{"id":11327,"date":"2010-09-13T19:23:30","date_gmt":"2010-09-13T19:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/09\/13\/if-the-universe-can-arise-out-of-nothing-then-so-can-mind\/"},"modified":"2010-09-13T19:23:30","modified_gmt":"2010-09-13T19:23:30","slug":"if-the-universe-can-arise-out-of-nothing-then-so-can-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/09\/13\/if-the-universe-can-arise-out-of-nothing-then-so-can-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"If the Universe Can Arise out of Nothing, then so can Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over breakfast yesterday morning, Peter Lupu uncorked a penetrating observation.  The gist of it I took to be as follows.  If a naturalist maintains that the physical universe can arise out of nothing without divine or other supernatural agency, then the naturalist cannot rule out the possibility that other things so arise, minds for example — a result that appears curiously inconsistent with both the spirit and the letter of naturalism.  Here is how I would spell out the Lupine thought.<\/font><\/p>\n

The central thrust of naturalism as an ontological thesis is that the whole of reality is exhausted by the space-time system and what it contains.  (To catalog what exactly it contains is a job for the physicist.)  But this bald thesis can be weakened in ways consistent with the spirit of naturalism.  The weakening makes naturalism more defensible.  And so I will irenically assume that it is consistent with the spirit of a latitudinarian naturalism to admit abstracta of various sorts such as Fregean propositions and mathmatical sets.  We may also irenically allow the naturalist various emergent\/supervenient properties so long as it is understood that emergence\/supervenience presupposes an emergence\/supervenience base<\/em>, and that this base is material in nature.  I will even go so far as to allow the naturalist emergent\/supervenient substances<\/em> such as individual minds.  But again, if this is to count as naturalism, then (i) their arisal must be from matter, and (ii) they cannot, after arising, exist in complete independence of matter.<\/font><\/p>\n

What every naturalism rules out, including the latitudinarian version just sketched, is the existence of God, classically conceived, or any sort of Absolute Mind, as well as the existence of unembodied and disembodied finite minds.  <\/font><\/p>\n

The naturalist, then, takes as ontologically basic the physical universe, the system of space-time-matter, and denies the existence of non-emergent\/supervenient concreta distinct from this system.  Well now, what explains the existence of the physical universe, especially if it is only finitely old?  One answer, and perhaps the only answer available to the naturalist, is that it came into existence ex nihilo<\/em> without cause, and thus without divine cause.  Hence<\/font><\/p>\n

1. The physical universe came into existence from nothing without cause.<\/font><\/p>\n

Applying Existential Generalization and the modal rule ab esse ad posse<\/em> we get<\/font><\/p>\n

2. It is possible that something come into existence  from nothing without cause.<\/font><\/p>\n

If so, how can the naturalist exclude the possibility of minds coming into existence but not emerging from a material base?  If he thinks it possible that the universe came into existence ex nihilo<\/em>, then he must allow that it is possible that divine and finite minds also have come into existence ex nihilo<\/em>.  But this is a possibility he cannot countenance given his commitment to saying that everything that exists is either physical or determined by the physical.<\/font><\/p>\n

This seems to put the naturalist in an embarrassing position.  If the universe is finitely old, then it came into existence.  You could say it 'emerged.'  But on naturalism, there cannot be emergence except from a material base.  So either the universe did not emerge or it did, in which case (2) is true and the principle that everything either is or is determined by the physical is violated.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over breakfast yesterday morning, Peter Lupu uncorked a penetrating observation.  The gist of it I took to be as follows.  If a naturalist maintains that the physical universe can arise out of nothing without divine or other supernatural agency, then the naturalist cannot rule out the possibility that other things so arise, minds for example — a result that appears curiously … Continue reading “If the Universe Can Arise out of Nothing, then so can Mind”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,238,218],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind","category-naturalism","category-nothingness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}