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There is no doubt that losing the folk-psychological notion of monadic selfhood requires considerable reflection and a battle against intuition. Nonetheless, nothing in the resultant transformation is contradicted by the raw data of experience. The phenomenology of per- sonal identity can be understood in terms of James’ stream of consciousness, where each thought picks up from the fringes of the previous one (1892, ch. 11), without being sustained by some unchanging substance 11 . So how successful are the combined arguments of Swinburne et al? In terms of the argument for scientific inexplicability, the early tasks of establishing correlations and produc- ing a causal account do not seem to be beyond the wider vista of modern neurological science. However, the difficulties in positing and elaborating fundamental laws must be recog- nised by the naturalist as providing significant reason to doubt that science will ever be able to fully explain the phenomenon of consciousness. Nonetheless, we have noted that the science of the mind is in its very early infancy and that an argument from a gap in science (even if it be one in principle) to a divine explanation leaves much to be desired. Swinburne’s argument for substance dualism, while raising many interesting issues, fares worse. It relies both on a modal fallacy and the folk-psychological assumption that our thoughts pass through some unified indivisible substance separate from our bodies. By calling into question both the indivisibility and the substantiality of the self, many modern views on the mind/body problem challenge the basis on which the argument is constructed. Despite the failings of these theological arguments, the naturalist corner would be sig- nificantly strengthened if it were able to put forward a workable account of consciousness that took both its existence and contents seriously. Just as God’s existence cannot be proven by a gap in science, the possibility of scientific explanation cannot be assumed based on past success. To this end, I now turn to examine David Chalmers’ theory, as expounded in The Conscious Mind. 11 See Griffin (1998) for a modern process thoery approach to the problem of consciousness. 32
CHALMERS’ THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS Underlying assumptions It is beyond the scope of this paper to describe in detail the positive arguments that Chalmers provides for his theory of consciousness. In any event, in private conversation and at a recent talk, he has indicated a move away from the theory in The Conscious Mind to- wards considering some sort of quantum-physical account. Nevertheless, for current pur- poses, his book will serve as a useful candidate response to the natural theological argument. Before outlining the theory itself, I will briefly explain each of the five assumptions from which it emerges: naturalism, simplicity, causal closure, structural coherence and or- ganisational invariance. Naturalism In the introduction, Chalmers states (xiii): I take consciousness to be a natural phenomenon, falling under the sway of natural laws. If so, then there should be some correct scientific theory of consciousness, whether or not we can ar- rive at such a theory. That consciousness is a natural phenomenon seems hard to dispute: it is an extraordinarily salient part of nature, arising throughout the human species and very likely in many others. And we have every reason to believe that natural phenomena are subject to fundamental natural laws; it would be very strange if consciousness were not. As part of this constraint, he also claims that “everything I say here is compatible with the results of contemporary science” (xiv). The justification for this assumption is identical to the point that Mackie makes above – that one can have reason to believe that there exists a scientific explanation for a phenomenon even if currently one has no idea how it may be reached. 33
Page 1 and 2: Acknowledgements TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page 3 and 4: The Argument from Consciousness In
Page 5 and 6: chips which was capable of behaving
Page 7 and 8: the decisions made within minds exe
Page 9 and 10: ful to think of a logically possibl
Page 11 and 12: entity, but it doesn’t explain re
Page 13 and 14: scription. As Cottrell says, “one
Page 15 and 16: nothing is proven about whatever ac
Page 17 and 18: THE ARGUMENT FOR SCIENTIFIC INEXPLI
Page 19 and 20: the basic physical laws are statist
Page 21 and 22: The Problem of Complexity Consider
Page 23 and 24: Therefore God? If, for argument’s
Page 25 and 26: point will have greater force. More
Page 27 and 28: moved, so that the transplant takes
Page 29 and 30: This is similar to Chalmers’ argu
Page 31: tion. Each of these objections has
Page 35 and 36: sciousness’) is not logically sup
Page 37 and 38: Information (in the actual world) h
Page 39 and 40: We can say that Chalmers wrote a bo
Page 41 and 42: Phenomenological Representation The
Page 43 and 44: Reconsidering the Alternatives CONC
Page 45 and 46: sense 14 , the act of human observa
Page 47 and 48: there any way in which conceptual c
Page 49 and 50: REFERENCES Adams, R. M. (1987) ‘F

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