Micheal Graziano thinks that consciousness, the apparent ability of human beings to have qualitative experiences, is not mysterious, at least it can’t be explained by mysterious methods. By mysterious, he means any method of enquiry that is not a hard science: The study of consciousness needs to be lifted out of the mysticism that has dominated it. Consciousness is not just a matter of philosophy, opinion, or religion. It’s a matter of hard science. It’s a matter of understanding the brain and the mind—a trillion-stranded sculpture made out of information. It’s also a matter of engineering. If we can understand the functionality of the brain, then we can build the…
-
-
Grounding Facts About the Mental in Facts About the Physical
A physicalist wants to be able to say the following: (A) There are no mental properties. (B) S believes p. There is an apparent inconsistency in these two claims. Most physicalists consider it implausible to suggest that (B) is false and so concede that (A) is false. In order to maintain the physicalist worldview they say that mental properties are nothing over and above physical properties. This is usually stated in terms of supervenience, something like this: a set A of properties supervenes on set B of properties if for any change to A properties there is a corresponding change to B properties and in every possible world in which A properties…
-
Notes on James Madden’s “Mind, Matter and Nature”
Are we living in a machine? Mechanism is the view that the fundamental substance of the world exists independently of anything else. It is physical and independent of minds or other psychological properties. It is analyzed according to physical properties, causes and a like. If one is a mechanist one can either be a dualist or a materialist. Either there are entities that operate over and above the material or matter is all there is. Given the weaknesses of both positions, Madden concludes that the issue in question is whether or not mechanism should be assumed. Madden says there is a better alternative and, when applied to the philosophy of…
-
On the Completeness of Physics
All is Physical and Physics is All Physicalists say that all facts are fixed by physical facts. Whatever physics tells us there is – that’s it. And physics tells us that there are no non-physical things. This creates two questions: What are qualities and what are mental properties? If physicalism, of the strongest kind, is true, then qualities are identical to quantities and mental properties are identical to physical properties. On physicalism of this stripe, all effects are physical and all causes are physical. If all the effects that we can observe are physical then all the causes are physical. Empirical evidence renders non-physical causes for physical effects implausible. The measurable…
-
Some Notes on Moreland’s “Consciousness and the Existence of God”
J.P Moreland argues that irreducible human consciousness provides compelling evidence for the existence of God. Moreland argues that naturalists ignore much of the background evidence for theism. Philosophical argument is favorable to theism, but these kinds of arguments are not forcing naturalists to raise the background probability of theism. Given the high probability of theism, the probability of consciousness being a mental property or substance is much higher (a theistic ontology admits mental substances/properties). On the other hand, given naturalism, the probability of mental properties is greatly diminished. To postulate mental properties on a physicalist ontology appears ad hoc and implausible. Moreland notes the most common objection to the argument…
-
Notes on J.P. Moreland’s The Recalcitrant Imago Dei
J.P. Moreland argues that certain features that we take to be part of what it means to be human are incompatible with naturalism but are every bit accounted for by Biblical Theism. Naturalistic views usually have three components – a commitment to an empirical epistemology, a historical account (“Grand Story”) reliant upon causal theory and emergenitism, and a constitutive account restricted to an ideal physics explainable with reference to causal theory. Moreland argues that consciousness, free will, rationality, an enduring soul, objective morality and human intrinsic value are all incompatible with naturalism. Moreland concludes by suggesting that the best the naturalist can offer is a dismissive strategy that takes human…
-
A Worldview on the Brink
Thomas Nagel argues that if you are committed to a reductive materialism/physicalism and a darwinistic historical narrative you have a problem – consciousness. A darwinist is one who holds to the evolutionary story. It is a description of history that attempts to explain how we have emerged to be rational, moral, conscious human beings through natural selection and laws of nature. A materialist holds to a set of presuppositions that imply that reality is fundamentally reducible to what is physical. Nagel says that darwinistic materialists are committed to a set of presuppositions (a constitutive account) that is reductionary (all is physical) and a story (a historical account) that is emergent (all that…