thesis

that we go back and reconsider whether historical accident has led us to a vocabulary that
accurately reflects reality.
A similar point is raised by Wittgenstein, who believed that (Johnston, 1993, 237)
the attempt to reach profound truths on the basis of purely conceptual investigations was fu-
tile – according to him, grammar is autonomous and conceptual analysis can teach nothing
about reality nor resolve the puzzle of how we should understand the world… In his own
terms, therefore, Wittgenstein believed metaphysics was doomed to failure.
While I resist the abandonment of metaphysics tout court, these points do add some cru-
cial perspective to the investigation. Nonetheless, in granting the possibility of some form of
radical monism, Chalmers seems to take the bite out of Searle’s criticism. When he says,
“perhaps the physical and the phenomenal will turn out to be two different aspects of a sin-
gle encompassing kind” (129), he is explicitly allowing that today’s dualistic metaphysical
vocabulary may be replaced by only a secondary distinction between the third- and first-
person perspectives.
In any event, the theological arguments to which I now turn rely heavily on the Carte-
sian categories – if the categories reflect reality, and consciousness exists, then Chalmers’
argument succeeds. Let us now see how a refutation of materialism can be developed into
an argument for a personal god.
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