A Panpsychist Hypothesis (General)

by dhw, Saturday, June 14, 2014, 12:17 (3814 days ago) @ dhw
edited by dhw, Sunday, August 10, 2014, 20:17

PART TWO-We should now go back to the panpsychist concept of matter with "quasi conscious aspects, some very unlike what we experience as consciousness", and in particular we should bear in mind that matter means zillions and zillions of energy particles. These are the quantum energy particles which David himself has imbued with the intelligence of his God, so intelligent particles are common to both hypotheses. I think we would all agree - except perhaps Romansh - that every human has his/her own individuality. Those who have had experience of living with animals will say the same of them. Those who have studied ants and bacteria etc. express surprise at the "intelligence" shown by individuals. (David recently gave us the example of slime, and has offered us countless others.) The behaviour of cells in cell communities gives us the same message. You will see that I'm working my way from the complex back to the comparatively simple. The "particles" are individuals that cooperate (or compete), and the innovations that have driven evolution have stemmed from individual intelligences - because every innovation must take place within an organism that already exists. To what extent this process can be applied to inorganic matter we don't know (that's why I've mentioned "natural laws"), but in the organic world we do not have ONE mind: we have zillions, from the human brain down to bacteria. These live for themselves and for their particular communities, and the "inner mental aspects" of these communities are also individual (Sheldrake's species consciousness).
 
In short, the God hypothesis proposes a single mind that has somehow always had intelligence, awareness and knowledge (of what?) or somehow evolved these attributes in time to deliberately create our universe and everything in it. My panpsychist variation begins with potentially intelligent energy being transformed into ever changing matter, experience of which somehow led to the dawning of countless individualized forms and degrees of intelligence (though the same process might have occurred innumerable times before our universe). Evolution progresses in the same way, through the accumulative experience and intelligence of cellular communities responding to changes in the environment; human self-awareness evolved from cellular awareness. No single controlling mind, but each organism fending for itself with its own inner "quasi-consciousness". The controlling force is not chance, because all these intelligences guide themselves and cooperate with one another to create complexity. This rids us of all the baggage associated with the conventional God figure, while keeping the influence of chance to the bare minimum, since the birth of intelligence in matter marks the starting point of individual purposefulness (survival, propagation, improvement).
 
Unlike materialistic atheism, this hypothesis sets no limits on the workings of intelligent energy, which need not be confined to or perish with the matter it has created, because it is not the product of matter. The (always partially) fulfilled potential can be passed on, and it incorporates all those factors in life that appear to defy material explanation - self-awareness, love, aesthetics, reason, imagination etc., plus so-called psychic experiences which are far too numerous to be ignored. David is constantly warning us against endowing his God with attributes - and indeed how could one impose any shape or character on eternal energy? - though he can't resist reading purposes and plans into the divine mind. The God of my panpsychist variation is also the particles of eternal energy, but in this panpsychist variation, apart from their evolved and evolving intelligences, we impose no attributes - not even that of homogeneity.
 
Finally, let me stress again that this is not a profession of belief. I'm only offering an alternative to faith in a nebulous God, and faith in chance, while also looking for a way to encompass those areas of intelligence that materialism has so far failed to explain.