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

[bennyboy]

You continue to misunderstand what I've said and you are going in circles.
No, qualia aren't in the brain, they are in the mind. It is minds that experiences, brains are the substrate.

And once again you are objecting to something I didn't frickin' say.
I have neither claimed that my view is true nor that yours is false.
I have stated that the evidence we have supports that mind is dependent on brain and only brain.

Okay, first of all, let me apologize for agitating you. I accept that you have been careful to avoid making positive assertions about things you don't know for sure.

Let me say two things here. First, to make sure I understand what you're saying: the brain/mind distinction is one of object/property, unless you accept the possibility of a kind of substance dualism. So instead of saying a brain has qualia, you are saying mind supervenes on the brain and its functions, and once that mind exists, the subjective experience of it is called qualia, right?

Second, with regard to evidence. Part of science is the assumption that rules apply generally unless specific requirements are known and met. For example, we assume that an object a billion light-years away is subject to gravity. On the other hand, because I know how a girl gets pregnant, I wouldn't say, "People can get pregnant, and they are material structures, so all material structures may have the capacity for getting pregnant." I consider gravity universal, and pregnancy highly specific.

In the case of the evidence you are talking about, there are at least two possibilities: 1) mind is intrinsic to all matter; 2) mind is not intrinsic to all matter. The brain evidence (setting aside philosophical problems) demonstrates that matter is capable of generating minds. It does not identify what specific kinds, structures or functions of matter are required for some kind of subjective experience to exist. It DOES, however, tell us very much about how changes to brain structure and function can affect the CONTENT of our subjective experience.

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Right. One of the theories of consciousness is that it is information-driven, not dependent on a particular physical mechanism. So the question in that case is-- how much information has to be processed in order to say something has consciousness? Where's the magic line in the sand?

My guess is it would be arbitrary. It's kind of like asking how many water molecules do you need in order to have wetness.

Are we then speaking of emergence? Or a Searle type biological naturalism? Or are you stretching to the Bob Doyle i-Phi?

This is not my theory, or one which I want to positively assert, so I can't say much more about it than that it exists. Here's what I had in mind when I mentioned the idea:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_...ion_theory

The only point I want to make is that until we know exactly what about the brain allows the existence of qualia, it's not sensible to assume that it is local to the brain.

--edit--
Okay, I looked up Searle, and that might be a good direction to take the debate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_naturalism

Someone accuses him of being a secret dualist:
http://www.edwardfeser.com/unpublishedpa...earle.html

He denies it:
http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/searle-final.pdf

This process is starting to look pretty familiar