The author firstly does a critique both of the dualism (that was supported by Aristoteles and later by Abrahamic religions) and of the materialism (that is supported by lot of people that are influenced by the somewhat aggressive speech of prominent scientists in the media, and people that don't think in that because they suppose it does not influence their everyday life [although I think that it influence very much because the philosophy of what we are is conditioning all our actions blinding the mind, for example, to other realities, as the interconnected that we are (see section [1]). Criticizes also the Darwinian model of evolution where the advances are supposed to be developed through the accumulation of small, accidental, but advantageous changes and how the popular science literature, radio, and television regard this reductive program as the undisputed and legitimate scientific unique explanation. And then he start talking about mind and what are explanations that reductionism do to explain how it surges (saying that it is an epiphenomena, or that is an illusion), the emergent view is like compare mind with the emergence of liquidity from water properties; but this is somewhat absurd comparison because there are not based in the same logical derivations. Fortunately there are other viewpoints of the nature of the mind, for example Freeman Dyson, an eminent particle physicist, wrote “I think that consciousness is not just a passive epiphenomenon carried along by the chemical events on 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 process of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the process of choice between quantum states which we call ‘chance’ when they are made by an electron.” This brings us closer to Panpsychism [the philosophy that is supported in this web because it's the one that fits with an electromagnetic mind theory] that confers a mental quality to all the elements of the physical world [in this web is proposed that electromagnetism and photons are the active part of the mind, while matter act as memory]. Although this philosophy has been defended by numerous great minds (Heraclitus, Empedocles, Bruno, Cardano, Leibniz, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Priestly, William James, Mach, Bergson, Whitehead, Eddington, Broad, Bohm, Waddington, Dyson, and recently, Strawson, Nagel, Skrbina, Hameroff, Chalmers, Seager, Rosenberg, Schooler, etc.) the mainstream is reluctant to take in consideration, although for various scientific and philosophers is the most logical and parsimonious explanation available to resolve the mind/matter conundrum. Panpsychism does not require an explanation of how the so ontologically different quality as consciousness emerge from matter where none existed before. And also obliquely recognizes that purpose is inherent to all the nature. |
Last modified on 20-Mar-16 |