[ExI] God's God

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Will,

Consciousness includes a whole boat load of stuff, including memory, 
personality, phenomenal qualities, physical desires, decision making and 
information processing systems, myriads of diverse perception 
systems....  to mention just a few.  Could you be a bit more specific?  
It helps, immensely, when people think and talk, a bit more clearly and 
specifically, when talking about this kind of stuff.  Your question 
could be interpreted and answered a million different ways, non of which 
would communicate anything.  For example, I hope you're not claiming 
that a rock, has the ability to perceive, and remember what it is 
perceiving, like is included in my 'consciousness'?  But it sounds like 
you are making that claim?

I'm in the following Emerging Expert consensus camps in this survey topic:
http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88

Approachable Via Science
     Representational Qualia Theory
         Dualism
             Property Dualism
                 Mind-Brain Identity Theory

And in the non consensus camps at this more specific level:
                     Material Property Dualism
                         Macro Material Property Dualism

These camps predict that much of the physical stuff in the universe, at 
least something in our brain, has ineffable phenomenal qualities that 
are blind to cause and effect (requires qualitative interpretation) 
observation to 'see', unless you know how to properly interpret what you 
are abstractedly 'seeing'.

So, yes, if what you mean by "the entire universe is conscious", is that 
the entire universe has these phenomenal or spiritual, if you will, 
qualities which are blind to traditional causal observation, then yes, I 
agree with you, it is likely that the entire universe has these 
qualities, which our brain merges or uses to 'paint' our unified 
phenomenal conscious experience with. And the emerging expert consensus 
is clearly in this camp.

Given your question, it makes me wonder what you believe consciousness 
is.  I'd sure like to know what camps you are in, and would love to find 
out how many experts there are that agree with you, compared to the 
existing camps, and be able to track this over time, as ever more 
demonstrable scientific evidence comes in (soon to force us all into the 
same camp).

Upwards,

Brent Allsop



On 8/24/2013 11:09 AM, Will Steinberg wrote:
>
> What do you think causes consciousness?  (Hint: the entire universe is 
> conscious)
>
>
>
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