Plasma Cosmology as the fourth form of matter (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, July 07, 2019, 20:32 (1967 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The point you keep missing is plasma is a different form of matter and suggests a special place in the scheme of things. Thus God might be there

dhw: The point you keep missing is that if your God really is made of plasma, plasma must be conscious/aware. All different forms of matter are different forms of matter, and if one form of matter might be conscious/aware, then maybe different forms of matter might also be conscious/aware (tying in with panpsychism).

DAVID: It all comes down to whether God has substance at all. I think He is quantum energy since the basis of reality is quantum mechanics. As for panpsychism, I view it as a far out substitute for our reality actually being within God's consciousness.

dhw: It all comes down to whether your God exists at all. If we accept, for argument’s sake, that he does, at one moment you say it is possible that he is in the form of plasma, the next he is “pure energy”, and the next he is “quantum energy”. I wish I knew what that meant. As for panpsychism, as I understand it, the term is open to any number of interpretations, including your own panentheism (God’s consciousness permeates but also transcends our reality). This a top-down version. I like to consider an atheistic possibility of a bottom-up version, in which energy and materials (or at least some of them) have their own rudimentary mental components, from which physical life and mental complexity have evolved to the forms we know today.

I think bottom up is a stretch. The only mental activity I recognize along with most scientists is related to neurons, especially in brains.