A Panpsychist Hypothesis (General)

by dhw, Monday, June 16, 2014, 21:06 (3599 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I'm not going to attempt a definition of intelligence, but I'm happy to list some of the attributes we associate with it: the ability to process perceptions, understand and act on them, communicate, devise plans and strategies, make decisions...some of these can be accomplished by computers, which is why we talk of artificial intelligence. They can also be performed by the billions of organisms we see around us, including some of the very simplest, such as bacteria.-DAVID: You are reaching amazing conclusons aabout automatic chemical reactions and instinct, inherited learned behaviors.-We are both presenting opinions as if they were established scientific facts. I should have qualified my statement by saying that many researchers believe....I hope you will also qualify your own. (But see below.)-dhw; And yet over and over again, you present us with examples that contradict this narrow view (for which, as always, I am deeply indebted to you).
-Apologies for my terrible syntax! I am indebted to you for the examples, not for your narrow view!-DAVID: ...And to make the point that life is miraculous in all its aspects, and it all appeared from inorganic matter. I am incredulous, and why not?-I agree that life is miraculous, and I'm as incredulous as you ... whether life stemmed from an unknown eternal intelligence, a process of evolving intelligence, or sheer chance.-dhw: Research has shown that plants, insects, animals, bacteria and cells are individual intelligences working together, perceiving, planning, adapting, communicating, making decisions. But their form of intelligence is different from ours.
DAVID: Their so-called intelligence are intelligent actions, which are in general automatic responses to the whatever challenges present.-Again, we are both presenting interpretations, not facts, but earlier you called my conclusions amazing, and so I like the caveat "in general". Innovations would be the most obvious exception to the general behaviour of these organisms, with every innovation stemming from an action that was NOT automatic. And even if, unlike many researchers in the field (we have discussed this on earlier threads) you are convinced that these organisms do not process perceptions, communicate, plan, take their own decisions etc., but act like robots once new organs and modes of behaviour have been established, you are still allowing for individual intelligence with your "in general". 
 
dhw: I'm offering a somehow that evolved from the interplay between energy and matter. You claim that the energy particles of your God were somehow always intelligent and conscious because... because...they just were. And Mary Poppins could fly. All at the same level of pipe dream.-DAVID: As Mary Poppins and Peter Pan said, it just takes wishing, your will and faith. You may started from the same place but the two interpretations of what we see are diametrically opposed.-Yes, your pipe dream is the opposite of the alternative pipe dream I have outlined. I don't accept or dismiss either of them, since both are based on interpretations of our limited knowledge, and both inevitably founder on the unknown "somehow".
 
Dhw: I did not expect you to change your views. For me, all the hypotheses are fairies in dells, but one of them must be closer to the truth than the others, There is no consensus. Only faith.-DAVID: On this we agree. [...] I made up my own decisions from the information I read, not from opinions. What I found required intelligence and underlying information to explain what was demonstrated. So I asked the question: where did the required information come from? There is no way it could be developed as things evolved. Information requires intelligence to begin with. Codes are only developed by intelligence.-We have always agreed on this, and of course you based your own decisions on the information you read. I have sufficient respect for people like Hawking and Dawkins to assume that they also based their decisions on the available information. I also agree that codes are developed by intelligence, but although information requires intelligence, intelligence also requires information if it is to function. Your first cause is intelligence in the form of pure energy. You have now acknowledged the possibility that your God might have had to experiment, although initially you dismissed the idea because it made your God seem an indecisive ditherer. Perhaps eventually you will also acknowledge the possibility that cells and cell communities have an intelligence of their own. And as information is accumulated through experience, thereby increasing the scope of intelligence, you may one day acknowledge the possibility that intelligent energy on its own, without information to work on, is a pretty meaningless concept. This leaves us with the question of how intelligence without information might come into being. And so perhaps one day you might acknowledge the possibility that first cause energy is a potential that required the information provided by matter to take on any reality. But it's just an alternative to the possibility that energy has intelligence before there is anything for it to be intelligent about.