Cell response to electric field (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 15, 2013, 12:31 (4241 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Surely you will see where this is taking us. You and I are the same in thought. My conscious energy (God) which pervades everything and your intelligent energy are really one and the same! Your panpsychism solves the problem as you have proclaimed. It is obvious your panpsychism is really God by another name.-This is a lovely post, and an ingenious response. Indeed if my "intelligent energy" or your "conscious energy" existed, they would both solve the problem equally well, but alas they are not one and the same. Your first cause energy has been eternally self-aware, purposefully designed the universe, purposefully designed life, pre-programmed the first living organisms to innovate until they reached his special target, which was humans (though his concept of preprogrammed, planned and unplanned evolution is still very unclear to me), and humans have a soul which somehow returns to him.-It may all be so. And other people's god(s) may have done things differently. The alternative panpsychist hypothesis that I am proposing is based on the model of evolution: I believe that all forms of life go back to the first living organisms, and that "intelligence" has evolved by degrees from the lowest to the highest, from bacteria (or whatever) to ourselves. And so by analogy my first cause is unconscious energy which also acquires consciousness by degrees, through and within the matter it has formed. No single, eternally self-aware, purposeful god required. We needn't repeat all the details or your objections, which I consider no more and no less valid than my objections to your eternally self-conscious energy. -However, there is an interesting in-between scenario which has been niggling away at the back of my mind, and which you, BBella and others including myself discussed at length. I went hunting through some of Frank's posts from several years ago, and came across this passage, which is a good summary:-FRANK: "Everything is "made out of" God. When God "pulverizes" himself, the most fundamental "pieces" of himself are the fundamental particles of nature, whatever they are (strings? who knows!). Since the fundamental particles are little pieces of God, supremely unconscious pieces of God because they are so simple, it stands to reason that when they collect together into higher and higher forms, following their own nature and coming to a focus in a "higher" being, they become more and more conscious, eventually reaching the point where they can turn right around and look inside themselves and "see" God in his fullness down deep inside, in what we call mystical experience."-I'm not sure to what extent you can go along with this, but my own hypothesis follows the same pattern, except that it doesn't require Frank's God! The fundamental particles are simple and unconscious, but they collect together into higher and higher forms which become increasingly conscious. Where, we will both ask, does the early consciousness come from? -According to Frank: "As for the origin of consciousness, Griffin has an answer, stemming from Whitehead, that I think is unassailable. Experience "goes all the way down" to the fundamental particles. In the fundamental particles, it is just "minimally there." It is manifest for example when one particle encounters another and there is a mutual reaction or transformation. They are "experiencing" each other. Problems only arise when you assume that experience suddenly emerges at some level of complexity from no precursors."-It's worth pointing out that A.N. Whitehead, the shining light of process theology, believed in panexperientialism (a variation of panpsychism). In my hypothesis, matter contains "particles" of the energy that formed it, and this energy's "experience" of matter (through endless encounters, reactions and transformations) brings about the first glimmerings of consciousness from which eventually everything else evolves. But of course, my hypothesis also removes the problem of believing in a form of consciousness that emerges at the highest conceivable level of complexity from no precursors: namely the God that you and Frank believe in, and in whom I neither believe nor disbelieve.