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

[bennyboy]

Now, let's consider the OP proposition. How would you know whether an atom, or a star, or the galaxy has some kind of awareness-- its own kind of qualia? You can't-- because you never had access to qualia in the first place. An atom won't produce words about meatloaf or have shaky hands, or show any of the physical markers that make you feel justified in making your philosophical assumption about people's minds.

---

Philosophical zombies, qualia of atoms. There is no deep thinking here; just mindless speculation. Do you really believe in the existence of philosophical zombies? Do you really think atoms experience their environment with what we have come to call qualia? This is absurdity parading as profundity.

It doesn't matter whether my thinking is deep or not. It doesn't matter what I personally believe. What matters here, according to you, is evidence. So what evidence do you have that anything in the universe possesses, or allows for the supervenience of, the experience of qualia? If you point to fMRIs, I'll say that as the brain processes information from the environment, it needs more energy. If you point to brain waves, I'll say those are electromagnetic traces of brain function. If you point to behaviors, I'll say that the brain is processing information and outputting a behavior. At no point in any of this is it necessary to form the belief that there is a real experience of qualia happening in that brain.

And yet you believe that all brains exhibiting certain behaviors must really be experiencing qualia. What is your evidence for this extra, and unnecessary, property, which you can neither see nor in any way measure? Sounds like a belief in ghosts to me.