Thinking Christian

Most theists who have spent any time debating the existence of God with atheists are familiar with the “God of the gaps” objection — namely, that the theist simply inserts “God did it” in the gaps of knowledge. While there are some poor arguments for theism that might be legitimately countered with such objection, I tend to think that this objection is often applied a bit unfairly on almost any conceivable argument that could be made in favour of theism, even if the argument actually relies on knowledge, rather than gaps in it — and even if the theistic explanation is presented in a rigorous philosophical manner that should count as a genuine explanation (thus undermining the objection that “God did it” explains nothing). However, that’s not the real topic of this blog post. That’s just some useful context for what follows.

It just occurred to me that when it comes to philosophy of mind, the naturalists that take the mind somewhat seriously in its phenomenal aspects that resist a reductive analysis, are very often guilty of the “emergence of the gaps” fallacy. Proponents of at least some of the stronger forms of emergence seem to be saying basically something to the effect that “The mind just emerged from matter and isn’t reducible to it in any sense — don’t ask me how this happened, or how it could be explained, even in principle. That’s just what happens when certain amount of neurological complexity gets in place.”

It seems to me that not only is this a clear case of the “emergence of the gaps”, but it may be worse than the average “God of the gaps” argument, even in principle. For the strong emergentist presumably maintains that not only is the explanation not known, but arguably, there isn’t a true explanation at all.