DAVID: Her point is that the elementary particles combine to make atoms which combine to make molecules. Therefore molecules which make up everything don't produce panpsychism in things. But remember panpsychism could be a separate force field, much as I think we are alive in the field of God's consciousness.

dhw: My personal view is that I don’t need all the rigmarole about particles. I find it impossible to believe that inanimate objects ranging from a grain of sand to a rock to a man-made building to a star have even a rudimentary consciousness. On the other hand, I don’t see how it’s possible to believe in God and not believe in some form of panpsychism, but I also find it impossible to believe that consciousness can simply have existed for ever outside of materials. On the third hand, I don’t think it’s possible to disbelieve in God without believing that some unconscious materials at some point became conscious and evolved ever increasing degrees of consciousness. You have to have blind faith to believe in any of the theories about the origin of consciousness. But one of them must be true or close to the truth! The agnostic’s dilemma!

DAVID: Of course something in the list is the truth. Like any detective story there are clues to follow. The key is the complexity of life which requires design. Chance cannot work. That means there must be a designer. The next move is yours.

dhw: I accept the logic of that argument. Unfortunately, however, it raises as many questions as it answers, which is why even you have admitted that ultimately whatever you believe requires a leap of faith. I suspect I shall remain stuck on my agnostic’s fence till the “next move”, which will either be goodbye to everything or – if NDEs are anything to go by – hello to a new world! I can’t lose, though, because the life that I’ve had has been a wonderful experience in itself. Lucky me!

The blessing of having a great life cannot be denied.

dhw: My personal view is that I don’t need all the rigmarole about particles. I find it impossible to believe that inanimate objects ranging from a grain of sand to a rock to a man-made building to a star have even a rudimentary consciousness. On the other hand, I don’t see how it’s possible to believe in God and not believe in some form of panpsychism, but I also find it impossible to believe that consciousness can simply have existed for ever outside of materials. On the third hand, I don’t think it’s possible to disbelieve in God without believing that some unconscious materials at some point became conscious and evolved ever increasing degrees of consciousness. You have to have blind faith to believe in any of the theories about the origin of consciousness. But one of them must be true or close to the truth! The agnostic’s dilemma!

DAVID: Of course something in the list is the truth. Like any detective story there are clues to follow. The key is the complexity of life which requires design. Chance cannot work. That means there must be a designer. The next move is yours.

I accept the logic of that argument. Unfortunately, however, it raises as many questions as it answers, which is why even you have admitted that ultimately whatever you believe requires a leap of faith. I suspect I shall remain stuck on my agnostic’s fence till the “next move”, which will either be goodbye to everything or – if NDEs are anything to go by – hello to a new world! I can’t lose, though, because the life that I’ve had has been a wonderful experience in itself. Lucky me!

DAVID: Her point is that the elementary particles combine to make atoms which combine to make molecules. Therefore molecules which make up everything don't produce panpsychism in things. But remember panpsychism could be a separate force field, much as I think we are alive in the field of God's consciousness.

dhw: My personal view is that I don’t need all the rigmarole about particles. I find it impossible to believe that inanimate objects ranging from a grain of sand to a rock to a man-made building to a star have even a rudimentary consciousness. On the other hand, I don’t see how it’s possible to believe in God and not believe in some form of panpsychism, but I also find it impossible to believe that consciousness can simply have existed for ever outside of materials. On the third hand, I don’t think it’s possible to disbelieve in God without believing that some unconscious materials at some point became conscious and evolved ever increasing degrees of consciousness. You have to have blind faith to believe in any of the theories about the origin of consciousness. But one of them must be true or close to the truth! The agnostic’s dilemma!

Of course something in the list is the truth. Like any detective story there are clues to follow. The key is the complexity of life which requires design. Chance cannot work. That means there must be a designer. The next move is yours.

My personal view is that I don’t need all the rigmarole about particles. I find it impossible to believe that inanimate objects ranging from a grain of sand to a rock to a man-made building to a star have even a rudimentary consciousness. On the other hand, I don’t see how it’s possible to believe in God and not believe in some form of panpsychism, but I also find it impossible to believe that consciousness can simply have existed for ever outside of materials. On the third hand, I don’t think it’s possible to disbelieve in God without believing that some unconscious materials at some point became conscious and evolved ever increasing degrees of consciousness. You have to have blind faith to believe in any of the theories about the origin of consciousness. But one of them must be true or close to the truth! The agnostic’s dilemma!

http://nautil.us//blog/electrons-dont-think?utm_source=Nautilus&utm_campaign=f5a82d...

"I recently discovered panpsychism. That’s the idea that all matter—animate or inanimate—is conscious, we just happen to be somewhat more conscious than carrots. Panpsychism is the modern elan vital.

"When I say I “discovered” panpsychism, I mean I discovered there’s a bunch of philosophers who produce pamphlets about it. How do these philosophers address the conflict with evidence? Simple: They don’t.

***

"If you calculate how many particles of a certain type are produced in a particle collision, the result depends on how many variants of the produced particle exist. In particular, it depends on the different values the quantum numbers can take. Since the particles have quantum properties, anything that can happen will happen. If a particle exists in many variants, you’ll produce them all—regardless of whether or not you can distinguish them. The result is that you see more of them than the standard model predicts.

"Now, if you want a particle to be conscious, your minimum expectation should be that the particle can change. It’s hard to have an inner life with only one thought. But if electrons could have thoughts, we’d long have seen this in particle collisions because it would change the number of particles produced in collisions.

"In other words, electrons aren’t conscious, and neither are any other particles. It’s incompatible with data.

"As I explain in my book, there are ways to modify the standard model that do not run into conflict with experiment. One of them is to make new particles so massive that so far we have not managed to produce them in particle collisions, but this doesn’t help you here. Another way is to make them interact so weakly that we haven’t been able to detect them. This too doesn’t help here. The third way is to assume that the existing particles are composed of more fundamental constituents, that are, however, so strongly bound together that we have not yet been able to tear them apart.

"With the third option it is indeed possible to add internal states to elementary particles. But if your goal is to give consciousness to those particles so that we can inherit it from them, strongly bound composites do not help you. They do not help you exactly because you have hidden this consciousness so that it needs a lot of energy to access. This then means, of course, that you cannot use it at lower energies, like the ones typical for soft and wet thinking apparatuses like human brains.

"Summary: If a philosopher starts speaking about elementary particles, run."

Comment: Her point is that the elementary particles combine to make atoms which combine to make molecules. Therefore molecules which make up everything don't produce panpsychism in things. But remember panpsychism could be a separate force field, much as I think we are alive in the field of God's consciousness.

DAVID’s comment: It seems panpsychism and pantheism are the same concept. Unlike this author I don't think one can explain the existence of the universe by stating it is naturally mental. That is why I embrace the panentheist view: the universe is sourced by the consciousness of God.

dhw: I can’t find any mention of panpsychism, but I agree that they have a lot in common. However, pantheism as far as I know does NOT entail Nature being conscious. (Reblak’s pantheism does, although for some reason he hasn’t equated his “Mother Nature” with pantheism or with panpsychism.) As far as the article is concerned, I find it somewhat unenlightening, since most of us know that there are lots of unanswerable questions, and in fact “the tiresome debate over the existence of a supernatural patriarch" has probably sparked off most of them! Here’s one: if there is a universal consciousness that is not interested in us, why should we be interested in it?

If the UC created us, then we should be interested in it.

QUOTE: Spinoza’s God is nature itself: all pervasive, impersonal, and unmiraculous.
Pantheism denies an anthropomorphic creator, and so it’s also often accused of rejecting divinity altogether.

QUOTE: Thinking about a pantheist multiverse prompts us to ask a host of psychological, ethical, philosophical, and even theological questions. They may be controversial, and they will certainly be unanswerable in any final sense. But for those who are interested in the history and future of science and religion, such questions should give rise to a far more productive conversation than the tiresome debate over the existence of a supernatural patriarch.

DAVID’s comment: It seems panpsychism and pantheism are the same concept. Unlike this author I don't think one can explain the existence of the universe by stating it is naturally mental. That is why I embrace the panentheist view: the universe is sourced by the consciousness of God.

I can’t find any mention of panpsychism, but I agree that they have a lot in common. However, pantheism as far as I know does NOT entail Nature being conscious. (Reblak’s pantheism does, although for some reason he hasn’t equated his “Mother Nature” with pantheism or with panpsychism.) As far as the article is concerned, I find it somewhat unenlightening, since most of us know that there are lots of unanswerable questions, and in fact “the tiresome debate over the existence of a supernatural patriarch" has probably sparked off most of them! Here’s one: if there is a universal consciousness that is not interested in us, why should we be interested in it?

http://nautil.us/blog/the-case-for-cosmic-pantheism?utm_source=Nautilus&utm_campaig...

"in more common versions of the multiverse theory—such as inflationary, quantum, superstring, and ekpyrotic scenarios—the creator becomes an omnipresent, immanent, material-energetic principle, whether it is in the form of inflation, the quantum vacuum, the landscape, or an all-governing dark energy. In these multiverse cosmologies, we find a creative principle that is the ever-evolving universe itself. This sort of theology, which identifies God with the physical universe, is a position historically known as pantheism.

"Although various pantheisms can be found in Hindu philosophy, Buddhist cosmology, and ancient Greek Stoicism, the idea also has its modern scientific precursors. Just before the turn of the 17th century, the philosopher Giordano Bruno proposed that an infinite God could produce nothing less than an infinite universe filled with infinite worlds. Bruno’s universe was the unmediated pouring-out of God—not into the universe, but as the universe. Bruno realized that this infinite universe with its infinite worlds was the source of all things, the life in all things, and the end of all things, or in other words, “God.” For the heresy of equating the creator and creation, Bruno was executed by the Inquisition. A few decades later, the philosopher Baruch Spinoza developed a similar idea, which his critics equated with atheism, that led to his excommunication. Spinoza argued that if God is infinite and self-subsistent, then everything in existence must be an expression of God. Spinoza’s God is nature itself: all pervasive, impersonal, and unmiraculous.

"Pantheism denies an anthropomorphic creator, and so it’s also often accused of rejecting divinity altogether. As 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer charges, “Pantheism is only a euphemism for atheism.” For Schopenhauer, pantheism embraces the scientific worldview while clinging to the niceties of religion, and so ends up saying nothing at all. “To call the world God is not to explain it,” Schopenhauer argues, “it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word world.” Or as Richard Dawkins recently put it, “Pantheism is sexed-up atheism.”

"Whether theistic or atheistic, these critics assume that the only thing God can be is an extra-cosmic, masculine monarch. Do away with “Him” and you’ve done away with divinity. Under this assumption, the dialogue between religion and science is reduced to little more than a Ping-Pong game: One side says the monarch exists and the other says he doesn’t. But in the pantheist multiverse, I find a more fruitful way to talk about what we might mean by divinity.

"What if God is the creatively emergent order of nature itself? In this case, the difference between pantheism and atheism might be emotional. Einstein, a professed pantheist, wrote that he experienced a “cosmic religious feeling,” a persistent awe at the “sublimity and marvelous order” of the universe. He was not alone. For the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, religion was a feeling of the whole universe at work in each part of it. Or perhaps the difference between pantheism and atheism is ethical. As neo-pagans, ecofeminists, radical environmentalists, new animists, and even some biologists have suggested, the Western opposition between God and world seems to have endorsed our exploitation of nature. So if God is the world, might we be more inclined to care for it? Or maybe the difference is conceptual: What would it mean to recode divinity as embodied, evolving, multiple, and multiversal? What kinds of new mythologies and spiritual practices might emerge from the unlikely terrain of modern physics?

"Thinking about a pantheist multiverse prompts us to ask a host of psychological, ethical, philosophical, and even theological questions. They may be controversial, and they will certainly be unanswerable in any final sense. But for those who are interested in the history and future of science and religion, such questions should give rise to a far more productive conversation than the tiresome debate over the existence of a supernatural patriarch."

Comment: It seems panpsychism and pantheism are the same concept. Unlike this author I don't think one can explain the existence of the universe by stating it is naturally mental. That is why I embrace the panentheist view: the universe is sourced by the consciousness of God.

rom: I thought I answered clearly and succinctly that I was not convinced that I am conscious or at least I have severe doubts about what I experience as consciousness.-I still wonder what you think you are experiencing.
> 
> Now if you would not mind and answer my question, do you believe in an intrinsic self?-Absolutely. I am me, not someone else. Using a dictionary online:-1- a: the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself -b: the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact -c: awareness; especially: concern for some social or political cause -2-: the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought : mind -
3-: the totality of conscious states of an individual-I know I have individual thoughts, freedom of thought and I know my emotions. I assume you are a follower of Dennett. He makes presumptions about the source of consciousness that I don't presume to know if they are correct, since a vast majority of scientists have no idea what causes consciousness, except one needs an active brain to experience it. The only exception being the NDE folks and the books I've read on that subject haven't enlightened me. Everyone gets back to quantum mechanics.

I am thinking you are sidestepping the issue. Do you have conciousness.?-I thought I answered clearly and succinctly that I was not convinced that I am conscious or at least I have severe doubts about what I experience as consciousness.-Now if you would not mind and answer my question, do you believe in an intrinsic self?

This is assuming that there is an intrinsic self that can be self aware?
> 
> Consciousness is like pornograpy? We define pornography into existence so why not consciousness?
> 
> > I have the same problem
> I really don't want you thinking that I am highly intelligent to be a problem for you David. Just think of me as average.-I am thinking you are sidestepping the issue. Do you have conciousness.?

Rom: Funnily enough I too think I am highly intelligent - it's a curse but someone has to bear it -I have the same problem
> 
> That I am aware of my thoughts does not mean I have to believe hook, line and sinker there is an intrinsic me or that I can perceive thought mean it is consciousness.-Consciousness is like pornography. Hard to define, but we all experience it. Can you define consciousness as you perceive it, recognizing that no one knows where it resides or how it is formed. I assume you are conscious and self- aware. ;>))


> This was the problem I mentioned earlier on. If you genuinely doubt whether consciousness exists, we cannot discuss panpsychism or the ideas I am trying to extrapolate from the theory. But let me reassure you that your always highly intelligent and probing questions suggest to me that you are not only aware of things around you, but you are even aware of the thoughts in your own mind. I suspect you are even conscious of the fact that you are doubting whether you are conscious.-Funnily enough I too think I am highly intelligent - it's a curse but someone has to bear it -That I am aware of my thoughts does not mean I have to believe hook, line and sinker there is an intrinsic me or that I can perceive thought mean it is consciousness.

"The majority of mammalian protein-coding genes have a number of possible transcripts, generated by the variable inclusion of exons. It was thought that these so-called alternative splicing events might be conserved between species, but two studies published today (December 20) in Science reveal that most are not. The researchers even propose that the high degree of alternative splicing variability may be a driving force of species divergence .
> 
>...There is a large amount of species-specific alternative splicing.'"
> 
> http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33782/title/Evolution-by-Splicing... is it not surprising that they would claim that unexpected, unpredictable, and directly contradictory findings support their theory....science no longer obeys it's own rules. Make a prediction; if your prediction is wrong, it supports your theory, if it is right, it supports your theory. Bah

"The fact that alternative splicing is very different even between closely related vertebrate species could ultimately help explain how we are unique."-
This is the start of findings which will show a complexification drive in DNA that I have predicted in the past:-
"The majority of mammalian protein-coding genes have a number of possible transcripts, generated by the variable inclusion of exons. It was thought that these so-called alternative splicing events might be conserved between species, but two studies published today (December 20) in Science reveal that most are not. The researchers even propose that the high degree of alternative splicing variability may be a driving force of species divergence .
 
"It was somewhat generally assumed that splicing differences that you see between brain and muscle in the mouse would be similar between brain and muscle in the human," said Donny Licatalosi, professor of RNA molecular biology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, who did not participate in the studies, "but what both of these studies are showing is that is not the case. There is a large amount of species-specific alternative splicing.'"-http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33782/title/Evolution-by-Splicing/


> Don't get too excited. Remember I have the theory tht we will find a system in DNA to push or guide complexification. And you are still stuck with the issue tht all basic change must be in the DNA of germ cells. Liver cells don't toot their own trumpet.-It is now shown that among primates DNA acts differently than in other vertebrate forms. Primates have a great deal more 'alternative splicing' which means genes can make a variety of different proteins, i.e., more complexity. Why should this be? Why is our DNA different than other DNA's when we believe in some form of comment descent? Shouldn't DNA work the same way in everyone? It doesn't:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121220144124.htm-"One of the team's major findings is that the alternative splicing process is more complex in humans and other primates compared to species such as mouse, chicken and frog.
 
"Our observations provide new insight into the genetic basis of complexity of organs such as the human brain," says Benjamin Blencowe, Professor in U of T's Banting and Best Department of Research and the Department of Molecular Genetics, and the study's senior author.
 
"The fact that alternative splicing is very different even between closely related vertebrate species could ultimately help explain how we are unique."-
"The results from the alternative splicing pattern comparison were very different. Instead of clustering by tissue, the patterns clustered mostly by species. "Different tissues from the cow look more like the other cow tissues, in terms of splicing, than they do like the corresponding tissue in mouse or rat or rhesus," Burge says. Because splicing patterns are more specific to each species, it appears that splicing may contribute preferentially to differences between those species, Burge says. "Splicing seems to be more malleable over shorter evolutionary timescales, and may contribute to making species different from one another and helping them adapt in various ways," he says."- Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-evolution-alternative-splicing-rna-rewires.html#jCp

ROM: You did not answer my question, about the consciousness of cities.
> 
> The only answer I can give you is that family, community, city, country are collectives, and so they must be split. The people in them will be conscious to the degree of self-consciousness, the other living creatures will be less conscious, the materials of which the cities are built...hm, well, perhaps a panpsychist would allot them the lowest possible degree of consciousness. If pushed, I'd say that inorganic material has no consciousness of its own. Any apparent consciousness will be the result of association with a different form of (conscious) energy.
I find a few contradictions here dhw. 
Are you suggesting the potassium, calcium and sodium ions play no part in your consciousness? The various bits of a city are more connected than ever, therefore your observation they are split does not work for me.-> Then why not acknowledge that there are degrees of consciousness? A zombie by definition ("someone who is not aware of what he/she is doing"), just like a drunkard, can be considered conscious but not to the degree of self-awareness. If a zombie's behaviour (ordinary humans aren't confined to responses) is EXACTLY like a human's, then of course we won't be able to distinguish it.
Why would i assign something degrees of consciousness when I am not even convinced consciousness even exists.
 
> dhw: I'm proposing panpsychism as a theory midway between theism and atheism, dependent neither on a self-aware Father Creator nor on Chance, but on the same impersonal intelligence that has enabled life to evolve from the more rudimentary to the more complex. I'm not saying I believe it, but I don't think it's any less likely than eternal uncaused Genius or eternally floundering Chance.-I don't buy into panpsychism especially like that proposed by Deepak Chopra-> What do you mean by "colder"? If we take the uncaused genius as maximum consciousness (= 100), and chance as no consciousness at all (= 0), and if we agree that the first cause is energy of some kind, where on the scale of consciousness would you put first cause energy?-If consciousness exists it is simply akin to energy exchange.
> 
> Rom, I've copied and pasted your announcement about Agnostics International onto the first entry, as it'll be more prominent there. Sorry you had such trouble!
Thanks dhw