Consciousness: Dennett says it is an illusion (General)

by dhw, Saturday, November 02, 2019, 12:02 (1631 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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: No, I can only say plasma is the closest thing we know to pure energy. And I view God a pure energy some of which He put into the origin of the universe.

So if plasma is not pure energy, what is its relevance to your belief that both God and consciousness are immaterial? And I still don’t understand how this belief squares with your statement that “everything is material at the basis of the universe” - which can only mean that among other things consciousness must have a material basis.

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Does 'closer to the truth' mean here might be a third answer, or one of them is the answer?

The third answer is some form of panpsychism in which all matter has some form of consciousness, but this is such a flexible concept that in my view it can be used to support theism or atheism.