I have argued that if property/event dualism is true, it provides evidence for the existence of God. Recall the distinction between a C-inductive (one in which the premises add to the probability and, in this sense, confirms the conclusion) and a P-inductive (one in which the premises make the conclusion more probable than not) argument. I have argued that AC is at least a correct C-inductive argument, though as a part of a cumulative case, consciousness contributes to a P-inductive theistic argument.
In chapter two, I provided a precis of some evidence for the antecedent of the conditional, though it was not, nor is it now within my objectives to make a case for property/event dualism. In my view, property/event and substance dualism are so obviously true, that it is hard to see why there is so much contemporary hostility to dualism in its various incarnations. At the very least, there are reasons to believe that the rejection of dualism is not primarily a result of the poor intellectual credentials of dualism or the unproblematic nature of strong physicalism. Consider the following pronouncement by Barry Stroud:
‘‘Naturalism’’ seems to me ... rather like ‘‘World Peace.’’ Almost everyone swears allegiance to it, and is willing to march under its banner. But disputes can still break out about what it is appropriate or acceptable to do in the name of that slogan. And like world peace, once you start specifying concretely exactly what it involves and how to achieve it, it becomes increasingly difficult to reach and to sustain a consistent and exclusive ‘‘naturalism.’’ There is pressure on the one hand to include more and more within your conception of ‘‘nature,’’ so it loses its definiteness and restrictiveness. Or, if the conception is kept fixed and restrictive, there is pressure on the other hand to distort or even to deny the very phenomena that a naturalistic study—and especially a naturalistic study of human beings—is supposed to explain.1
In chapters one through eight, I have been at pains to show why naturalism is so hard to define. As we have seen, the answer is related to the two-sided pressure to which Stroud refers. If we think of versions of naturalism along a continuum, then at one end we have robust positive naturalism: naturalism whose claim to worldview superiority resides in its certification by the epistemology/methods of the hard sciences and the Grand Story’s ability to explain how everything has come-to-be. Robust positive naturalism is correctly seen as entailing strict physicalism, but its ontology is hard to defend. For this reason, versions of naturalism are formulated at other points along the spectrum, with those at the other end resting content to quantify over a large shopping list of sui generis, recalcitrant entities or degenerating into the merely negative thesis that God does not exist. The increasing price to be paid for residence along the spectrum whose distance from robust positive naturalism widens is a growing loss of explanatory power and comportment with the ontology, epistemology, and methodology of the hard sciences. In short, the robust positive naturalist response to restrictive pressure retains (in principle) the potential for naturalist explanatory and epistemic superiority, but also renders it a distorted, false picture of reality. Naturalist responses that seek to be more inclusive increasingly render naturalism less definite, more ad hoc and question-begging, and weaken its claim to explanatory/epistemic superiority.
In this closing chapter, I want to step back from specific issues and alternatives central to explaining the origin of consciousness and focus on the psychological, sociological, and even spiritual climate within which topics in philosophy of mind are currently being discussed. I believe such an exercise is quite revealing and, moreover, very relevant to all who want to get at the truth surrounding the nature of consciousness, the self, and the best explanation for their appearance in cosmic history. In what follows, I shall identify and clarify a psychological, sociological and spiritual phenomenon, viz., the fear of God, which I believe explains the reactionary attitude towards, loathing of, and widespread rejection of dualism. These attitudes are held more strongly and widely than can be justified by strictly intellectual argumentation, and as a result, there is considerable social pressure on younger philosophers to be physicalists. After I have identified and clarified the fear of God, I shall provide three pieces of evidence that it is the fear of God that drives the current and confident acceptance of strong physicalism and naturalism and rejection of dualism. It will become clear, I believe, that AC is a part of the background of this rejection. I shall close by offering a way to turn my observations into an argument against strong physicalism and naturalism.
Hylomania and pneumatophobia
On one occasion, John Locke bemoaned the fact that the idea of soul, especially when compared to the idea of matter, was regarded as obscure by many in his day. Locke thought that this judgment followed from people being preoccupied with the study of material substances compared to immaterial ones: ‘‘I know that People, whose Thoughts are immersed in Matter, and have so subjected their Minds to their Senses that they seldom reflect on anything beyond them.’’2
In this judgment, Locke was probably correct. Around two decades before the publication of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Ralph Cudworth had noted a growing number of thinkers ‘‘possessed with a certain Kind of Madness, that may be called pneumatophobia, that makes them have an irrational, but desperate abhorrence from spirits or incorporeal substances.’’ According to Cudworth, this attitude went along with hylomania ‘‘whereby they madly dote upon Matter.’’3
In my view, there are reasons to think that the current hylomania characteristic of naturalists is due in large measure to pneumatophobia or, more specifically, to a fear of God. Even if philosophers do not believe dualism provides evidence for the existence of God, nevertheless, dualism is often associated with theism, usually Christian theism. Naturalist William Lyons notes that
[physicalism] seem[s] to be in tune with the scientific materialism of the twentieth century because it [is] a 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 the evolution of species just as much as buffaloes and beavers are. Evolution is a seamless garment with no holes wherein souls might be inserted from above.4
His expression “a seamless garment with no holes wherein souls might be inserted from above’’ clearly refers to the fact that the appearance of souls cannot be adequately explained by naturalistic evolution and the best account of their appearance would be a miraculous intervention by a transcendent Creator.
Religion and neurotic physicalism
Along similar lines, John Searle has some pretty harsh things to say about the last fifty years or so of work in the philosophy of mind.5 Specifically, he says that the field has contained numerous assertions that are obviously false and absurd and has cycled neurotically through various positions precisely because of the dominance of strong physicalism as the only live option for a naturalist. Searle’s statement of the reason for this neurotic behavior is revealing:
How is it that so many philosophers and cognitive scientists can say so many things that, to me at least, seem obviously false? ... I believe one of the unstated assumptions behind the current batch of views is that they represent the only scientifically acceptable alternatives to the antiscientism that went with traditional dualism, the belief in the immortality of the soul, spiritualism, and so on. Acceptance of the current views is motivated not so much by an independent conviction of their truth as by a terror of what are apparently the only alternatives. That is, the choice we are tacitly presented with is between a ‘‘scientific’’ approach, as represented by one or another of the current versions of “materialism,” and an ‘‘unscientific’’ approach, as represented by Cartesianism or some other traditional religious conception of the mind.6
In other words, philosophy of mind has been dominated by scientific naturalism for fifty years and scientific naturalists have advanced different versions of strong physicalism, however implausible they may be in light of what is obviously known by us about consciousness, because strong phy-sicalism was seen as a crucial implication of taking the naturalistic turn. For these naturalists, if one abandons strong physicalism one has rejected a scientific naturalist approach to the mind/body problem and opened himself up to the intrusion of religious concepts and arguments about the mental.
The cosmic authority problem
Perhaps the clearest expression of the role that the fear of God plays in sustaining strong naturalism and the avoidance of dualism has been stated by Thomas Nagel. In the context of discussing a view that takes irreducible, rational mind and its relationship to the world as something fundamental, in a rare moment of candor, Nagel says that this view
makes many people in this day and age nervous. I believe that this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life.
In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper—namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.
My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world.7
This Pneumatophobia provides the psychological, sociological and spiritual background that I believe sustains a commitment to strong physicalism/ naturalism far beyond the intellectual considerations that can be marshaled on its behalf. And this fear of God is also what sustains the rejection and loathing of dualism far beyond the meager quality of the intellectual considerations against it. By including a chapter on this subject, I am not referring to the fear of God as a substitute for argumentation. Dualists and theists provide arguments for their views, and I have tried to defend AC in the preceding chapters. In fact, I will argue later that there is a way to turn these psychological, sociological and spiritual factors into an argument for dualism. Irrespective of this, however, for those philosophers and, indeed, those in the broader intellectual community who are still interested in truth, it would be foolish not to consider the role such fear plays in shaping the dialog in philosophy of mind in its current setting.
I believe that there are three lines of evidence in the literature of the philosophy of mind that justifies the idea that it is not primarily intellectual considerations that explain the widespread acceptance of strong physical-ism/naturalism. Rather, it is Pneumatophobia and the fear of God.
Argumentation and dualism
First, there is the low quality of argumentation when it comes to evaluating substance dualism (or theism) when it is related to philosophy of mind. Most strong naturalists are exceptionally capable philosophers and the quality of their argumentation is evident when they defend a certain version of physicalism or criticize alternatives. But when it comes to stating and criticizing substance dualism, the quality dips considerably. This consideration is a bit subjective, I admit. About all I can do to defend the claim is to provide some examples and invite the reader to examine the literature.
We saw in chapter five that Colin McGinn’s critique of theism in The Mysterious Flame is completely out of touch with the explosion—now at least two decades old—of sophisticated defenses of theism and dualism.
This is not characteristic of McGinn. But his dismissal of theism is unworthy of a philosopher of his stature. He seems out of touch with the last twenty years or so of work in philosophy of religion. He does not list one relevant source in his footnotes and he seems to lack awareness of detailed distinctions regarding different infinite regresses, distinctions that have been around a long time and which are required material for an intellectually responsible treatment of God and infinite regresses, a treatment that McGinn purports to offer.
The main arguments for substance dualism are these:
Argument 1: In acts of introspection, I am aware of 1) my self as an unextended center of consciousness; 2) various capacities of thought, sensation, belief, desire, and volition which I exercise and which are essential, internal aspects of the kind of thing I am; 3) my sensations, e.g. this very pain, as being necessarily such that there is no possible world in which they could exist and not be mine. If we grant that my sensations are either modes of my self or events externally related to some physical particular, then my sensations are modes because modes are internally related to their substances but there are possible worlds in which a specific mental event is externally related to a different physical particular.8
What I am calling argument one is actually three arguments that draw their force from what substance dualists claim we know about ourselves from attending to ourselves and our conscious states. Put more formally, these three variants of an argument from introspection look like this:
Variant One:
(1) I am an unextended center of consciousness (justified by introspection).
(2) No physical object is an unextended center of consciousness.
(3) Therefore, I am not a physical object.
(4) Either I am a physical object or an immaterial substance.
(5) Therefore, I am an immaterial substance.
Variant Two:
(1) My various capacities for conscious states are essential to me and when actualized, the properties of consciousness that constitute those states are predicatively internal to me and characterize the type of thing I am. They do not stand to me by way of some external relation.
(2) If I am a physical object, then there is a possible world in which I exist without the capacities for consciousness (justified by strong conceivability) and, thus, those capacities are not essential to me. Moreover, when actualized, the properties of consciousness that constitute those states are externally related to me.
(3) Thus I am not a physical object.
(4) Either I am a physical object or an immaterial substance.
(5) Therefore, I am an immaterial substance.
Variant Three:
(1) My sensations (and other states of consciousness) are either externally or internally related to me.
(2) If I am a physical object, then my sensations are externally related to me such that there is a possible world in which those sensations exist and are not so related to me.
(3) There is no possible world in which my sensations exist without being mind.
(4) Therefore, I am not a physical object and my sensations are internally related to me.
(5) If a sensation is internally related to me, then it is a mode of my self, where a mode is an inseparable, dependent part of the thing it modifies and, as such, it is modally distinct from and internally related to that thing and it provides information about the nature of the thing of which it is a mode.
(6) Therefore, I am a thing whose nature is to have sensations (and other states of consciousness).
While my purpose is not to defend these arguments, it may be useful to clarify certain notions central to them, e.g. ‘‘being predicatively internal’’ or ‘‘internally related to me’’, ‘‘an external relation’’. To begin with, let us take as primitive the notion of a constituent/whole relation. A constituent/whole relation takes place between two entities just in case one entity is in the other as a constituent. So understood, there are two main types of constituent/ whole relations: the standard separable part/whole relation of mereology and the accidental or essential predication relation. When a whole has a part or an accidental or essential property, the part or property is a constituent in the whole. In the sense used here, when one entity is a constituent of a whole, it is internally related to that whole. By contrast, ‘‘an external relation’’ in this context is one which relates one entity to another without the former becoming a constituent of the latter. Thus, ‘‘to the left of” is an external relation in my sense as is ‘‘being causally emergent upon.''
Next, I need to clarify the notion of a mode. Here is a sufficient condition of some entity being a mode of another entity. If, for some substance S and Property P, S exemplifies P, then the state of affairs—S’s exemplifying P (call it A)—is a mode of S. As such, the mode is a dependent part of S internally related to S. There is no possible world where A exists and S does not.
Moreover, if at some time T, S has A (S exemplifies P), then at all times prior to T, S had the (first or higher order) potentiality to have A. And part of what makes S the kind of substance it is, is its potentialities.
Now the substance dualist takes sensations (and other mental states) to be modes of the substantial self according to the different variants of argument one above. In current debates about physicalism, if supervenience is taken as a relation causal or otherwise, the relevant mental properties or tokens are externally connected to the brain or other relevant physical object (e.g. a physical simple in the brain). One reason for this is the possibility (justified on the basis of strong conceivability) of zombie worlds without the relevant properties or tokens and disembodied worlds with those properties or tokens.
Stewart Goetz and Geoffrey Madell have advanced versions of argument one.9
Argument 2: Personal identity at and through time is primitive and absolute. Moreover, counter examples exist which show that the various body or psychological (e.g. memory) views of personal identity are neither necessary nor sufficient. Put linguistically, talk about persons is not analyzable into talk about their connected mental lives. This fact is not innocuous but, rather, has important metaphysical implications. Substance dualism, in which the soul is taken as a substance with an essence constituted by the potential for thought, belief, desire, sensation and volition, is the best explanation of these facts.
This argument has been advanced by Richard Swinburne.10
Argument 3: The indexicality of thought provides evidence for the truth of substance dualism and the nature of the substantial self. A complete, third-person physical description of the world will fail to capture the fact expressed in ‘‘I am J. P. Moreland.’’ No amount of information non-indexically expressed captures the content conveyed by this assertion. The first-person indexical ‘‘I’’ is irreducible and une-liminable and this feature of “I” is not innocuous, but rather, is explained by claiming that ‘‘I’’ refers to a nonphysical entity—the substantial self. Moreover, if we add mental predicates to our third-person descriptive language, we still will not be able to capture the state of affairs expressed by statements like ‘‘I am thinking that P’’ or ‘‘I am being appeared to redly.’’ Finally, the system of indexical reference (e.g. ‘‘I’’, ‘‘here’’, ‘‘there’’, ‘‘this’’, ‘‘that’’) must have a unifying center that underlies it.1 2 This unifying center is the same entity referred to by ‘‘I’’ in expressions like ‘‘I am thinking that P’’, namely, the conscious substantial subject taken as a self conscious, self referring particular.12 We may state the argument this way:
(2) If I am a physical object, then all the facts about me can be expressed in statements without the first-person indexical.
(3) Therefore, I am not a physical object.
(4) The facts mentioned in (1) are best explained by substance dualism.
Geoffrey Madell and H. D. Lewis have advocated this type of argument.13
Argument 4: Some have argued for substance dualism because libertarian freedom is true and either a necessary condition for libertarian freedom is substance dualism or the latter is the best explanation for the former. The argument may be put this way (using only the form in which substance dualism is a necessary condition for libertarian freedom):
(1) If human beings exercise libertarian agency, then (i) they have the power to initiate change as a first mover; (ii) they have the power to refrain from exercising their power to initiate change; and (iii) they act for the sake of reasons as irreducible, teleological ends for the sake of which they act.
(2) Human beings exercise libertarian agency.
(3) No material object (one which is such that all of its properties, parts, and capacities are at least and only physical) can exercise libertarian agency.
(4) Therefore, human beings are not material objects.14
(5) Human beings are either material objects or immaterial substances.
(6) Therefore, they are immaterial substances.
Substance dualist John Foster has employed this sort of argument.15
Argument 5: Thought experiments have rightly been central to debates about personal identity and dualism. For example, we are often invited to consider a situation in which two persons switch bodies, brains, or personality traits or in which a person exists disembodied. In these thought experiments, someone argues in the following way: Because a certain state of affairs S (e.g. Smith existing disembodied) is conceivable, this provides justification for thinking that S is metaphysically possible. Now if S is possible, then certain implications follow about what is/is not essential to personal identity (e.g. Smith is not essentially a body).
Some have criticized the use of conceivability as a test for possibility because the notion of conceiving is vague and used in a variety of different ways.16 I agree that ‘‘to conceive’’ does not mean ‘‘to image’’ (we can conceive of things, e.g. God, without imaging them) or ‘‘to understand’’ (we can understand impossible states of affairs, e.g. that there are square circles). What exactly do I mean by ‘‘to conceive’’? In my view, what is conceived is ‘‘what seems to be coherently supposed.’’
There are two forms of conceiving relevant to personal identity—weak and strong conceiving.17 Something is weakly conceivable for a person when he reflects on it and sees no reason to believe it to be impossible. Something is strongly conceivable for a person when he judges that it is possible based on a more positive grasp of the properties involved and of the compatibility of what he is conceiving with what he already knows. If something is weakly conceivable, one sees no reason for thinking it is impossible. If something is strongly conceivable, one sees good reason for thinking it is possible.
We all use conceiving as a test for possibility/impossibility throughout our lives.18 I know that life on other planets is possible because I can conceive it to be so. I am aware of what it is to be living and to be on earth and I conceive no necessary connections between these two properties. I know square circles are impossible because it is inconceivable given my knowledge of being square and being circular. To be sure, judgments that a state of affairs is possible/impossible grounded in conceivability are not infallible. They can be wrong. Still, they provide strong evidence for genuine possibility/impossibility. In light of this, I offer the following criterion:
For any entities x and y, if I have grounds for believing I can conceive of x existing without y or vice versa, then I have good grounds for believing x is not essential or identical to y or vice versa.
Let us apply these insights about conceivability and possibility to the modal argument for substance dualism. The argument has been advanced by Keith Yandell and Charles Taliaferro, and while it comes in many forms, it may be fairly stated as follows:19
(1) The law of identity: If x is identical to y, then whatever is true of x is true of y and vice versa.
(2) I can strongly conceive of myself as existing disembodied or, indeed, without any physical particular existing.
(3) If I can strongly conceive of some state of affairs S that S possibly obtains, then I have good grounds for believing of S that S is possible.
(4) Therefore, I have good grounds for believing of myself that it is possible for me to exist and be disembodied.
(5) If some entity x is such that it is possible for x to exist without y, then
(i) x is not identical to y and (ii) y is not essential to x.
(6) My physical body is not such that it is possible to exist disembodied or without any physical particular existing.
(7) Therefore, I have good grounds for believing of myself that I am not identical to a physical particular, including my physical body and that no physical particular, including my physical body is essential to me.
A parallel argument can be developed to show that possessing the ultimate capacities of sensation, thought, belief, desire, and volition are essential to me.
My purpose in mentioning these arguments is not to defend them or even present them in a thorough way. Rather, I have listed and elaborated on these arguments with enough detail to make it evident that there is a serious lack of interaction with these arguments in physicalist writings where it would be appropriate to do so. Thus, Paul Churchland’s otherwise excellent work Matter and Consciousness20 suffers a clear lack of quality when substance dualism is discussed. These arguments are not mentioned, much less enjoined. Instead, we have ad hominem remarks about religion, the mandatory mention of the Vatican’s treatment of Galileo, and so on. In fact, Churchland actually mentions with mockery how supermarket tabloids try to prove life after death (‘‘TOP DOCS PROVE LIFE AFTER DEATH!!!’’) while confidently asserting that there is no empirical evidence for these claims even though he does not interact with one single credible NDE case or source.21
Likewise, even though Jaegwon Kim has been concerned about mental causation, you will search in vain in his major works to find any attempt at all to examine the case for agent causation and the implications it may have for philosophy of mind. It is as though Kim keeps his philosophy of mind and action entirely separate from each other. But substance dualists have advanced technical arguments for their view from libertarian agency and agent causation, and Kim should interact with them when he treats the topic of mental causation.
Moreover, in the 1996 edition of his Philosophy of Mind text Kim’s discussion of substance dualism is incredibly weak when compared to the excellent treatment of other topics in the book. In Churchland’s case, it takes a mere fourteen pages to dismiss substance and property dualism (about half of which describes and sets aside substance dualism), and the rest of the book consists largely though not exclusively in evaluating the various physicalist philosophies of mind. In Kim’s case, substance dualism is presented in a scant three pages after which the rest of the book is devoted to physicalist theories.
Happily, the 2006 revised edition of Philosophy of Mind contains a chapter on substance dualism with a fair representation of the arguments for it. However, Kim (and most others, including Churchland) continues to present only Cartesian dualism. This is a serious omission, especially in Kim’s case, because Thomistic dualism contains a solution to his version of the pairing problem he takes to be decisive against Cartesianism. I cannot imagine Kim treating another topic without interacting with a major viewpoint that claims to rebut one of his main arguments. Yet this is precisely what Kim does regarding causal pairing. It is as though he simply is not aware of the Thomistic view or its solution to causal pairing. How could a philosopher of Kim’s stature claim to be taking dualism seriously when he fails to interact even briefly with a major, relevant version of dualism?22
I cite one more example, which may be the most egregious one so far. In Beyond Evolution: Human Nature and the limits of Evolutionary
Explanation, Anthony O’Hear provides a detailed, convincing case that there are a number of features of human beings that lie entirely outside naturalistic, including evolutionary explanation.23 So far so good. But O’Hear offers no plausible explanation whatever as to how human beings so construed could ever have arisen. Clearly, the context of his book cries out for interaction with sophisticated Christian theistic accounts of the origin and nature of human beings, even if they are mentioned for the express purpose of refuting them. However, inexplicably, he does not interact with any theistic literature at all, and in his bibliography, he does not include one theistic source that informs his topic. This is intellectually irresponsible because the thesis of his book is precisely what one would predict, given Christian theism and the doctrine of the image of God, viz., that several aspects of human beings would be recalcitrant facts for alternative worldviews, especially for naturalism.
I am not trying to be mean-spirited here. I am simply pointing out that when it comes to presenting the best arguments for theism or dualism and rebutting them, strong naturalists who deal with philosophy of mind do not sustain the level of excellence in treating these topics that are characteristic of their careful analyses of physicalist issues and options. At the very least, this is curious, and it may be a sign of the fact that dualism and AC are largely dismissed for non-intellectual reasons. Thus, it is not taken seriously and that explains the lack of quality to which I am referring.
Failure to enjoin dualist literature
Second, physicalists do not interact with leading dualists, particularly substance dualists, in their writings, endnotes, or bibliographies. In fact, there is usually no mention at all of key defenses of dualism, and when they are listed in a bibliography, they are hardly enjoined. Leading dualists (some of whom lean more towards some form of idealism) include Robert Adams, George Bealer, Francis Beckwith, Mark Bedau, Roderick Chisholm, John Foster, Stewart Goetz, W. D. Hart, William Hasker, Brian Leftow, Geoffrey Madell, Paul Mosser, Alvin Plantinga, Howard Robinson, Jeffrey Schwartz, Eleanore Stump, Richard Swinburne, Charles Taliaferro, Dallas Willard, Dean Zimmerman. It is too often the case that naturalistic treatments of philosophy of mind do not mention or interact with the arguments presented by these and other leading dualists.
Dualism and dismissive rhetorical moves
Finally, there are various rhetorical devices used to dismiss dualism, AC or theism that are not worthy of those who employ them. Searle points out four of them, which I have also observed:24
(1) The use of technical jargon to cover up the implausibility of one’s view: the sheer implausibility of such [physicalist] theories [e.g. they imply
that consciousness does not really exist] is disguised by the apparently technical character of the arguments bandied back and forth.25
(2) Authors [usually physicalists for Searle] who are about to say something that sounds silly very seldom come right out and say it. Usually a set of rhetorical or stylistic devices is employed to avoid having to say it in words of one syllable. The most obvious of these devices is to beat around the bush with a lot of evasive prose. I think it is obvious in the writings of several authors, for example, that they think we really don’t have mental states, such as beliefs, desires, fears, etc. But it is hard to find passages where they actually say this straight out. Often they want to keep the commonsense vocabulary, while denying that it actually stands for anything in the real world.26
(3) Another rhetorical devise for disguising the implausible is to give the commonsense view a name and then deny it by name and not by content. Thus, it is very hard even in the present era to come right out and say, ‘‘No human being has ever been conscious.’’ Rather, the sophisticated philosopher gives the view that people are sometimes conscious a name, for example, ‘‘the Cartesian intuition,’’ then he or she sets about challenging, questioning, denying something described as ‘‘the Cartesian intuition.’’ ... And just to give this maneuver a name, I will call it the “give-it-a-name’’ maneuver.27
(4) Another maneuver, the most favored of all, I will call the ‘‘heroic-age-of-science’’ maneuver. When an author gets in deep trouble, he or she tries to make an analogy with his or her own claim and some great scientific discovery of the past. Does the view seem silly? Well, the great scientific geniuses of the past seemed silly to their ignorant, dogmatic, and prejudiced contemporaries. Galileo is the favorite historical analogy. Rhetorically speaking, the idea is to make you, the skeptical reader, feel that if you don’t believe the view being advanced, you are playing Cardinal Ballarmine to the author’s Galileo.28
Unfortunately, Searle is guilty of his own rhetorical ploys and egregiously so. He assures us that it is an ‘‘obvious fact of physics—that the world consists entirely of physical particles in fields of force’’29 Obvious? A fact of physics? I would like to have the journal reference in a physics journal where this fact was discovered and by whom. The truth is that physics has no view of being at all and, thus, no view qua physics of what the world does or does not consist in. This is obvious, not Searle’s overstatement.
Again, regarding Cartesian souls that can survive death, Searle opines that ‘‘nowadays, as far as I can tell, no one believes in the existence of immortal spiritual substances except on religious grounds. To my knowledge, there are no purely philosophical or scientific motivations for accepting the existence of immortal mental substances.’’30 We will see below why this remark is intellectually irresponsible. However, rhetorically, its dismissive function is to associate substance dualism with the excess baggage of immortality—and the two are quite independent—and to paint a picture of dualists as a band of cowering fundamentalists heroically trying to cling to their doctrine in spite of an avalanche of evidence against them.31
Finally, in the context of claiming that the naturalist worldview consisting of the atomic theory of matter and evolutionary biology is the only view a contemporary well-educated person can believe, Searle says,
Our problem is not that somehow we have failed to come up with a convincing proof of the existence of God or that the hypothesis of an afterlife remains in serious doubt, it is rather that in our deepest reflections we cannot take such opinions seriously. When we encounter people who claim to believe such things, we may envy them the comfort and security they claim to derive from such beliefs, but at bottom we remain convinced that either they have not heard the news or they are in the grip of faith. We remain convinced that somehow they must separate their minds into separate compartments to believe such things.32
Searle published these remarks in 1992, but his book continues to be reprinted without revision, so I assume he still holds them. His statements are so incredible and outlandish, that I must conclude that it is he who has not heard the news. And I would not be surprised to learn that his own version of naturalistic faith is something that provides him ‘‘comfort and security’’ in the face of the cosmic authority problem. One wonders how a philosopher of Searle’s stature can get away with saying things like this. In the last forty years, there has been a dramatic revolution in Anglo-American philosophy. Since the late 1960s, Christian philosophers have openly identified themselves as believing Christians and defending the truth of a Christian worldview with philosophically sophisticated arguments in the finest scholarly journals and professional societies. And the face of Anglo-American philosophy has been transformed as a result.
In a recent article lamenting ‘‘the desecularization of academia that evolved in philosophy departments since the late 1960s,’’ Quentin Smith, a prominent atheist philosopher, observes that ‘‘in philosophy, it became, almost overnight, ‘academically respectable’ to argue for theism, making philosophy a favored field of entry for the most intelligent and talented theists entering academia today.’’33 He complains that ‘‘Naturalists passively watched as realist versions of theism ... began to sweep through the philosophical community, until today perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy professors are theists, with most being orthodox Christians.’’34 He concludes, “God is not ‘dead’ in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now alive and well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments.’’35 Smith continues:
The current practice, ignoring theism, has proven to be a disastrous failure. More fully, naturalist philosophers’ pursuit of the cultural goal of mainstream secularization in a philosophically governed way has failed both philosophically (in regards to the philosophical aspects of this philosophically governed pursuit of the cultural goal) and culturally. The philosophical failure has led to a cultural failure. We have the following situation: A hand waving dismissal of theism, such as is manifested in the following passage from [John] Searle’s The Rediscovery of the Mind, has been like trying to halt a tidal wave with a hand-held sieve. Searle responds to about one-third of contemporary philosophers with this brush-off: Talking about the scientific and naturalist world-view, he writes: ‘‘this world view is not an option. It is not simply up for grabs along with a lot of competing world views. Our problem is not that somehow we have failed to come up with a convincing proof of the existence of God or that the hypothesis of afterlife remains in serious doubt, it is rather than in our deepest reflections we cannot take such opinions seriously. When we encounter people who claim to believe such things, we may envy them the comfort and security they claim to derive from these beliefs, but at bottom we remained convinced that either they have not heard the news or they are in the grip of faith.’’ Searle does not have an area of specialization in the philosophy of religion and, if he did, he might, in the face of the erudite brilliance of theistic philosophizing today, say something more similar to the non-theist Richard Gale (who does have an area of specialization in the philosophy of religion), whose conclusion of a 422 page book criticizing contemporary philosophical arguments for God’s existence (as well as dealing with other matters in the philosophy of religion), reads ‘‘no definite conclusion can be drawn regarding the rationality of faith’’36 (if only for the reason, Gale says, that his book does not examine the inductive arguments for God’s existence). If each naturalist who does not specialize in the philosophy of religion (i.e. over ninety-nine percent of naturalists) were locked in a room with theists who do specialize in the philosophy of religion, and if the ensuing debates were refereed by a naturalist who had a specialization in the philosophy of religion, the naturalist referee could at most hope the outcome would be that ‘‘no definite conclusion can be drawn regarding the rationality of faith,’’ although I expect the most probable outcome is that the naturalist, wanting to be a fair and objective referee, would have to conclude that the theists definitely had the upper hand in every single argument or debate.37
In light of these matters that Smith chronicles, the following statement by
Searle is hard to understand. When asked if he had a belief in the supernatural, Searle responded:
None. But you see, there’s something else that is, in a way, more important in this issue of the supernatural. Intellectuals in our culture have become so secularized, there’s a sense in which the existence of the supernatural wouldn’t matter in the way that it mattered a hundred years ago. Suppose we discovered that we’re wrong, that there really is this divine force in the universe. Well then, most intellectuals would say, okay, that’s a fact of physics like any other—instead of just four forces in the universe, we have a fifth force. In this sense, our attitude about the existence of God wouldn’t be as important because the world has already become demystified for us. Essentially our worldview would remain even if we discovered that we had been wrong, that God did exist.38
Searle is clearly not speaking for hundreds, indeed, thousands of philosophers or for the tens of thousands of university professors who are classic theists. Thus, it is rhetorically misleading at best and intellectually irresponsible at worst for Searle to paint with such a big brush. And I don’t know of any serious philosopher of religion who would use ‘‘God’’ and ‘‘a divine force’’ which is ‘‘a fifth force’’ interchangeably without at least some justification. But more importantly, it is hard to see how one would argue for theism in general, or substance dualism and AC in particular with someone whose views are as indefeasible as Searle’s. When statements like these are made, there is usually something more happening than mere intellectual viewpoints, and the cosmic authority problem is a good candidate for that ‘‘something more.’’
I do not wish to continue with this section except to say that I could provide numerous examples of each line of evidence. But I do not think that is necessary. I can only appeal to the reader to look at the relevant literature and see if what I am saying is true. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that it is. What follows from this? For one thing, I believe naturalists need to be more self-reflective about what is driving them and how it is affecting the quality of their work in this area. But I believe that there is another implication of the ubiquitous fear of God that these three lines of evidence support and expose.
Statements using the first-person indexical ‘‘I’’ express facts about persons that cannot be expressed in statements without the first-person
indexical.