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

[Chas]

You did not source your quote. You're not very good at this, are you.

He follows that statement, according to this blog, with:


So, his opinion is not based on evidence. He has no proof, he cites no proof. THAT IS NOT SCIENCE.

His opinion is based on studies like those I mentioned earlier. The full quote only reinforces mery statement. After psi researchese have found positive results and satisfied the strict protocols required by skeptics, the skeptics like Wiseman raise the bar after the fact. Science is supposed to be objective. When you insert a very subjective judgment into the process, like calling some things ordinary and others extraordinary, then you lose all credibility as a neutral experimenter. It injects bias.

No, his opinion is that it is true by his opinion of the standards of other sciences.

He states that there is insufficient evidence for the claims.

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I have no problem whatsoever with the universe ticking along without any conscious beings, and I don't accept any kind of universal consciousness as no credible mechanism has ever been proposed.

I'm sure that a credible mechanism has never been proposed for the experience of qualia at all. There's a lot of narrative about how useful awareness is to an evolving species, etc., but that's just a two-step, because it's not the kind of causation that people are interested in.

We experience consciousness/qualia, therefore we are sure that it exists - we don't need to know a mechanism for that.

I definitely view consciousness/mind as emergent from brain, with the definition of 'brain' being either wetware or hardware. Therefore, I don't discount the possibility of strong AI.

I think it's clear that the brain is very important to human consciousness. But there are some aspects of the brain which are unique only to brians, and some which are much more universal. The particular chemistry of the brian may be unique in all the universe, for example. However, the ability to receive and process photons is intrinsic to all matter-- on some level.

Yes, consciousness may require a biological brain, or maybe not.

But I don't care for your use of the term 'process' in that sentence. What do you mean by it?

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The one question materialists never answer is this: "What does consciousness actually do?"

And what is your answer?