Title

Searle's biological naturalism and the argument from consciousness

School/Department

Talbot School of Theology

Publication Date

1-1998

Abstract

In recent years, Robert Adams and Richard Swinburne have developed an argument for God’s existence from the reality of mental phenomena. Call this the argument from consciousness (AC). My purpose is to develop and defend AC and to use it as a rival paradigm to critique John Searle’s biological naturalism. The article is developed in three steps. First, two issues relevant to the epistemic task of adjudicating between rival scientific paradigms (basicality and naturalness) are clarified and illustrated. Second, I present a general version of AC and identify the premises most likely to come under attack by philosophical naturalists. Third, I use the insights gained in steps one and two to criticize Searle’s claim that he has developed an adequate naturalistic theory of the emergence of mental entities. I conclude that AC is superior to Searle’s biological naturalism.

Keywords

Swinburne, Richard G Adams, Robert Merrihew Searle, John R God -- Proof Theism Consciousness Naturalism

Publication Title

Faith and Philosophy

Volume

15

Issue

1

First Page

68

Last Page

91

DOI of Published Version

10.5840/faithphil19981513

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS