Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 18:45 (3294 days ago) @ dhw

BBELLA: Sorry to post here, but I lost the last discussion we (dhw & I) were having.i]
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> dhw: I've hunted through the various posts, and you and I were discussing "Brain complexity: whole brain vision mechanism" - and the last exchange I can find was my reply on 12 November to your post of 11 November. -I've found the same one:-Brain complexity: whole brain vision mechanisms (Introduction)-by BBella @, Wednesday, November 11, 2015, 21:12 (6 days ago) @ dhw-
dhw: You left out my next sentence, which was that “I am happy to accept energy and matter as first cause, but not intelligence.” My objection is to your claim that somehow the magic formula of “first cause” is enough to explain intelligence.-DAVID: I don't view it that way. First cause must have intelligence to explain the invention of the reality in which we live.-First cause need not have intelligence if the reality in which we live (including intelligence) evolved as opposed to being invented.-dhw: And since we have no idea how/why ANY thought processes in ANY organism appear or work - as per all of us, not just Nagel - my answer to your original question is that the source of the instructions is “intelligence” itself (whose source is unknown), both for you and for bacteria.
 DAVID: But at least we can say that the intelligence must have a source. -BBELLA: I'm not sure I understand why intelligence (or energy or matter for that matter) "must have a source". Wouldn't it be equivalent or at least more clear (for me anyway) to say - energy, matter and intelligence is source? I could agree to that. There may have never been a source, origin or ground zero for anything that IS but what IS. The reason we can find no 'source" of all that IS "out there" is because there is nothing other than what IS.-The problem, as I see it, is that what IS includes life on Earth and us, and we want to know how that started. I think David will go along with energy, matter and intelligence as source - intelligence being the mind of the God he believes invented life on Earth. He may be right. But it is equally possible that intelligence has not always been part of what IS: -For me, they are entangled and cannot be separated. Intelligence, for me is like glue that holds all that IS together. Take away intelligence and you have nothing, just free floating dry dust - if that!-
i.e. that there is not one eternal mind governing the universe, -I can agree with this. In the sense there is not a one mind cosmic god as in one point of awareness, similar to a human.-
but minds have evolved out of an infinite and eternal mixing of mindless energy and matter (i.e. intelligence does have a source). -It seems to me, without intelligence there would be nothing to cause anything to ever be. So intelligence had to have always been. Just not a one minded intelligence. Just intelligence.-
I find both hypotheses equally incredible, but one of them must be closer to the truth.-I find it too incredible to even imagine intelligence to have never been.