Panpsychism (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 12, 2012, 11:54 (4363 days ago) @ hyjyljyj

dhw: You proceed to ask a series of philosophical questions which "possess the thought-destroying potential of koans." Yes, indeed. And there is not one mention of the subject that forms the subject of this thread ... namely, panpsychism.-Hyjyljyj: Hope that didn't come off as my blithely derailing a thread; I was merely intending to convey my concurrence that, rather, Romansh was so doing by taking the tangent of calling into question the existence of one's own consciousness, which, if I may just peel off the skin of the onion this time and simply say, is as close to silliness as anything on TV. >:^D)-We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread on panpsychism, something I still don't get.-The purpose of my post was to point out that you and I HAD been diverted from the subject by what I regard as philosophical games. I think Romansh was just having a bit of fun.-Panpsychism as I understand it boils down to the idea that there is a degree of "consciousness" in all things. I'm in no position to lecture on the subject, as it's new to me as well, but my personal slant on it (though long ago BBella offered the same suggestion) is that even a rock, which would probably have the lowest level, will respond to and interact with the environment. Push it over a cliff and it will fall, hammer it and it will flake. You and I might not call this any kind of consciousness at all, but as we move up the scale we come to bacteria which have an astonishing range of interactions, plants which engage with the environment and with one another, animals etc. right up to us with a degree of consciousness that extends into extreme self-consciousness. Until I read the paragraph about Koch which I quoted at the start of this thread, I'd been talking in terms of intelligence, not consciousness, and I still prefer it, though it also demands a reassessment of our normal understanding of the word. My "intelligent cell" creates communities of cells that perform miracles of intelligence without, so far as we know, being self-aware.-Regardless of all the faiths it touches on (pantheism, panentheism, process theology etc.), I am trying to apply panpsychism to the concept of the "first cause". There has to be a first cause ... something that has been there forever, if we agree that nothing can come of nothing, although many atheists disagree. David and I have both accepted that the first cause is energy of some kind. Theism makes that energy superintelligent, superconscious, totally self-aware. Atheism of course rejects that concept entirely, but in both versions this energy HAS to be active. The theist believes that it deliberately creates matter; the atheist thinks that it does so "naturally" (laws of Nature) without awareness. The panpsychist could argue (my interpretation) that the "natural" process of creating matter, and of matter then forming systems, is guided by unselfconscious intelligence. (At this stage, there is no major gap between atheism and panpsychism, but see below.)
 
My analogy for this, as I said above, is the unselfconscious intelligence that forms all the systems through which our bodies function (= communities of "intelligent cells"). In other words, the "creator" is unselfconscious energy which intelligently turns itself into inorganic matter which intelligently forms organic matter which intelligently forms cells which intelligently form organs etc. right through to us. Evolution through unselfconscious to selfconscious intelligence.-Where this could get really interesting is in the matter of OBEs and NDEs. Our human energy is now self-aware, and so if the brain is the container and not the producer (a big IF), this self-aware energy could survive death and bring its own identity ... as well as meeting with other identities ... into the intelligent but impersonal, unselfconscious energy of what BBella calls the ALL THAT IS.-I don't buy it either, but I don't buy selfconscious superintelligent energy at the start, or totally blank energy at the start. For me it's a third option no less and no more likely than the first two. It does away with the father figure, i.e. the personal, all-knowing, all-powerful God, and fits in with what appear to be the random comings and goings of stars in the heavens and species on Earth; but at the same time it does away with the atheist's total dependence on chance: earthly evolution no longer depends on random mutations, and the universe's production of conditions suitable for life no longer depends on a random alignment of heavenly bodies, as there is a never ending process of "intelligent" combination, with natural selection determining what survives. It also leaves open a possible explanation of psychic experiences which atheists would rather ignore as if they never happened. If people weren't so accustomed to concepts like God (theists) and "the laws of nature" (atheists), which they often swallow without a second thought, this third option might be taken seriously.