My evidence for what? Evidence for a "cosmic mind"?
To begin with, I clearly don't have "testable" evidence.
I know enough about science that if I had "testable" evidence it would be a scientific question.
If I had a valid scientific testable hypothesis I'd propose it to the scientific community for testing.
Perhaps you meant to ask, "Why do I feel that these things are worthy of consideration"?
I can offer you answers to that question. But you may find them unsatisfying.
They are also deeply philosophical and not easy to explain in few words.
Plus I also have intuitive feelings about it, which may not be impressive for you, but they are for me.
Even scientists often pursue ideas based solely on "gut feelings" that they have about them.
To keep these posts as brief as possible, let me just say the following:
To begin with, I personally find this philosophy to be more compelling than the alternative secular idea.
The alternative secular explanation is that a brain made solely of leptons, quarks, and bosons can have an "experience".
In fact, the secular proposal is that an 'emergent property' of a biological brain is what is actually having an "experience".
Well, I don't know about you, but that's not a deeply satisfying explanation for me.
If leptons, quarks and bosons have no ability to "experience" anything, then why should an abstract notion of an
"emergent Property" of something made of leptons, quarks, and bosons, have any better chance of having an "experience".
In short, the secular explanation of consciousness, simply doesn't impress me as having a sound basis.
I personally find the mystical idea of some deeper cosmic entity to be more compelling.
So rather than pinning me up against the wall demanding that I give evidence for my views.
how about trying to convince me why I should accept the secular view that an abstract concept of an "emergent property"
from a biological computer made of lepton, quarks, and bosons, makes any more sense?
Good luck with that!
I'd personally say that we're at a totally undecidable impasse on that one.
Well, my reasons for believing that quantum fields must necessarily contain information comes directly from science.
I've studied Quantum Mechanics for much of my life, and I've read many books on it, and watched many lectures, etc.
The premise (and even demand) that these fields contain information is a strong scientific principle.
Only certain things pop out of certain fields. They necessarily must have "structure" beneath the physical level.
In they had no structure or information at that level, then they would behave totally randomly and unpredictably.
But they don't. Only certain types of particles pop into existence from certain types of quantum fields, etc.
So it's a scientific requirement actually, that these fields contain "information" that exists beneath the level we call "physical".
For me that's well established in physics.
If you aren't aware of this all I can suggest is that you learn more about.
I don't know what else to say beyond that.
I'm not about to try to give lectures on quantum physics in Internet posts.
Again, I'm not going to try to teach quantum physics here.
There are plenty of books and even good videos on the topic.
I'm totally happy with my knowledge of it enough to know that it makes at least enough (or even more sense)
to me than the idea of an "emergent property" of a brain having an experience.
I'll be the first to agree that a lot of people use Eastern Mysticism as a means of making money. There's no question about that.
But, again, I've studied these philosophies from many different perspectives, and I personally find many of these philosophical ideas
to be intriguing and have sound philosophical merit.
I can't point to any one thing and say "that's what convinced me". We're talking about whole lifetime of contemplating these ideas.
In fact, it was a myriad of different views and ideas associated with these philosophies that has convinced me that the idea is plausible.
And besides, I'm not trying to convince you to accept these ideas. That was never my intent ever.
I'm just saying that for someone else to tell me that these ideas have been "ruled out" is nonsense.
In fact, if you have to ask me so many questions, that only goes to show that you have nowhere near enough information to claim to have ruled out my views.
Gives rise! That I can answer passionately. It's a dynamic on-going thing.
And no, I'm not suggesting that this mind consciously baby-sits the fabric of spacetime.
Clearly there are many processes that are indeed on 'auto-pilot' if you like.
There's no question about that. In fact, evolution itself was an 'auto-pilot' type of thing.
I could try to explain how I see this working, but again, it would become an extremely lengthy explanation.
The shortest explanation I can give goes like this:
The universe is "designed" like a pair of dice.
Let's say, you're the "God". You've designed the dice. And you toss them.
What can come up? Do you know? Yes you do. You know precisely what will come up.
In the case of a pair dice you can only throw a 2, a 12, or some whole number in between.
You'll never toss a fraction, or even an irrational number for that matter.
You'll never toss a zero. You'll never toss a 13 or higher, etc.
You know precisely what will come up in terms of "possibilities"
Yet at the same time you have no clue precisely which of the possible numbers will come up on any given toss.
Think of the universe as dice that have extremely high numbers on their faces.
God knows what can come up and what can't come up (just like you'd know with a pair of simple dice)
But just like you, God doesn't know precisely what WILL come up exactly on any given throw.
God is tossing dice. And then experiencing what comes up through the POVs that evolve from that toss.
This is an extremely crude explanation, but it's crude for the sake of brevity.
It's a metaphor. An analogy. Not to be taken literally.
Clearly the spacetime universe in which we live, has it's own "rules" of evolution.
Those rules are in place, and precisely determined by the numbers on the dice.
This kind of "God" has no need to dynamical baby-sit the evolution of the universe.
Can this God change the behavior of the universe through a POV that has evolved within the universe?
Yes and no. That partly depends on how highly evolved that particularity POV has become.
And on how much God is focusing on that particular POV.
Again, these are crude metaphors, and analogies.
It would require books upon books to try to flesh this stuff out in detail.
I have very deep thoughts concerning every possible situation you can imagine.
So for me this philosophy is not only viable, but it's actually quite interesting to think about.
It forces you to consider things that you might not otherwise even think of.
Can I convince you of this philosophy?
Probably not. But that's not my goal.
I don't need to convince you.
All I'm doing is stating that you (nor anyone else) could rule it out.
And there is nothing in all of science that has yet ruled it out.
And that's my only claim.
That is the only foundation I need to justify being open-minded about it.
People who are trying to claim that I'm being silly considering such things
are either totally ignorant of what is truly possible or they lack imagination.
That's all I can say.
