9/2/11 EXCELLENT ARTICLE BY CALLIE JOUBERT REFUTING SO-CALLED "EMERGENTISM" & PERSONS SUCH AS NANCEY MURPHY (FULLER SEM) ...ever since attending Fuller Sem & being unwittingly (albeit intentionally so, for nefarious reasons by a duplicitous academic advisor from korea) placed in a class taught by Nancey Murphy which made NO SENSE WHATSOEVER to me (& I was NOT the only one; yet I completed the classwork ...albeit she definitely had profiled me...she had her sights on me from day one, ...there definitely was gossip & social engineering in the works at fuller sem even amongst the faculty...& I was given an F without justification or explanation...but I refused to go to talk to Ms. Murphy because I sensed from day one that there was something definitely wrong with what she was teaching & the way she was teaching (by the way I came from calvin college & a year at calvin seminary & probably further offended Ms Murphy when I wrote, somewhere, prior to this class, that until I arrived at Fuller I had never heard of a Nancey Murphy (she's not in the "canon" around Calvin, that's for sure; which probably infuriates her all the more).
The more I listened to Nancey Murphy & read stuff by her or about her the more I realized she was teaching a bunch of absolute gibberish (essentially fraudulent, & yet she was shaping, or mis-shaping, a lot of young minds). And I wrote a lot in refutation of what she taught, as best as I could get a handle on something that was meaningless & nonsensical (imagine somebody claiming the world is flat today & having to waste your time trying to refute the nonsense, & actually giving such a person a platform for asserting such gibberish).
And now, ten years later, on September 2, 2011 (at 12:45am pst) I come across an article that does everything I tried to do, albeit so much better. This article by Joubert is awesome. It articulately defends God as Creator & refutes all the gibberish of so-called "physicalism" or "non-reductive physicalism" & "emergentism" etc. of people such as Nancey Murphy (who really shouldn't be teaching at a Protestant seminary if she believes this; not to mention she comes from a Catholic background ( and there's a LOT about Catholicism that I respect, but not about what she was teaching (which has nothing to do with Catholicism by the way) Why & how she infiltrated Fuller Seminary & got tenure I do not know). I will keep this on file forever to explain to others my response to the frustration & confusion caused by Nancey Murphy (not to mention the fact that I had to re-take the same class, albeit thankfully with a traditional professor, at my expense).
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www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v4/n1/emergentism-physicalism
Emergentism and the Rejection of Spirit Entities: A Response to Christian Physicalists
by Callie Joubert
August 10, 2011
Abstract
Emergentism comprises two theses: (1) there is no such thing as a pure spiritual mental being because there is nothing that can have a mental property without having a physical property, and (2) whatever mental properties an entity may have, they emerged from, depend on and are determined by matter. For Christian physicalists, the view of the human person in Scripture is accordingly monistic. Underlying this view is an appeal to neuroscience and the evolutionary history of human beings. The aim in this paper is to respond to their claims by taking Genesis 1:2 as the point of departure. The argument is that the Spirit’s presence and creative activities at the beginning of creation serve as a paradigm for how we are to understand the relationship of the soul/spirit to the body and of the mind to the brain. Logical, epistemological, and ontological objections will show that radical emergentism as an explanatory theory of consciousness, mental states and personal agency is so implausible that it cannot be true.
Introduction
According to Peter Corning, “There are very few terms in evolutionary theory these days—not even ‘natural selection’—that can command such an ecumenical following” (Corning 2003, p. 1) as “emergence.” In this he is quite correct. Professor of religion and philosophy Philip Clayton spoke for many emergentists when he said, “Emergence is, in my view, a necessary condition for a theological interpretation of the human person,” although “not a sufficient condition” (Clayton 1999, p. 22). I believe that Professor Clayton was spot on when he said that the “debate about the human person expresses the crux of the battle between physicalist naturalism and its opponents today” (Clayton 1999, p. 24). But what is emergentism? Emergentism is a worldview which comprises the following three key elements:
- Epistemology (theory of knowledge). What can be tested scientifically can be known. If there are other sources of knowledge, scientific knowledge must be considered as superior to it in kind. In other words, what and how we can know about the world is best determined by scientific methods. The term to express this attitude is scientism.
- Creation account and the origin of life. What exist are the products of evolution—laws and processes of nature and chance—therefore objects of nature. The term to express this mental posture is naturalism. According to the evolutionary story of creation, over millions and billions of years there emerged genuinely new and novel “qualities” from matter, and “We can now trace human origins to an extinct common ancestor of both humans and apes, a creature that lived 5–7 million years ago. Between then and now there have been a variety of hominid species” (Murphy 2006a, p. 87).
- Ontology (view of the nature of reality and the kinds of things that exist). Physical monists hold that all existent entities and those coming to be consist solely of matter. The term that captures this mental posture is known as physicalism.
From this worldview follows two claims: (a) there is no such thing as a pure spiritual mental being because there is nothing that can have a mental property without having a physical property, and (b) whatever mental properties an entity may have, they emerged from, depend on, and are determined by matter. The aim in what follows is to refute these claims, by defending the following thesis: If Genesis 1 records the fundamentals of God’s intention for how things of Creation are to function, then Genesis 1:2 presents the paradigm case (most clear example) for how the relationship between spiritual and material realities is to be understood.
In Section I, I will briefly focus on the Spirit’s presence in Genesis 1:2. This serves as background against which three important parallel phenomena to that of the Spirit’s relation to the earth in Genesis 1:2 will be discussed and make sense. In Section II, I will raise a number of logical, epistemological, and ontological objections to emergentism in the context of an analysis of an important analogy between God and God’s Spirit, and that of human beings and their spirits. Attention will particularly focus on consciousness, mental states, and an agent view of persons. In Section III, I will provide further evidence that the soul is not only different from its body but is also capable of existing without a body. Of importance will be Matthew 10:28 and Paul’s argument from creation in 1 Corinthians 15.
I will begin by clarifying the position of Christian physicalism first.
Christian Physicalism
That the concept of emergence gained popularity among “Christian physicalists” is beyond dispute (cf. Brown and Jeeves 1998; Clayton 1999; Green 2008; Jeeves 2005; Murphy 2006b). They are Christians who wish to harmonize their faith with science, rather than the other way around. For them the concept of emergence is well suited to create a sort of middle view between strong physicalists (ostensibly a position that science demands) and dualists (people who believe that there are also immaterial, spiritual entities in the world, and that matter is not the only reality). The view of Christian physicalists can be stated as follows: The mind, consciousness and mental states are not completely identical to the brain (matter), although it emerges from, is caused by and dependent on the physical processes of the brain which are, in turn, capable of being influenced by the emergent mental phenomena.
For Christian philosophers and theologians like professors Ian Barbour, Philip Clayton, and Nancey Murphy, emergentism is completely compatible with their panentheism—a view of God’s relation to the world that is also known as “naturalistic theism.” Professor Clayton is representative in this regard:
[T]he last few decades have brought an important new opening for science-based reflection on the nature of God. This opening lies in the ascendance of the concept of emergence, and more recently in the development of the new field of Emergence Studies . . . (Clayton 2004, p. 5)As a theological model, panentheism is responsive to the emergent turn . . . (Clayton 2004, p. 9).
In contrast to pantheists who believe that God is all and all is God, and theists who believe that Creation is a product of a personal God and therefore dependent on Him for its continued existence (not vice versa), panentheists believe that God is in the world and the world is in God. Although God is distinct from the world, He is not separate from the world. God has also not created the world out of nothing (cf. Romans 4:17; Colossians 1:15–18; Hebrews 11:3); matter co-existed with God.
If that is true, then that amounts to a form of idolatry, for at least two reasons: (a) it is compromising the ontological distinction between God and created things and the nature of His sovereignty (Copan and Craig 2004, p. 15), and (b) it is ascribing to finite and contingent Creation the divine quality of eternality, a quality that belongs to the Creator alone (1 Timothy 1:17). In other words, on the panentheistic view of God and emergentism, God is not before creation but with and dependent on creation for His continued existence and work in the world. The least we can say is that, if the world of matter coexisted with God (contrary to Genesis 1:1), then it would deserve the same veneration as the Creator. It is the impression we get from the following words expressed by Christian psychiatrist and naturalist Dr. Bert Thompson:
Ignoring [our] brain[s] is the equivalent of ignoring God. The more we are paying attention to these things [for example, feelings, memories], what our bodies—what our brains are telling us—the more we pay attention to God. The more [we pay] attention to the functions of [our] brain[s], the more [we] began to hear God in ways [we] had never heard him before (emphasis added) (Thompson 2010, p. 57).
We thus have reasons to be concerned when Christian physicalists suggest that the concept of emergence will render their “biblical” view of the human person scientifically acceptable. In this respect they are not hesitant to reinterpret Scripture to make it so. However, it raises a question: Is it the scientific discoveries themselves that lead to emergentist views of the human person or is it because emergent views underlie the interpretation of scientific discoveries?
Statements by Professor Nancey Murphy indicate that it is indeed scientism, naturalism, and physicalism that drives the hermeneutic enterprise. Here is how she expressed her physicalist thesis:
My central thesis is this . . . we are our bodies—there is no additional metaphysical element such as a mind or soul or spirit (Murphy 2006b, p. ix).
Elsewhere she expressed her naturalism as follows,
[N]euroscience is now completing the Darwinian revolution, bringing the mind into the purview of biology. My claim, in short, is this: all of the human capacities once attributed to the immaterial mind or soul are now yielding to the insights of neurobiology . . . .[W]e have to accept the fact that God has to do with brains—crude as this may sound (Murphy 2006a pp. 88, 96 cf. Brown and Jeeves 1998).
About science she said,
[F]or better or for worse, we have inherited a view of science as methodologically atheistic, meaning that science . . . seeks naturalistic explanations for all natural processes. Christians and atheists alike must pursue scientific questions in our era without invoking a creator . . . anyone who attributes the characteristics of living things to creative intelligence has by definition stepped into the arena of either metaphysics or theology (Murphy 2007, pp. 194–195).
Professor Murphy admitted that she could have called her position “nonreductive materialism,” (Murphy 2006b, p. 116) but prefer “nonreductive physicalism,” (Murphy 2005, p. 116) because the word “physicalism” indicates her agreement with the scientists and philosophers who hold that it is not necessary to postulate a metaphysical (immaterial) soul or mind in addition to the material body/brain. So whatever spiritual entities that emerge from the brain is considered as just a further stage in the evolutionary history of human beings (cf. Clayton 1999, p. 4. Professor Clayton prefers to call his own version of naturalistic physicalism “emergent monism”).
Christian physicalists suggested accordingly a physicalist theology.
By this [they] mean a Biblical and theological anthropology which can sustain a physicalist view of humans without loss or degradation of Biblical teachings, theological substance or critical doctrines (Brown and Jeeves 1998, p. 6).
A review of criticisms advanced against Christian physicalists show precisely the opposite of what they set out to accomplish (Delfino 2005; Garcia 2000, p. 239; Larmer 2000; Siemans 2005). It will suffice to say that these criticisms revealed the exact opposite of what theologian Charles Hodge concluded a number of years ago:
The Church has been forced more than once to alter her interpretation of the Bible to accommodate the discoveries of science. But this has been done without doing violence to the Scriptures or in any degree impairing their authority (Hodge 1997, p. 573, cited in Ham 2001, p. 4).
In other words, the debate between Christians who adopt Darwinian evolution and emergentism and their critics must not be construed as a mere difference in hermeneutics (interpretation) of Scripture. It cuts far deeper.
The facts are threefold: (i) the common claim that no conflict exists between biblical Christians and evolutionists (Christians or secular) is contradicted by the evidence; (ii) just as it is impossible to believe that a single statement of fact (a proposition) can be both true and false at the same time, likewise one cannot logically and simultaneously believe in two contradictory explanations of creation and the origin of life. Either God created the spirit/soul and mind, and Scripture is true, or mindless natural processes did, and evolutionary emergentism is true. But not both!; (iii) the conflict is in essence a conflict of authority that involves the nature and character of God.
Section I:
Genesis
Few Christians will doubt that the New Testament makes it unequivocally clear that the texts of Genesis 1 are the basis of a number of foundational doctrines of the Christian faith. Four examples from Genesis 1 will suffice to substantiate the point.
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“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’ . . . .” The text speaks of a condition of darkness, blindness ,and lifelessness. It is said of Jesus that “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend [or overpower] it . . . . [He] was the true light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man” (John 1:4, 5, 9). Genesis 1:3 must be understood in a literal way, for the apostle Paul quoted the text when he said, “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness’ is the One who has shone into our hearts to give the light . . .” (2 Corinthians 4:6; cf. Ephesians 1:18). We call this the doctrine of salvation which begins with liberation from darkness, spiritual life and illumination by the Spirit of God (cf. John 3:1–16, 6:63).
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“. . . and God separated the light from the darkness.” Again, Paul had this text in mind when he revealed the following literal truth: “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership . . ., or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial . . . Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols . . . Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord” (2 Corinthians 6:14–18 cf. James 4:4). Elsewhere the apostle used the text to remind the Ephesian Christians that “they were formerly darkness, but you are now light in the Lord; walk as children of the light . . . . And do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them” (Ephesians 5:8, 11). We call this the doctrine of sanctification (of holy and moral living).
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“Then God said, ‘let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind . . .” (cf. also verses 12, 20–22). The Creator did precisely that in Genesis 1:26–27; He created the first human person in His image and likeness (cf. Psalm 94:9; Ephesians 2:10). In Genesis 5:3 we are told that Adam “became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image.” We call this the doctrine of created kinds.
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“And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female . . . .” (cf. 2:24). Jesus used this text to show that marriage and its sanctity are not human inventions: “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh?’ Consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate” (Matthew 19:3–8).
It is interesting that Jesus did three things in Matthew 19. First, He showed Himself to confirm the literal creation of Adam and Eve on the sixth day of creation. Second, He showed the unity of Scripture by quoting from both Genesis 1 (verse 27) and Genesis 2 (verse 24). And third, He showed that He regarded the record of Genesis 1 and 2 as literal history. It follows that if Christians concede that people should not take Genesis 1 and 2 as written, then it would be inconsistent to expect the world to accept any part of Scripture as written. One last point, Paul used the same texts to reveal God’s will concerning authority and leadership in the church (1 Corinthians 11; 1 Timothy 2:9–15).
Genesis 1:2
Scripture states that, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Verse 2 begins by removing all doubt as to how that could happen: “And the Spirit of God was moving [hovering] over the surface of the waters.” The text indicates that the earth was there—in a certain condition (“waste” and “emptiness”)—which required divine action. But God’s action presuppose God’s presence, otherwise God could not have acted on the earth. And for God to have been present through the Spirit’s hovering, the Spirit had to be of the order of unembodied spiritual mind. This is how Scripture reflects the attributes of the Spirit:
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and marked off the heavens by the span, and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, and weighed the mountains in a balance, and the hills in a pair of scales? Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as His counselor has informed Him? With whom did He consult and who gave Him understanding? And who taught Him in the path of justice and taught Him knowledge, and informed Him of the way of understanding? (Isaiah 40:12–14).
Genesis 1:2 makes one thing very clear. It would be a mistake to think, just because the Spirit cannot be seen (cf. John 4:24; 1 Timothy 1:17), that He is not present or active in the world. Now for the Spirit to have been present and active at the beginning of God’s creation of the world imply that He made certain things possible. Put in the reverse, things were dependent on the Spirit’s presence and activities for them to exist and to be in a certain condition. So whatever appeared or came into being during the six days of creation is to be explained by the Spirit of God—who existed prior to creation. The Spirit of God is therefore not an entity of nature, such as a natural physical process, but a supernatural agent.
What this means for emergentists is that they are under huge pressure to explain how spiritual mental entities can “emerge” from mindless matter if they are radically different in kind from the matter from which they supposedly emerged. In contrast, biblical Christians are under no such pressure, for God created kinds of things to reproduce their own kinds. And since God did exactly that Himself in Genesis 1:26–27, 5:1, they already have an instance of what an unembodied spiritual mind, consciousness and mental properties are like—in God. In different words, they have a paradigm case of what a conscious personal agent is, and they accept God as ontologically and epistemologically analogous with themselves. The same point can also be stated this way: If God is a perfect being (cf. Matthew 5:48), then it follows that our God is the most supreme example of a person, which means that it is consistent that something be both a person and an immaterial spirit. Since this is so, it follows that something is a person if and only if it bears a relevant similarity to the supreme example. Let us focus next on three important parallel instances of Genesis 1:2 in order to further demonstrate, and thus to confirm our initial intuition, that the Spirit exists prior to matter, that the Spirit as the Giver of life, and that the Spirit is the source of power in humans—both individually and corporately.
Genesis 2:7: The creation of man
Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being [lit. soul] (Genesis 2:7).
The text (in context) allows for several immediate inferences. Firstly, the first human being was neither a self-caused being nor the product of physical processes of nature. Secondly, prior to breathing, the body and its organs (including the brain) were inoperative. Thirdly, with the inbreathing of the breath (Hebrew: ruach—spirit, wind) of life into the body, the creature became a living being, a unified centre of conscious thought, capable of experiencing emotions, having beliefs, desires, and the power to will things. Fourthly, it is reasonable to believe that the spirit, because of its capacities, will use the body and its organs as instruments to accomplish certain purposes and through which it can express itself (cf. Romans 6:13–19, 12:1). In other words, the spirit needs the body to do things in the world and the body needs the spirit to come alive. Since it is spirit that gave life to the body (cf. Isaiah 42:5, 57:16), and the spirit existed prior to it, the immaterial spirit did not “emerge” from an inactive material body.
It is thus reasonable to conclude that a living human being is a composite of two radically different ontological parts: immaterial spirit and material body. We could say, a unified whole of inner invisible and outer visible parts. But the emergent monist could object and say that the breath imparted to the body was no more than biological life; alternatively, that inner and outer are merely two aspects of the same being. But if that is so, then they need identity to make their case: if whatever we can say of the inner person can also be said of the outer person, then they are the same. If, however, we can say just one thing true of the inner person that is not true of the outer person, or vice verse, then they are not just two aspects but two different ontological realities and physicalist monism is false.
In Luke 11:40 it is recorded that Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You foolish ones, did not He who made the outside make the inside also?” If the “outside” and the “inside” were just two aspects of the same being, then Jesus’ clear distinction would have made no sense to them: “For the Sadducees say there is no resurrection, nor an angel, nor a spirit; but the Pharisees acknowledge them all” (Acts 23:8). In the gospel of John Jesus said something to Nathanael about himself (his inner person) that was not true of his body: “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” (John 1:47). The apostle Peter held exactly the same convictions as his Master. He contrasted the inner person and his imperishable qualities with the external body this way:
And let not your adornment be merely external—braiding hair, wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dress; but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God (1 Peter 3:3–4).
We find confirmation for the radical distinction between inner and outer person in the apostle Paul’s letters. He said that followers of Jesus ought not to “lose heart,” for although their “outer man is decaying, yet [their] inner man is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). Had the “inner man” and “outer body” been the same, then either they would decay together or be renewed together, but that is not what the apostle said. They are therefore neither the same things nor just two aspects of the same thing, but different ontological kinds of entities—despite their deep unity.
Ezekiel 37:1–14: The restoration of Israel
The immediate context indicates that it is a prophetic vision of a restored Israel in their land after many years of captivity in Babylon. Striking is the imagery that God used to depict their dire condition: dry and lifeless bones in a valley full of graves. In verses 4 to 6 the prophet is told to prophecy (proclaim the word of the Lord) to the dead (verse 8 informs the reader that “there were no breath [spirit; wind] in them”). A miracle occurred when the prophet did exactly that. The dry bones came together bone to bone, flesh appeared and skin covered the flesh. However, although the proclamation of the word of the Lord was absolutely essential, there had been no life apart from the Spirit of God. It was only when “the breath came into them” that they came to life. In fact, verse 10 shows that the proclamation of the word and the life-giving activities of the divine Spirit are inseparable, a truth Jesus emphasized in the following words: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63).
In sum, it is not difficult to see that God’s restoration of Israel as a body of people parallels God’s creative activity in Genesis 1:2 and the creation of Adam in Genesis 2:7. Without the Spirit/spirit there can be no life and power, a truth that brings us to Acts 2.
Acts 2:1–4: The body of Christ
In Matthew 16:18 Jesus said, “I will build My church,” which began with His own infilling with the Spirit of God—in the visible form of an entity with wings (Matthew 3:16), the initial calling of twelve “bodily parts” (disciples), and their receiving of life and power in Acts 2. Verse 1 (of Acts 2) tells us that the disciples (now about 120 of them) “were all together in one place” when “suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent, rushing wind, and it filled the house where they were sitting” as well as each of them individually (verses 2 and 4).
Significant about the event is that it brought an immediate depth to their understanding of Scripture—“This is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel” (verse 16), said Peter—and there was a new understanding of the “flesh” and “soul” of Jesus in the context of His death and resurrection (verses 22–28), and the “ways of life” (verse 28; cf. also verse 38). The fact of the matter is that none of this would have been a reality without the Spirit—a clear parallel to the creation of Adam and the restoration of Israel. It is thus reasonable to conclude that Christian physicalists serve as serious distractions from the plain truth of Scripture. Our parallel instances of the Spirit’s relation to creation in Genesis 1:2 make it hard to doubt that the Spirit/spirit is the ground of life, power and action in the world. This insight deepens when we consider an important analogy between our Creator and human beings created in His image and likeness.
Section II: Objections to Emergentism
1 Corinthians 2:11
In 1 Corinthians 2:11 the apostle Paul stated:
For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of man, which is in him. Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.
The analogy is clear enough: human beings stand to their spirits as God stand to the Spirit of God. But to come to a proper understanding of what this means, what it involves and entails require that we see a few things first.
Firstly, what is referred to as a thought in this text is known as a mental state or entity (as also a belief, sensation, feeling and desire); when a person is thinking or knowing something, his spirit is in a state of thinking and knowing something. Secondly, a mental state has intentionality, since it is of or about something, and therefore has content and meaning. Put another way, the spirit’s mental states allows it to interact with itself and other objects in the world. Thirdly, mental states (for example, a thought about a spider one is now seeing) is characterized by certain attitudes—perhaps fear in the case of the spider. Fourthly, mental states such as a thought is characterized by self-presenting properties—things a person has direct awareness of. Fifthly, and most remarkably, mental states are conscious states of the spirit; if a person lacks consciousness, then he or she will not know what he or she believes, thinks about, desires, feels, or wills.
We can now state the relationship between the spirit and the knowing of its own thoughts as follows:
- If the human spirit (or God’s) includes thoughts, then the spirit is necessarily such that whenever a thought is exemplified, it exemplifies the spirit.
- If the human spirit (or God’s) entails thoughts, then the spirit is necessarily such that when a thought is attributed to it, then a capacity (to think) is attributed to it. Another way of saying the same thing is, when a thought is attributed to the spirit, then it is reasonable to believe that a thought belongs to it.
This characterization makes it reasonable to say this: If conscious thinking, self-awareness, and intentionality (knowing what one’s thinking is of or about) are essential properties of the immaterial Spirit of God and the spirit of man, then they are self-presenting properties. That is, they are distinctive properties of a conscious first-person, knowing and intentional entity (a subject). It means that I can adopt certain attitudes toward objects, for example, to believe they exist, hope they love me, fear or hate them. Our quoted text refers to the existence of the spirit of God and God’s thoughts.
Now, if the function of a self-presenting property is to present the objects of mental states to a thinking subject, then one can know directly and immediately what one is thinking, desiring, or feeling right now. And that is precisely what the apostle told us in verse 10—he knew the thoughts of God as He revealed them to him as a spiritual mental person. This means that God has no need to communicate first to someone’s brain before He communicates with him or her. In short, 1 Corinthians 2:11 underlines three truths: (1) private awareness of one’s own mental life; (2) direct and immediate awareness of one’s mental life; (3) the existence of an immaterial spirit and mental capacities.
Now if a person, say Joe, is nothing other than a material brain, then none of this would be true. To begin with, Joe has no access to his brain whatsoever, but Joe knows what he is feeling right now when, for example, you prick him with a pin. A neuroscientist may know all there is to know about brains, but he cannot tell wha
