There’s an inherent contradiction here, though - you’re saying that neurons and the larger universe have different input/output mechanisms, and yet, also, that self-similarity holds. The only resemblance is the non-linearity, though, The specific processes differ. Why then do you expect similar results? Are you saying that a distributed system is all that is required to give rise to conciousness? I’d point out the similarities between neural structure and similar structures in both plants and minerals. Would you ascribe conciousness to those, too? Without any evidence for same (as you admit is also the case for your God=Universe concept).
IMO, yes. Anyone who drags Aether into the mess is grasping, and that’s what Spinoza’s “substance” ultimately is - magically both spiritual and material. I have little truck with neutral monists, me. Strict materialist, you see.
MrD, All part of the same system. Look at it this way: Big Bang, all same singular point. Immediately after, all the same soup of whatever with a variety of nonlinear processes beginning to occur. From there matter, antimatter, energy, dark matter, etc. all form, all part of the same system still, even though some parts now are effected by differernt forces. No matter where the system goes from there it is still all one massively nonlinear system, full of all different kinds of matter and energy and forces and hydrogen and carbon and electricity and carbon and gravity all effecting each other in very nonlinear manners. The question is: is there a patteern to it, and if so what sort of pattern? Systems can be made of units with different inputs and outputs and studied at different levels of analysis. Weather can be made of clouds and heat and all effect each other. Brains can be analyzed from the perspective of chemical and electrical inputs at cells with their sorts of inputs and outputs or behaviors and psychological principles and their inputs and outputs and still be describing the same thing.
Cite please, eh, for my statement about self-similarity. Well it is in book on nonlinear dynamics that is buried somewhere in a box right now. If I can find the time to dig I will, or to find a good online review for you. The concept though is the one that discusses how nonlinear systems, which chaos theory is designed to manage, tend to have solution sets which are fractal in nature, and fractals tend to exhibit self similarity at different levels of analysis.
“It might” is the way any hypothesis ought to be phrased. I do not have hard evidence that the pattern of activity of information processing in the brain causes consciousness. That is a reasonable conclusion, but not proven. I have only speculation from some physicists that cosmology may be best understood as being information at its core. I have no evidence on what the pattern of that information is, if it exists. It is, no doubt, a speculative leap, to hypothesize that this one part of the pattern of the universe, that of information processing in the brain, is self simlar on a grand scale. But I am unsure if it is an irrelevant question or a Big One. Spinoza for his part helped usher in the Modern Age with his somewhat dense work. If only my thoughts were that meaningless.
I too like to consider the universe in terms of parallels, microcosms and macrocosms, but I think the Brain-Universe parallel a step too far.
If you want a macrocosmic version of the brain, wouldn’t human society be a better one, both having specialised areas/professions, cognitive dissonance=the clash of ideologies, and communication media as the firing neurons, etc?
It seems excessively anthropocentric to think that the universe as a whole should resemble the human brain/mind, but since religions often stem from an inflated sense of human importance, I’m sure you’re edging towards god…
I know about Chaos Theory, I’ve seen Jurassic Park*, I wanted a cite for the statement that two systems that are distributed in different ways might exhibit similar emergent behaviour. I see you don’t have one. I don’t think you properly grok fractals, myself. Or at least the self-similarity aspect. Self-similarity is a property within a given fractal (equation/system), not across all fractals as a set. IOW, Just because something can be described as “fractal” does not mean it is in other ways similar to something else that’s also fractal. For instance, to grab two arb examples, coastlines aren’t similar to fungal mycelia. “Self-similarity” means that e.g a coastline will look fractally similar at various resolutions. But self-similarity breaks down when it ceases to be a coastline and becomes grains of sand.
I think I see where you’re going with the “everything originates in Big Bang, therefore everything is connected” idea, but I don’t agree. Conciousness is, IMO, an emergent behaviour of a *particularly organised *subset of that Totality, and it doesn’t logically follow that it is manifest in other, differently-organised subsets.
“It might, and here’s my evidence” would be much better.
“Speculative Leap” is putting it mildly, I think. I understand that you’re running on your own intuition and sense of what could be possible. That’s cool, but it’s hardly compelling.
Spinoza was necessary to get where we are today. So was Humoral Theory and the Greek 4 elements. But we’re *beyond that now. So now it’s meaningless. At the time, certainly meaningful.
** I’ve also read Mandelbrott.
If you have to give your beliefs a name, it’s always a good idea to use one that others have some understanding of already. In this case, I think pantheist works very well for you.
But millions of years of evolution have incrementally favored certain patterns of information that eventually gave rise to consciousness. Intellect ‘emerged’ because it was functional. There’s no reason I can see to assume the information patterns of the universe would be shaped in the same way.
