Consciousness: not explained by panpsychism (General)

by dhw, Monday, November 05, 2018, 10:07 (2208 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You simply refuse to recognize that life and speciation are unique phenomena which nobody can explain. Yet again: I do not accept that human birth canals, whales’ fins, spiders’ webs, weaverbirds’ nests, monarch butterflies’ migration all had to be planned before they were needed in anticipation of conditions that did not exist. I find it far more logical that they all resulted from the needs or opportunities created by changing conditions.

DAVID: Again, an example of your magical thinking. Needs and opportunities don't design, when design is required.

Again an example of your dislocated thinking. You have forgotten that in my hypothesis it is the intelligent cells/cell communities that do the designing, in response to the needs and opportunities.

dhw: And so, yet again, instead of your proposal that they were all preprogrammed 3.8 billion years ago or personally dabbled by your God (although apparently his purpose was to produce the body and brain of Homo sapiens), I propose that they were endowed right from the start - possibly by your God - with the intelligence to organize their own responses to those changing conditions. But of course, yet again: this remains a hypothesis because “life and speciation are unique phenomena which nobody can explain”. I believe I may have said all this before.

DAVID: You sure have said it before, scurrying back to an God-given inventive mechanism, which means God is in charge of evolution, which is always my point.

You have forgotten that my hypothesis (theistic version) is the reverse of yours: in mine, your God has invented the mechanism so that he does NOT personally preprogramme or dabble every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder in the history of evolution but organisms do it themselves. And this explains the vast variety of organisms and natural wonders extant and extinct – a history that runs directly counter to your belief that the whole of evolution was geared to the production of sapiens’ brain and body.

DAVID: Thirdly, the formless energy we find is not conscious, nor are aware of any way it can create its own consciousness. Therefore a pre-existing designing mind is required. Further logic not necessary.

dhw: Consciousness has to be designed, the formless energy we find is not conscious, and therefore there must be a form of formless energy that we are not aware of whose consciousness doesn't have to be designed but simply is. No, I’m afraid I do not find that logical. Sorry.

DAVID: That is why you are agnostic. Your logic doesn't carry as far as mine.

Even you have admitted that your belief ultimately rests on faith, not on logic. That is why whenever I pinpoint the illogicality of your arguments, you fall back on the mantra that your God’s logic is different from ours.