Mind-Body & God
What is most noticeable on these pro & con theism sites is the reluctance to take up the mind-body problem:
Google: Plantinga & Quentin & mind-body: 18 hits, including:
Darwin, Mind and Meaning -- Alvin Plantinga
Furthermore, the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable (i.e., furnish us with a preponderance of true beliefs) on Darwin's dangerous idea is either low or inscrutable (i.e., impossible to estimate). But either gives the devotee of evolutionary naturalism a defeater for the proposition that his cognitive faculties are reliable, a reason for doubting, giving up, rejecting that natural belief. If so, then it also gives him a reason for doubting any beliefs produced by those faculties.
The Argument from Consciousness Refuted -- Conifer
Many Christian philosophers (e.g., Richard Swinburne) advocate a theistic argument which has begun of late to garner considerable popularity in the literature. The argument is one from human consciousness, i.e., it appeals to the phenomenon of human consciousness as its main premise. That phenomenon, so the argument goes, is somehow unlikely or perhaps even impossible on the assumption of atheism (or naturalism).
This latter quote sounds promising:
The Evolution of the Soul by Richard Swinburne (1997 rev.)
Oxford Professor of Religion Richard Swinburne defends substance dualism, a philosophically unpopular account of the mind as far as contemporary academic philosophy is concerned. The so-called "mind-body problem" provides the groundwork for this old philosophical argument, once shared by most of humanity before the secular age emerged. Simply put, substance dualism holds that the brain and the mind are separate entities regularly and causally interacting with each other.
OK, but it is a throwback to a very traditional form of dualism. I'm looking for something more open to new possibilities.
On the Web:
7/19/02