A Panpsychist Hypothesis (General)

by dhw, Saturday, June 21, 2014, 12:12 (3807 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Never potential intelligence. "Which came first chicken or egg" type of argument. Pure energy invented its own intelligence? Illogical. 
GK: for me it is not illogical because of the possible states the particles that make up the energy can be in at any given time.
DAVID: Intelligence requires information. One cannot separate the two. When a consciousness receives information it becomes intelligent. Show me the other way around-I could not have put it better myself. Consciousness without information is only potential intelligence. If eternal energy was the first cause (i.e. nothing else existed before it), even if it was conscious, it could not have become intelligent without information. So where did the information come from, to enable it to make a universe and life? Earlier you wrote: "Pure energy invented its own intelligence? Illogical." Now apparently pure energy invented its own information, and that's how it became intelligent. Logical? -dhw: I still find it impossible to conceive how intelligent energy could have had any information at all about the behaviour of matter before matter even existed. 
DAVID: Because the inventor knows what he is creating.-That is the same as saying he already has the information about matter before any information about matter is available. You call it counterintuitive. I call it illogical.
 
dhw:The possibility that first cause energy was a potential rather than an actual intelligence is therefore bolstered by your acceptance that your God may have had to experiment in at least one area of his activity.
DAVID: These are your conjured up possibilities, not mine.-You have agreed that this is possible in the case of evolution.-Dhw: I have complete respect for your FAITH, but I don't like your insistence that your own illogical hypothesis (which you prefer to gently call "counterintuitive") is more logical than any other illogical hypothesis. I have said repeatedly that NONE of these hypotheses are logical, because they all come up against the brick wall of inexplicable life and consciousness. Hence agnosticism.
DAVID: Hence the need for faith.-Why is there a need for faith? Those who believe in heaven and hell, judgement, damnation etc. may feel under pressure, but why do you "need" to choose one illogical hypothesis in preference to another?