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

[Chas]

I love how Chas clamors for evidence and then ignores a post that makes reference to three compelling studies:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-26059-po...#pid671757

Dean Radin, PhD, is Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

Compelling? No.

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You are declaring things out of bounds for science. Is this your faith, again?

I haven't made any statements of faith, so you are wrong to use the word "again."

Science can mean a lot of things, but I assume we are all in this thread talking about science as it is practiced now: physical observation, hypothesis, and experimentation or other methods of confirming the hypothesis. And-- most importantly-- the ability for others to independently reproduce the observation and confirmation.

Some things are not observable by others. For example, my qualia are real and easily identified-- by me. You, however, cannot ever have access to my "what it's like to drink cocoa" sensations.

This is precisely where you are making assumptions. You do not know this to be true. Nor do you have any evidence for that claim. You are simply declaring this to be not possible.

Pro tip: Every time a scientist has predicted there is no room for advancement, or that all is known, he has been wrong. Every. Single. Time.

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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.

"Extra"? "unnecessary"? Why? Because you see them as something other than consciousness?

I suspect they are part and parcel with consciousness.
That they are an integral part of what consciousness is.
You have no evidence that they are not.

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Now that psi has been proven I say that physical system that can producce evidence for psi should be regarded has having mental properties.

Except it hasn't. So, there's that.