Innovation (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, May 09, 2013, 19:20 (4015 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My impression is that your panpsychist intelligent energy does not have an organized centre. My universal consciousness does. Am I wrong?-You are right. We must be careful here, because there are so many different forms of panpsychism. The form I'm proposing dispenses with a centre. Every different organism has its own intelligence. The scenario begins with non-conscious energy, and this develops consciousness within the different forms of matter it has unconsciously created (which demands as much faith as your eternally self-aware dabbler). Some of these cooperate to form bigger, more complex units. Our bodies are one vast mass of cooperating units, each one with its own (limited) intelligence, forming a combined entity which has its own overall intelligence. And so you have liver, heart, brain etc. as units within your brontosaurus, your whale, your human, but the manner in which everything has combined creates a different overall entity with its own overall intelligent energy. The differently evolved energies may well constitute Sheldrake's morphic fields, but you know far more about them than I do.-Different forms of intelligent energy may be able to communicate and cooperate. You wrote earlier: "I really don't think amoebas are trying to connect with me, but they do connect with each other." You and the amoeba may be so far apart that you can't even say "hi", but an amoeba might be able to say "hi" not only to its best amoebuddy but also to some nearby plankton. We can say "hi" to a dog, who can return the compliment with a woof. Symbiosis can only work if two different forms of intelligent energy are able to communicate and cooperate. Evolution therefore progresses in accordance with how these intelligences respond to environmental conditions, either adapting or innovating through cooperation. Hence the bush, which grows as and when these intelligences come up with their innovations. Neither by chance nor by central organization.-DAVID: A bush has a main source at its center, and then many many branches. Panpsychism does not appear to.-We have been using the bush image to denote the higgledy-piggledy shape of evolution ... branching out in different directions with its vast array of organisms. In both scenarios, the main source is therefore the first forms of life from which all the branches have sprung. What we don't know is how the first seeds came into being.