(November 10, 2010 at 3:42 pm)downbeatplumb Wrote: I believe you are attributing too much importance to self awareness, this was I believe a by product of the evolutionary process that our ancestors have gone through.
It may seem marvelous but so many things in evolution do.
If you acept that evolution happens then you accept that self awareness is one of the possible outcomes.
I accept that evolution happens and that it can give rise to self-awareness in living things.
But, what I'm essentially saying is that awareness should be something that is already present in the universe even before the time of evolution, and it exists everywhere at an abstract level of the universe, because for matter to organize itself into a living thing (through the process of evolution), there has to be a type of feedback loop that slowly evolves over time and that allows a creature to perceive itself. So, this is where the concept of self-reference is needed to explain the awareness of ourselves and every other creature as well. And I explained in my previous post why self-referentiality implies that there is a non-physical mind in the universe (which is also capable of perceiving itself since it is a self-referential system). Thanks for your input though.
