The Task of Theological Humanism
130
natural roots of our moral sense of right and wrong. The question also reaches into the theory of evolution and all the controversy surrounding it. The debate about consciousness highlights a collision of basic outlooks.Materialists (also called “physicalists” or “reductive naturalists”) contend 2
that the only reality that exists is material or physical reality. Consequently, human consciousness can be comprehensively reduced to physical states of some kind, namely, the firing of neuronal impulses.into neuronal activity in the brain is making tremendous progress in show- (^3) Undoubtedly, research
ing the physical basis of mental activities. But can scientific materialism reduce consciousness without remainder to its material substrate? If so, reflective goods would be reducible to natural goods. The human experience of an inner life of freedom would be an illusion that can be explained away
by scientific materialism. Materialism is historically connected with secular humanism, but in our view, materialism oversteps its limits in claiming that it can fully account for subjectivity in terms of objective reality. Its weakness is its inability in principle to account for the conscious experience of “inner
life” as the qualitative aspect of subjectivity.has an entirely different nature and origin than our bodies, as Descartes famously demonstrated: the method of radical doubt (Dualism stands at the other end of the debate. For dualists, consciousness^4 cogito, ergo sum)
dualist. Consciousness back to the divine from its exile in the perishable body.discloses the dualists drop the language of the immortal soul, but they preserve the^ non-objective yet real existence of the “I.”is an immaterial, immortal “soul,” which wings its way^5 Plato, too, was a (^6) Contemporary
“explanatory gap” between matter and mind.sciousness is really not at home in the world. Reflective goods are discon-nected from bodily and natural goods. What is more, dualism is historically and conceptually linked with theism. The theistic image of God as the light^7 For dualists, human con-
of the world finds its human correlation in consciousness that reflects the divine light. For many dualists, souls and bodies exist because God created them. The strength of dualism is its demonstration of the real existence of subjectivity. Its overriding weaknesses, however, include the mind-body
problem, namely, its inability to account for causal relations between body and mind, given that the two are altogether different kinds of substance, and its lack of scientific warrant.Emergentism (or “biological naturalism”) attempts to articulate a third 8
option between materialism and dualism. It holds that the phenomenon of consciousness is irreducibly subjective and is thus objective, neurobiological states. However, consciousness is nonetheless altogether caused by neurobiological processes in the brain. Consciousness ontologically distinct from