What proof do you have for your statement?

@WilliamFleming Let me reverse your question: What evidence do you have that the universe has a conscious mind"

@wordywalt But wait, I didn’t make the assertion that the universe is conscious. You made the bald-faced assertion that the universe is NOT conscious. How do you know such a thing with absolute certainty? Evidence please. Proof if you will.

I do LEAN toward the concept of universal consciousness, and yes, there is evidence:

[scientificamerican.com]

[google.com]

[jcer.com]

[m.huffpost.com]

[google.com]

Do you have testable evidence that the universe is not conscious?

@WilliamFleming Anything that's non-falsifiable is not afforded belief by most of us here.

How would you falsify the claim that the universe is conscious? And for what definition or criteria of "conscious"?

Don't demand proof of negatives, you won't get it here. It's beside the point.

Technically my position for anything non-falsifiable is that I have no belief about it at all. But since 100% of available evidence points to consciousness being an emergent property of a living brain (and, some would say, body) then the universe contains conscious entities, but to say that it's itself conscious would be a category error.

@mordant “How would you falsify the claim that the universe is conscious? And for what definition or criteria of "conscious"?

That would be for you to figure out. You are the one who made the statement that the universe is not conscious. I personally don’t see how you are going to prove your assertion, but I am waiting patiently.

That fact that your statement was couched in negative terms means nothing in the world of logic. The idea that you can’t prove a negative is nothing but a silly myth, and if by “here” you speak for this entire forum you are wrong. Technically speaking you made a bald-faced claim. Have you changed your mind or did you just “misspeak”?

You are also making another bald-faced claim: that 100% of available evidence points to consciousness being an emergent property of a living brain. I can easily disprove that statement. BTW I do not claim that the universe is conscious, but I strongly suspect that it is.

[scientificamerican.com]

[google.com]

[jcer.com]

[m.huffpost.com]

[google.com]

@WilliamFleming It was a rhetorical question -- not specifically how you, personally, would falsify it, but how (any)one would falsify it. The point is that one can't. If it's not falsifiable, then it's not discussable in any substantive way. One can only speculate.

Yes, a small number of scientists are open to panpsychism and similar notions, but that does not make these things true, or likely to be true. It simply points out that science has frustrating limitations from the viewpoint of someone that wants to (dis)prove something like a conscious universe. I submit that this will most likely always be in the speculative rather than the scientific realm. That doesn't mean it can't be discussed for fun, or must be considered flat out impossible, or that one can't play with it philosophically ... but it does mean that it's a pointless discussion if what you're after is actual knowledge of what is actually, knowably true.

Appeals to authority don't work here either. Good for Goedel for thinking it self-evident that consciousness is "everywhere". But he hasn't demonstrated that this is so, or even how you'd demonstrate that this is so. His area of expertise is mathematics. That he was an accomplished super-genius mathematician did not make him on expert on consciousness, or render his personal speculations about these things more valid than the next person's.

I will be happy to revise my views of what is likely / possible here when a scientifically valid hypothesis is advanced concerning it, or at least, some of the presuppositions of universal consciousness prove reliably useful and true in the same way that the basic assumptions underlying mathematics have (that is, mathematics, even though founded on certain axioms simply assumed to be true, has proven to accurately model reality, to the extent that it has become the very language of science).

In other words I don't demand that everything about a conceptual model has to be understood or free of axiomatic assertions ... but it has to at least add to the predictive and explanatory power of our understanding of reality -- not merely make some of us feel good, but actually make life more comprehensible / explicable or solve some real-world problem.

Of course I'm a contrarian in some ways there, too. My mortality isn't a practical problem for me, for example. Immortality is just "nice to have, maybe, so long as you can still opt out". The whole impetus for universal consciousness is just to me another futile immortality project for humanity to pursue, unless and until it proves otherwise.

@mordant Well said. And I am also open to changing my opinion if necessary.

Long live speculation and metaphysics!

So far as immortality, IMO we humans will blink out like a light when we die. It is consciousness itself that is immortal, immortal by default. That consciousness is us collectively. Please don’t ask for proof.

@icolan Yes, that kind of good, the kind that is the opposite of bad, is nothing but an arbitrary designation useful for organizing and planning our behaviors. Those things exist only in our minds.

So far as your last question,
Universal Consciousness:

[scientificamerican.com]

[google.com]

[jcer.com]

[m.huffpost.com]

[google.com]

As for holocausts, criminal acts, asteroid strikes, war, disease, etc., they are “bad” from the perspective of a finite set of bodily organisms, but they are all a part of nature, and nature is good by default IMO. I lean toward thinking that our bodies are nothing but robots, unaware and expendable. Universal consciousness likes having a river of organisms with which to interact, but Individual bodies have no value.

@icolanTrue scientists, those possessed of the spirit of science, ponder and discuss questions of the unknown. New ideas spring from intuition, dreams, and just sparks of the imagination. Without that first process there’d be no science, nothing to test. Humans would have no fire, no wheels, no tools, not even stone tools.

Are you calling for all discussion of universal consciousness to cease? Would you have those who entertain such ideas barred from university positions? (which is a very common practice) There is nothing scientific about leaping in to ridicule and debunk new ideas that conflict with your personal world view.

If you are sitting there smugly, thinking that you understand almost everything there is to know about nature you are in for a big shock. Live long enough and you’ll see revolutionary changes.

@icolan First of all, I am not calling for belief in anything. You asked what evidence there is for universal consciousness, and I provided a number of links. I’m sure that if you search through those articles you’ll find that there is evidence. Evidence is just evidence, not proof. I have proven nothing, and I myself do not know for certain about universal consciousnesses. It is a subject that intrigues me and which makes sense to me in an intuitive way.

It’s not evidence that needs to be falsifiable—it’s the theory itself. Evidence can consist of many things. How much credence you give that evidence determines your level of confidence in the theory. Even if no one can currently think of a way of testing the theory, some day they might. Those with keen scientific minds will continue pondering and discussing the theory, as is their right, whether or not the theory is disturbing to some people.

@icolan My level of confidence in the theory of universal consciousness is about 95%. It seems to me that you didn’t read the articles. That third one is about nothing BUT evidence for universal consciousness, but you have to download the pdf.

If you are hostile to the concept of universal consciousness, that is your right. If you want to discuss the idea in a meaningful way it would be better to offer insights into why you feel the way you do rather than to snipe about there being no evidence. There is evidence.

@icolan If by evidence you mean repeatable experiments that lead to overwhelming proof for the theory of universal consciousness, then you are right—there is no evidence like that.

There are other categories of evidence. The fact that we have conscious awareness and are communicating with each other is evidence. That we seem to exist individually is evidence. That anything at all exists is evidence. The results of quantum experiments present evidence. Experimentation in the paranormal, that is evidence. The opinions of people such as John Wheeler, Max Planck et al—that is evidence. Evidence does not have to be air-right and conclusive—it only need to be suggestive—to lead the mind in a certain direction.

Compare with courtroom evidence. In court there is personal testimony from witnesses, there is expert opinion, there is circumstantial evidence, and there is physical evidence. In order to convict, all the combined evidence must be overwhelmingly persuasive. If there is acquittal it is not because there was no evidence at all, but because the evidence was insufficient.

If you want to say that there is insufficient evidence to persuade you, then I’ll buy that. I am not 100% sure either.

I do not see this as religion vs science. I don’t see religion as an explanation for anything, or as a body of knowledge. For me religion is a way of life featuring deep awareness, appreciation and gratitude for the staggering implications of the mysteries of reality. Religion is not something to be proven or disproven.

@icolan I never said I was an atheist.

@icolan it’s not a question of belief. I’m not anything—no kind of “ist” No one knows the answers to the deep questions about reality, and those questions might be unknowable. The idea of universal consciousness has appeal in several ways, and it’s something I like to think about, but I know it hasn’t been proven by science, and is perhaps unprovable. That doesn’t bother me at all—I am perfectly comfortable discussing it, and a lot of people are interested.