Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion (General)

by dhw, Sunday, October 27, 2019, 08:57 (1852 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I thought perhaps you would acknowledge that the article as bolded supports my own view of autonomous intelligence and directly contradicts your theory that all the lifestyles and natural wonders you have listed over the years are preprogrammed or dabbled by your God.

DAVID: I will not change from my point that most animals have automatic responses. All cells do.

dhw: All organisms including humans have automatic responses. Many experts in the field, however, believe that all organisms, including cells, also have the autonomous ability to take in information, make decisions based on this, and then act on it. But I know you have a fixed belief that your God preprogrammed all their undabbled decisions and actions 3.8 billion years ago in the very first cells.

DAVID: You force me to repeat my mantra: from the outside of cells one cannot tell primary decision making from automatic programmed responses.

The same applies to all organisms, including humans. Indeed some humans believe that all our decisions are programmed by forces beyond our control. In any case, your mantra allows the autonomous decision-making theory a 50% chance of being right!

Under: “Consciousness: not explained by materialism”
QUOTE: As a mathematical description of solar cells and digital circuits, quantum mechanics works just fine. But if one wants to apply the materialist position to a concept as subtle and profound as consciousness, something more must clearly be asked for.

DAVID: As I've noted before, we must understand quantum physics which is directly related to mind and consciousness. Materialism, alone, does not explain it. And I turn to God, who created this universe from quanta, and provided consciousness to be received.

I don’t understand your first comment. The quote shows clearly that quantum mechanics (which I take to be a branch of quantum physics) is NOT directly related to mind and consciousness and in fact represents the materialist position. But of course materialism doesn’t explain consciousness – we do not have an explanation. One section of the article clearly refers to panpsychism, though it doesn’t say so explicitly and we needn’t delve into it here. The theory that there is some superconsciousness which has simply been there forever and shoves different degrees of its consciousness into the different life forms it has specially designed is just as nebulous as the theory that consciousness is generated by little globules of matter. There is no shame in admitting that we are in a state of complete ignorance!