Pantheism
This seemed really brilliant to me as I was falling asleep last night. It doesn't seem quite as brilliant to me now, but I'll post it anyway....
Materialists prefer not to talk about things like "mind" and "consciousness". But when they do, they speak of it in terms of an emergent property of the brain. Now, as an emergent property of the brain, it seems likely (according to Hofstadter) that this property would emerge from the complexity of the brain, not as a result of any innately physical property of the neurons themselves. Complexity theory believes that there is a certain isomorphism between different complex systems, regardless of their medium. In other words, there are things you can say that are true for all (or most) complex systems whether they are organic, geological, or financial. Certain principals hold true, and these principals are what make complex systems so interesting. (Spontaneous self-organization is one of them.) So, following from this, does it not seem reasonable that systems with a comparable complexity to the human brain might have something like what we call "mind", or even "consciousness"? Of course, I don't know if anything is as complex as the human brain with more synapses than there are stars in the universe. But synapses are just interactions between parts, and the interactions between parts grows combinatorially with any non-linear system. I don't know how you would count the number of "parts" (let alone "interactions between parts" or synapses) in, say, the weather. But the weather is definitely a complex system. If a butterfly flapping it's wings in Asia can produce a hurricane in Florida (as is generally believed to be true) then the weather is a very complex system. So, does this system have a mind? How would we know if it did? But it makes you wonder...maybe there is some truth to the old gods. If any sufficiently complex system can be thought of to have a "mind" or even to be "conscious", then we are, indeed, living among gods! How interesting is that?
Materialists prefer not to talk about things like "mind" and "consciousness". But when they do, they speak of it in terms of an emergent property of the brain. Now, as an emergent property of the brain, it seems likely (according to Hofstadter) that this property would emerge from the complexity of the brain, not as a result of any innately physical property of the neurons themselves. Complexity theory believes that there is a certain isomorphism between different complex systems, regardless of their medium. In other words, there are things you can say that are true for all (or most) complex systems whether they are organic, geological, or financial. Certain principals hold true, and these principals are what make complex systems so interesting. (Spontaneous self-organization is one of them.) So, following from this, does it not seem reasonable that systems with a comparable complexity to the human brain might have something like what we call "mind", or even "consciousness"? Of course, I don't know if anything is as complex as the human brain with more synapses than there are stars in the universe. But synapses are just interactions between parts, and the interactions between parts grows combinatorially with any non-linear system. I don't know how you would count the number of "parts" (let alone "interactions between parts" or synapses) in, say, the weather. But the weather is definitely a complex system. If a butterfly flapping it's wings in Asia can produce a hurricane in Florida (as is generally believed to be true) then the weather is a very complex system. So, does this system have a mind? How would we know if it did? But it makes you wonder...maybe there is some truth to the old gods. If any sufficiently complex system can be thought of to have a "mind" or even to be "conscious", then we are, indeed, living among gods! How interesting is that?