Panpsychism Makes a Comeback: denied in plants II (General)

by dhw, Monday, July 08, 2019, 10:38 (1747 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You keep repeating what I say as if I hadn’t said it. Humans have a vastly greater level of conscious/awareness than other life forms. That does NOT mean that other organisms do not have their own degree of consciousness/awareness. There is no disagreement between us! But you are, of course, welcome to disagree with the many scientists who believe that plants and bacteria have a degree of awareness.

DAVID: Our disagreement is your use of equating awareness with consciousness. Awareness only means the animal is conscious.

You have just equated awareness with consciousness, and yes the animal is aware, which means it is conscious. Consciousness does not mean self-awareness. There are different levels of awareness/consciousness. Humans have a vastly greater level of consciousness/awareness than our fellow animals. There is no disagreement.

Transferred from the “plasma” thread:

DAVID: As for panpsychism, I view it as a far out substitute for our reality actually being within God's consciousness.

dhw: […] 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.

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

How very strange. I thought you thought your God was mentally active. Now he’s not just pure energy, but he also has neurons. And I also thought you were a dualist, and firmly believed in an immaterial soul which was capable of mental activity. And I also thought you said most scientists now agree that brainless bacteria are intelligent, i.e. mentally active. You even accept a bottom-up view of evolution in so far as it starts with comparatively simple forms of life and evolves into ever increasing complexity. But I accept all your reservations concerning the mental capacity of all materials. I find that as difficult to believe in as a universal mind that has simply always been there.