Evolution of Intelligence (Origins)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, 14:46 (4258 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

I hope no-one will mind if I skip the discussions on our fellow animals (we agree they have varying levels of intelligence) and on my apparent need to have tea with God. I'd like instead to focus on some recent quotes:-TONY: The origin of a singular entity we call God very well could have been mindless energy.-I'd forgotten Tony's earlier references to the Qabala (my apologies), which BBella remembers: "[what I call] the 'All that Is' [could be the] nebulous, having no form, purpose, intelligence, personality, infinite and unknowable." The next stage, though, is an "awakening to awareness". This is the great conundrum. How did "the nebulous" become aware (let alone self-aware)? For this to happen, it must have something to be aware of. Perhaps we can agree that the "nebulous" is energy, which mindlessly transmutes itself into chunks of matter, each of which contains its own "portion" of energy. The form this energy takes is temporary ... matter always changes ... but the energy is not temporary. If we accept that somewhere along the line, energy became aware (and changing matter is what it became aware of), the awareness would be that of the energy within the matter. In answer to BBella, this is the form of "panpsychism" I'm suggesting: not a single self-aware entity, but multiple germs of "intelligent energy" within multiple chunks of matter (not necessarily in ALL matter), i.e. an individually developing awareness of change from within, rather than universal awareness of nothing in particular. -BBella: My thinking is, if from this nebulous sprung the creator of all things, why couldn't the nebulous itself be the creator of all things [...]?-In my scenario nebulous energy is the first cause, but the multiple "creator" is energy becoming aware of the changing matter which it formed and in which it's embedded. In my post of 5 March at 12.17 I tried to apply the idea to psychic experiences:
 
"It may well be that in some people, and even in some other animals, the "intelligent" energy within the brain cells makes contact with the energy of other intelligences, and after death the same process may continue (who knows?). The matter (here, the physical brain) disintegrates, and so the energy may be released along with the knowledge, information etc. it has gained during its physical lifetime. But it is released not into a single, all-knowing, universal being, but into an infinite field of different (even if interconnected) intelligences that have evolved from first-cause energy. Perhaps we can only communicate with our own form of intelligence, although we might also be able to perceive other "realities" (landscapes, sounds, events) since the energy that gives rise to them is never lost."-No single entity, but multiple intelligences which pass on information and so build complexity. This brings me to a marvellous article by Stephen L. Talbott, recommended by David:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/evolution-and-the-illusion-of-randomness
It deals in detail with the non-randomness of mutations and multiple complexities which provide solid support for the concept of the "intelligent genome" ... itself a prime example of my "panpsychist" hypothesis. One sample quote:-"Here, then, is what the advocates of evolutionary mindlessness and meaninglessness would have us overlook. We must overlook, first of all, the fact that organisms are masterful participants in, and revisers of, their own genomes, taking a leading position in the most intricate, subtle, and intentional genomic "dance" one could possibly imagine. And then we must overlook the way the organism responds intelligently, and in accord with its own purposes, to whatever it encounters in its environment [...]"-David, however, asks: "How much self-directed complexity in the genome do you need before a rational person must admit that a designer is a necessary conclusion?" -Here is Talbott's answer: "Although the word has its legitimate uses, you will not find me speaking of design, simply because — as I've made abundantly clear in previous articles — organisms cannot be understood as having been designed, machine-like, whether by an engineer-God or a Blind Watchmaker elevated to god-like status. If organisms participate in a higher life, it is a participation that works from within — at a deep level the ancients recognized as that of the logos informing all things. It is a sharing of the springs of life and being, not a mere receptivity to some sort of external mechanical tinkering modeled anthropocentrically on human engineering."-The highly recommended Talbott could hardly make it clearer that in his view the intelligence comes from within. (The Neo-Platonic use of logos had the meaning of "generative intelligence".) The evolution of intelligence from mindless first-cause energy to solar systems, living cells, and our own consciousness may have come about step by step through energy gathering information from within the matter it formed, and sharing information as matter/energy increasingly combined with matter/energy. Is that any more irrational than the hypotheses 1) of chance and 2) of all energy as a single entity becoming aware of itself?-******-I'll catch up on trilobite eyes tomorrow.