Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

— seem to have a rudimentary awareness, and yet bodies function perfectly when healthy. Should there be a problem, then the ‘complaints’ of the internal organs can be useful to us in understanding what needs to be set right. There is not a conflict between the various centres of consciousness. There seems to be a very clear case of ‘emergence‘ here! We — all conscious beings — are very much more than the sum of our parts.

The general idea of panpsychism dates back, at least, to Parmenides, Pythagoras and Plotinus (in a variety of different configurations) and is fundamental to ‘perennial’ philosophy and the mystical traditions of many religions. In more recent times, Friedrich Schelling saw no fundamental difference between spirit and nature. Sometimes panpsychism is divided into ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ versions. The strong version is more or less as previously described. The weak version suggests that there are some proto-mental properties to matter that allow consciousness to arise.

Let us now consider in more detail the monotheistic belief in God. The nature of God in Western culture has largely come from Greek philosophy rather than the Bible. Christianity has to a large extent inherited this view of God. The commonly assumed characteristics of God can be listed as follows:

Eternal.

Present everywhere (omnipresent). All-powerful (omnipotent).

All-knowing (omniscient).

Outside of space and time (transcendent).

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