Panpsychism Makes a Comeback in a different form (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 22, 2019, 11:17 (2130 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: This post rattles on about “value”. Perhaps there is a definition somewhere else in the article. Other authors talk of “meaning” or “purpose”. Without a definition, the first sentence containing your bold could be taken as a total dismissal of the concept of a God. If, however, “agentive cosmopsychism” is a euphemism for “God”, I would agree that so long as you shut your eyes to the problem of how an immaterial universal conscious mind can simply have been there for ever and ever, it is indeed simple and elegant, and I agree absolutely that it should be taken seriously. So, in my view, should the equally simple and elegant explanation that in an eternity and infinity of matter and energy forming new combinations, eventually there will be one that engenders rudimentary consciousness from which may evolve greater and greater consciousnesses. (David's bold)

DAVID: I like to present all sorts of views in areas of thought that we do not fully understand. Granted this was a nutty one. But I find your bolded response just as unreasonable, assuming the immaterial (consciousness) can arise all by itself from the material. There has to be agency of some sort in the background. I've chosen God.

dhw: Of course you find it unreasonable. But it is just as simple and elegant as the (in my view) equally unreasonable claim that there is an unknown immaterial universal consciousness that has been there for ever and ever…

DAVID: Coming out of inorganic matter, life seems to be a miracle. The appearance of human consciousness is another miracle. "an unknown immaterial universal consciousness that has been there for ever and ever…" is not unreasonable to explain the miracles.

In that case it is not unreasonable to argue that in an eternity and infinity of matter and energy forming new combinations, eventually there will be one that engenders rudimentary consciousness from which may evolve greater and greater consciousnesses.