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Electrons may very well be conscious.

[m.nautil.us]

WilliamFleming 8 May 17
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I'll give it a look but to me this sounds like declaring neutrons too experience digestion. Seems odd to attribute something we're only familiar with as a bodily function to inanimate objects, but I suppose it is their inanimateness which is in question. I'll have to hold my skepticism at bay long enough to give it a look.

"As modern panpsychists like Alfred North Whitehead, David Ray Griffin, Galen Strawson, and others have argued, all matter has some capacity for feeling, albeit highly rudimentary feeling in most configurations of matter. "

Okay, I do attribute consciousness to any creature with a cognitive function to make use of sense data. But why should things lacking senses or cognition feel anything?

"While inanimate matter doesn’t evolve like animate matter, inanimate matter does behave. It does things. It responds to forces. Electrons move in certain ways that differ under different experimental conditions. These types of behaviors have prompted respected physicists to suggest that electrons may have some type of extremely rudimentary mind. For example the late Freeman Dyson, the well-known American physicist, stated in his 1979 book, Disturbing the Universe, that “the processes of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call ‘chance’ when made by electrons.” Quantum chance is better framed as quantum choice—choice, not chance, at every level of nature."

That just seems like a fun conjecture but you can't infuse inanimate objects with consciousness by using the term choice instead of chance to describe how they react. Boy my bias for the Newtonian world view really is pretty strong. QM really annoys me. Still I'm inclined to see the choice of describing quantum states as a matter of choice (rather than chance) as grossly anthropomorphic.

I wish I understood it better. My general feeling is that it is incorrect to describe consciousness as a characteristic of matter, whether an electron or a human body. The consciousness has to be primary, not an attribute of something else.

There is that background consciousness or awareness that is pervasive, and then there is our personal EXPERIENCE of consciousness—something different. That’s why it seems ridiculous to ascribe consciousness to an electron. We are trying to project our interpretive experience on an object of our minds.

I think I’ll read it again. Hmm...

@WilliamFleming “ There is that background consciousness or awareness that is pervasive, and then there is our personal EXPERIENCE of consciousness—something different.”

I agree there is consciousness in the background but I think it is on board, arising along side that which we experience most directly and identify with the most. But I think the otherness of the surrounding consciousness is the totality of which what we take to be ourself is but a part. I think this onboard otherness is where that which gives rise to god belief arises.

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Light being conscious us not a new ideal

John 1:1 In the beginning was the logos(thought/word/reasoning - consicious cognition capability)

What is brain waves? What is sparking when thinking? What is chemical reaction doing?

In John 8:12 Jesus applies the title to himself while debating with the Jews and states: I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

1 cor. 2:16. for, "Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.

Word Level 8 May 17, 2020
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Interesting read, thanks for posting.

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Amazing.
Electrons thinking? Thought IS an aspect of 'consciousness,' and from there we could further postulate an interconnectedness of all consciousness into a ''universal mind.' This in turn could serve as a hypothetical definition of 'god.'
In this scenario 'god' would truly be EVERYTHING in a Pantheistic sense.
If true, how would a 'universal mind' function? Not as a singular entity, apparently, but maybe as a conduit, through which every particle of matter communicates with every other one?
How would this be appropriately thought of as 'god?' Clearly in a very different way than the god of old-school religious thought.
To me a very intriguing line of reasoning.

how does a universal mind function? well, first ... it has nothing to do with thinking. we have a very hard time understanding that awareness and thinking are 2 entirely different things. Thinking is the function of an organic brain. Awareness is the base upon which those thoughts are played.

second - that awareness is the "change agent" of the universe and is everywhere. On all levels, at all times, in all places. It's eternal and it's boundless. it attempts to squeeze itself into this 3D body with 2D senses so it has to be subject to time and space limitations. To AWARENESS that distant star is right there. Right now. But when you hafta equate that to human body terms our minds add in space and time to the equation. Thus that light - IMMEDIATELY triggered by awareness (double slit experiment) doesn't register in our eyeballs until millions of these periods we invent called "time" expire and that "space" between our forms spans millions of light years.

excellent find Bill!!

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