Value realism at the Omega Point

 

Waking Cosmos (or metaRising) is a YouTube channel and podcast devoted to a mostly panpsychist exploration of the problem of consciousness. I linked to some episodes before, and here we go again!

In the presentation above, WC argues that consciousness is not only deeply mysterious by itself (for how can dead or even living matter have a subjective inner world?), but that it could point to something teleological within the universe. Perhaps the cosmos *needs* consciousness in order to become aware of itself? Maybe it´s part of the deep structures of cosmic existence? Among the philosophers and scientists mentioned in the clip, Paul Davies and Thomas Nagel are the two most well known. 

WC tries to avoid the notion of a transcendent creator-god as much as possible, but I think it´s very difficult to do so. For instance, if "value realism" is true, where do the "values" originally come from? Values, I assume, can´t exist without a consciousness, suggesting that the universe must have been fine tuned (i.e. created) by a super-consciousness. And that´s what we call the G-word. WC instead proposes explanations that strike me as even stranger than good´ ol´ God almighty, such as a "future attractor" that "retro-causally" creates the world (that is, the cause-effect relation can move from the future backwards in time). 

One thing that surprised me was the explicit mention of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his notion of the Omega Point. It feels so retro! WC believes in a strong version of the Western Idea of Progress (at least in my humble opinion) in which the entire universe evolves towards a kind of divine state in which everything is saturated by life and consciousness, presumably of an extremely advanced kind, perhaps manifested in powerful cosmic beings. And while WC denies that this is anthropocentric - humans are only one small part of this grand scheme, after all - I think it can easily be spun that way, since we are part of this drama of increased complexity, and presumably are meant to evolve as much of it as humanly (or over-manly?) possible. It can also be given a Theosophical or Aurobindonian spin...

While I don´t rule out anything (not even a retro-causal computer on planet Kolob gone completely bonkers), if allowed to speculate, I would probably guess that we are in a temporary bubble (or is it manvantaric cycle) created and sustained by a hyper-cosmic super-consciousness with purposes we can´t even begin to fathom, and that our own part in the scheme is only a tiny dot smaller than those of jellyfish...