An attack on modern science (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Thursday, January 29, 2015, 21:00 (3584 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Philosophically speaking ‘mindlessness' creates nothing.-Dhw: Unless you have suddenly become a convert to a form of panpsychism, I don't see how you can be so sure that mindless matter can't create things. Can you not imagine universes full of stars and planets and meteors and rocks and dust and gases WITHOUT life? The result of energy and matter endlessly transforming themselves? Universes without planet Earth?-DAVID: No I can't. How long do you want to watch a rock to see if it will do anything? Or become something else? Perhaps you should define the ‘matter' you are envisioning.-The rock is the matter I am envisioning, as are the stars, planets, meteors, dust and gases, plus the 95% of dark energy and matter that make up our own universe. You claim that the first cause is conscious energy. If this is true, all matter came from that energy, and whether it's one or a zillion universes, the same principle has to apply: energy and matter endlessly being transformed. If you can have your conscious energy transforming itself, why I can't I have my unconscious energy transforming itself? In case you've forgotten my point, it is that Smolin and Unger's preference for a single universe in a succession of universes would shorten the odds against one of those universes coming up with a combination of materials to engender some form of awareness.