Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion (General)

by dhw, Friday, November 01, 2019, 10:24 (1631 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'm thinking of quantum pure energy particles. Everything is material at the basis of the universe.

dhw: I find this confusing. Is there such a thing as “pure energy particles”? And if everything is material at the basis of the universe, then the basis of consciousness must be material.

DAVID: An early phase of the universe was plasma made up only of charged particles.

dhw: But plasma is still matter. […]

DAVID: I know that by definition plasma is a form of matter, but it is the closest thing we see to pure energy since it is only charged particles, but that is equal to the ions that act like electrons running over our nerves. Electrons are matter but they are the closest thing we have to pure energy, which I think preexisted matter.

Regardless of what plasma is or isn’t, you say that everything is material at the basis of the universe, and yet you think that the basis of the universe is an immaterial God, and the basis of consciousness is an immaterial blob of that God’s immaterial consciousness. Are you now saying you think God and consciousness are made of plasma?

DAVID: There MUST be a designing mind. Only mind can design complexity. And design keeps you an agnostic, while denying the designer.

dhw: I don’t deny the designer. I am an agnostic. I give your sourceless top-down supermind designer equal footing (and equal non-belief, as opposed to belief and disbelief) with billions of designers that have evolved bottom-up from the first chance combination of materials which led to suitable conditions for life and to life itself and evolution.

DAVID: But billions of designers do not explain the coordination required to create what is reality. By your thinking a box of puzzle parts miraculously came together, no thought involved.

It is not my thinking, any more than a sourceless, inexplicable, unknown, eternal expanse of conscious divine plasma is my thinking. I keep telling you that I find both hypotheses equally difficult to believe in. I admit that one of them must be closer to the truth, but I cannot take the leap of faith in either direction. That is why I am an agnostic.