Different in degree or kind: EVOLUTION (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, January 03, 2015, 13:05 (3612 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Since I think the brain is a receiver for consciousnesss and is the interpreter of the soul, animals with brains have souls.-The second question, which is indispensable to the point I am trying to develop, was whether you believe there are gradations of consciousness/soul complexity between different organisms. My example was the chimpanzee and the duck.-However, I'll take this a little further in the light of the important discussion going on between yourself and Tony. Cells are sentient, and regardless of degrees of autonomy, you have agreed that within the genome there must be a mechanism that acts LIKE a brain, processing the information provided by the “senses”. As a substance dualist, you believe that there is some separate form of energy which controls our use of information, and this is what you mean by “soul”. Can you think of any reason why even the simplest organism should not have the same form of control, i.e. through some separate form of energy? (Obviously, this ties in with my question concerning gradations of consciousness/soul.)