What interests me most in Philosophy of Mind are defeaters to arguments that mind – that consciousness – arrived Naturalistically. I plan to explore this idea here soon.

In the mean time…I caught this post on The Prosblogion reviewing Plantinga’s argument that a Naturalistic system cannot in-and-of-itself create content (thus out of that system, beliefs cannot arise).

In Knowledge of God, Plantinga writes:

When light strikes photo-receptor cells in the retina, there is a complex cascade of electrical activity, resulting in an electrical signal to the brain. I have no idea how all that works; but of course I know it happens all the time. But the case under consideration is different. Here it’s not merely that I don’t know how physical interaction among neurons brings it about that an assemblage of neurons has content and is a belief. No, in this case, we can’t see how such an event could have content – that is, it seems upon reflection that it could not have content. It’s a little like trying to understand what it would be for the number seven, e.g., to weigh five pounds (or for an elephant to be a proposition). We can’t see how that could happen; more exactly, we can see that it couldn’t happen. A number just isn’t the sort of thing that can have weight; there is no way in which that number or any other number could weigh anything at all. (The same goes for elephants and propositions.) Similarly, we can see, I think, that physical activity among neurons can’t generate content. These neurons are clicking away, sending electrical impulses hither and yon. But what has this to do with content? How is content or aboutness supposed to arise from this neuronal activity? How can such a thing be a belief? You might as well say that thought arises from the activity of the wind or the waves. But then no neuronal event can as such have a content, can be about something, in the way in which my belief that the number seven is prime is about the number seven, or my belief that the oak tree in my backyard is without leaves is about that oak tree. (p. 54)

I love it.