Quantum zeno effect (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, August 24, 2013, 12:27 (3897 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: So why in the quantum world ... which nobody understands ... should the same principle [individual intelligences organizing themselves] be any more fantastic than a single consciousness/intelligence? D-AVID: Yes, flights of fantasy. The universe follows an organization. The basic particles organized it and have created a universe that allows us to exist. There are underlying principles that yield to mathematical descriptions. And you propose a bunch of micro-consciousnesses running around? Who coordinates the menagerie? Or is it all amorphous? And how does that work? There must be a central organiziing force.-Our bodies are a bunch of micro-consciousnesses in the form of cells and cell communities, and they themselves coordinate the "menagerie", and we are not amorphous, and we don't know how it works. Human society, the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom also consist of a bunch of micro-consciousnesses which coordinate themselves. How can you be so sure that the quantum world does not function along similar lines? You even say that "the basic particles organized" the universe so that they could form a zillion different combinations and ultimately give rise to life. If I argued that God gave particles the ability to work things out for themselves (as cells do in our bodies), would you dismiss the concept as "a bunch of micro-consciousnesses running around"? In fact, you may recall that this divinely inspired form of panpsychism underlay Frank's version of process theology, which resembles your panentheistic view of God being inside and outside everything.*** -How did it start and how does it work? We come back to the same dead end. I don't know if or how energy could have evolved into these countless quasi-intelligences. Nor do you know if or how energy could always have been a single and infinite intelligence. If one is a flight of fantasy, then so is the other. -***Out of interest, I have hunted through Frank's posts, to make sure my memory wasn't playing tricks. The following is under "Problems with this section", 27 October 2009 at 00.52 (ugh, it was a long hunt!): "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." -This is precisely the form of panpsychist evolution (unconscious particles combining and eventually evolving consciousness) that I am describing and you are dismissing. Do you accept it on condition that the particles are "pieces of God"?