[MD] atomic preferences and panexperientialism (panpyschism)

[david buchanan]

Since Krimel couldn't get past the first few sentences of Charles Birch's paper, I thought it might be nice to quote some of his concluding remarks:

"Panexperientialism avoids the emergence category mistake. This is to equate the evolutionary emergence of visible features such as feathers from scales and the so called emergence of mind from no mind. It is the same category mistake to equate the emergence of saltiness in sodium chloride and wetness in water with the emergence of mind from no mind. To say that a property emerges is to say no more than that from A comes B. How feathers came from scales can be explained by normal evolutionary theory. But how mentality can be derived from something which totally lacks it cannot be so explained. It is to believe in miracles.
The doctrine that mind emerges from no mind implies that there was a stage in biological evolution when mind appeared for the first time. But where is that line to be drawn? In so far as any line is drawn it is completely arbitrary. The logical alternative is to propose that there is no line of demarcation any more than there is a line between living and non living in evolution. This overcomes the problem of why consciousness evolved. It would seem that an unconscious robot [like Chalmers' Zombies, for example] programmed to avoid dangers and to appropriate its needed resources should do just as well in Darwinian evolution as an entity that was conscious. In panexperientialism, matter and mind necessarily evolve together. One doesn't come after the other. The evolution of mind from elemental beginnings in the electron to richness of conscious mind in the human makes logical sense."

If Birch is right, getting mind to emerge from material processes, as the physicalists have it, requires a belief in miracles and makes no logical sense. 


> Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2010 20:50:45 +0200
> From: parser666 at gmail.com
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: [MD] atoms preferences
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> http://www.physorg.com/news189163911.html
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