thesis

there any way in which conceptual complexity could be reduced?
Consider an intentional action, such as the writing of a cheque to pay for some pur-
chased groceries. Consider now a second action, described as follows: moving an object in a
manner that past experience has suggested will make marks on a piece of paper, where it
has been understood that these marks will be interpreted by an organisation of individuals
in order to transfer a certain quantity of money from my ‘pile’ to their ‘pile’, which they de-
serve considering that I have taken some food from their ‘place’ to my ‘place’. Are these two
action descriptions recognisably identical? If so, we have gone some way towards inten-
tional atomisation – breaking down a complex thought into simpler elements. And if this
could be done for all our intentions then we may have a way of reducing their tyrannical
complexity to perhaps a few dozen basic principles, each of which is likely to be grounded
in the fairly mundane needs or experiences of a very small child. Such a representation
might afford easier matching with events as physically described, both in terms of complex-
ity and linguistic description – thus weakening Davidson’s point about the “disparate com-
mitments of the mental and physical schemes”.
But all this is highly speculative. Even if these processes of interpolation and atomisation
became effective, we would still be left with a fairly complex and anomalous representation
of phenomenology and it still is not clear how this could be matched with physical events in
any manner worthy of the title ‘science’. Perhaps this is one part of science which will turn
out to be interminably complex – by objectifying all phenomena until now, science has put
off all the truly difficult problems until it felt ready to tackle consciousness itself. And now it
is beginning to rise to the challenge, it faces the resurgence of all those old explanatory loans
from which it had borrowed so much time.
The Theological Alternative
Perhaps, then, it is best for man to admit his limits and accept that science will never ex-
plain the phenomenon of consciousness. The only alternative, if we seek explanation at all, is
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