Can a God exist?

Can a God exist?

I suppose atheists have every right to claim that they don’t believe in the existence of God(and I suppose this is the Judeo-Christian God overall as well as all of the others), but does this disbelief a metaphysical and logical necessity rather than only a metaphysical and logical POSSIBILITY?

In my view, a godless world and a world containing a God are indistinguishable from one another on further rational reflection, unless one wants to invokes miracles and the like. I argue that God (if God exists) is ultimately a disembodied consciousness that enjoys complete causal control over the physical and phenomenal(psychological) states of the world( a view that I call: causal monism, as distinct from a view of “dualism” that holds that man operates independently of God).

As before, consciousness is the only “substance” or entity in the actual world that lies beyond the reach or scope of sensory perception, and it is usually sensory perception that we use to determine whether or not something exists. One has no empirical knowledge that I have conscious experiences and neither do I have empirical knowledge that they are conscious, as it is conceptually coherent that other humans are consciousless automotons for all we know, since consciousness is unavailable to sensory perception.

By this same reasoning, a God could exist beyond information gained by the senses because such a GOd is “composed” of the one actual material in the real world that is beyond the scope of the sensory: consciousness.

Any other conceptualization of God fails scrutiny by the senses because by such concepts, such a God should be sensorily perceived by an appropriately situated actual being. But a disembodied consciousness is “supposed” to be imperceptible precisedly because consciousness qua consciousness is “supposed” to be imperceptible…and is.

But that is only my view,
Jay M. Brewer
phenomenal_graffit@yahoo.com

Logical paradox goes beyond conciousness because it is inclusive. It include all of one point againts all of another. A logical paradox that fails to do this is a faliure as a paradox.

Guest ,

explain what is meant as a logical paradox? Consciousness is indeed an inclusive aspect of the world…and any conceptualization of God must be scrutinized according to how “logically possible” such a God is based on what we know about the actual world. For instance, alien beings from other worlds are logically possible precisely because we can conceive of those beings being composed of atoms and molecules and chemical structures necessary for life because there are atoms, molecules, and chemical structures necessary for life.

If one conceives of a God as a disembodied consciousness, the same logical possibility follows: consciousness is believed to depend for it’s existence on physical brain but we have no way of knowing if this is in fact the case, as it is also conceptually coherent that consciousness has always existed in some form but merely underlies the physical (Chalmers).
On this understanding, since consciousness is the only “substance” that is beyond the scope of sensory experience, we have no way of knowing it’s extent in the universe or even if it is exhausted to the physical.

But this is only my view,
Jay Brewer
phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com

But if it enjoys complete causal control how can you say it is indistinguishable? And if it is conscious why does the world follow set rules, like what comes up must come down, etc. There seems to be no choice here, so what is the control part?

I have empirical knowledge of my own consciousness though.

As for other people’s consciousness it all depends on one’s definition of consciousness, some definitions include the “automatons” as conscious anyway. In these definitions consciousness would be empirically accessible to others because consciousness depends on actions and not on the internal state. I think it’s also been argued that the automatons are logically impossible (though this could exclusively be referring to qualia, but I can’;t remember off the top of my head).

Oops, that last post was me.

To: Matt

Thanks for your views.

As for God having complete causal control over the world(conceivably), this control does not touch upon fundamentals such as up/down space and time and the conservation of energy and so on, as these are reasonably fundamentals, and a conception of God can hold that God has no control over the fundamentals themselves, but how they interact.

On this view, God can determine how particles will come together to form people, trees, and pizza-and God can determine how electrons can flow within neurons to form (psychologically) either Mother Teresa or Jeffery Dahmer.
(I do not espouse a notion of an omnibenevolent God)

As for how a God might conceivably do this, one can invoke David Chalmer’s notions of interactionism, or a conceivable state of affairs of the mental acting on the physical rather than vice versa(or alongside the vice versa). According to Chalmers, we claim that physical brain CAUSES psychological phenomena, without knowing how or why it does, we simply take it for granted that it does. There is nothing to rule out the possibility that the reverse might also be true.

As for consciousness, there seems to be a difference between structure and dynamics (the human system and function and movement) and EXPERIENCE, which is the “hard problem” of consciousness. We can conceptually separate or distinguish the two. You have no way of knowing whether or not I truly have conscious experiences and neither have I any way of knowing if you in fact are conscious…we simply take it for granted that we are. What you seem to be espousing is a sort of Type-A materialism(that consciousness is really nothing over and above structure,function, and physical behavior) but Chalmers did a good job of showing that we have no good reason to hold to Type-A materialism and that conscious experience is something WHOLLY independent of the physical.

On this understanding, we have no way of knowing that there ISNT some consciousness entirely divorced from the physical, and that this divorced qualia is humanly intelligent and enjoys causal control over the world.

But that is only my view,
Jay M. Brewer
phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com

To: Matt

Also…a theistic world (a world containing the type of God I described) and an atheistic world (a godless world) is indeed indistinguishable. From observing the world, one would not be able to say with certainty whether the events of our world result from the “nonconscious” interactions of particles and forces…or from the interactionistic influence of a God over those same particles, thereby overdetermining the other four forces of Nature.

Jay

To Phenomenal Graffiti-

This is what I am extrapulating from your theory:

God= a supreme consciuosness, that has causal control over all particles.

If this were true, God’s “body” would be the entirety of the universe. Just as we have “control” over our bodies (using the term control very loosely). Human conscious would therefore be a fraction of God’s conscious, as we would be sharing the same particles that we have consciousness over.

Interesting perspective (if I’m not horribly putting words into your mouth)

Is it then that you would dismiss evolution as a theory? Or does his interaction not got that far?

Thinking about it, you would not have to make that strong a claim, you could easily say that while he stuck to the principle of evolution he chose from one of many possible paths it could take, ensuring “random” mutation always happened in the desired way.

As for consciousness being wholly independant of the physical, would you say then that it is possible to have consciousness without a physical form? Are you completely rejecting physicalism as a philosophy of mind or do you mean that the concept of conciousness is abstract, but it’s cause in us could still be physical (e.g. neural pathways)?

Oops, reading your last paragraph, looks like you choose the former. But with that view you fall in to (the very many) traps of any kind of Dualism. Off the top of my head (and as I’m reading it atm ) there’s Derek Parfit’s contention that if there were some non-physical matter out there that creates (in this case) a soul, it doesn’t seem to do anything, so what is the point of it?

Further arguments include the problem of the mental/physical bridge, why do physical things affect our consciousness and emotions (e.g. drugs, alcohol, etc.) and more that I can’t tink of off the top of my head, but I’m sure others here may be able to provide.

To Matt:

To reply to your last post…

It would not be a necessity for God to have a body at all in order to interactionistically (and overdeterminatedly) control every particle in the universe(as conceived) in order to give rise to the world we observe everyday.

The reason behind this stems from dualism in general: There is physical structure and function, in terms of the brain and its neural structure and electronic functionality throughout(based in part on inputs/outputs from the system by the physical environment), and then there is conscious experience. We know from covariances between the physical and experience that the two seem linked, but there is no way to know why or how independent of constant coexistence or constance contiguity(to borrow a term of Hume’s notion of causality).

This relationship seems to be the only kind that exists in our universe. It is not known how or if the brain is even capable of “making” consciousness to exist from nonexistence, and it is certainly compatible that consciousness has and does always exist but can do so in “quantized” packets just as physical phenomena are entailed to ultimately exist in “pieces”. This very notion is summarized in David Chalmer’s idea of “panprotopsychism”, or the view that consciousness is just as fundamental and eternal as mass, charge, and space-time but forms the “subjective” underlying layer of matter that can be pieced together to form a given consciousness if matter is put together to form a functioning brain.

Ultimately, we don’t know that consciousness DEPENDS on the physical even to exist, and it is just as coherent and logical that it doesn’t. Secondly, we can’t know that consciousness CANNOT exist without a physical manifestation before it. If consciousness does not necessarily depend on the physical to even exist from nonexistence, and given the nonempiricality (or the inability to discern the existence of consciousness other than our own with the senses) of consciousness in general, we cannot rationally hold that there is NOT consciousness that exists independent of the physical.

(If it is true that there is no “naked” or independent consciousness, then I hold that it is by chance rather than by some metaphysical necessity, and we cannot know that it is absent. In this case, and atheist’s belief about the world would be INADVERTENTLY rather than KNOWLEDGEABLY correct)

Thirdly, we cannot know how the brain CAUSES certain conscious experiences to arise and this supposed causal nexus is even more mysterious that physical-physical causal relationships(which are explained by the notion of “force”). It follows that if one holds that physical to psychological causality exists and is possible, then one has no reason to suppose that psychological to physical causality is impossible.

On this understanding, a God can certainly control the world by perceptually imagining how a world might turn out and all of the interactions of that world and by the same inscrutable causal relationship have the physical world “replay” that imaginable scenario. We say that the physical world operates by way of four forces, we cannot rule out the possibility of a fifth mental force underlying the other four. If we did, we might as well rule out the notion that the brain possesses causal powers over consciousness, as it doesn’t seem to be anywhere that the two can somehow spatiotemporally “connect”.

But that is only my view,
Jay M. Brewer
phenomenal_graffiti

To: Matt yet again,

I do not reject physicalism overall, except that type of physicalism that holds that consciousness cannot exist independent of the physical and that all consciousness is “within” (or is exhausted within) the physical.
I hold that there is no way for us to know this or can come to know this and that based on this disembodied consciousness is just as metaphysically( a world used in common philosophy to mean: “the nature of the world” rather than the “supernatural”) and logically possible.
(Once again, the atheist’s may indeed be right and physicalism is the truth of the world, but there is no way for us to KNOW this and thus disembodied consciousness remains a logical possibility even if it not a logical necessity)

I hold that there can be a sort of “quasi-physicalism”, such that the brain coexists with consciousness and this explains why human consciousness exists with such psychophysical covariance (for every neural state there is a cooresponding brain state), and at the same time there is consciousness entirely free of the physical, such that functionalistic consciousness (us and the animals) can coexist with disembodied (or as I like to call it, “nonpsychophysical”) consciousness.

The existence of nonpsychophysicality does not negate psychophysicality, and the two can “shake hands as neighbors”.

This is why I hold that an atheistic world and a theistic world are actually “twins” and indistinguishable, precisely because a universally-causal disembodied mind(God) can produce the exact same world as would be produced by the blind interactions of mere particles and forces.

Jay

correction:

In the above post I stated: “For every neural state there is a corresponding brain state”

what I meant to say was: “For every neural state there is a corresponding CONSCIOUS state.”

This is the basis of psychophysicality.

phenomenal graffiti

correction:

In the above post I stated: “For every neural state there is a corresponding brain state”

what I meant to say was: “For every neural state there is a corresponding CONSCIOUS state.”

This is the basis of psychophysicality.

phenomenal graffiti

The trouble with Chalmer’s work is that he leads you down the garden path of saying that it is intuitionistic that there could be conciousness without physical form. Look at one of his attacks on physicalism, that of zombies (for those interested in philosophical zombies, including Chalmer’s look here). In the end the zombie argument against physicalism, which is that it is possible to imagine an exact replica of yourself without conciousness, thus conciousness must be something more than the physical, is ultimately circular. It’s entire concievability depends on you being able to assume that an exact physical replica of you could be unconscious, but you can only hold that if you believe there is something else which causes consciousness.

I must admit I have only just started reading about this area, more for my course than a particular love of the area, I find the style of the major writers to often be a major slug because of their love of wrapping even the simplest of ccncepts up in philosophical language, which I always find totally excessive, if I wanted to be a translator I would have done a foreign laguage. That’s what comes of philosophers self-importance though.

Rant over,

The thing is that as we understand the human brain more and more the most likely candidate for explaining consciousness looks to be purely the structure of the brain. While it is still coherent to argue against, one can only do so through stubborn skeptical method. It is also possible that cause and effect will stop working tomorrow, but you’ll find few people who believe that. I’ll bet you any amount that the sun will rise tomorrow To use a bit of the loathed philosophical language, it is not nomologically possible that there are such zombies out there.

I am convinced by the articles of Marton and Dennett (in the are of the link provided) that they are not logically possible either.

That’s the only type of physicalism I know

What you describe in the second post is still strictly a form of dualism, for themto shake hands there must be some sort of mental/physical bridge. The question still remain how can the physical effets of drugs, trauma, etc. on consciousness be explained?

It’s easy to quote Okham’s razor here and just get rid of the ‘God’ though. Thin of the amount of extra “energy” that would have to be expended to do such a thing, whether it be physicalor the type of underlying mental force you mentioned earlier.

To: Matt

Sure, Occam’s razor tends only to reveal the world to be only an “apparent” world( a world wherein what we judge to exist or not to exist depends on the senses and on inferences of consciousness).

I stick to Chalmer’s view on things precisely because we have no way of knowing whether or not consciousness without the physical is nomologically impossible, as we have no way of “measuring” consciousness other than our own by introspection. How can something be claimed to be “per impossible” when it fails introspection and empirical knowledge?

Chalmers challenges Dennett’s claims about consciousness by asking a simple question: once all of the relevant neural structures and functions are explained, how does this automatically necessitate the existence of consciousness?

We know that when the relevant functions are performed, consciousness arises, but we don’t know why or how it does.

Given this, we cannot even know that consciousness is necessarily LIMITED to the physical, as it seems that consciousness is indeed something over and above physical structure and dynamics.

(Remember: everything else in the universe is available to the senses EXCEPT others’ conscious experience: based on this alone we cannot constrain consciousness to ontological parameters)

I have stated over and over that for all we know, we could be living in a godless world-but I claim that it is INADVERTANTLY godless rather than KNOWLEDGEABLY so, given the nonempiricality of consciousness itself.
We simply can’t say if there is “nothing but” functionalistic consciousness, simply because functionalistic consciousness exists.

One can feel and believe that physicalism is all that there is, but one cannot know for certain that this is so, despite the seemingly “psychological” advantage of Occam’s razor. This strategy simply reduces the universe to that which is most apparent. But ultimately apparency does not necessarily reality make(if it does so, it is by accident)

But again, this is only my view,
Jay Brewer
phenomenal_graffit@yahoo.com

I read a very interesting article attempting to destabalise physicalism entiorely. I’ll try and find out what it was called, I think it was wriiten by a professor and a Doctor from UCL, it was very good, ending in something like, this should be the last ever article on physicalism, but we doubt it. Very persuasive, but I couldn’t help feeling some sleight of hand was going on somewhere.

The general gist of the argument, which doesn’t follow most of Chalmers’ work[1] was, physicalism is an attempt to explain the world, psychology is not termed a physical science, the reducability of the physical sciences to pure physics is an unattainable sham [2], thus psychology is no less a science than physics/chemistry/biology, thus it is impossible to reduce the world to the physical.

However the particular claims you made above was that it was not nomologically impossible to have consciousness without the physical. I think that is wholly dependant on one’s interpretation of the meaning of conciousness. Without any sort of input from the physical world, what would consciousness mean? I can’t imagine such a thing, I personally don’t think it is even logically possible, let alone nomologically possible. What is consciousness without stimuli? There must be some sort of input, ultimately from a low (physical) source such as perception to be able to form consciousness. If you get rid of the physical in brackets there youmayjust be able to make it logicvally possible, but certainly not nomologically as I see the world today. That just leaves you at a skeptical position.

That’s the job of the neuroscientist. Conciousness couyld purely be form, the structure of the system. i think it was lebeinez who said conscioussness would always be outside our grasp of explanation. I suppose it depends on whether you believe a computer could attain consciousness.

I do realise, of course, that structure seems a poor way to explain the phenomenal consciousness of red, blue, tea, the elation of discovery or the pain of a gunshot wound. But just because the structure may be complex, it doesn’t mean it is inexpicable, though words may do it little justice, after all we talking hundreds of thousands of years of progressive design here[3]. Any attempt to say that consciousness is something more beyond the physical must alwaysrest on the dualist’s shaky mind/body bridge.

There are good and bad points about both the view that you hold and the view that I do,that much I admit

Notes

[1] I think, not having read all his work as I said in an earlier post.

[2] This was the long and fairly technical part of the article which needs a lot more arguments to back it up, but I can’t remember it in it’s entirity nor do it justice. Though this was the particular place where I thought the sleight of hand was going on.

[3] I refer to evolution of course. Though I do side with the Dawkins and others when they say that it’s not always beneficial, and in fact can be seen as ‘evil’ at times. Progressive is perhaps the wrong word, but it is the most appropiate I can think of.

To: Matt

Thanks for your response…

It seems as if your view of what is “physical” involves consciousness itself and it seems inextricable from your way of thinking-this tends toward a sort of “Dennetian” Type-A materialism, but oh well.

I think that one must conceptually distinguish the differences between what is known as “consciousness” from what is known as the “physical”.

In general, it seems as if the physical world is also a “public” world, available to the senses if a conscious being is appropriately situated near the perceivable object or property. Neurons are “public” in this sense, and if we ever devise microscopes or some such powerful enough, atoms and molecules would also be “publically known to the senses”. We can cut through a brain or a neuron down to it’s chemical substrates, and ultimately all that we would have is physical appearance of structure, mass, and particular dynamics(of the chemicals themselves or the brain structure functioning as a whole)

On the other hand, the experience of red, blue or the pain of a gunshot wound is a “private” experience, not discernible from external sensory perception. I cannot “see” what you are thinking as you read this, nor would I be able to “see” it if you were in front of me.

In general “consciousness” is that aspect of the world(and it seems to be the only aspect of the universe) that exists beyond the senses. Air cannot be seen, but it certainly can be felt as wind. Electromagnetic waves are invisible and the quantized photons that make up those waves are beyond macroscopic sensory perception but they leave causal “marks” on our instruments by producing certain regular effects.

Inputs to a physical system are also “public” and discernible to the five senses. The “private” product that accompanied this “public” input and output is simply an accompanying phenomenon. It is the regularity and punctuality of conscious experience when a particular brain function is performed that gives us the inference that there is a sort of causal link that exists-although this sort of causality is sui generis compared to every single other sort of causal relationship IN THE UNIVERSE(generally explained by the actions of “forces”).

Here’s a thought: Before there were brains in the universe, where was consciousness? The answer to this may imply whether or not consciousness is something “extra” that must be brought in when physical conditions are met. In general, there are two schools of thought on this:

(1) Functional incantationism: consciousness did not exist before there were brains and somehow “pops” into existence when the functional organization of the brain is realized. Problems with this include the notion of “creation ex nihilo”, and how physical structure and function can somehow magically “make” something that in one second did not exist to exist.

(2) Fundamentalism of the psychological. Some theorists hold that consciousness is just as fundamental and “eternal” as mass, charge, and space-time but does not exist “coherently”(as our consciousness). It takes a physical structure such as the brain to “bring together the pieces” of disparate conscious information to form the integrated whole of our experience.

In general, asking yourself what happens to consciousness if the brain is destroyed would be effective in discerning if consciousness IS something wholly distinct from “public” atoms and molecules.

But that is only my view,
Jay M. Brewer
phenomenal_graffit@yahoo.com

I think you people are forgetting that “conciousness” is an abstract concept, that exists only because of it’s linguistic possibility. There is no such thing as the metaphysical conciousness that you all speak of.
As for if a god exists? The concept of god sprung out of our ignorance of natural phenomena. If a God CAN exist?, well only as a linguistic concept. Outside of that, HOW CAN a god exist?

• It doesn’t exist physically

Some say god exists on a metaphysical level. But metaphysics itself as a solid science is questionnable, and has been dimissed. So How can we believe in something so grand if it can exist only within a framework that is itself full of flaws?

I have to say that I disagree with you. We are conscious, sentient beings regardless of whether or not we can speak or use language. Language simply describes consciousness. If language ceased to exist, just because we could not describe consciousness does not mean that we would cease to be conscious. This is so blatantly obvious I fear I am misunderstanding you. Let me know if this is the case.

You may very well be right.

Just because we are incapable of directly knowing something does not mean it doesn’t exist. Because we are not physically capable of knowing God, does not mean that God doesn’t exist. We just can’t know. For example, I do not directly know that you are a conscious being, however it does not mean that you aren’t. I cannot physically test that you feel, I can only test whether or not you have a physical reaction (i.e- I pinch you and you wince). Your wincing demonstrates that you felt pain. But what is pain? Perhaps it is something physical. I personally don’t think so. Perhaps this is something that you would classify as being created by language? Pain is a metaphysical concept. It exists, we just don’t know where. If pain were physical, we could divide it, and it would be tangible. Of course a specific firing of neurons will translate into pain, but these firings of neurons is not pain itself. Pain is the experiencing of that particular firing of neurons.

I must say that I’ve never encountered an argument taking your approach. I’m not too sure whether I have addressed your proposition with my response. I apologize if that is the case. Anyhow, I hope you will attempt to explain your position more thoroughly so that I can decide whether or not I agree with you.

From: phenomenal graffiti
To: Matt from Laguna Beach

Read any Chalmers lately? Your response to the last responder had everything in it that David Chalmers used to make disambiguous the term “consciousness” from the term “physical” by stipulating that consciousness is EXPERIENCE over neural brain function which is a public and sensorily perceivable phenomenon said to CAUSE the relevant experience.

Your response to the last responder was dead on, I’m impressed! When most theorists are asked about consciousness, they respond with a brain function, as if physical structure and function WAS the experience rather than simply the “publicly accessible” CAUSE of experience. THis is the problem of Type-A materialism, or ignorance of the experience of pain (as an example)-saying that pain is “only just” the brain function correlating to pain states while ignoring the seemingly obvious fact there there is something going on (the experience of pain) that is nonphysically more than atoms and molecules combined in neurons pumping electrons and neurotransmitters through them.

And as for the nonempiricality of God and how one cannot judge that a God does not exist based on that nonempiricality, that was also very impressive and something that I repeat over and over myself. Belief or disbelief ultimately does not ultimate reality make-and I state over and over that if God does not exist, an atheist cannot know this directly but would only be INADVERTANTLY correct…and vice versa.

It’s good to (at least at first appearances) to finally see another “deep thinker” over simply the “thinkers” I’ve encountered here.

But…that is only my view,
phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com
Jay Brewer