Panpsychism Makes a Comeback in a different form (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, January 24, 2019, 20:46 (2128 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Wishful thinking. Life must appear first for consciousness to occur, and you assume it was spontaneous. You have faith in the powers of infinity. Fine tuning looks certainly like a designed process.

dhw: "Life must appear first for consciousness to occur", and yet consciousness created life. And you assume that consciousness was always there but it wasn’t there until consciousness created it. You have faith in the powers of topsy-turvy. But yes, fine tuning looks like a designed process, and I do not have faith in the powers of infinity. I consider both “first causes” to be equally reasonable/unreasonable. For some reason you keep forgetting that I am an agnostic.

DAVID: I fully remember you are an agnostic. An ever-present God with consciousness as a starting point is only topsy-turvy if God is impossible to accept as the originator, which is your implacable position.

dhw: I do not have an implacable position. I find both “first causes” equally reasonable/unreasonable, but one of them must be right. I can't decide which one. Topsy-turvy refers to your argument that life must appear first for consciousness to appear, but consciousness created life.

You will remember my contention that consciousness cannot appear from nothing. Human consciousness requires the appearance first of a human brain that can contain it or have the ability to receive it. I do not think that our human brain invented consciousness. You may consider a first cause God as topsy-turvy but I don't