Assume naturalism about the human mind. Our best naturalistic account of the human mind is functionalism. But functionalism faces multiple too-many-minds problems. The most famous of these are the Chinese Room and its variants like Schwitzgebel’s consciousness of the United States argument. But a more troubling bevy of problems comes from abundant ontologies. Thus, as Dean Zimmerman noted (building on Unger), where I am there are many clouds of atoms that differ from me in an insignificant way—say, an atom in some insignificant skin cell. On functionalism, each of these clouds should have the same conscious states as I do. Or, as Johnston argued, I have many personites—temporal parts of my life that are intrinsically just like the life of a person could be. On functionalism, they will have the same conscious states as me. The clouds of atoms and personites are not just a consequence of functionalism but also of other naturalistic accounts of mind.
But why are the too-many-minds problems problems, beyond the fact that they are counterintuitive? After all, we have good reason to think that the mind is mysterious enough that the true theory will have some counterintuitive consequences.
I think the best answer is ethics. If a country has a person-level mind, then it would be a murder-suicide for the citizens to vote to dissolve the country. But it is not wrong for the citizens to vote to dissolve a country for, say, economic reasons. If the Zimmerman argument is right, then where there is a person feeling pain, there are many other beings with human-level consciousness feeling the same pain. But the number of being that coincide with a specific person rapidly increases with the size of the person—the more cells they have, the more clouds of atoms there are that differ with respect to a few insignificant atoms. Consequently, if we have a choice between relieving an equal pain in two smaller persons or one much larger person, we should always relieve the pain in the larger one, because the number of conscious atom clouds coinciding with the larger person is likely much larger than the total number of atom clouds coinciding with the smaller ones. In other words, crucial intuitions about equal treatment of people are undercut. Something similar is true on the Johnston arguments if the number of personites is finite, and if it’s infinite we have other ethical problems. On the other hand, there is no immediate serious ethical problem in saying the Chinese Room is conscious.
Given functionalism, I think there is only one way to block the ethically problematic too-many-minds cases: deny that the alleged entities exist. There are no countries. There is only one human-shaped cloud of atoms where I am. There are no personites. But we better not go all the way to blocking all complex objects—we will get other ethical problems if we conclude with the early Unger that humans don’t exist. In other words:
- If functionalism and ethical realism are true, restricted composition is true.
Restricted composition says that some but not all (proper) pluralities of atoms compose a whole. Note that (1) also applies to some other naturalistic theories than functionalism.
But it’s not enough that restricted composition be true. What we need is a carefully fine-tuned restricted composition. If we restrict composition too much, there will be no humans—and that’s ethically unacceptable. If we don’t restrict composition enough, there will be too many minds of an ethically problematic sort. In other words, restricted composition must be fine-tuned to fit with human ethics.
That’s difficult to do. For instance, van Inwagen’s life-account—that a plurality composes a whole if and only if it has a life together—has the problem that clouds of atoms that differ from me insignificantly have a life together just as I do.
Given naturalism, I think any restricted composition account that fits with ethics will involve seemingly arbitrary choices. Thus, one might start with van Inwagen’s account, but have an incredibly fine-grained account of what counts as “a life together” such that only one of the clouds of atoms nearly coinciding with me has a life together—namely, the cloud constituting me. But such a fine-grained account will have a ton of free parameters, and will be an implausible candidate for a metaphysically necessary account of restricted composition. Thus, the account will not only be fine-tuned but will likely be contingent.
How do we explain the fine-tuning of restricted composition for ethics? It’s hard to see how to do it other than by supposing that fundamental reality is value-driven. There are two main value-driven theories of fundamental reality: theism and axiarchism, where the latter is something like the view that reality must be for the best. Thus we have an argument for theism or axiarchism. And axiarchism, as Rescher noted, plausibly implies theism, since it’s for the best that there be a perfect being. So, either way, we get theism.
We can also run this argument in a Bayesian way. Assume naturalism about the earth ecosystem as a background belief, and assume as part of the background that the physical simples are arranged as they are. On atheism, it is extremely unlikely that composition is fine-tuned for ethics. On theism, it is at least moderately likely. So, we have significant evidence for theism.
Objection: God can’t control which cloud of atoms composes a whole, because whatever is the answer, the answer is metaphysically necessary.
Response: First, as noted above, it is likely that any ethically fine-tuned restricted composition theory has a bunch of parameters that appear contingent, and hence is likely contigent. Second, God is creator and has power over being itself. It seems quite plausible that where there is a bunch of particles God can lend his power to create an entity composed of the particles. Third, if God exists, likely modality itself is grounded in God—all reality necessarily reflects the goodness of God. But if so, then divine goodness may help to explain surprisingly good features of necessary truths, such as a fine-tuned but necessary theory of composition. Fourth, we don’t need to be certain of any of the above. All we need is that one of these stories is an order of magnitude more likely on theism than the fine-tuning of restricted composition is given naturalism (where the probabilities are all epistemic).
If my argument succeeds, it yields a dilemma:
- Either naturalism about humans is false or God exists.
One may ask whether some variant of the above fine-tuning argument applies if naturalism about humans is true. I expect it does, but the exact shape of the bump under the rug will be different for different non-naturalistic stories. For instance, on Cartesian theories, there will be the question of why there is exactly one soul per human body. On strong emergence, we can ask why consciousness arises in exactly one of the human-shaped clouds of atoms where I am.
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