Why Materialism Can't Explain Consciousness
by John Bergsma
January 25, 2012
Raymond Tallis (atheist): "Once the viewpoint of consistent materialism is assumed, it ceases to be self-evident that it is a good thing to experience what is there, that it will make an organism better able so to position itself in the causal net as to increase the probability of replication of its genomic material. On the contrary, even setting aside the confusional states it is prone to, and the sleep it requires, consciousness seems like the worst possible evolutionary move. ...Those who are currently advocating evolutionary or neuro-evolutionary explanations of the most complex manifestations of consciousness in human life, preaching neuro-evolutionary aesthetics, law, ethics, economics, history, theology etc, should consider whether the failure to explain any form of consciousness, never mind human consciousness, in evolutionary terms, might not pull the rug from under their fashionable feet."
Alex's comment: Materialism and evolution cannot explain the emergence of consciousness because consciousness might not have survival and reproductive advantage. The survival advantage of consciousness can be proved by the too successful domination of
Homo sapiens over the planet that her resources are being depleted rapidly. On the other hand, a disproof of survival advantage of consciousness is that bacteria, by numbers, are perhaps more "successful" than
Homo sapiens. Latest neuroscience research suggests that consciousness is just an
illusion accidentally reached by complex neuronal networks. It just happened to be fit enough to be retained by evolutionary competition.
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