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

[Hegel]

The idea that the brain produces the mind is baseless conjecture.

.. as compared with what alternative theory?

The question is here also this: what you mean by "mind"?

I think it's obvious that mind is everywhere, at least in biological world (probably also the physical), even if consciousness is not. Why? Mind IS information, or "active information", information processing.
So clearly brain does not produce the mind, but is only one instance of it, a very complex instance of mind.

And consciousness. One should not confuse correlation with causation. But let us assume brain produces the consciousness. Now, what is it in the brain that does this? That's the real question.

If the answer is (1) it takes quantum phenomena, then it seems plausible that consciousness could be everywhere.

If the answer is (2) it is the complex information processing, the idea of universal mind makes still sense (digital physics) but perhaps less so than in the case (1).

If the answer is (3) that consciousness is an emergent property of some sort or another, then the idea of universal mind obviously is false.

(there are also other options and one can accept 3 with both 1 or 2)


Now, from scientific point of view this is the only real fact: we have no conclusive evidence to either direction to settle the issue. And thus the only genuinely scientific attitude is to be agnostic over it. But still, you can have your preference. There are good philosophical arguments against (3), but not against (1) or (2), but I guess these arguments do not account as scientific evidence. So, from scientific viewpoint all alternatives are rather baseless. But I think there are purely speculative reasons to think that (1) is the most appealing alternative of the three.