Panpsychism Makes a Comeback (General)

by David Turell @, Thursday, January 22, 2015, 23:03 (3353 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: Your final sentence is a good summary of my evolutionary hypothesis: that as the lower forms of awareness enabled cells to combine into ever more complex communities, so these cell communities themselves acquired increasing degrees of awareness.-You state that this could have happened through 'awareness' even though what we see is molecular reactions and responses, nothing more. You are claiming to have solved one of the great mysteries of evolution, multicellularity. The great experts, like the ones you love to quote about sentience, have no answer as to how this developed.-> dhw: You go on to say you think human self-awareness and abstract thought represent a “break in the progression”, and we shall have to agree to disagree, since I find a perfectly logical sequence from our cave-dwelling, vocalizing animal ancestors, through our cave-dwelling, vocalizing human ancestors, to our house-dwelling, Internet-browsing modern selves.-Here let me use an analogy for my view. Each step of evolutionary progress through early primates to apes and chimps was as if evolution stepped over a small dividing brook. To get to human consciousness, it required a flight over the Atlantic Ocean
> 
> Dhw: Our own sensory and mental activities and communications are also bound up with “molecular responses to molecular stimuli”, but what we don't know is how we are able to modulate our behaviour accordingly. That is where degrees of consciousness come in, for us and for other organisms, and that is where the work of eminent researchers clashes with your preconceptions concerning the purpose and course of evolution (see my post under “Pre-preprogramming evolution”).-Sorry, but I can't follow your line of thought. I'' try the other post.


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