Consciousness; a radically new theory. Romansh? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, June 28, 2015, 17:54 (3435 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Sunday, June 28, 2015, 18:12


> DAVID: No, I think the universal consciousness has created inanimate objects such as you have listed, but the attribute of consciousness itself is limited to those animals with brain function.This is where I differ with dhw and his panpsychism theory.
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> dhw: The attribution of consciousness to inanimate objects is misleading, since it can imply human-type awareness. The description of panpsychism that I like asserts that “each spatio-temporal thing has a mental or ‘inner' aspect. [...] there may be varying degrees in which things have inner subjective or quasi-conscious aspects, some very unlike what we experience as consciousness.” (Oxford Companion to Philosophy) .... Basically, as I mentioned in an earlier post, this would describe evolution from the bottom upwards (the rudimentary quasi-consciousness of those individual materials ultimately developing into our own self-awareness), as opposed to the top downwards (supreme consciousness coming from nowhere). I do not subscribe to this hypothesis, but simply offer it as an equally reasonable/unreasonable alternative to the inexplicable creative talents of God and chance.-I find the term 'quasi-consciousness' as a neat cop-out to escape the trap of chance or design as the only alternatives. As I view universal consciousness, from which your thought begins I believe, it has created animate and inanimate forms, but nothing 'quasi'. Quasi-consciousness presumes since God is in everything He imparts some of His mentation to everything. I find no evidence for that in anything I have studied. A rock is still a rock. A single cell still responds automatically to stimuli and appears to have some degree of mental choosing, but that is just 'appearance' without any proof.-And a pantheist (very closely related to panpsychism) has the pope's ear with terrible results. I think the Earth is a special planet with interlocking and self-correcting properties to allow for life.:-https://stream.org/scientific-pantheist-who-advises-pope-francis/-"Strange, then, that a self-professed atheist and scientific advisor to the Vatican named Hans Schellnhuber appears to believe in a Mother Earth.-****-"This goes far beyond the fact that the Earth's climate system has feedbacks, which are at the very center of the debate over climate change. In the Gaia Principle, Mother Earth is alive, and even, some think, aware in some ill-defined, mystical way. The Earth knows man and his activities and, frankly, isn't too happy with him.-"This is what we might call “scientific pantheism,” a kind that appeals to atheistic scientists. It is an updated version of the pagan belief that the universe itself is God, that the Earth is at least semi-divine — a real Brother Sun and Sister Water! Mother Earth is immanent in creation and not transcendent, like the Christian God.-"What's this have to do with Schellnhuber? In the 1999 Nature paper “‘Earth system' analysis and the second Copernican revolution,” he said:-"Ecosphere science is therefore coming of age, lending respectability to its romantic companion, Gaia theory, as pioneered by Lovelock and Margulis. This hotly debated ‘geophysiological' approach to Earth-system analysis argues that the biosphere contributes in an almost cognizant way to self-regulating feedback mechanisms that have kept the Earth's surface environment stable and habitable for life.-"Geo-physiological, in case you missed it. Cognizant, in black and white. So dedicated is Schellnhuber to this belief that he says “the Gaia approach may even include the influence of biospheric activities on the Earth's plate-tectonic processes.” Not the other way around, mind you, where continental drift and earthquakes effects life, but where life effects earthquakes."