The Argument From Consciousness

[FallentoReason]

For us to experience the phenomenon of consciousness, we need to be in the presence of time. This is logically true because for consciousness to work, it needs to actualise so that things such as emotions and thoughts can occur. Our experience of consciousness is quite literally a collective sequence of actions that we perform. All this can only happen if it's subject to time. Therefore, if we are experiencing consciousness, we must be in a temporal environment.

God must have a consciousness because God possesses the attributes of omniscience and [omni]benevolence. Otherwise how is God able to obtain all the knowledge possible and be able to express the emotion of [endless] love? This construct of the "god concept" proves to be internally contradictory by nature, and it leads to a conclusion that must negate one of the assumptions about God. The argument is as follows:

1) God is a conscious being
2) A conscious being requires a temporal environment to be conscious
3) If (2) is true, then God requires time to be conscious
4) God is outside of time
C) Therefore, God cannot be a conscious being

This conclusion is catastrophic to the idea that a personal god is one who is loving, punishing, angry, jealous, merciful, moral and genocidal as all these feelings and actions require the being to have a consciousness. It can only follow that a conscious being, such as a personal god, does not exist outside of time.

An objection could be that God exists within some transcendental dimension with its own "timeline". But, like most of these objections, that points to something that exists externally to God. In this case, God literally couldn't have made this environment for him to inhabit because such an action would first require the environment so that he could (via his conscience) create the environment. Therefore, who/what created this transcendental dimension for [their] God to exist in?

[Darkstar]

God must have a consciousness because God possesses the attributes of omniscience and [omni]benevolence.

A good post other than this part. God isn't omnibenvolent, nor is that a requirement for your argument.

I'm interested to see how theists will try to refute this without massive special pleading.

[FallentoReason]

God must have a consciousness because God possesses the attributes of omniscience and [omni]benevolence.

A good post other than this part. God isn't omnibenvolent,

Hence the square brackets i.e. if the individual believes he is (e.g. classical theism) then they include what's inside the square brackets. If they don't believe he is, then they leave out what's in the square brackets.

That's my understanding of square brackets anyways. It's like a suggestion, but without necessarily asserting it. That is left up to the individual.

nor is that a requirement for your argument.

Yes it is, because emotions only work in a temporal environment. God can't feel [infinite] love for us if there's no time to actualise such a feeling.

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I'm interested to see how theists will try to refute this without massive special pleading.

I wrote this up as a request from Chad Wooters. He thinks there's lots to be explored here, so I'm interested in seeing where we can collectively get to.

[Darkstar]

nor is that a requirement for your argument.

Yes it is, because emotions only work in a temporal environment. God can't feel [infinite] love for us if there's no time to actualise such a feeling.

Ah, yes. With the clarification that the omni is optional, that makes more sense. I don't disagree that emotions require a temporal environment, just that omnibenevolence doesn't (there are more fitting emotions than love that I would attribute to Yahweh...depends on who you ask, I guess).

[FallentoReason]

Yes it is, because emotions only work in a temporal environment. God can't feel [infinite] love for us if there's no time to actualise such a feeling.

Ah, yes. With the clarification that the omni is optional, that makes more sense. I don't disagree that emotions require a temporal environment, just that omnibenevolence doesn't (there are more fitting emotions than love that I would attribute to Yahweh...depends on who you ask, I guess).

Oh? Why wouldn't omnibenevolence require a temporal environment? I don't see any reason for thinking it escapes the claws of time.

[Darkstar]

Ah, yes. With the clarification that the omni is optional, that makes more sense. I don't disagree that emotions require a temporal environment, just that omnibenevolence doesn't (there are more fitting emotions than love that I would attribute to Yahweh...depends on who you ask, I guess).

Oh? Why wouldn't omnibenevolence require a temporal environment? I don't see any reason for thinking it escapes the claws of time.

Agh! I meant to say something more along the lines that omnibenevolence is not the only emotion that required a temporal environment, and since it didn't seem a very representative example of Yahweh's actions...but then you said the omni was optional, so...yeah.

[FallentoReason]

Oh? Why wouldn't omnibenevolence require a temporal environment? I don't see any reason for thinking it escapes the claws of time.

Agh! I meant to say something more along the lines that omnibenevolence is not the only emotion that required a temporal environment, and since it didn't seem a very representative example of Yahweh's actions...but then you said the omni was optional, so...yeah.

Ah, gotcha! Yeah, another way of slicing 'n' dicing the square brackets is that I'm actually saying both options apply i.e. it actually doesn't matter which way you go about it, you're still going to arrive at the same conclusion.

[Angrboda]

A more fatal flaw, to my mind, is that while it may be true that our form of consciousness, and the way it is realized, may necessarily entail that it exists in time, this doesn't mean that any form that consciousness might take must necessarily occur in time. It would be similar to noting that all life on our planet is carbon based, and concluding that life can't exist in a world without carbon. The generalization doesn't hold unless you can in some sense show that it is reasonable to conclude that a consciousness dependent on time is the only form that consciousness can take; failing that, I don't see how it can avoid being nothing more than an argument from ignorance ("I can't imagine how consciousness could exist without time, therefore consciousness must require time.")

I suppose ultimately the main problem here is pinning down exactly what consciousness is such that you can make the argument directly, rather than indirectly as you seem to be doing. However, once you do that, it may no longer be necessary to even make the argument, it might be self-evident.

(ETA: Another way of looking at the difficulty is to reframe your argument to something along the lines of, for all X such that X is conscious, Y [requires temporality]. I haven't the first clue how to rigorously bound the set of all X that are consciousness in order to demonstrate this, and the fact that there are numerous existents on the planet [in the animal kingdom] for which I can't conclusively say whether or not they belong to the set of all X or not [are conscious] suggests that my definition of what counts as a member of that set is not well enough defined for me to be making arguments about what does and does not belong in that set.)

[FallentoReason]

A more fatal flaw, to my mind, is that while it may be true that our form of consciousness, and the way it is realized, may necessarily entail that it exists in time, this doesn't mean that any form that consciousness might take must necessarily occur in time. It would be similar to noting that all life on our planet is carbon based, and concluding that life can't exist in a world without carbon. The generalization doesn't hold unless you can in some sense show that it is reasonable to conclude that a consciousness dependent on time is the only form that consciousness can take; failing that, I don't see how it can avoid being nothing more than an argument from ignorance ("I can't imagine how consciousness could exist without time, therefore consciousness must require time.")

I suppose ultimately the main problem here is pinning down exactly what consciousness is such that you can make the argument directly, rather than indirectly as you seem to be doing. However, once you do that, it may no longer be necessary to even make the argument, it might be self-evident.

Good point. I thought I sort of explained briefly why to my mind, it seems like consciousness necessarily requires time; consciousness is a series of events that when put side by side, give us an experience of reality. It's like a movie and all its frames. The movie wouldn't be a movie if it was stuck at frame 1. Likewise, we wouldn't be *conscious* if we were stuck at the first "instance". Only through time, do we get a flow of instances adding up to enable us to experience reality.

It's not that I'm arguing from ignorance, because if the above is true, then consciousness -- of any kind -- has to tick off time as one of the things it is influenced by, because it is necessary no matter what.

[Angrboda]

Good point. I thought I sort of explained briefly why to my mind, it seems like consciousness necessarily requires time; consciousness is a series of events that when put side by side, give us an experience of reality. It's like a movie and all its frames. The movie wouldn't be a movie if it was stuck at frame 1. Likewise, we wouldn't be *conscious* if we were stuck at the first "instance". Only through time, do we get a flow of instances adding up to enable us to experience reality.

It's not that I'm arguing from ignorance, because if the above is true, then consciousness -- of any kind -- has to tick off time as one of the things it is influenced by, because it is necessary no matter what.

See my edited-to-add comment.

ETA: How do you know that you are not a movie that is stuck at frame 1? Not that I value the objection, but your counter-argument seems to fall prey to a variant of Last-Teusday-ism.

ETA: ETA: It's also worth noting that if you're attempting to prove a negative, as you are, you require more than simply something that is compelling and persuasive, you need airtight and irrefutable logic, and you don't have that. As an argument that the notion of god is implausible, fine, you may have that; as an argument that god is impossible, you'll need much more than this.