Mind and Consciousness (Religion)

by dhw, Friday, May 04, 2012, 16:04 (4372 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: It all comes back to the discussion of existence/nonexistence. The short of it is, something either exists or it doesn't. If it does, it's part of God, end of story. That makes it conform to a pantheistic view. -First of all, thank you for your comprehensive and extremely interesting response. We are entering into deep waters. Secondly, I shall have to stop pretending to be David's defence attorney just for a moment (not that he needs one!), because if Peacocke rejects dualism (see David's post of 04 May at 01.56) we could initially be in trouble. Thirdly, the website he has referred us to makes it clear that there are umpteen forms of panentheism, and so we should discuss the form I have already outlined and to which David originally agreed: "God is the primal energy that has always existed and that consciously transforms itself into the matter which we call the universe. Atheists believe that the primal energy is not conscious, and that is the difference between theists and atheists."-You are therefore right: whatever exists is part of God, if he himself exists. Otherwise, whatever exists is part of the universe. But the panentheist discussion, in my view, does not come back to existence/nonexistence. It was you yourself, Matt, who initiated this thread under "Mind and Consciousness", and I see that as the key to the whole argument. Bringing in pantheism only muddies the waters, because there are umpteen forms of pantheism too, one of which is that God = Nature and need not be a conscious force.
 
MATT: Panentheism asserts that there is a God that is somehow distinct from but existing within the universe. There is no way in the rules of logic that it is possible to make this kind of claim.-And this is where it gets tricky, and this is why I'm about to grapple with David's/Peacocke's rejection of dualism. On 29 April at 07.43, David wrote: "It fits my idea that the universe is really mind and consciousness. I don't believe that inorganic material can become alive and invent consciousness, unless consciousness already exists." So what follows is in answer to your comment above, to the rest of your post, and also to David's post ... not as an expression of belief on my part, but purely as an explanation of what I see as the logic behind this form of panentheism.
 
The basic argument can be directly related to NDEs and OBEs, in which consciousness/the mind appears to be separated from the body, even though prior to the experience it was integrated within the body. Dualism is the theory that "mind and matter are two distinct things" (dictionary definition). In my own definition of panentheism, as above, I laid the emphasis on "energy" as the link between mind and matter, and I defined God as the primal energy that consciously transforms itself into matter. That makes it ... like the human mind (if we believe in NDEs and OBEs) ... "within and without" the body (which = matter). And so once we identify energy as the primal source, we can actually "dualize" our concepts: 1) mind is a form of energy different from matter (= dualism); 2) mind and matter are both forms of energy (= what I believe some philosophers have called "neutral monism"). If by "universe" we mean all that is, we lump mind and matter together: God and the universe are one. If we mean the material world as we know it, God/mind and universe/matter are distinct.
 
And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is how panentheism can have its cake and eat it.