Of chest of drawers and consciousness

As a Thomistic substance dualist (http://afterall.net/papers/490580) I believe that consciousness provides proof for God's existence (http://www.boundless.org/features/a0000901.html). There are five states of consciousness or mental states (among others) that are non-physical, that is they are without extension in physical space. JP Moreland lists them as follows:

A thought is a mental content that can be expressed in an entire sentence. A thought is the mental content of a statement. Some thoughts logically entail other thoughts. For example “All dogs are mammals” entails “This dog is a mammal.” If the former is true, the latter must be true. Some thoughts don’t entail other thoughts, but merely provide evidence for them. For example, certain thoughts about evidence in a court case provide evidence for the thought that a person is guilty — “He said he would kill him” provides evidence for the thought “He is the murderer.”

A belief is a person’s view, accepted to varying degrees of strength, of how things really are. If a person has a belief (e.g., someone believes that it is raining), then that belief serves as the basis for the person’s tendency or readiness to act as if the thing believed were really so (e.g., she gets an umbrella). At any given time, one can have many beliefs that are not currently being contemplated.

A sensation is a state of awareness or sentience, a mode of consciousness — for example, a conscious awareness of sound, color, or pain. Some sensations are experiences of things outside me like a tree or table. Others are awarenesses of other states within me like pains or itches. Emotions are types of sensations.

A desire is a certain inclination to do, have, or experience certain things. Desires are either conscious or such that they can be made conscious through certain activities, for example, through therapy.

Volition is a act of will or choice, an exercise of power, an endeavoring to do a certain thing, usually for the sake of some purpose or end.

As JP notes, people should not accept the Naturalist view that the rearrangement of brute matter can account for the nonphysical, immaterial nature of mind. It cannot. While there is a correlation between mental states and physical states, it does not mean that they are the same. One can drive a car and suddenly loose power because of a dead battery, due to a faulty alternator, causing both the car to stop and my inability to move forward but that does not mean I am my car. Similarly one can have Alzheimer's disease or brain damage and loose some lower-order capacities but that does not mean persons loose part of their human personhood or are identical to their brain.

JP rightly argues that:

(1) If we are merely the result of naturalistic, evolutionary processes, then we are wholly physical beings.
(2) But we possess nonphysical conscious minds, so we are not wholly physical beings.
(3) Therefore, we are not merely the result of naturalistic, evolutionary processes.

Also, dare to be different and try not to use language that implies you are your brain. I picked up these two sentences just this week that imply just that (I hear or read these types of statements all the time and have once thought I should keep a record of them):

"We were very interested in the VW CC until we found out it only seated 4 people. Not sure who was the brains behind that. Neat car, but not practical." [This one is from an email I received. By the way this is the same nonsense as saying a Ferrari is neat but not practical, anyhow, the point is she might find minds behind the design of the CC since brains are a complicated collections of neurons that don't really design anything. Remember that God has a mind but not a brain and he does just fine.]

"I really am trying to wrap my brain around Seversky’s comments" (on the UD site) [Try that one at your own peril. We know that the brain does not do the thinking and does not wrap itself around anything. A simple, uncomposed mind without physical extension however can do just that.]

Instead ask someone to tell you how much a thought weighs or ask them to point to the location of their positive (as opposed to their negative) childhood memories.