DAVID: (under Evolution: a different view): Another essay from Andreas Wagner which explains the enormous protein landscape and how evolution seems to navigate it through large relationship networks. -https://aeon.co/essays/without-a-library-of-platonic-forms-evolution-couldn-t-work?utm_...-Thank you, David, for another interesting approach to the subject. I'm transferring it to this thread because although the first quote below applies to mathematical “truths”, it could be extended to tie in with BBella's suggestion that ALL the information is already there, which could mean that organisms do not invent but they discover. I think, though, that this is a difficult concept to pin down. Did Shakespeare “invent” his plays, Beethoven his symphonies, Whittle his turbojet, Marx his Marxism, the legless lizard its leglessness, or did they just happen to come across them in the infinite library of the ALL THAT IS? I am inclined to opt for the former. Here are the relevant quotes:-"Some believe with the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein that mathematical truths are human inventions. But others believe with Plato that our visible world is a faint shadow of higher truths. Among them are many mathematicians and physicists, including Charles Fefferman, winner of the Fields medal, the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in mathematics. He expressed his experience when breaking new mathematical ground this way:
There's something awe-inspiring. You aren't creating. You're discovering what was there all the time, and that is much more beautiful than anything that man can create."-The conclusion: "Nature's libraries are the fountains of biological innovation that Darwin was looking for. And unlike the realm of abstract forms that Plato envisioned, they are richer, more diverse, and more complex than the visible world. They harbour enough innovations for all the species Darwinian evolution has created - and could create. No planet would be large enough to explore all of them. The legless lizard and the rest of the living world, in all their glory, are just faint shadows of this Platonic realm of the possible."-“Nature's libraries” seem to me to be very akin to Sheldrake's "morphic fields", though it is still not clear how organisms gain access to the right "book", or whether there is an almighty librarian in charge of the whole shebang.


> dhw: And so to your question: "What is consciousness if there is nothing to be conscious of?" I couldn't agree more. And this is one reason why David's God is so difficult for me to believe in. If God is pure conscious energy, what did pure conscious energy have to be conscious of through the eternity of its past existence? - Its self as ALL THAT IS.

Dhw: The information and the collective memories may allow for innovation, but they do not cause it. -> BBELLA: This is the question then [...] Subtract all information and all collective memory from all that IS, and what would we have? Would there be anything for an intelligent, conscious observer to view? Even more importantly, could there then be any intelligence if there were no memory or no collected information to gather from? Would there even be consciousness if there is no memory of information to be conscious of? 
 
> [...]I find it hard to believe that a stone has consciousness. But I know from experience that I can use the information embedded in the stone in order actively to influence the world around me. (I can break somebody's window with it.) This simple fact leads to what I think is the crucial difference between us at this juncture of the debate:-I have no problem with your example, but it doesn't address or seems to me to side track my point (or question) of whether innovation is not caused by the morphic field. For me, the answer lies in the understanding that if you subtract the collective memory of everything that is or ever was (the morphic field), if conscious intelligence would still be conscious? Or by substracting all memory are we deleting consciousness all together? Without memory of the past or anything to innovate with is there still something? Can one exist without the other. Is innovation "caused" by the collective memory of the morphic field? I cannot see how it cannot be.
 
> BBELLA: I have difficulty separating the collective information from the collector as easily as you (maybe Sheldrake as well) seem to be able to do. Is there a separation? If there is a separation, where would the line be drawn? And what would the one be like without the other?
> 
> This is basically the clash between holism and atomism. The ALL THAT IS comprises every element, conscious and unconscious, and all are interdependent, but that does not mean the parts can't or don't have an existence of their own. I can't throw the stone if there is no stone, and the information can't be extracted from the stone and used by me if there is no me. And so on the holistic level there is no separation, but on the atomic level there is, and each is as valid (in my view) as the other.-I completely agree with you. But this doesnt answer the questions: Where is the separation between the parts and the whole? And can we have consciousness without something to be conscious of? ->This brings us to innovation. Of course no organism can innovate if (a) it doesn't exist, (b) it has no environment, (c) it has no existing information to work with. But if it is conscious of the information contained in itself and in its environment (more generally, in the morphic field), it can use that information to invent. The invention will provide new information which in turn will become part of the morphic field. The latter is not static, but expands in a never ending process of development.-No argument here. 
 
> However, you have asked: "Is the collective information of all that IS also the acting intelligent collective conscious of all that IS?" As I see it, that would remove the individuality of all organisms (including humans) from the picture. -I disagree. Because the very term itself- inter-connectivity - expresses individual parts connected. You can't connect that which is not separate. Where the line is drawn between individuality and connectivity is what we are really trying to distinguish in our discussion.->As David says, it is the universal consciousness he calls God (if we leave out all the religious attributes). In my evolutionary hypothesis, I have allowed for David's God to endow individual organisms with their own consciousness, and his belief in human free will follows the same principle, which means that holism and atomism can still live together, though David's concession is much more limited than mine. Your proposal makes no concession at all. -I completely disagree. In fact, I am saying just the opposite. Every conscious decision is made by each individual consciousness.->If the ALL THAT IS is actively conscious and individuals cannot add to existing information (because it is the conscious WHOLE that invents), all life forms are puppets. -I have not said that new information cannot be added to existing information. New information is being added in every moment. But whether new information becomes part of the existing field is another thing.->Maybe we are. But common sense and daily observation tell me we are not. I think technology, the arts, languages, our often murderous economic and social systems all suggest that at different times humans have used existing information to create new information. And I would suggest that all the natural wonders David has shown us, and all the different forms of life that have come and gone, also indicate a continuous process of individual organisms changing the morphic fields through their own consciousness, as opposed to a collective consciousness making all the decisions.-I completely agree. I did not mean to give the impression that (one) collective consciousness makes all decisions. Each "decision" is made by each individual conscious entity.