Immunity: detecting dangerous bacteria (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, December 07, 2017, 15:36 (2544 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Which is a non-answer since first cause here is a blank slate. To me the presence of consciousness is critical, and demands an explanation, which cannot be found in the inorganic origin of the universe. Consciousness must require some sort of underlying organization since it must use a brain to appear, at least as we experience it.

dhw: I agree that the presence of consciousness is critical, but I don’t know what you mean by “here is a blank slate”. As I see it, the first cause is either eternal energy and matter forever forming new combinations and eventually producing one that has consciousness (chance), or energy and matter have always contained a rudimentary form of consciousness which has evolved (bottom-up atheistic panpsychism), or energy has always had total consciousness of itself and of everything needed to create a universe and life (top-down God). No "blank slates" here. NONE of these (for me equally incredible) hypothetical first causes require a brain. Consciousness as WE experience it does require a brain, unless the dualists are right, and we only require it to provide us with information and give material form to our thoughts so long as we have a body. Consciousness as bacteria may experience it does not require a brain, but if materialists are right, it does require an equivalent.

DAVID: I'll stick wwith my view that the consciousness we experience is the only one that really exists other than God's. Of course I come from a position of seeing the requirement of a designer.

dhw: It is perfectly possible to believe in a designer and to believe that other organisms are conscious, even if not to the same degree as we are.

And I'll stick to the requirement for a present brain to have consciousness.