jaa said:post 118452hmac said:post 118434Perhaps it is a weird thing to infer - but to me the spontaneous coherence and expression of patterns of movement (swirls and bands) that the matter forms are an intimation of consciousness. To me, the implication is that all matter is inherently conscious. Haidut has framed the post in the context of the "spurious mind-matter duality", which I take as meaning there is no division between living and non-living matter. If we accept this notion this leaves us a choice of two inferences; either all matter is dead (not conscious) including organisms, or all matter is alive (conscious); as there is no division between mind and matter then all matter must possess mind. I think this is an idea that Peat has expressed himself a number of times.jaa said:post 118392 Yeah consciousness seems like a weird thing to infer from that.
So a rock has consciousness? I don't believe that. All matter is made up of the same type of stuff and adheres to the physical laws of the universe or this part of the universe. But consciousness is not defined as all matter. It's a particular property of certain sets of organized matter whose basic definition is something like the ability to sense the universe. We experience consciousness thanks to our nervous system. It is possible to imagine something can be alive (replicating thing that reacts to it's environment), without having consciousness.
I think Peat has implied several times that indeed all matter is conscious. He even quotes Blakes famous poem on all dust particles being alive. I posted a study a while ago showing that mainstream physics is getting more and more aligned in the general direction of panpsychism. See below for more info:
viewtopic.php?t=4334
I think Peat said in one of his interviews that all matter is conscious and there are only degrees of intelligence depending on metabolism. A yeast, surviving on fermentation, is not as intelligent as an ape.
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