Cosmologic philosophy: conscious universe (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, July 16, 2017, 21:10 (2687 days ago) @ David Turell

Another view of a universe that allows consciousness to appear:

https://flipboard.com/@flipboard/-is-the-universe-conscious/f-daca0496dd%2Fnpr.org

"The history of science — in particular the physical sciences, like physics and astronomy — can be told as the incremental realization that there is large-scale coherence in the universe.

"By large-scale coherence, I mean that some of the same physical laws hold at scales as diverse as the atom and the galaxy, and even the universe as a whole. In a sense, the universe speaks one language and scientists act as the interpreters, translating this language in terms that humans can understand and relate to.

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"Is this coherence an accident, or the product of something deeper, perhaps some kind of proto-consciousness that permeates the universe and gives it purpose? This is the question many physicists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers have been asking lately, leading to a sort of reawakening of panpsychism. Panpsychism is an ancient belief that has been an essential aspect of many religions, from the Old Testament's omniscience and omnipresence God to the Brahman of Hinduism, "the single binding unity behind the diversity in all that exists in the universe"

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"The possibility of a conscious universe seems to fly in the face of our deep-seated materialist worldview, whereby everything that exists is due to material particles and their mutual interactions, the very successful reductionist view of physics. Philosophers such as Thomas Nagel and David Chalmers have criticized such strict position, beginning with the difficulties we have in understanding our subjective experience of reality from a "it's all about neurons and synapses" mechanistic approach.

"In his book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, Nagel suggests that the laws of physics are not enough. He argues that there is some kind of "teleological naturalism," a sort of overarching purpose in the universe that the usual reductionist approach cannot capture. Essentially, Nagel defends that the laws of physics cannot be a mere accident, given that they lead from particles to stars to people to minds. It's not that we need to look beyond the natural world, but Nagel believes that we do need to look beyond the laws of physics, as Sean Carroll pointed out in a blog post when Nagel's book came out in 2013.

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"Panpsychism enthusiasts also like to invoke bizarre effects from quantum physics. Chief among them is nonlocality, what Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," where a particle seems to "know" what another one is doing even if separated by very large distances. Current experiments have convincingly confirmed quantum nonlocality, establishing that such correlations happen faster than the speed of light. Could such effects be the substrate whereupon the cosmic mind is acting?

"Although we still know very little about quantum nonlocality, it's hard to believe it has something to do with a cosmic-wide mind. As far as we know, nonlocal quantum effects don't show any sort of purpose, satisfying instead well-known physical laws such as the conservation of total rotation in a pair of particles (or spin). One could even say that quantum nonlocality is nature's way of preserving such conservation laws at the level of elementary particles, hardly a sign of some deeper volition. Indeed, a defender of pansychism would be hard-pressed to explain how quantum nonlocality would act as the "messenger" for some kind of cosmic purpose. Or, even harder, to propose a test or mechanism for such.

"To me, what's fascinating is that consciousness is what makes the universe exist. Just think that before humans came to be, and discounting other potentially smart creatures out there, the universe was just doing its thing, expanding, stars being born and dying, entropy increasing overall. But as matter organized itself into living things in our planet, it eventually reached a level of complexity that allowed for self-awareness, the ability to know that thyself is a self.

"This emergent picture of animal consciousness is the one that is meaningful to us, as it places humans back in the driver's seat of existence. We will never know all things about the universe, but we have the amazing capacity to always learn more. If the cosmos had us as a plan, it surely hasn't told anyone so far. But now that we are here, everything is different because we are able to figure things out on our own. This surely makes my day."

Comment: This commentary reflects the same view as Paul Davies. Our consciousness is a highly significant development from an inorganic universe. Did consciousness make the universe? I think so.