Why Consciousness is a Problem for Evolutionists

“Every fact in the universe is in principle knowable and understandable by human investigators. Because reality is physical, and because science concerns the investigation of physical reality, and because there are no limits on what we can know of physical reality, it follows that all facts are knowable and understandable by us.”[1]  - John Searle MIT, 1992

    A great deal of scientific data has come to light in the 24 years since this was written that refutes this assertion. "A widely held view in contemporary scientific discourse is that the scientific method is capable of providing adequate explanations of all phenomena. This perspective called "scientism" rests on the unverifiable metaphysical assumption that all real phenomena are explainable in relationship to models and methods used in current science."[2] However, the dogmatic reductionist materialist paradigm that holds sway over much of the scientific community is nothing more than a “…metaphysical conjecture because it is a priori impossible to verify that all phenomena are explainable in the context of scientific theories."[3]

    Rather than being scientifically justifiable, materialism, and in its extreme form scientism, is used as a philosophical shield by dogmatic atheists to deny growing evidence for the immaterial realm. Proving the reality of personal immaterial consciousness and free will agency would refute the physicalist materialist paradigm. By acknowledging the evidence for immaterial substances such as consciousness, doors could be opened for reasoned discussions about the existence of a non-physical realm and the existence of a necessary, immaterial, uncaused "First Cause" Creator God.

Consciousness Defined

    How do materialists define consciousness? Many rival theories have been proposed, yet "…in spite of millennia of introspection, research and debate, there is still no compelling evidence for any single model of consciousness."[4] The very “…concept [of] ‘consciousness’ is notoriously ambiguous. The abstract noun ‘consciousness’ is not frequently used by itself in the contemporary literature, but it originally derives from the Latin con (with) and scire (to know).”[5]

     There are measurable, definable characteristics of consciousness which “...philosophers sometimes refer to conscious states as phenomenal or qualitative states. More technically, they often view such states as having qualitative properties called ‘qualia’ (singular, quale). There is significant disagreement over the nature, and even the existence, of qualia, but they are perhaps best understood as the felt properties or qualities of conscious states.”[6] The key debate between materialists and other thinkers is whether consciousness is a substance that is distinct from matter and energy, or merely phenomena produced by them.

a Priori Assumptions about Consciousness and Truth

    The power of the scientific method to increase our understanding of the physical world is undeniable, but scientists must grapple with "…the startling, totally counterintuitive, yet scientifically proven discoveries of physics reveal that our world, at its deepest level, is not built of tangible, discrete objects. Rather, when we look closely, we find that reality is as gossamer as a thought…closer to being an associate of ideas than a conglomeration of atoms."[7] "Recent decades have seen serious challenges to the conventional materialist paradigm by advances in the basic sciences including quantum mechanics, high energy physics, complexity theory and other domains.”[8] 

    In spite of these scientific advances, materialists are committed to restricting all inquiry and acquisition of knowledge to a set of metaphysical boundaries and tests:[9]

1. All facts of reality must be described in physical terms and qualities.[10]

2. All facts about reality phenomena must be discoverable through the scientific method, and be observable exclusively from the third-person perspective.[11]

3. All phenomena must be causally attributable to earlier events such that the entire universe could "in principle" be explained at any time t if all the motions and forces and preceding events were known. Therefore, no phenomena can be accepted as "real" that is causally linked to independent “Agents” or any other form of teleological “source”.[12]

    Yet, a committed materialist seeking the truth, no matter “where the evidence leads,” may well consider why there is so much resistance to examining any data not conforming to these self-imposed metaphysical boundaries. Imagine if Columbus had set out to discover a new route to India but refused to navigate through any waters that were not already mapped! Are these metaphysical limits on where the search for knowledge can be conducted really justified?

Consciousness from Matter Alone

    Beyond disputes about how to define consciousness, materialists face the larger issue of explaining its origins. Since materialists are almost universally adherents of evolutionary theory, their models must explain the origin of consciousness by way of random biological processes and cellular mutations. “A naturalistic expansion of evolutionary theory to account for consciousness would not refer to the intentions of a designer. But if it aspires to explain the appearance of consciousness as such, it would have to offer some account of why the appearance of conscious organisms, and not merely of behaviorally complex organisms, was likely.”[13]

When materialists appeal to a macroevolutionary process for the origin of consciousness, they make a flawed argument. The argument assumes that since macroevolution is "true" and consciousness could not exist before complex organisms evolved, it must have originated solely from physical matter and processes. This is a logically flawed modus-ponens argument that assumes the premises as true in order to prove the conclusion; namely, that evolutionary mechanisms to create consciousness are both known, and that no immaterial processes like consciousness were operative before evolution "created" them. But this argument leaves an unanswered question: What are those physical evolutionary processes? To date, no scientifically plausible explanation for the origin of consciousness from material processes has been offered.[14]

Five rival conjectures that explain the origin of consciousness have been circulated in the popular scientific literature by materialists of late. They are John Searle’s “Contingent Correlation,” Timothy O’Connor’s “Emergent Necessitation,” Philip Clayton’s “Pluralistic Emergentist Monism,” Colin McGinn’s “Mysterian Naturalism,” and David Skrbina’s Panpsychism.[15] All of these explanations for the emergence of consciousness have a serious flaw: they fail to meet the necessary criteria for scientific evaluation. Materialist models for the emergence of consciousness "…rely principally on conjecture about unsubstantiated mechanisms and constitute a priori metaphysical assumptions because they are not falsifiable using available empirical means.”[16] What is it about matter that requires the emergence of consciousness? Nothing. "No material thing presupposes or requires reference to consciousness for it to exist or be characterized."[17] Materialists are left with no mechanism to explain how consciousness emerged from purely material causes, only conjectures.

Materialist Ideology

    Materialist models of consciousness are also forced to equate all conscious events with brain functions and to assume that all subjective mental states are reducible to physical forces of biology and chemistry.[18] Thus, for any model to be considered "scientifically true" from a materialist perspective, all modes of consciousness and their effects (mental states) must have material properties, exhibit no teleological behaviors or characteristics, and have no dependency on consciousness preceding or logically antecedent to any behaviors or effects of Identity.[19] 

    Further, to validate any phenomena described in a model of consciousness, all properties of mental states must be accessible to third party observers.[20] These are ideological assumptions, rooted in an atheistic materialist worldview, not fact-based criteria for evaluating scientific data. "The assumption that linear cause-effect relationships exist between particular conscious states or experiences and discrete biological process is not only unverifiable using current research methods and technologies, but it cannot even potentially explain complex relationships that characterize consciousness in living systems.”[21] To conform to their ideological worldview, materialist models of consciousness must "…attribute mental state properties to physical substances that are unknown in any other context in science or metaphysics..."[22] to explain consciousness. 

    This constraint in their thinking defies logic and universally held facts from other scientific fields. "You will search in vain through physics or chemistry textbooks to find consciousness included in any description of matter. A completely physical description of the world would not include any terms that make reference to or characterize consciousness."[23]

Rethinking the Materialist Paradigm on Consciousness

A paradigm "…pre-figures the way a researcher "sees" and interprets phenomena related to consciousness. [This] significantly influences and constrains 'findings' that may be obtained using a particular research method and determines shared beliefs about valid ways to interpret the quality or relevance of findings and thus to assign significance to findings."[24] This dogmatic materialist paradigm denies consideration of promising research from other scientific disciplines and closes down discussion and debate in preference for conformity and political correctness.[25]

    Given the reductionist materialist paradigm chills free inquiry into promising areas of research, it should be openly challenged as unjustified and unscientific and a new paradigm should be considered. "A new paradigm contributes to the explanatory power of science when it provides a more complete and more accurate picture of causes of phenomena or descriptions of relationships between phenomena."[26] Some cognitive scientists realize this and acknowledge that "…future models of consciousness will not rely exclusively on empirical verification of strictly biological processes and will take into account both classically described biological processes…and non-classical physical phenomena, including the postulated role of macroscopic coherent quantum fields and quantum non-locality."[27] A very promising model of consciousness has been developed that deserves unbiased examination. That model is Substance Dualism. 

Consciousness Models and the Identity Test

"The substance dualism model attributes mental states to immaterial substance of the mind or the soul."[28] Immaterial mental states such as sensations, propositional attitudes or beliefs, and intentionality are necessarily distinct from physical brain states. Substance Dualism recognizes that attitudes, hopes, desires, fears, wishes, and beliefs toward a proposition cannot be the same thing as the proposition itself. Conversely, for materialist models of consciousness to be true, everything that is true for the physical brain must also be true for immaterial mental states. If characteristics of consciousness and material properties of the brain can be shown to differ in any way, then by the logical force of Leibniz's Law of Indiscernibility of Identicals, materialist models of consciousness would be logically invalidated.[29]  

Property Dualism as a Third Party Candidate

       As an alternative to Substance Dualism, and to avoid failing the Identity Test, materialists reframed their models of consciousness as "Property Dualism," which concedes that states of consciousness can be immaterial, but are properties of matter.[30]  Property Dualism acknowledges five immaterial characteristics of consciousness that are real and distinct from physical brain states. These are first-person awareness, immediate and private access to thoughts, private mental states that cannot be transferred, intentionality, and second order awareness (or, self-awareness).[31]  By reframing materialist models of consciousness as Property Dualism, the Identity Test is resolved, but by conceding that physical matter has immaterial properties, materialists violate their own a priori assumptions of what can be scientifically proven. First Person awareness and immediate and private access to thoughts violate their materialist premise that all knowledge and "knowing" must be accessible via third person observation. Intentionality as an immaterial characteristic of a mental process violates the materialist a priori assumption of causality, which states immaterial properties (such as attitudes) cannot operate upon material things (such as brain states).

      By conceding that mental states such as sensations, intuitions, beliefs, intentions and self-awareness are not the same thing as physical brain states, an additional problem arises for the materialist. What Property Dualism models fail to account for is that matter never exhibits characteristics of consciousness anywhere in the scientific literature.”[32] Due to self-imposed metaphysical restrictions within the materialist scientific community, no immaterial phenomena can be reported as scientific fact in order to support Property Dualism's premise that matter exhibits immaterial properties.

Free Agency, Causality, and Determinism

      "A challenging issue that must be addressed in any dualist model of consciousness is agency which refers to problems inherent in explaining interactions between the two fundamentally different kinds of things posited by dualism, namely physical and non-physical phenomena."[33] Materialists in the Property Dualism camp hold that conscious states are immaterial properties of physical brain states, but are somehow causally linked to physical matter. This forces Property Dualists to define all mental states as epiphenomenal properties of physical things. This means that all immaterial conscious activity is derived from and must be caused by something in the material world (such as the physical brain). However, this assumption is logically self-defeating because the materialist must also hold the contradictory position that immaterial states of consciousness are causally impotent and cannot interact with or "cause" anything to happen in physical reality.[34]  For the committed materialist, if immaterial things (such as free agency) were allowed to causally interact with material things, it would be tantamount to believing in the supernatural.

      On the other end of the materialist spectrum, Reductionist Physicalists reject Property Dualism and any form of immaterial substance. Therefore they reject the entire concept of free agency in any of its forms. "Contemporary scientific monist physicalist models of consciousness avoid the problem of agency by positing the existence of only brain processes and their correspondence to empirically verifiable mental states."[35] By their own definition, all actions, thoughts, sensations, and beliefs must be deterministic. "Determinism is the view that ….for every event that happens, there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could have happened. At any time t, there is only one physically possible future world that can obtain."[36]  To the Reductionist Physicalist, all our thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and sensations are merely responses to outside stimuli and biochemistry.

      When conducting experiments and evaluating data, scientists routinely evaluate data and accept the results of the experiment or reject them in favor of another hypothesis. How can this rational process of discovery and judgment coexist with determinism? To engage in rational thought required to observe, evaluate and judge, there must exist a "self" that has some degree of freedom and intentionally to hold thoughts and propositions from moment to moment during the course of an experiment. In a purely deterministic universe, it becomes "…self-refuting to argue that one "ought" to choose physicalism or property dualism on the basis of the fact that one should see that the evidence is good for physicalism or property dualism."[37]  

      Yet, in reality, scientists have self-awareness while mentally engaged in the scientific method; maintaining direct access to their own thoughts, which are private and privileged and must be self-reported (or published in a journal) for other scientists to learn. If all these mental processes are predetermined based on brain chemistry and prior external stimuli, there can be no "I" over and above those mental states expressing free agency to evaluate what "ought" to be done or judge what "should" be true or false.

       If the scientific and logical concept of "error" really exists, that presupposes a concept of accuracy. How can a materialist scientist who denies that mental processes are any different than chemical processes in the brain, in turn, identify with a concept such as truth or accuracy?[38]  A materialist who "believes" the proposition that materialism is absolutely true has no way to justify that belief.[39]  Whenever a materialist conducts scientific research, evaluates data, learns, and holds a belief or attitude about a scientific fact, they must temporarily suspend their own worldview in order to accept thoughts from their own private self-aware consciousness.

      Materialism must "borrow" from Substance Dualism, accepting that scientists operate as free agents while holding to a worldview that denies that immaterial, self-aware minds could possibly exist.

The Mind/Body Problem

      Materialists have made argument Substance Dualism is false because it offers no "operative mechanism" to explain the interaction between the physical brain and immaterial mind. While no physical mechanism has yet been identified to describe how the brain and the mind interact, Substance Dualism posits there is no intermediary mechanism to explain; interaction between the physical brain and the immaterial mind is immediate, without intervening mechanisms. "The puzzle of the mind-brain interface is not in the recording and biochemical storage of the incoming sensory data. Specific regions of the brain are well known to be devoted to the processing of speech and vision. The puzzle is in the replay. There is no hint in the brain of how you hear or see what you have heard or seen."[40]  "Applied to substance dualism, a person's soul or mind is not a property of his or her body, but a separate substance that bears properties (such as being alert) and interacts with the person's body."[41]

       This implies, and is acknowledged by some brain scientists, that memories and sensations are immaterial; they are processed by the physical brain, but not stored "in" the brain. The assumption that childhood memories or the sensation of eating cereal must have some physical grounding in our brains is not necessarily true. “The idea, advanced by several scientists, that specific memories are somehow stored in individual neurons is preposterous; if anything, that assertion just pushes the problem of memory to an even more challenging level: how and where, after all, is the memory stored in the cell?”[42] I identical biochemical reactions occur in different parts of the brain to process sounds and record sights. "And yet from this same chemistry emerge immeasurably different sensations of sight and sound. The location of that perception is the puzzle."[43]   

    Emerging brain research and even entire journals are now examining the nature of memory as 'non-local' phenomena. "At the physiological level, it appears that physical memory itself is not localized to one region of the brain (although memories may be processed within the hippocampus) but involves some sort of non-local distribution."[44]  In order for memories to be "non-local," they would also have to be "non-physical." This is where Materialists simply come undone regarding recent brain research.

Spatiotemporal Boundedness

    Self-consciousness is another mystery the physicalist cannot simply explain as brain chemistry. Bernard J. F. Lonergan presented a proof of God's existence that hinges on the existence of self-awareness. Dr. Spitzer, commenting on this proof, explains that an unrestricted act of understanding, which is an act of self-awareness, cannot be bound to physical dimensions. "The problem of "consciousness being inside itself" may be understood through human acts of self-consciousness. When I am aware of my awareness, my awareness is at once the understanding and the understood.”[45]  These two states of awareness exist at that same time "inside" a brain, which results in something like an infinite feedback loop outside the realm of physics.

    Self-awareness is a contradiction to materialists because they must explain it in entirely physical terms constrained by the laws of physics. When self-awareness is viewed solely as electro-chemical interactions between neurons in the brain, it cannot logically exist because the "thought" being processed inside the brain must traverse space at an infinite velocity (to get inside itself).[46]  Materialists must either disavow their own self-awareness or concede that self-consciousness is a causally active, immaterial process. In the same form as the Kalam Cosmological Argument, where a necessary uncaused "First Cause" must exist for physical creation to exist, Dr. Lonergan has argued for an uncaused "First Cause" of self-consciousness as a proof for the existence of an immaterial Creator. At least one self-existent consciousness must exist otherwise no conscious thing would ever exist.[47]

Using Good Grammar: First Person vs. Third Person

    The Substance Dualism model views self-consciousness as part of what defines identity, or person-hood. Thoughts and sensations are privileged (i.e. they are from a First Person) perspective and are in a sense "property" that is "owned" by the thinker. All access to those thoughts is totally private, and only accessible by introspection.[48] Materialists deny this, contending that "…there are no irreducible, privileged, First Person perspectives. Everything can be exhaustively described in an object language from a Third Person perspective."[49]  In practice, this definition breaks down, because when scientists conduct brain experiments, subjects must self-report what they are experiencing. This proves that all mental properties are actually self-presenting and that private to the person experiencing them -- even when scientists can measure associated brain activity. Physicalists have argued that "someday" they will have the ability to scan brains and read people's minds directly without having the subject self-report. However, this is not logically equivalent to First Person self-presentation of sensations and mental states. This "brain scanner," which does not exist yet, cannot create those mental events directly in the minds of third party observers.

    When a person is self-aware that a mental event has taken place and knows it with certainty, this is known as an incorrigible belief.[50]  The knowledge of having a thought, even if the object of that thought is imaginary, false, valid, or even ambiguous, can be certain in the mind of the person who had the thought. While incorrigible beliefs cannot be scientifically proven to be true, they cannot be scientifically disproven either. When materialists argue incorrigible beliefs cannot exist because they cannot be scientifically proven (through Third Person observation and physical measurements), they drive their own argument into a logically self-defeating ditch. To "know for certain" that no one can have an incorrigible belief is, in fact, also an incorrigible belief.

Personal Identity Over Time

    The mind must be coherent across physical brain state changes. A mental "self" must survive the life and death and replacement of brain cells, or even removal of part of the brain and body. While "…the materialist can only view a human being as a succession of discrete material states with no immaterial substance,"[51] unless the "self" is an enduring substance, there is no such thing as a singular discrete "mind" over time. If this is not true, no other properly held belief can be maintained. Concepts of morality, good, evil, responsibility, and "ought-ness" are only operative if the "self" survives across different mental states. "Traditional Christian theology, common sense, and various philosophical arguments unite to affirm that persons sustain absolute, real sameness through various kinds of change."[52]

Pointing to God

    The existence of a self-aware, enduring, immaterial substance that somehow transcends at least some of the limitations of physics and chemistry that resides in a small part in every sentient human being who has ever lived is a testimony to a greater Consciousness. "The Bible informs us, and Wald[53], Heisenberg[54], Schroedinger[55], Jeans[56], and Wheeler[57] have come to confirm, that wisdom (skeptics may wish to substitute here the scientifically acceptable term "information") is the substrate, the basis, of existence. Wisdom is as fundamental to our universe as are time and space."[58]  The logically self-defeating and ideologically indefensible assumptions of the atheistic materialist worldview reveal themselves for what they are: attempts to deny the obvious truth by hiding behind scientific terms and propositions that break down when applied to their own criteria. "The atheist's problem is rebellion against the plain truth of God, as clearly revealed in nature...This is not a loss of intelligence so much as a selective intellectual obtuseness or imperviousness to truths related to God, ethics, and human nature."[59]

    God seems to be present in human consciousness not only as the "Idea of complete Intelligibility," or as the "Ideal of Perfect Empathy," or as the "Ideal of Perfect Justice and Goodness," or as the "Quality of Perfect Beauty," but above all as the "invitation to a Perfect Home." While scientific papers can be written to try and deny there is a Creator who has made us for a relationship with Him, in the private access of each person's self-consciousness, it is likely many hope and even privately "incorrigibly know" this must be true.

For similar technical articles like this, see:

Faith or Materialism: Which is More Rational?

Can Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Theory Adequately Explain the Presence of Life?

Reality Must Necessarily Be "Created"

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[1] John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind, (Cambridge, MA; MIT Press, 1992), 11.

^[2] James Lake, MD, Toward a Model of Consciousness: Philosophical Problems and Questions Guiding a Way Forward, Journal of Nonlocality, Vol III, No 1, June 2014, 12.

^[3] Lake, 12.

^[4] S. Dehaene and J. Changeux, Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious Processing, Neuron, 70, April 28, 2011, 200.

^[5] Rocco Gennaro, Consciousness and Concepts An Introductory Essay, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14, No. 9–10, 2007, 2.

^[6] Gennaro, 3.

[7] Gerald L. Schroeder, God According to God: A Scientist Discovers We've Been Wrong About God All Along, (New York: HarperOne, 2010, 2009), 151.

[8] Lake, 4.

[9] James Porter Moreland. Consciousness and the Existence of God: A Theistic Argument. New York: Routledge, 2009, pp 24-36.  [summarized and synthesized]

[10] Moreland, Consciousness, 26.

[11] Moreland, Consciousness, 28.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 47.

[14] James Porter Moreland, The Soul: How We Know It's Real and Why It Matters (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2014), 94-96.  [synthesized]

[15] James Porter Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 231-238.  [summarized] 

^[16] Lake, 2.

[17] Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 231.

^[18] Lake, 9.  [paraphrased]

[19] Moreland, Consciousness, 25-26. [summarized] 

[20] Moreland, Consciousness, 26.  [paraphrased] 

^[21] Lake, 13-14.

[22] Douglas R. Groothuis, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2011), 395.

[23] Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 231.

^[24] Lake, 5-6.

^[25] Lake, 8-9.  [paraphrased]

[26] Lake, 4.

^[27] A. Vannini, Quantum Models of Consciousness, Quantum Biosystems, 2008, No. 2, 165.

[28] Groothuis, 395.

[29] Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 268.  [paraphrased]

[30] Moreland, The Soul, 118-119.  [synthesized]                      

[31] Moreland, The Soul, 77-78.  [summarized]

[32] Groothuis, 397. [paraphrased]

[33] Lake, 9.

[34] Moreland, The Soul, 74-76.  [synthesized and summarized]

[35] Lake, 10.

[36] Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 268.

[37] Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 243.

[38] Groothuis, 399.  [paraphrased]

[39] Ibid.

^[40] Schroeder, 152.

[41] Groothuis, 390.

[42] Robert Epstein, "The Empty Brain", Aeon, May 18, 2016. Accessed June 29, 2016. https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer

[43] Schroeder, p 152

[44] F. David Peat, "Non-locality in Nature and Cognition", accessed December 04, 2016, http://www.fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/essays/nat-cog.htm.

[45] Robert J. Spitzer, New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2010), 171.

[46] Spitzer, 171.  [synthesized]

[47] Spitzer, 244.

[48] Moreland, Consciousness, 31.  [paraphrased] 

[49] Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations, 239.

[50] Ibid., 235.  [summarized]

[51] Groothuis, 400.

[52] Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 286.

[53] George Wald, American Nobel laureate in Biology

[54] Werner Heisenberg, German Nobel laureate in Physics, one of the key pioneers of quantum mechanics.

[55] Erwin Schroedinger, Austrian Nobel laureate in Physics, who formulated the wave equation, and author of works in physics: statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, physics of dielectrics, color theory, electrodynamics, general relativity, and cosmology.

[56] Sir James Jeans, English physicist, astronomer and mathematician, He made important contributions in many areas of physics, including quantum theory, the theory of radiation and stellar evolution.

[57] John A. Wheeler, American theoretical physicist and best known for discovering the Breit-Wheeler process and coining such terms as "quantum foam", "neutron moderator", and "wormhole."

[58] Schroeder, 154-155.

^[59] James S. Spiegel, "The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief," (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2010), 56.