Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion (General)

by David Turell , Monday, October 28, 2019, 13:55 (1635 days ago) @ dhw

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

dhw: 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!

DAVID: But that 50% allows for the fact that it is really either/or, that is, one of the two is 100% correct.

dhw: Precisely. You are beginning to grasp the essence of agnosticism, and in relation to the theory of cellular intelligence, you are acknowledging that it has a 50% chance of being correct, which gives it the right to be taken just as seriously as the possibility that cells are mere automatons switching on divine, 3.8-billion-year old computer programmes for every move they make.

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.

dhw: I don’t understand your first comment.

DAVID: Quantum experiments with the mind playing a role in late choice.

dhw: Right. Nothing whatsoever to do with the source of consciousness.

If God created the universe from a substrate of quantum mechanics, consciousness may have a quantum basis.

dhw: 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!

DAVID: God created the universe based on quantum mechanics, which only He understands. God's existence explains the design required.

dhw: The article is all about the source of consciousness, not about how he might have created the universe. But even if that was the subject, it’s not much of an explanation if you tell us the universe was designed by a hidden designer whose nature is unknown to us, whose existence cannot be proved, and who has always been there and has no source.

How do you explain a universe from nothing? What caused it? What is your First Cause?