Consciousness and the Existence of God: A Theistic Argument (Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion)
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 0415962404
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In Consciousness and the Existence of God, J.P. Moreland argues that the existence of finite, irreducible consciousness (or its regular, law-like correlation with physical states) provides evidence for the existence of God. Moreover, he analyzes and criticizes the top representative of rival approaches to explaining the origin of consciousness, including John Searle’s contingent correlation, Timothy O’Connor’s emergent necessitation, Colin McGinn’s mysterian ‘‘naturalism,’’ David Skrbina’s panpsychism and Philip Clayton’s pluralistic emergentist monism. Moreland concludes that these approaches should be rejected in favor of what he calls ‘‘the Argument from Consciousness.’’
phenomena, the appearances, in terms of underlying material causes. A proffered characterization of those causes often employs divisive metaphysical commitments as when Aristotelians, Cartesians and atomists gave disparate accounts of the phenomenon of magnetism. If the aim of physical theory is to explain phenomena in terms of the ultimate nature of their causes, says Duhem, then physical science becomes subordinate to metaphysics, and is no longer an autonomous science. In this case, estimates
any view of intentionality must meet on pain of being disregarded as inadequate. While I cannot argue the point here, I believe that (at least) property dualism for the relevant mental states is the only adequate solution that meets this criterion. The argument from consciousness 45 Finally, we come to (c), the fact that mental states exhibit various epistemic features. It is fairly typical for physicalists to attempt to undercut arguments associated with (c) because (1) epistemic modality
three reasons I believe it is appropriate to take him as an example of a contingent correlation position. First, he takes such correlations to be adequate to justify the superiority of biological naturalism, so they are sufficient conditions for a naturalist account of consciousness.2 Second, he explicitly claims that a causal explanation of consciousness may be in principle beyond our abilities to obtain. Moreover, even if this is the case, his biological naturalism remains standing.3 Third, he
length—it involves traversing an actual infinite series of members. Besides, with the problem of traversing an actual infinite, there is another problem with the regress that McGinn fails to note: by its very nature it is vicious. To see this, let us ask how should 100 Colin McGinn and mysterian ‘‘naturalism’’ ‘‘vicious’’ be characterized here? At least four characterizations have been offered. Roderick Chisholm says that ‘‘One is confronted with a vicious infinite regress when one attempts a
belief in a dualistic God qua conscious personal agent, we have a defeater for the emergentist view of human persons. Why? Because we have a Paradigm Case of what a conscious personal agent is, and we accept an ontological, and not merely an epistemological analogy with us. Think of it this way. Whatever else may be different between us and God, Clayton’s own argument presents God as the paradigm case of a conscious personal agent, and, as such, the paradigm case grounds the class of conscious