ID commentary on animal minds (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, January 11, 2016, 13:06 (3239 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: It is reasonable to consider a hierarchy of consciousness as this article appears to suggest. Very simple consciousness in ants for example. Human consciousness vastly different and really of a different kind. I think we both agree consciousness seems to pervade the universe, and certainly is a part of quantum mechanics.-dhw: I'm not sure about the universe, though that is part of panpsychist thinking and may offer an alternative to the hypothesis that the universe was created by a single sourceless mind. I feel more confident about the consciousness of living organisms. -DAVID: And I don't accept that any degree of consciousness developed from an inorganic universe, unless by purpose. It is a giant step. Note the following:
"Physicist Vlatko Vedral explains to Aleks Krotoski why he believes the fundamental stuff of the universe is information and how he hopes that one day everything will be explained in this way."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfQ2r0zvyoA
Watch the video. Information can only come from a mind, the universal consciousness.-I watched it and admired the interviewer, who asked all the right questions and got no answers, though Vedral does not endorse your conclusion, so I don't know why you have recommended the video. Perhaps it's unfair to make judgements without reading the book, but these are the notes I made as I struggled to listen:- “Probability is the only concept you need to define information.” Meaning? Where do the laws/information come from? You can only be speculative. If you talk of God, you get back to infinite regression and ask what are the origins of God. We'll never get there. It's all open-ended. The scientific method is conjecture, we try to refute it, and the conjecture that survives the longest = the laws of nature (until another conjecture comes along to replace it). Concepts like emotion and aesthetics are too complicated, but one day we'll probably be able to explain love. We need randomness...not caused by anything...everything out of nothing...lack of knowing...The interviewer asks: “How are we information?” Answer: “This is not fully understood.” On and on it goes...And yet at one stage he says it's all very simple. We don't know where the information comes from, emotions etc. are too complicated to explain, we don't know if the genome or social factors explain humans, but it's all very simple. Just call everything information, and you have a theory. Call it energy and you have a theory. Call it God and you have a theory.-Vedral is of course entitled to his belief that the fundamental stuff of the universe is information, however nebulous that concept may be, and his hope that one day everything will be explained in this way is on a par with every other hope expressed by every other scientist and non-scientist who thinks he has hit on the magic formula. As Hamlet put it: “Words, words, words.”