Lent 3: Graham Dunstan Martin

Now let us emphasise this key point: the contemporary reductionist view is that, fundamentally, there is only matter.  Their definition of matter exactly corresponds to Berkeley's definition, namely that it is devoid of consciousness.  By their definition, consciousness is 'derived from it'.  Let us ponder this in the light of the distinction between percipere [the active verb to perceive] and percipi [the passive verb to be perceived].  If according to reductionists, consciousness must be a product of the mechanical processes of unconscious matter, that is seeing can be causally and logically derived form being seen, then according to them, seeing is not primary.  Being seen is primary.  Intuitively, one feels there is something wrong here.  How can reality be derived from a passive verb?  (From: Does It Matter? The Unsustainable World of the Materialists  (2005), page 49.)

This book was a gift in September 2008.  It confirmed so many of my own suspicions, I cannot resist returning to it over and again.  I have already written a sequence of posts  about it in my other blog.  The point is not that Martin clinches some argument against atheism, it is rather that he shows there are rational arguments on both sides.  There is no clinching argument about God because this debate about the existence of God poses the wrong question .

If consciousness is primary, then the whole universe is in a great conversation .  Things happen because there are other things.  So, where can God be found in the universe?  Somehow the intervention or incarnation of God in the world seems more credible, when we picture the creator in conversation with the created.  It is worth pondering what that conversation between the material world and God might be.

Comments

[Bas Meijdam]

My comment on anything written on the subject of Consciousness is that Consciousness, Life and the entire Universe is absolutely acausal.
We tend to look at anything from a point of view of separation = dualism, as if anything can exist independently of anything else which is a fallacy.
We presume beginning and end to anything which fundamentally is identification with death and mortal being, however Consciousness is non-material and our true identity and indestructable.
To ask ourselves the question where consciousness is located already implies the assumption that consciousness somehow is an object and alien to our disposition which is a false presumption.
The body-mind is a biochemical machine that produces
an illusion of separateness/dualism.
When one is capable of allowing for direct experience rather than conceptual thinking and one tries to locate the so called individual "I" then all one encounters is mere thinking about "I" no substantial real "I". "I" itself is but a concept in mind, to identify with that fictional "I" is the very act of separation and the creation of dualism.

[Chris Sissons]

This reminded me of the famous quote from Bertrand Russel's grandmother (quoted in his autobiography but here from memory): 'What is matter? Never Mind. What is Mind? No Matter.'
Thank you for your comment. I'm not sure I follow all of it but here goes. When you write that everything is acausal, you presumably refer to its origins? Clearly, what we call causality happens all the time. What I think you mean is (1) there is no first cause, and (2) no need to postulate a God who holds everything in existence.
My post I think challenges dualism by suggesting conversation as the key to this debate. Indeed consciousness may be the same thing as conversation. I suppose it's another way of saying things interact. Consciousness is not located anywhere because it is between things but not a thing itself. 'The lover, the beloved and the love between.'
The idea of biochemical mnachine is Newtonian science, long since superceded. The idea of an ordered clockwork universe does not represent the universe as physicists see it these days. I'm left with an image of the science fiction computer that becomes conscious. (Usually with megalomaniac tendencies.) The point Martin is making is this model of consciousness emerging from the unconcious is unconvincing. It isn't even dualism - there is one type of thing and everything is derived from it.
I think I agree with your last paragraph. I suppose the way you see it is 'I' must be an illusion because we're really just matter. I would argue 'I' is illusion because we are in endless flux. Consciousness is not something generated by matter but integral to reality.