The mind-first explanation

Sources

• J. P. Moreland, “Consciousness and the Existence of God” (opens in a new tab)

  J. P. Moreland, “Consciousness and the Existence of God: A Theistic Argument” (Routledge, 2008)

Objections & responses

“Consciousness is what you’d expect in a universe made by a mind” explains nothing. Why does consciousness depend so intimately on brain states, appear late in evolution, and vanish under anesthesia, if mind is fundamental?

This is the strongest empirical objection to mind-first views. The theistic reply is that God creating minds that are realized through brains is consistent with dependence on brain states, and that the timing and vulnerability of consciousness are facts about embodied minds rather than about mind as such. Critics find that reply ad hoc. The honest framing is that the correlation data favor physicalism on the surface, the hard problem favors non-physicalism at depth, and each side has to explain the other’s data. That is a comparison of fit, not a proof.

“Fits a mind-first universe at least as well” is a weak conclusion dressed as a strong one. Panpsychism, property dualism, and Chalmers’s own naturalistic dualism all take consciousness seriously without God.

Correct. The hard problem, if real, is evidence against reductive physicalism, and there are non-theistic views (panpsychism, Russellian monism, naturalistic dualism) that accept the problem. The theistic claim is narrower than consciousness proves God. It is that a universe in which mind is fundamental is what theism predicts and what materialism does not, and that the non-theistic alternatives are also departures from materialism. This is a comparison of fit among views that all reject the materialist default.

Appears under 1 claim in this case

• A complete physical account of the brain still does not explain why we have inner experience, and this fits a mind-first universe at least as well as a matter-first one.