…Let me turn finally to the assumption that matter is unconscious. This assumption dates back to the 17th century when René Descartes, the philosopher of the clearly formulated the machine theory of nature. When he formulated his view he made a sharp…

…formulated his view he made a sharp distinction between matter, which he defined as unconscious, and mind, which is consciousness. Descartes said that It's just stuff that's pushed around by external forces. Animals are just machines, plants are just machines,…

…are similar except the supposed seat of interaction has shifted a couple of inches into the cerebral hemispheres. But this was Descartes' theory and it created a sharp dualism between mind and body, between humans and other animals and the rest of nature…

…is matter. And that materialist philosophy is what came to dominate science by the late 19th century. It started with Descartes' assumption that matter is unconscious. Then it rubbed out consciousness in human brains. Everything else in nature remained the…

…academic consciousness studies as we speak. But of course, panpsychism is not a new theory. In the 17th century, soon after Descartes' theory, philosophers were trying to put forward better theories to avoid this extreme dualism. One of them was Leibniz, who…

…in the Renaissance, and this had a great impact on the founding fathers of modern science, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, and so on. They were really more Pythagoreans than Platonists, but these two ways of thinking are closely related. And…

…living beings. A great break happened in the 17th century with the scientific revolution, the mechanistic revolution, through the vision of René Descartes in 1619, which is the first time he had this vision. that nature was a great machine, the cosmos was…

…machines. And human bodies are machines too. And this was the mechanistic theory of nature. When it was first formulated by René Descartes in France, who first had this vision in 1619, Descartes made a sharp separation. He didn't deny God and angels. He…

…mechanistic theory of nature. When it was first formulated by René Descartes in France, who first had this vision in 1619, Descartes made a sharp separation. He didn't deny God and angels. He said, God, angels, and human spirits are immaterial. The realm…

…And the one that I'd like to address now briefly is the idea that matter is unconscious. This was an assumption of Descartes because he split matter off from spirit which was immaterial and made this sharp split. The materialists get rid of the spirit…

…ever discussed it even, let alone thought about how you might test it. It's simply an assumption. Matter is unconscious. Descartes said so in 1630. Matter is unconscious, therefore the sun's unconscious. That's the basis of this widespread belief the sun's…

…read something about that somewhere, but I forgot, so I cannot give you the exact quotation. Do you know anything about that? Well, Descartes, people had to be careful at that time what they said. I mean, Galileo had had a rough time with the Roman…

…He was an old man anyway at the time. But it did make people a bit guarded about what they said. But Descartes was, though, I think, a perfectly... At that time, almost all... Well, all the founding fathers of modern science were sincere Christians...…

…a perfectly... At that time, almost all... Well, all the founding fathers of modern science were sincere Christians... And I think Descartes was perfectly sincere. I don't think... He obviously didn't want to cause more trouble for himself than he need, but…

…you map out this trajectory of human thought perspective, going back, you went all the way to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and Descartes and then to Richard Dawkins and sort of modern day philosophers and atheists. Yes. Oh, that's a very good question to…

…and why it should be confined to the inside of the head is a purely arbitrary assumption. It comes from René Descartes originally, I suppose, or from the ancient Greek materialists. Descartes, as Aniel pointed out, made a division between extended things,…

…is a purely arbitrary assumption. It comes from René Descartes originally, I suppose, or from the ancient Greek materialists. Descartes, as Aniel pointed out, made a division between extended things, res extenso, matter, as extended in space, whereas mind,…

…special, and consciousness being this thing that adheres to more human distinctive kinds of things like language and rational thought, like Descartes tried to do. This is in a sense unavoidable because we know we're conscious, so it's a starting point. But…

…And why it should be confined to the inside of the head is a purely arbitrary assumption. It comes from René Descartes originally, I suppose, or from the ancient Greek materialists. But Descartes made a division between extended things, res extenso, matter,…

…is a purely arbitrary assumption. It comes from René Descartes originally, I suppose, or from the ancient Greek materialists. But Descartes made a division between extended things, res extenso, matter, as extended in space, whereas mind, res cogitans, was not…

…In the 17th century, when the scientific revolution took place, the view of matter that we now have was first formulated by René Descartes, the French philosopher. who was one of the first people to put forward the idea that the universe is a giant…

…forward the idea that the universe is a giant unconscious machine, animals are machines, plants are machines, and we're machines. Descartes made a famous dualistic separation between the world of matter. Matter is unconscious and it's in space and time. The…

…physical, and basically immortal and timeless. And this was not part of the realm of science. The realm of spirit, in Descartes' view, included three basic components, God, angels, and human minds. Those were outside space and time, and there was this…

…of mind throughout nature. There were two famous panpsychist philosophers in the 17th century, both of them reacting against Descartes. One was Leibniz. who suggested that all self-organizing units have bodies and minds that each reflects the universe from…

…they were machines, automata, unconscious, inanimate automata. The human body was a machine. And in the vision of René Descartes, who's founded this mechanistic philosophy most explicitly, the whole universe is made of inanimate matter, which works mechanically…

…plants are. The only things that were not mechanical and unconscious in the universe were God, angels and human minds. Basically what Descartes did was de-animate the whole of nature, drain the soul out of the whole of nature so that all that was left…

…practically all traditional cultures everywhere in the world. But in European philosophy in the 17th century, in response to Descartes, there was already a kind of panpsychist reaction. Two leading philosophers then were panpsychists. One was Spinoza, the…

…not as if scientists have ever proved the sun or the other stars are unconscious. They've just assumed it, because Descartes said so in the 17th century, defined all matter as unconscious by definition, not by proof, empirical inquiry, rational discussion.…