The Argument from Consciousness

A lesser-known argument for the existence of God is that of the Argument from Consciousness. This argument is relatively simple and easy to understand. It starts from the phenomenon of consciousness and argues that it is an irreducible aspect of reality incongruent with naturalism. From there, it is a relatively short hop, skip, and a jump to conclude that God is a better explanation for consciousness than any naturalistic alternative. 

There are two, key sub-arguments in favour of the premise that consciousness is not reducible to physical states such as brain states: the Chinese Room argument, and the Knowledge argument. The first of these, the Chinese Room argument, was actually put forward by a naturalist, John Searle. 

Imagine a man who is locked in a room. He does not read or understand Chinese at all. Yet, he receives slips under the door written in Chinese. Now, imagine has a rulebook written in English that tells him how to respond based on which symbols he receives under the door. He can thereby use this rulebook to interact with a native Chinese speaker in such a way that they come to believe they are speaking with another Chinese speaker. 

Yet, the man in the room at no point actually understands Chinese. He is manipulating symbols he does not understand based on a set of rules that do not explain their meaning. Now, Searle used this to argue that consciousness cannot be simulated by a computer program, which is certainly a true conclusion that can be drawn from this thought experiment.

Yet, he nevertheless argued that consciousness nevertheless emerged from physical states and remained a naturalist. But does this make sense? Surely, if the world is only composed of physical matter and energy, then the emergence of genuinely sui generis phenomenon is impossible? 

If the world only consists of physical matter and energy, then this entails that phenomenon such as consciousness must be reducible to physical states. That this is evidently not the case is therefore a very strong argument against the truth of naturalism. 

The second sub-argument is the Knowledge argument, which asks us to imagine a colour-blind person locked in a black and white room. They are provided with all physical information about colour but never experience what it is like to actually see colour. Now, imagine their colour-blindness is somehow 'cured' and they are released from their black and white prison into the real world.

If physicalism were true, then they should already know everything there is to know about colour. Yet, upon seeing colour for the first time, it abundantly clear that they learn something new. This kind of knowledge is called qualia and consists of first-person knowledge that is irreducible to third-person facts. 

What both of these arguments show is that consciousness is inherently a non-physical phenomenon. In other words, naturalism is false. But if consciousness is non-natural, how does it come to be? How is it that consciousness accompanies sufficiently advanced brain states? Well, in the absence of a naturalistic explanation, the only logical option remaining is theism.