Genome complexity: mechanism stopped evolving (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, May 16, 2016, 16:09 (3114 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: If God invented the universe, and I'm sure He did, it is not conscious. If God invented life, and I'm sure He did, He started with bacteria, and they are not conscious.
dhw: But if nothing existed except consciousness, what did consciousness make an unconscious universe from? As regards bacteria, their non-consciousness is a matter of opinion not fact.-DAVID: What is your definition of consciousness? All Shapiro appears to allude to is a possibility of minor conscious reactions, not introspection.-So far as I know, nobody has ever suggested that bacteria are introspective, or that their intelligence/consciousness is to be equated with human consciousness. Once more: the term denotes such attributes as sentience, the ability to register and process information, to communicate and cooperate, to take decisions and solve problems.-DAVID: Next, energy and matter are interchangeable. God's conscious energy just transformed some of itself into the matter of the universe. -The “interchangeability” of energy and matter presents a problem here. It fits in with the hypothesis that first cause is an unconscious process of energy and matter eternally transmuting themselves into each other, with matter somehow - the great improbability - becoming aware of the changes. (Awareness is meaningless unless there is something to be aware of.) However, your first cause is nothing but eternal conscious energy which at some finite time in the past deliberately transformed "some of itself" into unconscious matter. They are not “interchangeable” in your scenario, because the one is conscious and actually creates the other, which is unconscious. -DAVID: […] To review, God is a consciousness within and without the universe, but the early inorganic universe was not in and of itself conscious until conscious living forms appeared. Consciousness at the level of ours, somewhat mimicking God's, finally appeared late.-I think theistic panpsychists would say that the inorganic universe contains particles of their God, and so are “quasi-conscious” (Oxford Companion to Philosophy). In an atheistic version, this quasi-consciousness would have come about as described above. As an agnostic, I thoroughly approve of your neutral “conscious living forms appeared”. As a fan of the “cellular intelligence” hypothesis, I also approve of these early living forms being described as “conscious”, though not the same as “consciousness at the level of ours”. Thank you. That is precisely the concept which I have been trying to explain for the last few years and which you have so resolutely opposed!