Another excerpt from Why?: The Purpose of the Universe ->
"Rational matter" seems like an odd conception, more a way of avoiding [having to say] "soul"?
That said, I do think it is encouraging to see Goff - who once was more mechanistic even with his Panpsychicsm - reach these conclusions.
Quote:...if the laws of physics had been fine-tuned for life but the universe did not contain rational matter, i.e. matter inherently disposed to respond in a rationally appropriate manner to the character of its conscious
experience, it’s highly unlikely that experiential understanding would have evolved; the Earth would almost certainly be populated by meaning zombies.
As explained above, experiential understanding of reality is helpful for survival only if physical systems are able to respond rationally to the character of their conscious experience.
Fine- tuning and rational matter need each other to produce creatures that can understand and respond to what things are and mean. Without fine- tuning, rational matter would be unable to evolve into complex organisms which are responsive to their environment, a pre-condition for the emergence of experiential understanding. Without rational matter, even if matter evolved into complex survival mechanisms, those mechanisms—if conscious at all—would have meaningless experience: they would be meaning zombies./
In other words, fine-tuning and rational matter fit together like a key fits the lock it was made for...
"Rational matter" seems like an odd conception, more a way of avoiding [having to say] "soul"?
That said, I do think it is encouraging to see Goff - who once was more mechanistic even with his Panpsychicsm - reach these conclusions.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
(This post was last modified: 2024-06-21, 11:35 PM by Sciborg_S_Patel. Edited 1 time in total.)
- Bertrand Russell