Does the universe need intelligence to order it?

[Sapiens]

OK, so you,as a human being, are conscious, but you say the Sun is not. What would it take for you to do what the Sun is doing as a totality? IOW, what level of consciousness would you require to be a nuclear furnace burning hydrogen to helium etc.? According to you, it can be done without being conscious at all, or at least the Sun would require a massive brain to do so. And yet, the Sun does all of that without a brain or nervous system. In the larger sense, though, maybe it isn't the Sun doing it at all, but the Universe doing the Sun, just as the Universe is doing you and I; just as the wave is a total action of the ocean.

Hydrogen bombs seem to accomplish the mission without consciousness.

 

[psychoslice]

Thank you shawn001 for all that information about QM, very interesting indeed.

 

[shawn001]

Science has also shown that in theory without breaking any fundamental laws of nature, that you don't need intelligence to create a universe. The universe is not getting more orderly it is getting less orderly.

The term disorder also has some issues.

"It is a matter of common experience, that things get more disordered and chaotic with time. This observation can be elevated to the status of a law, the so-called Second Law of Thermodynamics. This says that the total amount of disorder, or entropy, in the universe, always increases with time. However, the Law refers only to the total amount of disorder."

Life in the Universe - Stephen Hawking

This what we are observing happening with the universe right now.

 

[shawn001]

Thank you shawn001 for all that information about QM, very interesting indeed.

Your very welcome.

 

[godnotgod]

On Earth evolutionary biology.

How do you know that any god would be conscious and why would it need to be if it knows everything already?

Well, were there such a god, for it to know anything would require consciousness. Having said that, such a god may not require a mind, but knowing is consciousness itself.

All evolutionary biology may, in fact, be driven by consciousness. For example, consciousness may maintain a brain as a means of having certain autonomic bodily functions relegated to the background, while consciousness tends to what is spontaneously going on in the foreground. If consciousness had to constantly focus on every little bodily detail, such as heart beat, blood flow, respiration, digestion, etc., it could not focus on, say, the immediacy of a tiger about to pounce.

 

[shawn001]

OK, so you,as a human being, are conscious, but you say the Sun is not. What would it take for you to do what the Sun is doing as a totality? IOW, what level of consciousness would you require to be a nuclear furnace burning hydrogen to helium etc.? According to you, it can be done without being conscious at all, or at least the Sun would require a massive brain to do so. And yet, the Sun does all of that without a brain or nervous system. In the larger sense, though, maybe it isn't the Sun doing it at all, but the Universe doing the Sun, just as the Universe is doing you and I; just as the wave is a total action of the ocean.

Sapiens did a good job right off that bat with this one.

But do you believe the sun has thoughts and is intelligent? How about a rock? How about individual elements. Can a carbon molecules think on its own?

 

[godnotgod]

Hydrogen bombs seem to accomplish the mission without consciousness.

It takes human intervention to create and launch them via consciousness. Without consciousness, none of that is possible. But that process is a product of the mind. The Sun is a product of consciousness, before mind.

 

[Sapiens]

It takes human intervention to create and launch them via consciousness. Without consciousness, none of that is possible. But that process is a product of the mind. The Sun is a product of consciousness, before mind.

Seems to me that you're now taking a hike down the road carrying a goalpost.

 

[godnotgod]

Sapiens did a good job right off that bat with this one.

But do you believe the sun has thoughts and is intelligent? How about a rock? How about individual elements. Can a carbon molecules think on its own?

Consciousness is not thought. You're projecting human mentality onto nature. The consciousness inherent in nature is non-rational.

The physicist Freeman Dyson thinks atoms are conscious:

“It is remarkable that mind enters into our awareness of nature on two separate levels. At the highest level, the level of human consciousness, our minds are somehow directly aware of the complicated flow of electrical and chemical patterns in our brains. At the lowest level, the level of single atoms and electrons, the mind of an observer is again involved in the description of events. Between lies the level of molecular biology, where mechanical models are adequate and mind appears to be irrelevant. But I, as a physicist, cannot help suspecting that there is a logical connection between the two ways in which mind appears in my universe. I cannot help thinking that our awareness of our own brains has something to do with the process which we call "observation" in atomic physics. That is to say, I think our consciousness is not just a passive epiphenomenon carried along by the chemical events in our brains, but is an active agent forcing the molecular complexes to make choices between one quantum state and another. In other words, mind is already inherent in every electron, and 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 they are made by electrons.”

 

[godnotgod]

Seems to me that you're now taking a hike down the road carrying a goalpost.

Excuse me. a hydrogen bomb cannot accomplish anything on its own. Human consciousness is required. You're talking two different worlds here. A bomb is an artifact; the Sun is not.

 

[shawn001]

Well, were there such a god, for it to know anything would require consciousness. Having said that, such a god may not require a mind, but knowing is consciousness itself.

All evolutionary biology may, in fact, be driven by consciousness. For example, consciousness may maintain a brain as a means of having certain autonomic bodily functions relegated to the background, while consciousness tends to what is spontaneously going on in the foreground. If consciousness had to constantly focus on every little bodily detail, such as heart beat, blood flow, respiration, digestion, etc., it could not focus on, say, the immediacy of a tiger about to pounce.

"Well, were there such a god, for it to know anything would require consciousness. Having said that, such a god may not require a mind, but knowing is consciousness itself."

This is made up with nothing to back it up. If were talking the Christian God it is the alpha and the omega and who created god? How did it just get to know everything?

"All evolutionary biology may, in fact, be driven by consciousness. For example, consciousness may maintain a brain as a means of having certain autonomic bodily functions relegated to the background, while consciousness tends to what is spontaneously going on in the foreground. If consciousness had to constantly focus on every little bodily detail, such as heart beat, blood flow, respiration, digestion, etc., it could not focus on, say, the immediacy of a tiger about to pounce"

Consciousness is an outcome of evolutionary biology.

"For example, consciousness may maintain a brain"

The brain has gone through stages in evolutionary biology to where it is today.

"autonomic bodily functions" the Autonomic nervous system.

"If consciousness had to constantly focus on every little bodily detail, such as heart beat, blood flow, respiration, digestion, etc., it could not focus on, say, the immediacy of a tiger about to pounce"

Right hence the autonomic system evolving before the higher nervous system structures and bigger brains.

"Eating meat and cooking food made us human, the studies suggest, enabling the brains of our prehuman ancestors to grow dramatically over a period of a few million years."

Meat, Cooked Foods Needed for Early Human Brain

There is also an important part here being left out which is very important,, and that is the subconscious.

 

[apophenia]

Apophenia, I didn't think you insulted me just to know.

Yeah I know. We're cool. It was a comment about how subtleties are difficult to convey in short pieces of text.

I'm not disagreeing with you either, btw.

More a comment about how easily people accept ideas like 'space is expanding'.

And about how language is so inadequate.

And how repeating what 'seems' logical' is not the same as seriously investigating the meaning.

I am only using your posts as a vehicle to express that, not trying to refute you.

 

[godnotgod]

"Well, were there such a god, for it to know anything would require consciousness. Having said that, such a god may not require a mind, but knowing is consciousness itself."

This is made up with nothing to back it up. If were talking the Christian God it is the alpha and the omega and who created god? How did it just get to know everything?

"All evolutionary biology may, in fact, be driven by consciousness. For example, consciousness may maintain a brain as a means of having certain autonomic bodily functions relegated to the background, while consciousness tends to what is spontaneously going on in the foreground. If consciousness had to constantly focus on every little bodily detail, such as heart beat, blood flow, respiration, digestion, etc., it could not focus on, say, the immediacy of a tiger about to pounce"

Consciousness is an outcome of evolutionary biology.

"For example, consciousness may maintain a brain"

The brain has gone through stages in evolutionary biology to where it is today.

"autonomic bodily functions" the Autonomic nervous system.

"If consciousness had to constantly focus on every little bodily detail, such as heart beat, blood flow, respiration, digestion, etc., it could not focus on, say, the immediacy of a tiger about to pounce"

Right hence the autonomic system evolving before the higher nervous system structures and bigger brains.

"Eating meat and cooking food made us human, the studies suggest, enabling the brains of our prehuman ancestors to grow dramatically over a period of a few million years."

Meat, Cooked Foods Needed for Early Human Brain

There is also an important part here being left out which is very important,, and that is the subconscious.

None of what you've posted here is indicative of consciousness requiring a nervous system. Consciousness can have been, and still is, the driving force behind all evolutionary processes. Some are now saying that, if we are paying attention to the bigger picture, that the first phase of human evolution is now over, and we are entering the second phase, which is the evolution of consciousness.

BTW, we now have documented proof that consciousness, via meditation, grows thicker cerebral cortexes. We also have scientific experiments proving that the brain is capable of non-local communication.

 

[shawn001]

Consciousness is not thought. You're projecting human mentality onto nature. The consciousness inherent in nature is non-rational.

The physicist Freeman Dyson thinks atoms are conscious:

“It is remarkable that mind enters into our awareness of nature on two separate levels. At the highest level, the level of human consciousness, our minds are somehow directly aware of the complicated flow of electrical and chemical patterns in our brains. At the lowest level, the level of single atoms and electrons, the mind of an observer is again involved in the description of events. Between lies the level of molecular biology, where mechanical models are adequate and mind appears to be irrelevant. But I, as a physicist, cannot help suspecting that there is a logical connection between the two ways in which mind appears in my universe. I cannot help thinking that our awareness of our own brains has something to do with the process which we call "observation" in atomic physics. That is to say, I think our consciousness is not just a passive epiphenomenon carried along by the chemical events in our brains, but is an active agent forcing the molecular complexes to make choices between one quantum state and another. In other words, mind is already inherent in every electron, and 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 they are made by electrons.”

No not really, first lets get on the same page.

con·scious·ness

: the condition of being conscious : the normal state of being awake and able to understand what is happening around you

: a person's mind and thoughts

: knowledge that is shared by a group of people

a : the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself

b : the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact

c : awareness; especially : concern for some social or political cause
2
: the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought : mind
3
: the totality of conscious states of an individual
4
: the normal state of conscious life <regainedconsciousness>
5
: the upper level of mental life of which the person is aware as contrasted with unconscious processes

Consciousness - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

You really want to go into QM and consciousnesses? I really like physicist Freeman Dyson, but a don't know when he wrote that and B neurscience has come a long way recently and he is not a Neuroscientist, although knows QM.

"Dyson has suggested a kind of cosmic metaphysics of mind. In his book Infinite in All Directions he writes about three levels of mind: "The universe shows evidence of the operations of mind on three levels. The first level is the level of elementary physical processes in quantum mechanics. Matter in quantum mechanics is [...] constantly making choices between alternative possibilities according to probabilistic laws. [...] The second level at which we detect the operations of mind is the level of direct human experience. [...] t is reasonable to believe in the existence of a third level of mind, a mental component of the universe. If we believe in this mental component and call it God, then we can say that we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus" (p. 297)."

Freeman Dyson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


You might read this although older as well.

The Electric Brain

• How does a three-pound mass of wet gray tissue (the brain) succeed in representing the external world so beautifully? In this interview with noted neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás of the New York University School of Medicine, find out how the rhythm of electrical oscillations in the brain gives rise to consciousness, and how failures in this rhythm can lead to a variety of brain disorders.

NOVA | The Electric Brain

Conciousness can be changed and damaged. Make sure to read those parts.

 

[godnotgod]

"Well, were there such a god, for it to know anything would require consciousness. Having said that, such a god may not require a mind, but knowing is consciousness itself."

This is made up with nothing to back it up. If were talking the Christian God it is the alpha and the omega and who created god? How did it just get to know everything?

I am not claiming a god. All I am saying is that consciousness is necessary for knowing to occur, god or no god.

 

[shawn001]

Yeah I know. We're cool. It was a comment about how subtleties are difficult to convey in short pieces of text.

I'm not disagreeing with you either, btw.

More a comment about how easily people accept ideas like 'space is expanding'.

And about how language is so inadequate.

And how repeating what 'seems' logical' is not the same as seriously investigating the meaning.

I am only using your posts as a vehicle to express that, not trying to refute you.

"More a comment about how easily people accept ideas like 'space is expanding'."

That one is easy to measure and we have been for quite some time. That CMB radation of the bang is now in microwave and it was visible light at one time.

"
Scientific American

When this cosmic background light was released billions of

years ago, it was as hot and bright as the surface of a star.

The expansion of the universe, however, has stretched space by a

factor of a thousand since then. The wavelength of the light has

stretched with it into the microwave part of the electromagnetic

spectrum


Its been stretch INTO the electromagnetic spectrum, which today we pick up as microwave."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-the-cos mic-microw

 

[shawn001]

I am not claiming a god. All I am saying is that consciousness is necessary for knowing to occur, god or no god.

Hence

"
WHY BRAINS ARE IMPORTANT
NOVA: Let's start by talking about why one needs a nervous system—or a brain—in the first place.
Rodolfo Llinás: That's a very intriguing issue. The nervous system is about 550 million years old, and it first came about when cells decided to make animals. Basically there are two types of animals: animals, and animals that have no brains; they are called plants. They don't need a nervous system because they don't move actively, they don't pull up their roots and run in a forest fire! Anything that moves actively requires a nervous system; otherwise it would come to a quick death.

Why would it die if it didn't have a nervous system?
Because if you move, the variety of environments that you find is very large. So if you happen to be a plant you have to worry only about the very small space you grow into. You don't have to do anything other than maybe move up and down. And you're following the sun anyhow, so there is no planned movement, and therefore there is no necessity to predict what is going to happen if, which is what the nervous system seems to be about. It seems to be about moving in a more or less intelligent way. The more elaborate the system, the more intelligent the movement.

So you need a nervous system in order to be able to predict the future?
Yes, and in order to predict you have to have, at the very least, a simple image inside that tells you something about the purpose of the outside world. That is common to all nervous systems of all forms that we know of. Each animal has a different universe—the universe it sees, the universe it feels, the universe it tastes. Earth probably looks very different not only for all of us as individual humans, but also for different animals."

NOVA | The Electric Brain

 

[godnotgod]

No not really, first lets get on the same page.

con·scious·ness

: the condition of being conscious : the normal state of being awake and able to understand what is happening around you

: a person's mind and thoughts

: knowledge that is shared by a group of people

a : the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself

b : the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact

c : awareness; especially : concern for some social or political cause
2
: the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought : mind
3
: the totality of conscious states of an individual
4
: the normal state of conscious life <regainedconsciousness>
5
: the upper level of mental life of which the person is aware as contrasted with unconscious processes

Consciousness - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

You really want to go into QM and consciousnesses? I really like physicist Freeman Dyson, but a don't know when he wrote that and B neurscience has come a long way recently and he is not a Neuroscientist, although knows QM.

"Dyson has suggested a kind of cosmic metaphysics of mind. In his book Infinite in All Directions he writes about three levels of mind: "The universe shows evidence of the operations of mind on three levels. The first level is the level of elementary physical processes in quantum mechanics. Matter in quantum mechanics is [...] constantly making choices between alternative possibilities according to probabilistic laws. [...] The second level at which we detect the operations of mind is the level of direct human experience. [...] t is reasonable to believe in the existence of a third level of mind, a mental component of the universe. If we believe in this mental component and call it God, then we can say that we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus" (p. 297)."

Freeman Dyson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


You might read this although older as well.

The Electric Brain

• 
  
  
  • How does a three-pound mass of wet gray tissue (the brain) succeed in representing the external world so beautifully? In this interview with noted neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás of the New York University School of Medicine, find out how the rhythm of electrical oscillations in the brain gives rise to consciousness, and how failures in this rhythm can lead to a variety of brain disorders.

NOVA | The Electric Brain

Conciousness can be changed and damaged. Make sure to read those parts.

Sorry, I give no credence to emergent theory.

 

[godnotgod]

Hence

"
WHY BRAINS ARE IMPORTANT
NOVA: Let's start by talking about why one needs a nervous system—or a brain—in the first place.
Rodolfo Llinás: That's a very intriguing issue. The nervous system is about 550 million years old, and it first came about when cells decided to make animals. Basically there are two types of animals: animals, and animals that have no brains; they are called plants. They don't need a nervous system because they don't move actively, they don't pull up their roots and run in a forest fire! Anything that moves actively requires a nervous system; otherwise it would come to a quick death.

Why would it die if it didn't have a nervous system?
Because if you move, the variety of environments that you find is very large. So if you happen to be a plant you have to worry only about the very small space you grow into. You don't have to do anything other than maybe move up and down. And you're following the sun anyhow, so there is no planned movement, and therefore there is no necessity to predict what is going to happen if, which is what the nervous system seems to be about. It seems to be about moving in a more or less intelligent way. The more elaborate the system, the more intelligent the movement.

So you need a nervous system in order to be able to predict the future?
Yes, and in order to predict you have to have, at the very least, a simple image inside that tells you something about the purpose of the outside world. That is common to all nervous systems of all forms that we know of. Each animal has a different universe—the universe it sees, the universe it feels, the universe it tastes. Earth probably looks very different not only for all of us as individual humans, but also for different animals."

NOVA | The Electric Brain

All of this is about perceptual reality. The consciousness inherent in the universe is not perceptual in nature. It is not dependent upon the senses. The senses are dependent upon consciousness. IOW, consciousness must already be in place for perceptual reality to occur.

 

[shawn001]

Sorry, I give no credence to emergent theory.

What do you mean, that is a post on the definition of consciousness?