Abstract
J.P. Moreland’s (Consciousness and the existence of god: a theistic argument, 2009) so-called Argument from Consciousness (AC) for the existence of God is examined. One of its key premises, the contingency of the mind–body relation, is at odds with the possibility of mental causation. The AC may be rescued from this problem by adapting some of the lessons learned in Chap. 3 concerning one of the Non-reductive Physicalist solutions to the Supervenience Argument.
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Notes
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This way of formulating Closure diverges from the way Kim formulates Closure (and the way I’ve been discussing Closure so far in this essay). Moreland’s formulation, reminiscent of Princess Elisabeth’s worry, eliminates the possibility of mental-to-physical causation at the outset and leaves no room for debate. Kim calls this way of formulating Closure strong Closure and he goes on to argue that this is a dialectically unhelpful way of moving the debates regarding mental causation forward.
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For more on this debate see Bird (2005, 2007) and Ellis (2001). Bird poses the question in terms of essential or contingent causal profiles. Those who claim that causal profiles are contingent he calls Categoricalists and those who claim that causal profiles are essential he calls Dispositional Essentialists. Ellis provides compelling reasons to reject categoricalism.
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I will not pursue a line that tries to show that (CF2) is vacuous because this will essentially lead to a denial of Contingency and Contingency is critical to the success of the Argument from Consciousness. Nevertheless there are certain dualists, ones who countenance metaphysically necessary connections between mental and physical properties, who could opt for this strategy. For more on this see Lim (2014).
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For a distinct but similar discussion on the context-sensitivity of counterfactual conditionals, see (Lowe 2009, Chap. 8).
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One might respond that laws of nature are violated in textbook cases as well. I don’t think, however, that this would be a welcome move because this would show that, for any possible world worth considering, only the actual world is nomologically possible. All other worlds should be considered counter-nomological worlds, which I think would be a mistake. My point is that there is an important distinction between textbook cases and the Uranus counterfactual because of the nomologically necessary relation that holds between the causes in the latter.
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Lim, D. (2015). God. In: God and Mental Causation. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47426-6_4
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