This may actually belong in GQ, but given it involves God and all …
I have a God concept but it does not involve an interventional God. It shares some with Spinoza’s pantheism but allows for God to have a greater consciousness beyond our understanding. I don’t know how to classify it.
Like Spinoza’s pantheism my God is immanant of Nature. But I concieve that a greater consciousness emergent. It only seems logical.
The universe, just like the human brain, is a massively non-linear system. One thing we know about non-linear systems is that their behaviors are best determined by Chaos Theory and one of the basics of Chaos Theory is that these systems tend to exhibit self-similarity at different levels of analysis. At the human brain level of analysis we see that individual discrete units (neurons, etc) end up interacting in pattern that leads to an emergent experience of the whole that we call “consciousness.” The individual cells are for their part performing their summation of inputs and producing outputs and are incapable of comprehending what that consciousness is.
Logically, it seems to me, it follows that a higher level of interaction exists in which we are among the discrete entities of which a different level of consciousness exists. And since we are just matter and energy, just particular manifestations of spacetime, it seems entirely logical that all of spacetime participates in this greater consciousness that is beyond our comprehension by many many orders of magnitude.
Now this God concept does little. It doesn’t explain how things work. It doesn’t provide an axiomatic basis for values and Law. It doesn’t provide for group identity. It makes no testable predictions. So I guess by any measure of science or religious value it aint worth a thing. Yet it still both makes sense and feels right to me and gives some comfort, even thopugh I couldn’t tell you why.
It sounds like pantheism to me. Spinoza’s version of pantheism isn’t the only version out there. You can differ from Spinoza theologically and still be a pantheist.
Also, while I wouldn’t call your concept “stupid,” I will point out that Neurons can give rise to consciousness because of their complex physical/chemical/electrical structure. I don’t see the analogy with the simpler structures of the universe.
It might have something in common with Deism. Something that winds things up and then stands aside while things happen.
And this concept isn’t any worse than the standard one. That explains nothing in any useful way either. “God did it” is no different than “It just happened” as far as I can tell.
In my opinion/experience — since the theology you’re describing is mine — badly
You’ll run across references to its underpinnings in a variety of philosophical arguments about causation, intentionality, and consciousness, though, as well as specifically theological discussions.
Wow Larry. You actually understand how neurons give rise to qualia. It is all because the neurons are so much more complex individual cells than any other cells. Do tell. And wow, the rest of the universe is so simple compared to the amazing complexity of a single neuron and it chemical and electrical impulses.
Do explain all about the emergence of qualia from discrete cells to the neuroscientists who actively work in this field and do explain the simplicity of the rest of matter and energy to physicists. They all await your insights.
Meanwhile you may be right about it best fitting in under pantheism albeit not straight up Spinozism.
DanBlather, admittedly so. But like I said, for some reason it seems to matter to me. God concepts are like that. It may indeed be that I just suffer from a God-shaped hole in my psyche. But I do not think so.
Lilairen, that helped but the links I could find seem to place the God is the Universe within an external God that it exists in. That is not it. God is still imanant of Nature but a consciousness is emergent of it just as qualia and consciousness are emergent of our bodies.
pravnik can you explain how so?
David, nah, no wind up. God is not external to the process, God is emergent of the process, which has always been.
AHunter please expound upon your personal God concept. I for one, see no improbablity to matter that thinks and see no role for a designing or interventional God. I do not design my neurons; I am a result of them. I do not intervene for the survival of single cells. God in this concept did not any more create me, but is emergent of all of the Universe.
To me this fits with my longstanding personal philosophy that to study the way in which the universe works is to study God and a very religious undertaking.
Do you really think sarcasm is going to get you best results? He was honestly answering your question, man, don’t be bitchy.
Anyway, the way I see it, self-similarity breaks down when there’s no continuity of structure. There’s a distinct jump from “brain” to the wider “collection of brains” (I like the Science of Discworld term “Extelligence”) that is a fundamentally different method of interlinking. A jump from the electrochemical communication of neurons to the memetic communication of Extelligence(s). There’s emergent behaviour there, sure, but I wouldn’t call it conciousness. It certainly isn’t exhibiting any signs of self-awareness to me.
Sure, you *can *argue that it does, just nothing I can comprehend, but then I’m with DanBlather (and William of Occam) on this one - it might as well not exist. You will never know of its existence outside your own theory. This is not “God”, by any meaningful definition. Renaming “Universe” to “God” without imparting any new, real, characteristics to distinguish it from the old definition is pointless.
I have no answer other than to mention a vague resemblance to the Gaia concept. I do have a couple of bonus questions !
Are you locating god in the universe, in the awareness, or in the mechanisms ?
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying that the universe is self-aware. To me this begs various questions - does the universe act on itself in a self-aware manner ? Is awareness not in part a function of the interaction between self and other - if so what would be ‘other’ to the universe ? Self-awareness in the absence of other-awareness sounds quasi-psychopathic, not that I think that description fits anybody’s god !
I’m on board for the idea of larger scale (than human) emergent awareness, but why would it need to be singular ? The singular universal awareness might be something that the universe is tending towards, or away from.
The word God has many meanings,there are many different religions that define the word for God. To me it just means existence,(what exists) Not 'a" being but being. We are all part of a greater whole.
If your beliefs help you why worry what name someone else calls it.
It’s nice to have a shorthand and to find out how other minds, likely better than mine, have presented similar ideas., is why Monavis.
Theminin Is humanness located in the consciousness, the body or the process? Igues it is all of the above for Godliness too.
Sorry MrDibble if I seemed “bitchy”. Moving on, there is nothing about Chaos Theory that limits non-linear systems to those connected in any particular way. Neurons are discrete. They are effected by a variety of inputs and effect other cells by a variety of inputs, but are themselves seperate and fairly simple structures. Somehow that non-linear pattern allows an emergent property to occur. We are similarly effected by a variety of inputs and produce outputs that effect others doing the same in a system. What is magical about chemical and electrical impulses doing the triggering?
As to the irrelevance of it, well I’ve tried to answer that already. Was Spinosism also meaningless though?
Well maybe I am trying to do that, but upon more thought, this may be a testable hypothesis.
Currently many neuroscientists interested in “consciousness” attribute it to the pattern of the processing, the particular way the information forms self-referential loops. To some degree this goes back to Hofstadter and his strange loops, but others also have proposed that these resonances and looping information streams result in the experience of consciousness. The more complex and self referential the looping I the more conscious the entity. So let’s say it is so. And that such a structure can be quantified.
Meanwhile some physicists see information as being the essence or the structure of universe. If I am right then the structures of that information network, when analyzed as such, will be self similar to the structures of processing information associated with consciousness in brains.
Okay, it is not testable at this point in time or in the near future. It requires both brain science and cosmologic advances and includes several kilotons of speculation. But then so does String theory and I like that too!
I’m not sure why you’re being so sarcastic, but, while I obviously can’t say howneurons give rise to consciousness, it’s pretty clear that they are at least necessary for consciousness, and probably that qualia arise from neural activity. No other mechanism has been proposed. You’ve proposed an analogy between human consciousness and a universal consciousness. I’m simply pointing out that I don’t see the analogy; that the brain and the universe are two very different structures, and there’s nothing I’m aware of in the structure of the universe that suggests it is capable of thought or subjective experience. As far as I’m aware, most of the matter in the universe is simple hydrogen and helium, spread out randomly or clumped together in stars, whose gravitational influence on one another is very weak, especially compared to the chemical and electrical influence of brain cells on one another.
I do apologize for the sarcasm. But no, there is less reason per se to believe that there is anything magical about neurons per se, than there is something special about the patterns of the information being shuttled around. Inputs and outputs by discrete cells participating in an emergent process that they are not only unaware of but are incapable of being aware of.
Many seperate debates have centered around the question of whether if similar patterns were replicated in a computer system then qualia would result and how would we know when do not really know if other minds experience qualia and consciousness. Obviously my take is that I would assume that such a conscious experience was extant.
If so, if the critical aspect is the nature of the information processing, then the question is if information is being processed, and in what sort of pattern. Again, physicists are just beginniing to develop models of the universe as being composed of information with matter and energy merely being manifestations of information. (See work by John Wheeler and Anton Zeilinger - http://www.quantum.univie.ac.at/links/newscientist/bit.html) . Even if not literally true, the point is that parts (dare I say “bits”) of spacetime interact with each other. Will it turn out that such interactions are random or will it turn out that on a grand and slow scale there is some structure, some pattern to these interactions? If there is some structure will it have some similarity to whatever the patterns of interaction are that give rise to human consiousness? It follows that it might from the principles of Chaos Theory.
And like with the question of artificial intelligence and consciousness, with questions of alien intelligences, even within our own planet, how will we recognize an intelligence foreign to our own when we meet it?
