My father loves going for walks. He ponders the profound questions that plague the thinking man. On one of these walks, he decided to visit the famous Speakers Corner in London. It is known for its loud and heated discussions about man, life and the universe, including politics and all sorts of conspiracies. It is a place for unfettered free speech, where anyone and everyone can say almost what they want in any way they want. The corner usually witnesses theological and philosophical debates centred on God’s existence. The day my father visited the corner he was listening to a discussion about whether or not we have good reasons to believe in the Divine. My father interrupted the discussion and told them, “If you reject God, you deny yourself.” When my father told me this story, I didn’t really understand the implications of what he said. However, fast-forward a few decades, I would like to expand on his profound wisdom in this chapter.

My father was trying to tell the crowd that since we have an awareness of who we are (and what we feel), it is a sign that God exists. In a broad sense, what my father was referring to was phenomenal consciousness; in simple terms, the fact that we have inner subjective experiences. Phenomenal consciousness relates to our ability to have an inner subjective awareness of what it is like to experience a particular conscious state. For example, when I eat my favourite chocolate or when I listen to a recitation of the Qur’an, I am aware of that internal experience, and I can appreciate what it is like to be in that conscious state. However, no one else can access what it is like for me to have those subjective experiences. Of course, other people will have their own perspectives of chocolate and the recitation of the Qur’an, but they will never truly experience or comprehend what I feel during those experiences.

Even if you were to know everything about my physical brain, you would not be able to find out what it is like for me to have a particular experience, whether drinking orange juice, staring at a beautiful sunset or falling in love. The main reason for this is that neuroscience is mostly a science of correlations. Neuroscientists observe brain activity and correlate that activity with what the participants report they are conscious of. However, these correlations can never tell us anything about what it is like for participants to be in a given state of consciousness; it can only tell us when it occurs. You may argue that a participant may provide neuroscientists with first-person data by describing his or her subjective experience, thereby answering the question. Nonetheless, this is not an answer, because even if someone uses words like ‘cold’, ‘painful’, ‘sweet’, ‘beautiful’ and ‘sad’, they can never tell us what it is like to have those experiences and feelings. Words are vehicles for meaning and experience, but we must go beyond words to fully understand the conscious experience of another. Another elusive aspect of internal conscious experiences is why subjective experiences arise from non-conscious biological and physical processes. Why does a unique internal experience arise from non-conscious matter? This is another important question in the philosophy of the mind and neuroscience. The issues I have introduced so far form what academics call the hard problem of consciousness. This has remained unresolved, despite having sparked many heated debates on the nature of who we are and our conscious experiences. Research fellow Daniel Bor states the problem in the following way:

“There are a lot of hard problems in the world, but only one gets to call itself ‘the hard problem’. That is the problem of consciousness—how 1300 grams or so of nerve cells conjures up the seamless kaleidoscope of sensations, thoughts, memories and emotions that occupy every waking moment… The hard problem remains unresolved.”190.

The very fact that we have internal subjective conscious experiences can only be explained by the existence of an All-Aware Being. This Being created the physical universe with conscious creatures, and gave them the ability to be aware of their internal subjective experiences. Other explanations fail from the onset—for instance, a cold, materialistic view on the universe offers no hope for a solution to the problem. Imagine in the beginning of the universe all you had were simple arrangements of matter, and after a long period of time, they rearranged themselves into human beings to form consciousness. This sounds like magic, because matter is cold, blind and non-conscious, so how can it be responsible for such a phenomenon? It cannot. For example, I cannot give you £10 if I do not have it. Likewise, matter cannot give rise to consciousness if it does not contain it or have the potential to give rise to it. You may argue that I can earn the money and then give it to someone; likewise, matter can somehow ‘earn’ consciousness via some complex process. This is false, because an individual non-conscious process plus another individual non-complex process still equal two non-conscious processes. It is like trying to turn a piece of iron into wood: no matter how you manipulate the iron, it will never turn into wood, even if you add more iron.

The scope of this chapter is to deconstruct the popular explanations for the hard problem of consciousness and explain how a theistic approach, and by extension God’s existence, provides a far better explanation. I will also bring to light that this is not an issue for which ‘science will eventually give us the answers’, because even if we were to know everything about the brain and insist on referring solely to biological, materialist (or even non-theistic philosophical) explanations, we will still not answer the hard problem of consciousness.

More about the hard problem.

By their own admission, the issue of consciousness has caused many academics unsolvable problems, especially those who are excessively dogmatic in their materialistic approach. In his book Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist, Professor Christof Koch openly admits:

“How the brain converts bioelectrical activity into subjective states, how photons reflected off water are magically transformed into the percept of an iridescent aquamarine mountain tarn is a puzzle. The nature of the relationship between the nervous system and consciousness remains elusive and the subject of heated and interminable debates… Explaining how a highly organized piece of matter can possess an interior perspective has daunted the scientific method, which in so many other areas has proved immensely fruitful.”191.

These unresolved problems do not concern the physical makeup of the brain and how we can correlate some conscious states with brain activity. If I am experiencing pain, some sort of activity in my brain indicates that I am experiencing pain. No one is denying that the physical brain and consciousness are related, but I must stress here, it is just a relationship. The brain and consciousness is not the same thing. Take the following analogy into consideration: the brain is the car, and consciousness is the driver. The car will not move without the driver, and the driver will not be able to start the car—or use it properly—if it is damaged or broken. However, they are both different and independent in some way.

What are the problems that specialists in the field are trying to address, and why are the brain and consciousness not the same thing? The answer to these questions lies in what is known as the hard problem of consciousness. The hard problem of consciousness concerns the fact that we have internal subjective experiences. In other words, the problem is that we cannot explain what it is like for a particular organism to have a subjective conscious experience in terms of the third-person language of science. Professor David Chalmers, who popularised the phrase the hard problem of consciousness, explains:

“The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information processing, but there is also a subjective aspect… This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a physical field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion; and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience… If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of ‘consciousness’, an organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state.”192.

Professor Torin Alter adds another dimension to the definition of the hard problem of consciousness, by focusing on the inability to answer why physical brain processes produce conscious experience:

“As I type these words, cognitive systems in my brain engage in visual and auditory information processing. This processing is accompanied by states of phenomenal consciousness, such as the auditory experience of hearing the tap-tap-tap of the keyboard and the visual experience of seeing the letters appear on the screen. How does my brain's activity generate those experiences? Why those and not others? Indeed, why is any physical event accompanied by conscious experience? The set of such problems is known as the hard problem of consciousness… Even after all the associated functions and abilities are explained, one might reasonably wonder why there is something it is like to see letters appear on a computer screen.”193.

Let me simplify the above definitions with an example. Say you were to eat a strawberry. Scientists and philosophers would be able to find correlations in the brain that indicate that you are eating something, maybe even the fact that you are eating a piece of fruit, and whether or not you find it tasty or sweet by asking you to describe your conscious experience. Nevertheless, they could never find out or examine what it is like for you to eat a strawberry, or what tastiness or sweetness mean and feel for you, and why you have had that particular subjective experience of eating a strawberry arising from physical processes.

It is important to note that the issue at hand is not merely an epistemic one; it is not due to a lack of understanding neurobiology or not being able to understand what it is like for someone to have an inner subjective conscious experience just by observing neurobiological happenings. Rather, it is an ontological problem; it concerns the source and nature of phenomenal experience. The nature of the physical (in this case, neurobiology) and subjective consciousness are completely different. Not being able to find out what it is like for someone to have a subjective conscious experience, and not knowing how these experiences arise from physical processes, raises the following metaphysical questions: What is the nature of conscious experience? What is the ultimate source of these experiences?.

Addressing the failed approaches.

A range of competing approaches attempt to explain the phenomenon of consciousness and its hard problem. These approaches include biological, materialist and non-materialist explanations. I will attempt to discuss why they do not address the hard problem of consciousness, and why a theistic approach provides the best explanation. In other words, God’s existence provides a rational basis to answer the questions philosophers and neuroscientists have been unable to answer.

Biological approaches.

Let us first address why biological explanations have failed. Some of these attempts include Francis Crick and Christof Koch’s Toward a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness, Bernard Baars’s Global Workplace theory, Gerald Elderman’s and Giulio Tononi’s The Dynamic Core theory, Rodolfo Llinas’s Thalamocortical Binding theory, Victor Lamme’s Recurrent Processing theory, Semir Zeki’s Microconsciousness theory and Antonio Damasio’s The Feeling of What Happens theory. Although it is not the purpose of this chapter to discuss the technicalities and shortcomings of these empirical theories (because they all have philosophical implications and assumptions, which are addressed below), none of them comprehensively addresses the hard problem of consciousness. Professor David Chalmers explains the failure of the biological approaches in addressing the hard problem of consciousness. In his book The Character of Consciousness, he 145.

mentions five perilous strategies that have been adopted194:

1. The first strategy is to explain something else. Researchers simply admit the problem of experience is too difficult for now. Koch openly admits this failed strategy. In a published interview, he confessed: “Well, let's first forget about the real difficult aspects, like subjective feelings, because they may not have a scientific solution. The subjective state of play, of pain, of pleasure, of seeing blue, of smelling a rose—there seems to be a huge jump between the materialistic level, of explaining molecules and neurons, and the subjective level.”195.

2. The second strategy is to deny the hard problem of consciousness. It is to decide that we are zombies, with only an illusion of free will. This strategy describes the human reality as a biological machine with no subjective experience. In other words, it ignores the problem and redefines what it means to be human.

3. The third strategy claims that subjective experience is explained by understanding the physical processes in our brain. However, this sounds like magic. Conscious experience somehow emerges without any explanation. The question, how do these processes give rise to an inner subjective experience?

is never answered. Furthermore, understanding physical processes tells us nothing about what it is like for a person to have a particular internal conscious experience.

4. The fourth strategy is to explain the structure of experience. This strategy tells us nothing of why experience exists in the first place, and just by explaining the structure of experience, it provides us with no answers to what it is like for a person to 146

have unique experiences.

5. The fifth strategy is to isolate the substrate (the underlying basis or layer) of experience. This strategy aims to isolate the neural basis for experience by understanding certain processes. However, this strategy does not explain what it is like to have an internal conscious experience, why it emerges from these processes and how.

Enter the philosophy of mind.

Now we are in a position to address how philosophers of the mind explain consciousness in a way that attempts to address the hard problem. An important note to add here is that scientific theories have implied philosophical assumptions. Therefore, addressing the philosophical theories will also address the empirical theories. Professor Antti Revonsuo makes this point clear:

“However, it is useful also for empirical scientists to be aware of the different philosophical alternatives, because every empirical theory also necessarily involves some sort of implicit philosophical commitments… The overall empirical approach that a scientist takes to consciousness is guided by his prior philosophical commitments or intuitions about the nature of science and the nature of consciousness, whether he is aware of such commitments or not.”196.

Professors Ricardo Manzotti and Paolo Moderato also highlight that the neurosciences are “not metaphysically innocent”197 and that “empirical data needs to be interpreted from the perspective of some premise.”198.

None of the various philosophical attempts to explain consciousness are comprehensive enough to challenge the theistic alternative. These attempts can be broadly categorised as materialist or physicalist, and non-materialist. Below is a brief account of these attempts and an explanation of why they have failed.

Materialistic approaches.

Echoing other researchers and academics, the terms physicalism and materialism will be used interchangeably.199 200 Although they have separate histories and some conceptual differences201, these do not pose a problem to the concepts dealt with in this chapter. The two terms mean that consciousness can be explained by the physical sciences, but do not always imply that conscious states must be equated to bits of matter.

Physical facts are not all the facts!.

Before I get into all the materialist approaches, I would like to explain how physicalism and materialism in general are undermined by Frank Jackson’s powerful Mary argument. Here is a summary of it: Mary has lived in a black and white room all her life and acquires information about the world via black and white computers and televisions. In her room, Mary has access to all of the scientific objective information about what happens when humans see physical phenomena. She knows everything about the science related to perceiving objects with the human eye. Yet, she is unaware of what it is like to see colours. One day she is allowed to leave the room. The moment she opens the door she looks at a red rose, and experiences the colour red for the first time. She only appreciates the colour red the moment she sees it.202 Her knowledge about all the physical facts concerning visual perception and colours did nothing to prepare her for the new experience of seeing red. She did not know what it was like to see a red rose by learning the physical facts, she only knew what that experience was like the moment it occurred.

Chalmers provides the following premises to show that the Mary argument renders materialism unable to solve the hard problem of consciousness:

1. Mary knows all the physical facts.

2. Mary does not know all the facts.

3. The physical facts do not exhaust all the facts.203.

Chalmers’s argument here shows that knowledge of the physical world will not lead to knowledge of subjective conscious reality—for example, what it is like to see red. This seems to undermine materialism. Chalmers generalises the argument in the following way:

1. There are truths about consciousness that are not deducible from physical truths.

2. If there are truths about consciousness that are not deducible from physical truths, then materialism is false.

3. Materialism is false.204.

Physicalism and materialism do not explain subjective.

consciousness because knowledge of the physical brain does not lead to an understanding of a subjective experience, and why that experience emerges from brain activity. Materialism is inadequate, because there are facts about consciousness that cannot be deduced from physical facts.

The Mary argument has generated interesting objections. One objection argues that it is not possible to identify what Mary would know if she acquired all of the physical facts. This objection misunderstands the Mary argument. It assumes that the Mary argument is focused on what it is like to know all the physical facts. However, the argument is focused on Mary’s inability to know what it is like to see red if she never had the experience of seeing red. Therefore, any objection to the Mary argument must focus on what Mary gains by seeing red and not what she would know if she had all the physical facts.

Another objection is the Ability Hypothesis. This hypothesis asserts that Mary does not gain any new knowledge, but only acquires new abilities. For example, when someone learns how to ride a bike they are not learning new things about the bike, they simply acquire the ability to ride it. This objection is considered inadequate. If Mary can gain new abilities when she leaves the room, then it is also possible that she gains new facts that she did not have prior to leaving the room. When someone learns how to ride a bike, they do not only acquire the ability to do so, they also gain new facts. For example, if someone is riding downhill fast, they will eventually learn not to constantly use the brakes as this will cause the rims to overheat. For a controlled descent, the brakes must be gently squeezed with around two second pulses. Professor Brian Loar’s objection provides a strong challenge to the Mary argument. Loar argues that Mary does not acquire new knowledge about red, only a new way of conceptualising what she already knew about the colour. This strategy declares that there is only one property that can give rise to distinct concepts of that property. These concepts are physical-functional concepts and phenomenal concepts (concepts that refer to subjective experience). So, when Mary saw red for the first time, she was not experiencing a new property and learning new facts about it. She was experiencing a different way of conceptualising what she already knew. Prior to leaving the room, she recognised the property of red in physical-functional terms. However, when she left the room, she acquired a new way of recognising the physical property of red in phenomenal terms. Mary can only acquire phenomenal concepts when she sees red, because these concepts come about only by seeing the colour red.205 The main problem with Loar’s strategy is that it is based on the assumption that we can acquire phenomenal concepts from observing physical properties. However, this begs the question: How can our brains, while we experience the conscious state of observing a physical-functional property, acquire a phenomenal concept? Loar does not provide any adequate answer. The non-physicalist will then state that the Mary argument holds its ground because it provides an answer to that fundamental question: we gain phenomenal concepts because things (including ourselves) contain physical and phenomenal properties. In summary, to claim that phenomenal concepts can arise from a physical property is inadequate to explain the knowledge one gains from experiencing a subjective conscious experience.206

There are other reasons why Loar’s phenomenal concept strategy is not decisive. For detailed discussions and responses to Loar’s account, please refer to Michael Tye’s Consciousness Revisited: Materialism Without Phenomenal Concepts207, Erhan Demircioglu’s Physicalism and Phenomenal Concepts208, Karol Polcyn’s Brian Loar on Physicalism and Phenomenal Concepts209 and David Chalmers’s essay, Phenomenal Concepts and the Explanatory Gap210.

The academic literature on the Mary argument is also vast, with compelling arguments supporting and challenging physicalism. This is not the space to explore the literature on the topic. However, the academic discussions do not conclusively undermine what has been presented in this section.

‘Let’s ignore the problem’: Eliminative materialism Eliminative materialists assume everything can be explained via physical processes, and do not accept that subjective conscious states exist. They argue that the brain is made up of neurons undergoing physical and chemical processes; therefore, explaining these complex processes will somehow explain consciousness.211 Eliminative materialists assert that the ideas of ‘folk psychology’ we have developed to describe subjective consciousness (due to the current lack of solutions provided by the physical sciences) will be made redundant when neuroscience has “matured”212. This is when neuroscience will replace subjective consciousness with “neural activity in specialized anatomical areas”.213. In summary, science will one day explain what we call subjective consciousness; therefore, the hard problem will be solved.

Echoing the eliminative materialist approach, the analytical philosopher Patricia Churchland asserts that the apparent question of subjective consciousness will be demystified when we improve our scientific knowledge. Churchland argues the hard problem of consciousness should not be distinguished from other problems in neuroscience. The reason, according to Churchland, is that researchers have an array of problems that are unaddressed, and to argue that they will never be solved seems unreasonable. Just because the hard problem is described as mysterious or a difficult challenge to physicalism does not mean that it will never have a scientific solution. Churchland refers to the history of science in support of her arguments. History shows that science has solved many ‘hard problems’, indicating that the hard problem of consciousness will also be solved.214

However, physical and chemical processes tell us nothing about what it is like for a particular conscious being to have an internal subjective experience. This implies that, for the eliminative materialist, inner subjective experiences are just an illusion. In other words, proponents of this view do not really accept the hard problem of consciousness, because they claim that matter and physical processes are all that is required to explain anything. Nevertheless, matter and physical processes cannot tell us anything about what it is like to have an inner subjective conscious experience. Furthermore, matter cannot explain the emergence of subjective conscious experience because matter is cold, blind and non-conscious. Something cannot give rise to anything unless it contains that thing in the first place or has the ability to give rise to it. Matter and physical processes are non-conscious and therefore cannot give rise to subjective conscious experience as they do not contain it. Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit maintain that the eliminative materialist’s claim—that the history of science has shown that a physicalist language will replace our primitive folk psychology—does not logically follow. The basis of their argument is that it is unreasonable to reject the conclusions of a theory due to the potential discovery of another theory that may have greater explanatory scope and power. It could be that the claims of the ‘weaker’ theory are still true despite a scientifically better way of explaining the same phenomena. Jackson and Pettit use the kinetic theory of gases as an example. The kinetic theory of gases studies “the microscopic behavior of molecules and the interactions which lead to macroscopic relationships”.215 This theory uses statistical analysis to provide accurate “results for macroscopic manifestations of microscopic phenomena”. (Ibid) Jackson and Pettit postulate that if a hypothetical “Super Kinetic” theory provided non-statistical, deterministic calculations of the “exact position, mass, velocity, and size of every gas molecule” it would not provide a basis to reject the fact that gases have temperature and pressure.216 The reason is that the super kinetic theory does not contain “information that supports the relevant part of the old theory.”217 Jackson and Pettit summarise their argument:

“And yet no reductive reductive identifications of temperature and pressure with fundamental properties of the super kinetic theory are possible. Temperature, for instance, is not the mass, velocity, or position of any individual molecule. There will be no isomorphism even by the most relaxed standards between gas laws framed in terms of temperature, pressure, and volume and the laws framed in terms of mass, position, and velocity of molecules of the super kinetic theory. The basic taxonomic principles of the two theories are very different.”218

In light of this, eliminative materialism is not an adequate explanation of the hard problem of consciousness as it ignores what requires explaining in the first place. The conclusions of eliminative materialism can be reduced to the following absurdity: we do not have inner subjectivity. However, our ability to have inner subjective experiences is a first-person fact; it is ludicrous to deny it.

Eliminative materialism became popular with the philosopher Daniel Dennet when he published his book, Consciousness Explained. In this heavily criticised book, he redefined consciousness by ignoring what requires explaining: our subjective conscious states. According to Dennet, we have no real personal subjective experiences; we are simply biological robots. In other words, we are zombies with the illusion of subjective experience. Criticism of Dennet’s approach, also known as Multiple Drafts theory, has been summarised by Professor Antti Revonsuo in his book, Consciousness: The Science of Subjectivity:

“Dennet’s theory has been heavily criticized because it seems to redefine ‘consciousness’ in such a way that the term comes to mean something very different from what we originally set out to explain. Dennet’s famous 1991 book is titled ‘Consciousness Explained’, but many felt it should have been called ‘Consciousness Explained Away’. What most people wanted to find an explanation for is phenomenal consciousness, qualia and subjectivity, but Dennet dismisses them as mere illusions.”219.

‘Subjectivity exists, but it’s just matter’: Reductive materialism Reductive materialism asserts that there is a knowledge-gap between physical processes and subjective conscious experiences. However, they maintain that the gap can be explained within a materialistic philosophy. Proponents of this view assert that subjective conscious experience exists, but is not distinct from physical processes. The basis for their arguments is that there is a link between certain activities in the brain and certain experiences of consciousness; therefore, consciousness can be reduced to physical processes. Reductive materialism, unlike eliminative materialism, accepts that subjective consciousness exists, but can be reduced to physical happenings in our brains. In this way, subjective consciousness is identical with neurochemical activity.220 Although there is currently no way of reducing all subjective conscious states to physical phenomena, reductive materialism is based on the expectation that neuroscience will follow the other sciences in that old terms, such as ‘heat’, will have been replaced with ‘the science of mean kinetic energy of molecules’. Similarly, neuroscience may replace words like ‘love’ with a neurochemical equivalent. In essence, “consciousness is nothing over and above a complex set of neural activities going on in our brain”.22.

This view is not an adequate explanation for subjective conscious states, because it is based on the assumption that subjective experiences are real, but will be explained in the future by developments in neuroscience. Essentially, reductive materialism argues that subjective conscious states will be reduced to physical brain states. This does not solve the hard problem of consciousness. It is impossible to know what it is like for a particular organism to experience a subjective state simply by observing a bunch of neurons firing. Reductive materialism also doesn’t explain the source of conscious experience. Neurobiology and subjective experience are completely different. Simply explaining that consciousness emerges from non-conscious physical processes is not adequate. Just like the eliminative materialists, reductive materialists cannot solve the hard problem. The inner subjective realities of the human being are once again being ignored. Professor Revonsuo explains:

“Still, it seems clear that to talk about neural firings, activations and deactivations in different brain areas or oscillatory synchrony in neural assemblies is not at all the same thing as talking about feelings of pain, sensations of colour, passionate emotions or inner thoughts—and never will be. What is being left out is, first and foremost, the subjective aspect of the conscious mental events.”222

The difference between eliminative materialism and reductive materialism is quite subtle. Eliminative materialism argues that subjective consciousness is an illusion and does not exist. According to this approach, the illusion of subjective consciousness is nothing more than neurons firing. Reductive materialism accepts that subjective consciousness exists, but maintains that it is nothing more than physical activity in the brain. Both fail to address the first-person fact of subjective consciousness.

‘It’s what you do’: Behaviourism Another approach that shares the conclusions of eliminative materialism is behaviourism. Behaviourism postulates that consciousness is defined in behavioural terms. Behaviourists assert that a person only has a certain conscious state if it can be verified by that person’s behaviour (for example, Susan is in pain if, after being struck with something, she cries ‘ouch!’). Behaviourism denies subjective conscious experience, and defines consciousness as the way we act rather than the way we are. This approach denies the hard problem of consciousness because it fails to acknowledge that humans can have mental states without displaying any behaviour. As the philosopher David Lund argues, we cannot dismiss the fact that we do experience inner subjective states that are not always revealed via our behaviours.223

Behaviourism makes a conscious state identical to a physical state. The problem with this approach is that it ignores the fact that it is the conscious state that causes the behaviour. For example, it is the pain that provokes Susan to say ‘ouch!’, so pain and saying ‘ouch!’ are not identical to each other.

‘Just a bunch of inputs, mental states and outputs’: Functionalism Functionalists postulate that consciousness is defined as the functions or roles it plays, emerging from a set of relations within an organism or system, just like a computer. A function is defined as a relation of inputs, mental states and outputs. For example, if I see my bus arriving (input), I experience the mental state of worrying that I may be late due to the possibility of missing my bus (mental state); I then run towards the bus stop (output). Functionalists assert that consciousness is similar to a computer program, which arises from complex patterns within the brain.224 Functionalism has faced a number of objections.225

One of these is that functionalism is unable to consider subjective conscious states because they cannot be understood functionally.226 It does not follow that just by knowing all of the inputs, mental states and outputs we will somehow know what it is like for a particular organism to experience a mental state. I can understand that when someone sees a dangerous dog running towards them (input), they will experience fear (mental state), they will inevitably run for safety (output). However, by knowing the relations between the input, mental state and output, I am no closer to understanding what it is like for that person to be in a particular mental state. It also tells me nothing about how and why mental states arise from the set of relations. Referring back to the above example, I cannot know what it is like for someone else to experience the feeling of being threatened by a dangerous animal. Understanding how mental states relate to inputs and outputs does not give rise to knowing what it is like to be in that mental state.

Many academics maintain that despite its popularity, functionalism does not carry much weight as a solution to the hard problem of consciousness.227.

‘It’s in the complexity’: Emergent materialism.

This idea is based on the concept of emergence. Emergence occurs when things become arranged in such a way that they transform into complex entities and have complicated causal relationships from which new phenomena appear.228 There are two types of emergent materialism: the strong and the weak.

The weak form asserts that we will eventually understand subjective consciousness once all of the complex physical processes are understood. The weak form may explain how consciousness emerges from physical processes, but it does not follow that it will lead to knowledge of what it is like for a conscious organism to have an inner subjective experience. Will the mystery of subjective consciousness disappear once we have understood how it emerges from all of the complex physical processes? If it does, then it seems to be denying what requires explaining in the first place. If subjective consciousness remains, then emergent materialism suffers from the same problems as reductive materialism; subjective consciousness may have a physical basis without telling us anything about what it is like to have these subjective conscious experiences.229

A variant of weak emergent materialism maintains that we will never understand all of the physical processes that underpin subjective consciousness. However, theoretically speaking, if we were ever to have a perfect understanding of how the brain works, we could understand subjective consciousness. This form of weak emergent materialism does not explain anything at all. In the context of the argument presented in this chapter, accepting an explanation that actually explains the hard problem of consciousness is more rational than accepting an approach that does not.

The strong form of emergent materialism argues that subjective consciousness is a natural phenomenon; however, any physicalist theory that attempts to address its reality is beyond the capacity of the human intellect. This form of emergence argues that we can get a new phenomenon X from Y, without knowing how X emerges from Y. Strong emergent materialism maintains that we can get something new from the complex physical processes, but the gap in our understanding of how this new thing emerges will never be closed. This approach does not explain the hard problem of consciousness, as it admits that it cannot be explained. In my view this is no different to saying, “It just happens. It is so complex that no one knows.” Revonsuo argues that strong emergent materialism will never be able to address subjective consciousness, and even if we were to be given the correct theory, it “would equal what hamsters could make of Charles Darwin’s Origins of Species if a copy was placed in their cage.”230 Since we are trying to explain the hard problem of consciousness, dismissing subjective consciousness as a mystery does nothing to prevent a rational person from accepting an approach that actually does coherently explain it. Will science eventually explain subjective consciousness? As seen from the above materialist approaches, the main argument is that a scientific explanation will someday close the current gap in our knowledge. This approach, however, does not provide an adequate explanation of consciousness, as I believe it is a form of the ‘science of the gaps’ fallacy. If we examine the scientific method and the philosophy of science, we will understand that subjective consciousness is beyond the reach of science. The previous successes of science stemmed from the fact that they were able to observe new phenomena or provide new theoretical models that explained existing observable data. The likeness of a particular conscious organism cannot be understood by science. Scientists are limited to the observations they have, because science is “forced to restrict its attention to problems that observations can solve”.

231 Since it is impossible to observe subjective consciousness (first-person perspective) from the perspective of the third person, science cannot address subjective consciousness. As mentioned before, even if we were to know everything about the brain we would still not be able to address the hard problem of consciousness. Brain activity only indicates that something is happening, not what it is like for that something to happen. Even if all of the neurochemical activity were mapped out in someone’s brain and correlated with first-person accounts of his or her subjective experience, science would be unable to determine that particular person’s experience or why it results from physical processes.

Even if, ten years from now, a new scientific theory or biological explanation for consciousness is developed, it would still not be able to determine what it is like for a person to have a subjective experience, or why that particular subjective experience emerges from physical processes. Subjective conscious experience is outside of the scope of a scientific explanation. In light of the above, materialistic attempts to explain consciousness fail comprehensively. The neurophysiologist John C. Eccles aptly summarises this failure: “I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism….”232.

Non-materialistic approaches These approaches admit that the.re is more to reality than matter. This is a view that Islam, and theism in general, recognises. We are more than matter and energy; there is a spiritual component to our existence. However, several of these strategies aim to explain consciousness without admitting, or invoking, the existence of God. I will criticise these and explain how theism provides the most rational way of explaining consciousness.

‘They’re different, but we do not know how’: Substance Dualism.

Substance dualism is the view that there are two different substances: one is physical and the other is non-physical. These substances are fundamentally distinct and exist independently of each other. In the context of our discussion, substance dualism maintains that consciousness and the brain are different and are not from the same substance; one is material and the other immaterial, yet they interact with each other. This account of consciousness is very intuitive, making sense of our everyday experiences. For instance, we experience that conscious states can cause physical states, and vice versa. If I have the subjective conscious experience of sadness, it can cause the physical state of frowning or crying. On the converse side, if I bump my head on an object, I will feel the inner subjective experience of pain. A key objection to substance dualism is that since conscious states and the brain are radically different, then knowing how they interact is impossible. This is known as the interactionist problem; there is— according to some philosophers—no coherent account of how and why the material brain and the immaterial consciousness interact.233

However, this objection is based on the false assumption that if we do not know how X causes Y, then we are not justified to believe that X causes Y. There are many cases of causal interactions in which we know one thing causes another without knowing how.

Although substance dualism is a strong contender to the theistic alternative, if substance dualism is adopted within a non-theistic paradigm, it does not address some fundamental questions: Where did the immaterial substance come from? How does it exist in the physical universe? Moreover, a theistic explanation provides a more coherent account of how the physical brain and non-physical consciousness interact. This is why a theistic type of dualism is the most coherent approach (see God Is the Best Explanation section below).

‘It’s a lucky accident’: Epiphenomenalism With this theory, conscious states are distinct from physical states, and physical states cause conscious states, but not the other way around. In this way, conscious states are causally impotent. Popular rejections of epiphenomenalism include that, if true, a sensation of pain in my hand (conscious experience) due to a hot flame plays no causal role in my hand moving away (physical state). Another example includes that if you were to have the unfortunate experience of being chased by a drunkard hell-bent on throwing a broken bottle at you, the sight of the bottle moving towards you might create the conscious experience of fear, but the feeling of fear would not cause you to duck and protect yourself; your defensive move would occur due to some random accident. This contradicts our basic understanding of the human reality. We know that we have physical reactions due to subjective conscious states, and we also experience subjective feelings and experiences due to physical causes. If epiphenomenalism were true, human psychology would be in ruin. Just imagine a patient with depression telling his psychotherapist that his internal feelings of depression cause his anxiety attacks, only to be told that it has nothing to do with it.

‘Everything is conscious’: Panpsychism.

Panpsychism is somewhat similar to property dualism, which asserts that one substance exists (physical substance), but contains two properties (physical and non-physical or subjective conscious properties). Panpsychism asserts that matter contains a form of subjective consciousness. From this perspective, it argues that consciousness is an intrinsic property of the universe and it plays a causal role. Advocates of panpsychism include professors David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel. Since each component of matter contains consciousness, the brain’s consciousness is just an accumulation of these components of consciousness. One form of panpsychism states that all matter is conscious in the same way humans are. The other form of panpsychism asserts that consciousness contained in matter is in a basic state, also known as protoconsciousness.

There are a number of problems with panpsychism. • Firstly, there is an absence of evidence for the claim that matter contains subjective consciousness. Protons, electrons, quarks and atoms do not exhibit any signs of having subjective consciousness.234.

• Secondly, this approach fails to provide an adequate metaphysical or physical explanation of how matter contains consciousness. Where did the property of consciousness come from? How does matter contain this subjective conscious property? The panpsychist’s failure to answer these questions undermines any metaphysical and physical explanation.

• Thirdly, there are no examples of consciousness existing outside of the subjective experience of a living entity. For instance, what does pain mean without a self or an ‘I’? What does being conscious of a thought mean without someone who is thinking? These questions strongly suggest that consciousness only makes sense with a unified conscious being experiencing an array of subjective states.

• Finally, how can a unified conscious experience emerge from many pieces of matter that all contain a form of consciousness? How do individual pieces of matter that contain subjective consciousness manage to add up to a meaningful, unified experience? If our conscious experiences were just a result of many conscious elements contained in the physical parts that make up the brain, our experience would be incoherent, or less unified. Professor Edward Feser comments on the unified meaning of a single conscious experience. He explains that our experiences are not just a summation of many different conscious elements; our experiences have a unified feel. He presents his case using the conscious experience of reading a book:

“The experience has a coherent significance or meaning, and significance or meaning for a single subject of experience. You are not only aware of the shape, texture, colors, etc. as separate elements, but are aware of them as a book; and it is you who are aware of them, rather than myriad neural events somehow each being ‘aware’ of one particular aspect of the book.” 235.

There is a lot of academic discussion around the approaches I have summarised above. However, the main intention was to briefly introduce these approaches and bring to light some criticisms which undermine their ability to explain subjective consciousness as sufficiently as theism does.

God is the best explanation.

How do we explain consciousness in light of the failed attempts to comprehensively explain our subjective personal experiences? A theistic approach is the most adequate explanation. It is far more reasonable to postulate that an All-Aware, conscious agent with volition and purpose is the author of all consciousness. Here are three main reasons why God is the best explanation:

Firstly, it answers a question that none of the existing views have answered: Where did consciousness come from? Professor J. P. Moreland explains how it could not have been via natural physical processes: “Our knowledge of the natural world would give us positive reasons for not believing that irreducible consciousness would appear in it, e.g., the geometrical rearrangement of inert physical entities into different spatial structures hardly seems sufficient to explain the appearance of consciousness.”236

If matter and consciousness are distinct, it follows that consciousness could not have emerged from matter. However, if matter contains conscious properties, then how did these properties arise? We need to ask this ontological question because consciousness is very different from material stuff. In order to explain the fact that subjective conscious experiences exist, God must have created consciousness. It is far more coherent to postulate an All-Aware conscious agent to explain consciousness. From this point of view, theism offers a far richer explanation. Moreland argues that physicalist and materialist accounts of consciousness have “…no plausible way to explain the appearance of irreducible, genuine mental properties/events in the cosmos… when compared to the rich explanatory resources for theism….”237.

Secondly, theism answers how consciousness could have entered the physical world. It often surprises people how non-physical entities like the soul can interact, and in fact control, physical aspects like the bodies of humans and animals. However, theism explains this very naturally. God’s comprehensive will and Divine activity ensure a world where the physical and non-physical interact. Charles Taliaferro explains:

“But in a theistic view of consciousness, there is no parlor trick or discrete miraculous act of God behind the emergence of consciousness. Consciousness emerges from the physical cosmos through an abiding comprehensive will of God that there be a world of physical and non-physical objects, properties, and relations. The relation between matter, energy, consciousness, the laws of space-time, tout court, all stem from an overwhelming, divine, activity.”238

According to a non-theistic approach to consciousness, consciousness seems to have miraculously popped into existence without any adequate physical explanation. However, theism does not face this problem, as the emergence of consciousness is viewed as part of reality. Since God is conscious, Ever-Living and All-Aware, it is plausible that the world He created contains beings with a conscious awareness of themselves. Taliaferro similarly concludes:

“From the vantage point of a fundamentally materialist cosmology, the emergence of consciousness seems strange; it is likened to claiming ‘then a miracle happens.’ But from the vantage point of theism, the emergence of consciousness may be seen as something deeply rooted in the very nature of reality. The creation of animal and human consciousness is not some isolated miracle, but a reflection of the underlying structure of reality.”239

Theism explains the interaction between nonphysical mental and physical brain states. God’s will and power have enabled such interaction to take place, as this interaction is part and parcel of the reality that God has created. Simply, if, in the beginning of the cosmos, only matter existed, then consciousness would not. However, if in the beginning a type of consciousness created the physical world, then the interaction between nonphysical mental states and physical brain states makes sense.

Thirdly, theism explains our ability to have subjective conscious states and the fact that we have an awareness of what it is to be like ourselves, experiencing tastes, sounds and textures. Since the universe was created by an Ever-Living, Alive, All-Aware Being, it follows that we have been given this capacity to be aware of our inner subjective states:

“God, there is no god except Him, the Ever Living.”240.

“And He is the All-subtle, the All-aware.”241.

A theistic explanation for the emergence of consciousness has greater explanatory power than competing explanations. I must stress here, however, that I am not denying the usefulness of biological explanations in unearthing neuro-correlations. Neuroscience can be conducted just as vigorously and fruitfully in a theistic context. What I am advocating is adding theism as a philosophical basis to fully explain what non-theistic explanations cannot: the hard problem of consciousness. In this sense, my approach is a form of dualism, which can be called theistic-dualism. In theistic-dualism, neuroscience is not undermined, and all the research projects can continue to provide their amazing insights and conclusions on the topic. However, theistic-dualism is a metaphysical thesis that provides a comprehensive explanation. Professor Taliaferro advocates a similar position: “I do not see why the brain sciences cannot continue with its study of psycho-physical interaction. The failure to identify metaphysically consciousness with brain states does not for a nanosecond impede the study of correlation. Moreover one may be a dualist and treat consciousness and brain states, the person and body, as functional units without supposing that there is only one kind of thing metaphysically that is in play. Mind-body (or, as I prefer to call it, integrative) dualism is a thesis in metaphysics… integrative dualism is not a scientific hypothesis that competes with any scientific claims.” 242, God’s existence is required to explain the existence and emergence of subjective conscious experience. In addition, the hard problem of consciousness and the existence of inner subjective experiences clearly point to an All-Aware Being, that created the universe and the ability for you and me to have an awareness of our subjective conscious states.

We are not meant to know much about the soul.

Muslim readers will rightly ask if this argument is compatible with normative Islamic theology. The common objection usually includes the fact that the Qur’an explicitly states that the rooh (meaning soul, spirit, consciousness or the thing that animates the body) is the affair or command of God and humanity has been given very little knowledge about it. Therefore, we should keep silent on the matter: “And they ask you, [O Muhammad], about the soul. Say, ‘The soul is of the affair of my Lord. And you have not been given of knowledge except a little.’”243

To reconcile this apparent theological conflict, it must be understood that this verse concerns the essence of consciousness or the soul, not its existence. The verse affirms that an immaterial substance animates the body—in other words, a soul or consciousness. This is exactly what the argument in this chapter has presented: that the existence of consciousness can only be explained by a non-materialist worldview. The chapter is not discussing anything beyond what is already implied by Islamic source texts. For instance, the Qur’an affirms that the rooh is different from our material universe, that it animates the body, that it is a unified ‘I’, and that it was created by God. Therefore, nothing here contradicts core orthodox Islamic principles.

To conclude, I think we must consider the fact that God tells us to ponder within ourselves, and by doing so we may conclude that if there is no God, then we could not have any subjective conscious experience—in other words, by denying God, we deny ourselves!.

“Do they not reflect within themselves?”244