The Philosophy of Mind Quotes

“If Descartes is right, pinching yourself will not suffice to prove that you are awake. It may suffice, however, to prove something more philosophically momentous: that materialism is false.”
― Edward Feser, The Philosophy of Mind: A Short Introduction

“The same thing appears to be true where the debate over the existence of God is concerned. There are, of course, a number of standard objections to the traditional arguments for God’s existence. But there has also been in recent decades a great revival of interest among philosophers in the philosophy of religion in general and in the traditional theistic arguments in particular. Many contemporary philosophers of religion hold that the traditional arguments can be reformulated in a way that makes them immune to the usual objections, and that many of those objections rest in the first place on misunderstandings or even caricatures. So philosophically sophisticated is the work of these recent defenders of traditional religious belief, and so significant is the challenge it poses to atheistic naturalism, that the prominent atheist philosopher Quentin Smith has gone as far as to concede that “the great majority of naturalist philosophers have an unjustified belief that naturalism is true and an unjustified belief that theism (or supernaturalism) is false.” Smith’s view is not that these naturalistic philosophers are mistaken – as an atheist, he shares their naturalism – but rather that most of his fellow naturalists and atheists have not made a serious attempt to grapple with the powerful arguments that can and have been made for the other side, so that the level of confidence they have in the truth of their own position is unwarranted. The question of whether God exists is, in short, as live a philosophical issue as it ever was, and cannot reasonably be assumed to have been settled in a way that would provide support for a presumption in favor of naturalism and materialism.”
― Edward Feser, Philosophy of Mind: A Beginner's Guide