Atheism Undermines Knowledge

[Neo-Scholastic]

...prevent it from closing the gap between quantifiable properties with measurable outcomes and knowledge about the qualitative aspects of reality.

Can you clarify the bolded part and how that relates to the mind/body problem?

That’s a tall order, since whole books have been written on the subject.

Originally Aristotle identified 4 types of cause: material, efficient, formal and final. Of these, formal and final causes presuppose intelligent agency. Formal cause implies applied design. Final cause implies purposeful direction. Neither material nor efficient causes require goal-directed or designed outcomes.

Following Descartes, the modern scientific method focuses exclusively on material and efficient causes. The whole enterprise is devoted to eliminating final and formal causes. For example, a scientific analysis of a thermostat would describe the response of a bimetal strip (material cause) to changes in temperature (efficient cause). A non-scientific description of a thermostat is saying that it “wants” to reach a set temperature (final cause). Likewise a scientific analysis of the human brain would work to eliminate any description of the brain’s operation in terms of intention or sensations. If you believe, as I do, that intentions and sensations have a real place in your concept of reality, then the scientific method as currently applied will not preserve either.

But wait! You say, “things like intentions and sensations are ‘emergent’ properties.” Doing so introduces a category error between mental and physical properties. You do not attribute mental properties to things like thermostats for good reason. They are physical systems governed solely by cause and effect. A desire to reach 72 degrees does not emerge in the thermostat. It doesn’t want anything, it just is. Likewise, driving is not an emergent property of a car. Driving is an act of intention expressing the will of the driver when applied to a physical object. So if the brain is a solely physical system why do you attribute mental properties to it? The problem is not a scientific one. The problem is conceptual.