From John Ellis at PJ Media:
The belief that inanimate objects, like rocks and tableware, contain consciousness is quickly picking up steam among respected philosophers and scientists.
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The problem for these “credible philosophers, neuroscientists, and physicists” who take panpsychist seriously is, as Goldhill points out, “The materialist viewpoint states that consciousness is derived entirely from physical matter. It’s unclear, though, exactly how this could work.” She cites philosophy professor David Chalmers who noted, “It’s very hard to get consciousness out of non-consciousness.”
While this is an academic discussion on one level, there is another level that directly affects our ethics. The Judeo-Christian worldview and ethics that undergird Western society have as part of their core anthropology the recognition of a distinction between humans and the rest of the creation. The dignity and worth of humans, all humans, is rooted in the fact that we are created in the image of God. Take that away, and society’s ethics will drastically change. Either rocks and tableware will be afforded similar rights as humans, or humans will see our rights taken away. I mean, if there is no real ontological difference between humans and rocks, there’s little reason to treat fellow humans any better than you do the unwanted rock in the middle of your flower bed. More.
This growing consensus that everything is conscious and humans are not special may well underlie the flight from intellectual freedom at universities. People who think the mind is real face different issues with intellectual freedom than people who think that consciousness is an illusion anyway
See also: At Quartz: Materialists are converting to panpsychism
Nearly 50% Americans now think humans are not special
and
The illusion of consciousness sees through itself.
How might one go about providing evidence for the belief that “inanimate objects, like rocks and tableware, contain consciousness”?
Not that evidence ever really mattered to Darwinists in the first place. As Dr Hunter notes, “With Darwinism, The Theory Is Always Driving the Ideas In Spite of the Evidence”.
But if evidence ever really did matter to Darwinists, again, how would one go about providing evidence for the belief that “inanimate objects, like rocks and tableware, contain consciousness”?
This seems to run into the same ‘philosophical zombie’ problem that Darwinian materialists now have.
The problem for these guys ever providing evidence for their position is the ‘problem of ‘qualia’. That is to say, I know for 100% fact that I really do exist and am having a personal subjective experience,, but there is no way for atheists to ever to scientifically prove to me that they really exist as a real people who are having a ‘real’ subjective conscious experience, and that they are not just some type of ‘philosophical zombie’ going through the motion of acting like real person!
Such as it is with the atheist’s refusal to ever accept any evidence for the personhood of God.
As Alvin Plantinga pointed out years ago in “God and Other Minds”, “the evidence for God is just as good as the evidence for other minds; and conversely, if there isn’t any evidence for God, then there is also no evidence that other minds exist,,,”
Although atheists have the impossible task of trying to ‘explain away’ the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ (as is made evident with this current appeal to panpsychism), the Theist, on the other hand, has a much easier task at hand. The Theist merely has to show that the mind can not possibly be the same thing as the material brain.
One simple way of demonstrating that the mind can not possibly be the same thing as the material brain comes from utilizing the ‘Law Of Identity’ to separate properties of mind from properties of the brain:
Alvin Plantinga humorously uses a clever thought experiment where we have a ‘beetle body’, to highlight the fact, via the ‘law of identity’, that the mind cannot possibly be the same thing as the brain.
Another way for the Theist to clearly prove that consciousness can never be reconciled with materialistic and/or panpsychist presuppositions is to appeal to science itself and point out the fact that quantum mechanics has now repeatedly proven that consciousness must precede material reality.
Due to advances in quantum mechanics, the argument for God from consciousness can now be framed like this:
Of humorous note:
Atheists find themselves very much in a situation similar to Pinocchio’s. They don’t want to be considered ‘neuronal illusions’ (and/or “philosophical zombies”) and find it embarrassing to admit, given materialistic premises, that they don’t really exist as real persons. Thus, they very much want to be considered real people someday as Theists currently consider themselves to be real people.
And much like Pinocchio, there is hope that atheists can, someday, be real persons also. To become real persons they must simply have a very strong desire to know (and speak) the truth: