Examining Hasker's View as the Response of Substantial Emergentists to the Problem of Consciousness

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Department of Philosophy and Theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

10.22059/jpht.2024.370640.1006016

Abstract

Consciousness is one of the main challenges of the philosophy of mind in the contemporary period; in other words, the big philosophical problem in the contemporary discourse is how consciousness is possible and how the brain causes it.This is called "hard problem," and the lack of explanation about it is "explanatory gap". In order to address the problems in the field of consciousness, Hasker has expressed the theory of mental substance emergence. According to him, consciousness is a mental substance that is created from matter through a complex process. But can this theory solve the problems of previous theories in the field of consciousness? In this article, the intellectual foundations of the followers of substance emergentism are first scrutinized. Subsequently, based on the analysis and investigation of the nature of consciousness, the challenges of consciousness and the answers provided are examined. It is determined that although Hasker and the followers of the theory of substance emergentism, by accepting the intuition of "self", have made an effective scientific effort to address some challenges, they have not been able to resolve the conflicts caused by the intuition of "self" and physicalism. Issues such as the cause of emergence, the duality of determinability and inexplicability, the relationship of irreducibility with causal reduction and suspension of laws, conflict with the principle of exclusion, and the independence or dependence of mental substance on matter are issues that the theory of the emergent mental substance has encountered.

Keywords

References

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Philosophy of Religion
Volume 21, Issue 3
October 2024
Pages 173-185

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