God and Phenomenal Consciousness: A Novel Approach to Knowledge Arguments

by Yujin Nagasawa

In God and Phenomenal Consciousness, Yujin Nagasawa bridges debates in two distinct areas of the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion. He proposes novel objections to Thomas Nagel's and Frank Jackson's well-known 'knowledge arguments' against the physicalist approach to phenomenal consciousness by utilizing his own objections to arguments against the existence of God. From the failure of these arguments, Nagasawa derives a unique metaphysical thesis, 'nontheoretical physicalism,' according to which although this world is entirely physical, there are physical facts that cannot be captured even by complete theories of the physical sciences.

Genres: Philosophy

178 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2008

About the author

Yujin Nagasawa is a British philosopher specialising in the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of mind and applied philosophy.

Reviews

[Dara Ghaznavi · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this thought-provoking book, Yujin Nagasawa provides a comparative analysis of "knowledge arguments" in the philosophy of mind and religion. Knowledge arguments, by definition, try to draw certain theological or metaphysical conclusions by comparing the size of knowledge simpliciter with a particular type of omniscience. While in the philosophy of religion their aim is to refute theism by showing that Divine omniscience does not include what actually there is to know, in the philosophy of mind they purport to downthrow physicalism by proving the existence of nonphysical knowledge. If there are things that are possibly knowable but God fails to know them (for example because of his being omnipotence), then the concept of omnipotent and omniscient God would be incoherent. On the other hand, if one can show that a person who knows all physical truths about the world still is ignorant with respect to certain facts, such as what is like to see red, then physicalism will fail.

Nagasawa, along with drawing similarities and differences between these arguments, rejects them all on more or less similar bases. He defends "nontheoretical physicalism", which is currently known as Russelian Monism, throughout the book. According to this thesis, while everything is physical, the intrinsic categorical nature of all physical entities (that eludes our physical sciences) is phenomenal. Galen Strawson, Phillip Goff, and Hedda Hasselmorch have recently made rigorous attempts to defend this Russellian Monism. It is noteworthy that Nagasawa does not intend to propose any form of theism in this particular work.

While, personally, I am not interested in Russelian Monism and find it problematic on several grounds; and while I prefer other physicalist responses to at least one of the arguments discussed, namely Jackson's "Mary" argument, I highly recommend this book to philosophy enthusiasts. That is mainly because of Nagasawa's careful and thorough examination of the subject and his ingenious insights into the easily overlooked niceties in epistemology and metaphysics. Step by step, all the arguments, objections, and responses are criticized in this book, and barely any concept is left unexplained or vague. My 4-star rating goes to this valuable work.

[Liam Marsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short introduction to problems concerning knowledge: I am laying my cards out here, but I find analytical philosophy allow is speculative. I will say, the chapters on Bat in a Vat where informative and helpful- but Nagaswa throws away classical theism to combat the Theological defeaters, and if you hold to a posterior physicalism, the Jackson's Mary Argument just falls apart (I tend towards a Christian physicalism that's a posterior).