The Argument from Consciousness

Consciousness is one of the most complex phenomena of the world. As philosophy of mind, together with psychology and cognitive sciences, developed, consciousness was seriously studied in the twentieth century. Many attempts have been made to explain the nature of this mysterious phenomenon and the way in which it has come into being; as a result, different theories have been offered about it. There are two major approaches to the problem of consciousness: naturalistic and theistic. In this article, J. P. Moreland considers a variety of naturalistic theories of consciousness, showing their weak points. Then, he proceeds to consider the capability of the theistic approach to explain consciousness; and based on the two criteria which he has first established for preferring a scientific theory, he regards the theistic approach a more plausible one.