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

[Rampant.A.I.]

I'm moving on. As usual only bennyboy has any real understanding of the issues involved.

"His comments match my presumptions; so the rest of you don't understand anything, and we're both smarter than anyone else."

This is called The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight.

The illusion of asymmetric insight is a cognitive bias whereby people perceive their knowledge of others to surpass other people's knowledge of themselves.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_...ic_insight

See also The Dunning-Kreuger effect:

Unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude.[1]
Those persons to whom a skill or set of skills come easily may find themselves with weak self-confidence, as they may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. See Impostor syndrome.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

See also, Confirmation bias:

Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.[Note 1][1] People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Your inability to examine positions differing from your own does not demonstrate those positions are flawed, or based on a misunderstanding of your position.

[Chas]

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

What's this "we" stuff, Chasmatic 3000?

Oh, I'm only a Chasmatic2000, but I appreciate the compliment.

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?

I mean that there is a causal chain: sensory input, brain processing, behavioral output.

Then I most certainly have a problem with the statement you made:
"However, the ability to receive and process photons is intrinsic to all matter-- on some level."

You are saying that all matter has brains?

[bennyboy]

Then I most certainly have a problem with the statement you made:
"However, the ability to receive and process photons is intrinsic to all matter-- on some level."

You are saying that all matter has brains?

I agree my original statement wasn't very well coined, so let me revise it. It may be that every reception of a photon causes a state change in the receiving matter, and that it is this minimal exchange of information (i.e. from the emitter) that represents the most fundamental "quantum" of qualia-- a little nano-spark of consciousness. And that this particle now "behaves" differently as a result of the information it has received, causing that original reception to cascade through physical causality. So on that level, the process is whatever the mechanism is that allows things to receive photons, have their state changed, and through their modified behavior affect the causal chain.

I'm not too attached to that specific idea-- my point is that EVEN IF we agree mind supervenes somewhere in the brain, it's not necessarily only, and specifically, in the brain as a whole entity that qualia might be spawned. Qualia might be intrinsic to all exchanges of information, or only to certain kinds of matter which interact with certain kinds of energy, or to any mechanism which collects data over time and causes it to be related to new data, or to only the whole brain, or only to me personally. Most importantly, note that all these are purely physicalist models.

[Chas]

Then I most certainly have a problem with the statement you made:
"However, the ability to receive and process photons is intrinsic to all matter-- on some level."

You are saying that all matter has brains?

I agree my original statement wasn't very well coined, so let me revise it. It may be that every reception of a photon causes a state change in the receiving matter, and that it is this minimal exchange of information (i.e. from the emitter) that represents the most fundamental "quantum" of qualia-- a little nano-spark of consciousness. And that this particle now "behaves" differently as a result of the information it has received, causing that original reception to cascade through physical causality. So on that level, the process is whatever the mechanism is that allows things to receive photons, have their state changed, and through their modified behavior affect the causal chain.

I'm not too attached to that specific idea-- my point is that EVEN IF we agree mind supervenes somewhere in the brain, it's not necessarily only, and specifically, in the brain as a whole entity that qualia might be spawned. Qualia might be intrinsic to all exchanges of information, or only to certain kinds of matter which interact with certain kinds of energy, or to any mechanism which collects data over time and causes it to be related to new data, or to only the whole brain, or only to me personally. Most importantly, note that all these are purely physicalist models.

OK, fine. I will restate that there is absolutely no evidence for anything but mind being dependent on anything but brain.

And no evidence that qualia are in any way not simply an aspect of consciousness.

I am not claiming that external factors might not be at play, that dualism is not true, or that there isn't some non-chemical property of particles that makes consciousness possible.
I only point out that there is no evidence for any of those things. The only evidence is that consciousness is brain-based.

[bennyboy]

OK, fine. I will restate that there is absolutely no evidence for anything but mind being dependent on anything but brain.

How could there be?

What are the criteria for establishing whether a physical entity has any qualia associated with it? Nothing. There's no scientific measure or procedure by which we determine anything, even a person, actually experiences qualia. There are only the physical corollaries which we choose to accept as evidence in lieu of actual observation.

Some choose to take this lack of evidence as evidence of a 1:1 brain correlation. However, I think the obvious truth of the existence of mind (I at least know that my own qualia are real), and the obvious truth of our complete inability to gain access to it physically, is pretty compelling evidence that mind is not itself physical.

Don't believe me? Let's turn it around. I can say that every single physical object which is known to have been discovered or interacted with in any way, including the brain, was at that time the object of the perception of a mind. There is no physical entity or property which we know about which we did not first experience before adding it to our list of known things. Using the "lack of evidence" argument, can I then conclude that there is no evidence that anything exists outside at least one mind's perception of it?

No. I don't accept that kind of reasoning on either side of the coin, and neither should anyone else. Our lack of access TO truth should never be taken as evidence FOR truth.

[Chas]

OK, fine. I will restate that there is absolutely no evidence for anything but mind being dependent on anything but brain.

How could there be?

What are the criteria for establishing whether a physical entity has any qualia associated with it? Nothing. There's no scientific measure or procedure by which we determine anything, even a person, actually experiences qualia. There are only the physical corollaries which we choose to accept as evidence in lieu of actual observation.

Some choose to take this lack of evidence as evidence of a 1:1 brain correlation. However, I think the obvious truth of the existence of mind (I at least know that my own qualia are real), and the obvious truth of our complete inability to gain access to it physically, is pretty compelling evidence that mind is not itself physical.

Don't believe me? Let's turn it around. I can say that every single physical object which is known to have been discovered or interacted with in any way, including the brain, was at that time the object of the perception of a mind. There is no physical entity or property which we know about which we did not first experience before adding it to our list of known things. Using the "lack of evidence" argument, can I then conclude that there is no evidence that anything exists outside at least one mind's perception of it?

No. I don't accept that kind of reasoning on either side of the coin, and neither should anyone else. Our lack of access TO truth should never be taken as evidence FOR truth.

Did I say that mind is physical? No.

I see mind as a pattern of activity on a physical substrate, although that's a simplification. Mind emerges from the complexity.

If there is no evidence and your ideas are not testable, then it is not science.

That's fine, but that means you can't gain any knowledge about it.

You can conjecture and philosophize all you want, but scientists will continue to seek ways to explain it.

[archangle]

A lot of times I hear terms such as these thrown around in the context of some quasi-religious, pseudoscientific assertion about telepathy or the placebo effect or the run-of-the-mill con-artist masquerading as a "card-reader" or "healer." I'm not really interested in these silly charlatans. I want to talk about the idea of Universal Conscious or Intelligence in a philosophical context, as a notion that logically proceeds from the realization that there really isn't an external world that is fundamentally separate from the mind. That is because the mind is itself a product of the external world, just another feature that arose from atomic interactions. In the sense that we are all part of the larger Cosmos, perhaps analogous to the cells that comprise one brain, it seems at least that something like a Universal Conscious or Intelligence can be made into an intelligible framework... no?

you cant have anything the universe doesn't have more of.

period.

if you would like to talk science let me know. If you need absolute proof ... leave me out. Until you find it of course, then I'll be reading about you in a good magazine.

[bennyboy]

I see mind as a pattern of activity on a physical substrate, although that's a simplification. Mind emerges from the complexity.

Let's talk about this.

If mind is emergent on complexity, then the question is: complexity of what? Everything in the universe is related. And the universe includes all brains, so the complexity of the universe is necessarily greater than that of all brains. This indicates a possibility (or in this case semantic necessity) of a universal consciousness.

Why is it that some collections of matter are thought of as singular agents with many parts, and others are thought of as just a bunch of stuff happening? Why are the energetic interactions between brain cells considered more complex than those between galaxies?

[archangle]

Hierarchy of structure ladies. you have to go higher and lower. If I take you apart I find no "you". You still "are". If we go higher. Can an universal "awareness" emerge from the "pieces that we see? The answer is far more probably "yes" than "no". In fact so much so that it is silly not to assume it. as silly as assuming there were no planets elsewhere in the 1970's.

Then we can move into more measurable e defenses of this logic. That's where "philosophy bs can stop. An artist/philosophy can build the coolest fastest looking car ever (philosophy paper) ... till he has to race it. Engineer the truth ladies, its the best we can do for now.

[Foxaèr]

This thread makes my brain hurt.