Does it make sense to speak of "Universal Consciousness" or "Universal Intelligence"?

[Hegel]

No, that doesn't make sense. The evidence points to consciousness being an emergent property of a complex assemblage of matter, not the matter itself.

What evidence? How do you test your hypothesis that consciousness is an emergnet property?

The fact is that emergent materialism is piece of metaphysics, not science ... So, you seem to have a double standard.

In any case, you have the burden of proof to tell us how is emergent materialism testable? So go ahead, if you know something that I don't.

I do not claim that human consciousness is not the product of brain. Surely it seems to be. The question is: what is it in the brain that is responsible for this miracle? You claim it's some emergent information processing. Ok, that's a hypothesis, but how do you test it?

I claim that it's more plausible that consciousness is connected to some quantum phenomena in the brain, most likely in the microtubules.

Again, no - that does not follow. You assume far too much on no evidence.

Look, we cannot speak here of proofs and proper scientific evidenve, for the question is open; my only claim is this: that matter is consciouss all the way down MAKES SENSE, that is to say, it is perfectly reasonable as hypothesis, not something to be debunked as some pooh pooh or whatever "para" stuff.

And that soemthing makes sense does not make it true. In science people talk about hypotheses' that could be true, right? And with consciousness we are in ANY CASE in the situation that we are dealing with speculative metaphysics, not testable science. Testable yet.

Many worlds interpretation of QM makes perfect sense, so does bohmian dynamics. But both cannot be true. Lamarcism made perfect sense when Lamarc postulated the idea; when no evidence was found it was assumed that the hypothesis was false, and it began to make less sense, though never did it become non-sense; and now, with new evidence from epigenetics, things have again truned around: a sort of lamarcism seems to be part of evolutionary process just as Darwin himself assumed. And so on.

And if you believe matter is conscious, how can you disbelieve strong AI?

I do not actively disbelieve in strong AI, I only think that it is intellectually less seductive than the idea of "quantum mind". The idea of universe as computer seems implausible to me. And my intuition can be wrong.

No, that is not science as it is not testable.

Actually the hypothesis of Penrose and Hamerhoff is the first scientific theory of consciousness that so far has made some testable predictions and they have turned out to be true. The evidence is not conclusive, far from it, but in science things progress often slowly.
You can try to read their article:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...4513001188

Yes, you are making a claim for which you have no evidence.

I was not making any claim for which I have no evidence. Only you are, if you claim that emergent materialism is a fact, not just a hypothesis, which has other alternatives, such as the theory of quantum mind.
And the idea of some "supermind" does not follow from quantum mind. Quantum mind is scientific theory, theory of "supermind is" piece of speculative metaphysics. I only maintain that neither such notion of "cosmic intelligent" is no nonsense. Scientific idea -- that it ain't.

In any case, you confuse notions of testability scientificity and reasonability.
Testability is the strongest notion: not all science can be testable, for science has to make some assumptions that are non-testable and at its limits it must include speculative elements. And not all non-science is unreasonable nor "pseudo- science" (unless it prtends to be science), for scope of current scientific knowledge never grasps everything, and one can make reasonabel non-scientific speculations about what is left6 outside (e.g. is universe infinite, are there alternative universes, etc). Such ideas can later insipire science, as it has frequently happened. The question of "supermind" belongs to this last subclass. It ain't science, I never said that.