The Argument from Consciousness and Divine Consciousness

This paper refines the argument from consciousness by highlighting the first-person perspective as a distinctive feature that cannot be fully explained by materialism, thereby supporting a theistic explanation. It draws on knowledge arguments to challenge a posteriori materialism and suggests that divine knowledge is better understood as knowledge of things rather than knowledge of facts. The argument centers on how subjective experience points beyond purely physical accounts.

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Abstract

The paper aims for an improvement of the so-called argument from consciousness while focusing on the first-person-perspective as a unique feature of consciousness that opens the floor for a theistic explanation. As a side effect of knowledge arguments, which are necessary to keep a posterior materialism off bounds, the paper proposes an interpretation of divine knowledge as knowledge of things rather than knowledge of facts.