Pansychism; a supporting essay (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, September 03, 2019, 09:29 (1909 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: dhw will like this. My belief is a parallel in that I think we live in the consciousness of God.

dhw: I don’t understand what you mean by “in the consciousness of God”.

DAVID: To answer your question I think God created us in His mind.

dhw: Perhaps I’m being stupid, but I still don’t understand this, or “we live in the consciousness of God”. Do you mean our material existence and that of the universe are both illusions and everything is a figment of his imagination? Or do you mean he planned everything in his mind and then manipulated matter to give material form to his ideas? Or the universe is his body and contains his mind?
Purely as a matter of interest, the author of our article has clearly latched on to A.N. Whitehead’s notion that “the basic unit is an experiential event”, which he calls an “actual entity” (Oxford Companion to Philosophy) – and Whitehead was a panpsychist-panentheist and process theologian.

DAVID: I do not view God as true matter in any sense. For me God exists only at the quantum level, which is why quantum mechanics is at the root our our reality. This explains one of the reasons why I doubt our ability to reason as God does…..

This is your one and only justification for your combination of fixed beliefs in your always-in-control God having a single goal which he ignores for 3.X billion years before designing a bush of hominins and homos until he finally designs the only thing he ever wanted to design…… (See “Neanderthal” and “Unanswered questions”)

DAVID: ….since quantum discoveries are so counterintuative but also related to consciousness as Whitehead infers. I think God planned and created us with His mind, and therefore we live in it.

I can understand him using his mind to plan and create us. I can’t understand “therefore we live in it”. Do rocks and grains of sand and drops of water also live in it? Then “it” would mean the material universe, but God is not “true matter in any sense”. On the other hand, in the context of panpsychism and your panentheism: If your God is within as well as without the universe, is he also present in rocks etc.? What would that mean? (I am only trying to understand your thinking here – this is not a criticism.)