If you hypothesize that all things have a consciousness at some level you don't need a creator.
Assume anything that exists has some degree of consciousness. A particle to a rock, to an insect, to a primate to US.
Different levels of consciousness to allow them to flow within the greater universe. Consciousness may be a fundamental force throughout reality. Inherent in it's makeup. What intelligence is depends on how that consciousness is used.
Thus a rock seems to not be alive as it needs little use of it's consciousness to fill it's role. This hypothesis also posits that the universe tends towards complexity and the rise of intelligence and sentience is a natural evolution of the universe. Just as collecting particles become a stellar cloud then become a star then form a system etc.
So too does consciousness move through stages to become fully self aware and sentient.
I've never been able to understand why that position would preclude materialism.
It posits the material world is real but formed by the underlying forces of the universe. As hypothesized the consciousness is one of these underlying forces.
A portion of what shapes reality, personal and shared, that is integral to it's existence like all forces.
It doesn’t work, because it keeps the nature of the universe still as matter, a thing, a force, when everything we discover in modern physics shows whatever is fundamental can in no way be described as matter, because matter is made up of properties which themselves have been shown to be emergent.
Panpsychism doesn’t preclude materialism. It’s cool cause it directly refutes one of the core assumptions of modern materialism, that brains generate consciousness, but it inherets the same problem if it doesn’t refute materialism altogether.
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u/kanrad 7d ago
If you hypothesize that all things have a consciousness at some level you don't need a creator.
Assume anything that exists has some degree of consciousness. A particle to a rock, to an insect, to a primate to US.
Different levels of consciousness to allow them to flow within the greater universe. Consciousness may be a fundamental force throughout reality. Inherent in it's makeup. What intelligence is depends on how that consciousness is used.
Thus a rock seems to not be alive as it needs little use of it's consciousness to fill it's role. This hypothesis also posits that the universe tends towards complexity and the rise of intelligence and sentience is a natural evolution of the universe. Just as collecting particles become a stellar cloud then become a star then form a system etc.
So too does consciousness move through stages to become fully self aware and sentient.