Models of the emergence of consciousness from a material substrate (whether weak or strong emergence—it won’t matter for this post) differ on how easy it is for consciousness to emerge. Functionalist or computationalist models make it relatively easy: as long as there is a functional isomorphism between a thing and a conscious thing, the former is conscious as well. Biological models, on the other hand, make it harder, by putting constraints on what kind of biological realization of a functional structure gives rise to consciousness.
It’s interesting to note that there the more permissive a model of consciousness is, the easier it is to tune the universe to get consciousness, and hence the better the response that can be given to fine-tuning arguments for theism or a multiverse. On the other hand, the more permissive a model, the greater the danger of skepticism from the fact that the buzzing atoms in a random rock have some sort of isomorphism to a human brain, and hence it is not clear that we have good reason to think we’re not rocks.
On the other hand, the more restrictive a model of consciousness is, the harder it is to tune the universe to get consciousness. On one extreme, you need brains to be conscious. But brains are a specific type of physical organ in DNA-based life forms, so you need life-forms rather like us to have consciousness, and the fine-tuning needed becomes more stringent. On the other hand, the more human-like that conscious things have to be the less skepticism we have to worry about.
Is there some kind of a Goldilocks zone in the range of theories of consciousness where the fine-tuning is not too onerous and skepticism is not an issue? I don’t know.
5 comments:
Professor, have you thought about reposting your blog topics on Substack? there is a ton of dialogue on Philosophy of Religion happening on that medium right now. Even if you didn't actively comment/respond to others there, your blog posts making the rounds over there could definitely influence the discussion. Not to mention you can have paid subscribers over there!
What's the advantage? (Apart from the paid subscribers, which is problematic for conflict of interest reasons.) It's all one Internet.
The substack format makes it so your posts would be easy to share and be commented on the platform and elsewhere. Your posts would reach a much larger audience and would generate a ton of discussion on the platform where the philosophy of religion discourse is flourishing. There is a hunger for good PoR content (and philosophy in general) on the format, your presence there would definitely be a postiive influence. Both for bringing people to Christ and for increasing the quality of popular philosophical dialogue. Rasmussen has recently joined the platform and has been quite active with it.
I hope that you will consider it.
Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm old and don't get it. Isn't sharing anything on the web just a matter of pressing ctrl+L, ctrl+C, switching to a different tab and pressing ctrl+V?
Sure there is nothing stopping anybody from Ctrl + C Ctrl + V 'ing your articles and sending them anywhere, but if you posted directly to substack, your articles would arrive on people's feeds automatically via an algorithm, and there are features embedded within Substack that makes sharing and quoting the article, including specific parts of your posts, incredibly easy. More people would see and comment on your blog posts. Your content would have a wider reach and a stronger influence in a forum where Philosophy of Religion is currently undergoing a golden age of discussion
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