Scientific naturalists explaination for consciousness is as inadequate as in the time of Leibnez's time when he threw down the gauntlet regarding the emergence of consciousness. Geoffrey Madell stated, "The emergence of consciousness, then is a mystery, and one to which materialism signally fails to provide an answer." Colin MacGinn claims that its arrival borders on sheer magic because there seems to be no naturalistic explaination for it: "How can mere matter originate consciousness? How did evolution convert the water of biological tissue intothe wine of consciousness? Consciousness seems like a radical novelty in the universe, not prefigured by the after-effects of the Big Bang; so how did it contrive to spring into being from what preceded it?"
Not only are adequate naturalistic explainations for irreducible consciousness hard to come by, there is a widespread suspicion, if not explicit acknowledgement that irreducible consciousness provides evidence that this is a theistic universe.
William Lyons (physicalist) notes that "physicalism seems to be in tune with the scientific materialism of the twentieth century because it is harmonic of the general theme that all there is in the universe is matter and energy and motion and that humans are a product of evolution of species just as much as buffaloes or beavers are. Evolution is a seamless garment with no holes wherein souls mighty be inserted from above." Crispin Wright states, "If we reject naturalism, then we accept that there is more to the world than can be embraced within a physicalist ontology-and so take on a commitment, it can seem, to a kind of eerie supernaturalism".
So the naturalists are committed. Lyons and Wright's reference to "a kind of eerie supernaturalism" and "a seemless garment" with no place to insert a soul.
Seeing their worldview being invalidated, they reach, in desperation, for anything but what is obvious. Like those who espouse the universe a result of quantum event claiming the universe 'popped into existence', they reach for epiphenomenalism as an explaination of how consciousness was derived. But just as Borde-Guth-Vilkin disproves a quantum origin of the universe, First Principles disprove their assertion of the supervenience of consciousness. Brute matter cannot give up what it does not have. It cannot give what it does not have. Like Alamo-girl often reminds us...'in the absence of time events cannot occur, in the absense of space things cannot exist'.
They are committed to the view that the spatio-temportal universe is all there is. They owe us an explanation of an event-causal story described in naturalistic scientific terms. They owe us a general ontology in which the only entities allowed are ones that bear a relevant similarity to those thought to characterize a completed form of physics and if epiphenomenalism is explained by physical laws then give it up to us. But they cannot. So they apply a word, 'epiphenomenalism' as an ontology. It is not. It is a word which describes an alleged phenomenon. How did that occur. Naturalist are committed to reductionism. So...reduce it so we will understand. But they know consciousness is irreducible. Causal nessitation fits their paradigm, yes, even is required to be a consistent metaphysical naturalist. Our contention is that consciousness is ontologically basic for theism since it characterizes the fundamental being. According to the naturalist, consciousness is emergent, derivitive and supervenient and both its finitude. So...emerged from what, I ask. Derived....from what I say. Complete the story. Reduce it to is basicality by naturalistic explaination or abandon it.
To say that consciousness "seems" like a radical novelty in the universe somehow does not square with the ubiquity of some form of consciousness — along the gamut running from basic sentience through self-consciousness, depending on the complexity of the living organism — among all biological beings. Amoeba have been shown to display simple learning behaviors in experimental laboratory settings. Likewise, WRT bacteria:
Recently, it has become clear that simple bacteria can exhibit rich behavior, have internal degrees of freedom, informational capabilities, and freedom to respond by altering itself and others via emission of signals in a self-regulated manner.... Each bacterium is, by itself, a biotic autonomous system, having a certain freedom to select its response to the biomechanical messages it receives, including self-alteration, self-plasticity, and decision making, permitting purposeful alteration of its behavior.... [B]acteria and other unicellular organisms are autonomous and social beings showing cognition in the forms of association, remembering, forgetting, learning, etc., activities that are found in all living organisms....I agree with McGinn that "there seems to be no naturalistic explanation" for consciousness, let alone its universality in all living organisms. But to say that consciousness "borders on sheer magic" is nonsense. It only means that Neodarwinism will not look outside of the box of its naturalistic presuppositions.
One might say that some form of consciousness is a fact of LIFE. It would be magical only if it is an "epiphenomenon" of matter — just as the abiogenesis theorists believe life itself is an epiphenomenon of matter.
So, I wonder, who's doing the "magical act" here? I'd say on this point, it is the Neodarwinists.
Moreoever, to say that "Nature did it!" is just as uninformative as to say "God did it!" It is the job of biologists to tell us how Nature (viewed as matter + random variation + natural selection) did it. And evidently — given their metaphysical naturalistic presuppositions — they cannot.
Crispin Wright states, "If we reject naturalism, then we accept that there is more to the world than can be embraced within a physicalist ontology — and so take on a commitment, it can seem, to a kind of eerie supernaturalism."I agree with Wright about what the rejection of physicalist ontology logically entails. But his following conclusion seems a non sequitur to me: For consciousness is obviously an empirical feature of living nature. How then can it be "supernatural?" If anything, this shows that Nature really cannot be reduced to a strictly physicalist ontology; Nature really cannot be reduced to naturalist/materialist explanations.
Neodarwinists have no trouble believing that the laws of physics exist, and that Darwinian theory is "true." Do they then consider that laws and theories are also supernatural — because they cannot be reduced to the status of material objects? If so, it would seem logical to conclude on this point that much that goes on in the living world is "magical." So if we want to understand that world, perhaps we'd better fire the scientists and call in the shamans?...
Dear TS, you wrote:
Brute matter cannot give up what it does not have. It cannot give what it does not have. Like Alamo-girl often reminds us..."in the absence of time events cannot occur, in the absense of space things cannot exist."This should be obvious to anyone who bothers to think about it in a fair-minded (i.e., undogmatic) way.
As to Alamo-Girl's telling point, physical cosmologists who hold that the Big Bang was a random, spontaneous quantum event still must account for the quantum vacuum necessary for such an event to take place. Where did IT "come from?" Plus absent time, no event of whatever description can take place. Likewise, absent space, there can be no quantum vacuum in which events can occur.
Unless you want to wrap yourself up in an infinite causal regression (which would make the world senseless, unintelligible in principle), there must have been a first uncaused cause — just as Aristotle said.
That is, the quantum vacuum, space and time all had "beginnings" — they are the effects of a primaeval Cause. They didn't just "magically" pop in out of thin air (so to speak), out of physical nothingness. The first cause can be regarded as "supernatural" in a certain sense; i.e., as "above" or "beyond" the physical world. But its effects in the physical world are not.
One effect is the natural laws themselves. What they tell us is that our universe is "informed" and thus intelligible. Scientists implicitly depend on this statement being true; otherwise what they do would be senseless and pointless.
Of course, if we speak about "information," we necessarily invoke the ideas of intelligence, consciousness, communication — which as you show, dear TS, cannot be explained on the basis of the evolution history of "dumb, blind matter." Rocks are not conscious; but rabbits are.
Thank you for your outstanding essay/post, Texas Songwriter!