must be a first cause, though we can't possibly know what it is. I accept that we cannot understand the emergence of life and consciousness. And I accept that if there is an afterlife, we do not know how the identity can survive the death of the body. That is why I remain open-minded on these subjects. I think you too should accept that you are "in puzzlement". I have great respect for your faith and for your hypotheses, but I am also prepared to consider alternative hypotheses. By attacking those hypotheses on the grounds that they do not answer the questions that leave us all "in puzzlement", you can only find yourself throwing stones in a glass house. -dhw: What is anathema to David [...] is the suggestion that this consciousness is not one supreme being who has planned and designed the universe and everything in it. The "intelligent" cell concept can be linked atheistically (it can also be theistic, though) with the idea of there being different forms and levels of intelligence, which can evolve into new forms as they combine and cooperate. Life, like the universe itself, would therefore be the product of an evolutionary process guided from within materials by intelligences of ever increasing complexity. [...] In short, "universal consciousness" would not be one being, but the separate energies of all things and all beings. Pretty way out, perhaps, but no more so than chance creating the universe and life, or than a readymade superintelligence that came from nowhere.-DAVID: ...The one agreement I have is it 'is way out'. You want a bottom up solution to the discussion of how evolution happens and I prefer a top down. Only a top down can provide intelligent plans for evolution to follow.
 
I offer it as an alternative to your version. You want a top down solution because you believe in a god. That doesn't mean that a top down solution is any more or any less likely to be accurate than a bottom up solution. You believe that evolution follows intelligent plans, but some people believe it follows its own course without any overall plans. That is why we are having this discussion.
 
DAVID: Bottom up is a bastardized version of Darwin's musings and brings in cells dancing around trying this and that, trial and error, which is pure Darwin. I know you were raised on "Origin" but you really must believe you have abandoned it, because your stated position has. Chance flew out the window a while ago.-No, in this hypothetical version the cells are not dancing around trying this and that, trial and error. That is indeed pure Darwin (= random mutations). Instead of randomness, and instead of your divine preprogramming of every innovation right from the start, this hypothesis suggests cells may have an intelligence of their own, and through cooperation between billions of such intelligences over billions of years, there have emerged increasingly complex organisms culminating (so far) in ourselves. This intelligence may even have been engineered by your God. Like Darwin's own theory, the hypothesis deals only with evolution and not with the origin of life and intelligence.