The problem of evil—whether the existence of evil undermines belief in God—and the problem of consciousness—how conscious experience arises from physical processes—are typically treated as separate issues in philosophy. This paper argues they are actually versions of a single underlying problem, termed the “problem of ontological expectation mismatch.” Recognizing this common root provides a fresh perspective for systematically evaluating existing approaches to both problems. The thesis is then used to critically examine panpsychism, a popular recent response to the problem of consciousness.
Yujin Nagasawa connects the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion by showing that influential arguments against the existence of God share a parallel structure with arguments by Thomas Nagel and Frank Jackson against physicalism about consciousness. He uses this parallel to develop new objections to Nagel's and Jackson's arguments. From the failure of those arguments, Nagasawa derives a thesis he calls 'non-theoretical physicalism': the world is entirely physical, yet some physical facts cannot be captured by any complete theory of the physical sciences.