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2.3.1 Dualism and Physicalism Three broad schools of thought vie against one another concerning the reality of immaterial minds idealism, which holds that all reality, including apparently physical objects, is mental dualism, which holds that both immaterial mental substances and physical substances exist and materialism or physicalism, which holds that there are no immaterial mental substances and, hence, only physical causes.35 Although idealism persists in contemporary philosophy, it is unfashionable materialism is the majority view today, especially with respect to sentient biological organisms, including human beings. Materialism or physicalism comes in two significantly different varieties reductive and nonreductive physicalism. Reductive physicalism may be either eliminative or noneliminative materialism. Eliminative materialism is the more radical view, denying that states of mental awareness like thoughts are in any sense real. People on this view do not really have thoughts. Noneliminative materialism concedes that people and animals do have states of mental awareness but identifies such allegedly mental states with brain states, so that, for example, a pain is nothing more than the firing of certain neurons in the brain. Reductive physicalism, whether eliminative or noneliminative, though once very popular, is increasingly disfavored today because it fails to take account of the obvious differences between brain states, which may be fully described from a neutral, thirdperson standpoint, and phenomenal states of awareness, which involve a subjective or firstperson viewpoint.36 Nonreductive physicalism is the preferred view among materialists today, the view that although mental states are real, they are nonetheless properties of the brain. Because of its commitment to the reality of mental states, nonreductive physicalism is often taken to be a kind of dualism, specifically, property dualism.37 That is to say, even though there are no mental substances in addition to physical substances, there are irreducible mental properties which some physical substances have.38 But given its denial of mental substances, this view is more accurately characterized as a kind of physicalism, not dualism, even if it represents a concession to dualism. Because there are no mental substances, a consistent nonreductive physicalist maintains that the states of mental awareness possessed by certain physical substances are causally effete, so that all causal influences are physical. On the contemporary scene, anthropological dualism is a wellrepresented minority position in the philosophy of mind.39 In a theological context anthropological dualism takes the form of bodysoul dualism, according to which a human being is a composite of a rational soul and body. Whether human persons just are souls which happen to be embodied or whether human persons are composed of soul and body as essential and contingent parts is an inhouse question among dualists. On theism God is a sort of soul or mental substance distinct from the physical world. Physicalism of any variety is obviously incompatible with divine incorporeality, since God is an immaterial mental substance who is causally connected to the world. Accordingly, if there were good arguments for physicalism, we should have good reason to reject divine incorporeality. But here caution is in order, for divine incorporeality does not obviously entail anthropological dualism. There are on the contemporary scene plenty of anthropological monists, or physicalists, who are Christian theists who affirm divine incorporeality.40 Thus, arguments against anthropological dualism do not obviously commit one to a denial of divine incorporeality. This distinction is highly significant because the most important and widely accepted arguments against anthropological dualism are scientific in nature, what Dean Zimmerman aptly calls “Ockhamist objections” to dualism, to wit, the soul or mind is not needed to account for the empirical data of the cognitive sciences, rendering the hypothesis of the soul dispensable.41 Now whatever one thinks of such Ockhamist objections to anthropological dualism,42 they are obviously inapplicable to theism because God is not related to the world as soul is to body,43 much less have we any scientific data about the workings of God’s mind in relation to the cosmos What we need to consider, then, are arguments for physicalism that are not scientific in nature but would have application to God as an immaterial mental substance distinct from and causally active in the world. This is a welcome relief, for it prevents our being sucked into the black hole of the literature on the mindbody problem. We can set aside for now as irrelevant Ockhamist objections to anthropological dualism and even forego the positive arguments of substance dualists for anthropological dualism. Of course, if those arguments are sound, so much the better for theism But we have good scriptural reasons for thinking God to be incorporeal. That is where we as Christian theologians begin. Our question is thus sharply delimited what arguments are there that God cannot be incorporeal There are such arguments, but they are much fewer in number than the arguments against anthropological dualism. 2.3.2 Physicalist Objections to Divine Incorporeality So what objections have physicalists offered against substance dualism that would be applicable to God Moreland and Rickabaugh consider three such objections.44 2.3.2.1 The Problem of Causal Interaction Doubtless the most important nonscientific objection to substance dualism is that it posits a causal connection between mind and matter that is utterly mysterious.45 We have no understanding how a nonphysical substance could have physical causal effects. The objection thus presents a challenge to dualisminteractionism, the view that the mind and body are causally interactive. The problem of causal interaction would obviously not be a problem for idealist philosophers, for whom all reality is mental. For theistic idealists the world is, in effect, like a dream in the mind of God, and everything that happens in it is sustained by God’s thinking. Were he to unthink it, the world would vanish in an instant. So radical a solution to the problem, however, one that treats the material world as basically illusory, is hardly a promising way to handle it, since the solution to the problem seems no more plausible than the problematic view itself. In any case, the idealist solution does not sit well theologically with the JudeoChristian worldview, which affirms the value and, hence, reality of the material in its doctrines of creation, incarnation, and resurrection. Therefore, we should do well to take the duality of mind and material as real rather than a matter of mere appearance and see what might said in response to the problem of their causal interaction. Moreland and Rickbaugh distinguish two issues with regard to the interaction problem. On the one hand, it may be a demand for some sort of mechanism between mental and physical entities in virtue of which they interact with one another. This demand is, however, inept, since the effect of the mind upon the body, on pain of embarking on an infinite regress, is taken by dualistinteractionists to be immediate, without any intervening causal linkage. On the other hand, if the question is taken as simply an expression of skepticism that there could be such immediate causal connections, then the force of the objection can be easily exaggerated. Taliaferro finds the physicalist critic somewhat hardpressed to provide evidence that the only causal relations possible are among physical objects.46 After all, souls, in contrast to causally effete abstract objects like numbers, are concrete entities endowed with causal mental powers sufficient for effects like thoughts. Why not powers to affect the physical realm as well The materialist cannot simply charge that evidence is completely lacking for mentalphysical interaction, Taliaferro reminds us, for if we follow the precept of trusting appearances until we have strong reason otherwise, it seems that the mental and physical do interact.47 Keith Yandell explores and rejects various justifications of such skepticism, for example, that mindbody interaction would violate some supposedly necessary truth like Only like can affect like, or Only what is in space can affect what is in space, or Ultimate connections cannot be brute. The above causal likeness principle is patently false, so that “anyone should be ashamed for basing criticisms of anything on it.”48 As for the spatiality principle, there is just no evident incoherence in stating that something which is nonspatial affects something that is spatial. Considerations from contemporary cosmology reinforce Yandell’s point. There is no reason why something to which our 4D spacetime manifold is present but which exists at no spacetime point in it cannot causally affect things which do exist at various spacetime points. In fact, this is precisely what the initial cosmological singularity does. Granted, it, too, is a physical reality, if real at all, but it is not at all obvious that a God who transcends space and time could not act to produce effects in it. As for the no brute connections principle, Yandell points out that there can be irreducible physical laws connecting physical phenomena, and there is no reason why brute mental–physical connections should be objectionable, whereas brute physical–physical connections are not objectionable. We might not agree with William Hasker that the problem of causal interaction “may well hold the alltime record for overrated objections to major philosophical positions,” but its force should not be exaggerated.49 Hasker is not alone in pointing out that one reason it is not decisive is that “all causal relationships involving physical bodies are at bottom conceptually opaque. We have no ultimate insight into the causal relations involved except to say, ‘That’s the way things are.’”50 Philosopher of science Jeffrey Koperski demands, “Can anyone say how the Higgs field bestows mass on elementary particles What precisely does the causal joint look like Can anyone explain how an exchange of particles binds electrons to a nucleus As every parent knows, eventually the right answer is simply ‘that’s just the way it is’.”51 Perhaps the most powerful response by anthropological dualists to the present objection is to point out that we have good positive reasons to think that the soul is an immaterial substance that causally affects the body, even if we do not understand how.52 Moreland and Rickabaugh point out that dualist entities like conscious states and the soul are not only entities of which we have direct acquaintance, but entities whose reality is supported by philosophical arguments from the unity of consciousness, the possibility of disembodied survival or body switches, the best view of an agent in support of libertarian agent causation, the metaphysical implications of the use of the indexical “I,” and the special sort of diachronic and synchronic unity of human persons.53 Similarly, in considering physicalist objections to divine incorporeality, we must not forget that we have sound theistic arguments that support divine incorporeality. As we have mentioned, arguments such as the kalām cosmological argument, the teleological argument from the finetuning of the universe, and the argument from the uncanny applicability of mathematics in physics provide powerful reasons for thinking that there is a transcendent Mind who has created the universe. These arguments provide a strong cumulative case in support of divine incorporeality that may well outweigh the putative defeaters brought against the doctrine. In particular, they outweigh expressions of incredulity based on our ignorance of how the mental affects the physical. In fact, it seems to me that the dualistinteractionist can turn the tables and argue cogently that the materialist claim that causal interaction is impossible is incapable of rational affirmation. I have reference here to Alvin Plantinga’s celebrated Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism EAAN.54 Plantinga argues that naturalism is selfdefeating because if our cognitive faculties have evolved by naturalistic processes, they are aimed, not at truth, but at survival, and so cannot be relied on to produce true beliefs. Because our mental states assuming against the eliminative materialist that we have such states have absolutely no effect on our brain states, the content of our beliefs is irrelevant to our survivability. All that matters is our physical behavior, not the truth of our beliefs. So long as we act in ways conducive to survival, it literally does not matter what we believe. But if we cannot rely on our cognitive faculties to produce true beliefs, then the belief in naturalism is itself undermined, since it has been produced by those very cognitive faculties. We can formulate Plantinga’s argument as follows55 1. The probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable, given naturalism and evolution, is low. 2. If someone believes in naturalism and evolution and sees that, therefore, the probability of his cognitive faculties’ being reliable is low, then he has a defeater for the belief that his cognitive faculties are reliable. 3. If someone has a defeater for the belief that his cognitive faculties are reliable, then he has a defeater for any belief produced by his cognitive faculties including his belief in naturalism. 4. Therefore, if someone believes in naturalism and evolution and sees that, therefore, the probability of his cognitive faculties’ being reliable is low, then he has a defeater for the reliability of his belief in naturalism. EAAN, if sound, does not prove that naturalism is false but that it cannot be rationally affirmed. It is a selfdefeating position.56 As Hasker perceptively recognized, EAAN is not so much an argument against naturalism as an argument against materialism.57 If the naturalist were to embrace dualisminteractionism, he would be immune to the argument, despite his denial of supernatural realities like God. For though a naturalist, he would recognize the reality and causal efficacy of souls and, hence, their possible selective advantage in the evolutionary struggle for survival. In that case our belief states would be relevant to our survivability. Plantinga himself, in his most recent explication of EAAN, makes it clear that the real target is materialism. Observing that “nearly all naturalists are also materialists with respect to human beings,”58 he asks what the likelihood is that the content of our beliefs is in fact true, “given evolution and naturalism construed as including materialism about human beings.”59 He then proceeds to explore the reasons for premise 1, first, on the assumption of reductive materialism and, second, on the assumption of nonreductive materialism.60 Accordingly, “EAAN” is something of a misnomer the argument is better called the Evolutionary Argument against Materialism EAAM. But even that new label is not quite correct. For many naturalists, most eminently W. V. O. Quine, are not materialists but embrace wholeheartedly the reality of immaterial abstract objects such as mathematical entities.61 Despite their denial of materialism they would still be vulnerable to Plantinga’s argument, since they deny that immaterial entities exert any causal influence on the world. As Hasker discerns, what Plantinga’s argument is really about is the socalled causal closure of the physical CCP.62 As defined by philosopher of mind Jaegwon Kim, “This is the assumption that if we trace the causal ancestry of a physical event, we need never go outside the physical domain.”63 The closure principle requires that all physical events have only physical causes. If there do exist immaterial entities, they are irrelevant because of the causal closure of the physical domain. Materialists may embrace or deny the reality of mental states of awareness, but they all deny their causal efficacy in the material world. Plantinga’s argument is therefore best cast as the Evolutionary Argument against the Causal Closure of the Physical EAACCP.64 Plantinga’s argument is thus directly relevant to the present objection based on the impossibility of causal interaction between the soul and body. If EAACCP is sound, then the materialist’s claim cannot be rationally affirmed and collapses in selfdefeat. Hasker wryly comments, “To say that this constitutes a serious problem for physicalism seems an understatement.”65 Is EAACCP successful Andrew Moon, whose careful analysis of debunking arguments we have already encountered in the locus De fide, 66 explains that the crucial question in assessing the success of Plantinga’s argument is, “Which beliefs may the materialist legitimately use to respond to such a potential defeater” The materialist might think that he can offer a defeaterdefeater for Plantinga’s defeater of the reliability of the materialist’s cognitive faculties. He might, for example, invite us to just look around and see how reliable our and other animals’ cognitive faculties are in navigating successfully the physical world. Unfortunately, Moon explains, the materialist, while engaging in such reasoning, would be employing the very cognitive faculties that he already has reason to distrust. In other words, any potential defeaterdefeater will itself already be defeated by the original defeater of the reliability of one’s cognitive faculties. Therefore, the materialist cannot block defeat by appeal to a defeaterdefeater, since all of his beliefs are already defeated. Rather what the materialist needs is what Plantinga calls a defeaterdeflector. 67 The materialist might argue that even if, given belief in CCP E, the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable is low, nevertheless there could be other beliefs B he also holds, such that on CCP E B together the reliability of our cognitive faculties is not improbable. B then serves as a defeaterdeflector for the potential defeater, that is, B prevents the admittedly low probability of the reliability of our faculties given CCP E from being a defeater for the reliability of our faculties. While a defeaterdefeater assumes that some belief is a defeater that must in turn be defeated, a defeaterdeflector prevents the belief from being a defeater in the first place. Figuring out exactly which beliefs can legitimately function as defeaterdeflectors is a difficult question and constitutes a serious challenge for materialists that needs to be addressed. Plantinga refers to this problem as the conditionalization problem Which beliefs B are such that if the probability is high that our faculties are reliable given CCP E B, then B prevents the defeat of the reliability of our faculties Clearly, for instance, B cannot just be the belief that our faculties are reliable, for that would be obviously questionbegging. In a recent contribution Moon attempts to solve the conditionalization problem for a certain type of debunking argument that he calls an undercutterwhilerebutter such as he takes Plantinga to offer.68 What is needed, says Moon, is a “reliabilitypromoting, epistemic origin story,” that is to say, an account of how we came to have our cognitive faculties such that, conditional on it, there is a high probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable.69 Moon offers what he calls an Epistemic Origin Story Solution EOSolution to the conditionalization problem EOSolution. Even if S’s belief that X and PrR∣X is low is a potential undercutterwhilerebutter for R, the belief that B and PrR∣XB is high is a defeaterdeflector for that potential undercutterwhilerebutter for R if and only if a S is justified prior to considering the argument at hand in believing that B and PrR∣XB is high. b B is part of S’s believed epistemic origin story. In other words, Moon says, a justifiedly believed, reliabilitypromoting epistemic origin story will deflect a potential defeater for R. Though Moon’s solution to the conditionalization problem is offered only for the undercutterwhilerebutter interpretation of Plantinga’s argument, there seems to be no reason why it would not apply to both interpretations of EAACCP. In both cases the reason that we should conditionalize R on a justifiedly believed, epistemic origin story in order to determine whether R gets defeated is that one must prevent defeat from happening in the first place. Moon writes, Why is the justifiedly believed epistemic origin story what R should be conditionalized on to determine whether R gets defeated . . . Given the powerful undercutting power of undercutterswhilerebutters, most bits of evidence one would like to appeal to to deflect the potential defeater will get undercut. To prevent defeat, one must prevent the undercutting from happening in the first place. The appropriate deflector to such a potential defeater will be the set of justifiedly believed propositions in one’s justifiedly believed epistemic origin story, propositions that make probable and explain why R is true. This will prevent undercutting from happening in the first place.70 What is said here of undercutterswhilerebutters could with equal justice be said of undercuttersbecauserebutters to prevent defeat, one must prevent the rebutting from happening in the first place. That requires an origin story So the question is whether the materialist can offer a justifiedly believed, reliabilitypromoting epistemic origin story. It is very hard to see how he can. We know that the probability that our faculties are reliable given CCP E is low. E already includes the materialist’s epistemic origin story. Is there something that could be added to E consistent with materialism that would do the job It is hard to see what that could be. Given the causal closure of the physical, there seems to be nothing that might be added to E that would raise the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable.72 It is not clear, therefore, what defeaterdeflector the materialist can offer to stave off defeat by Plantinga’s argument. Unless and until such a defeaterdeflector can be identified, belief in the causal closure of the physical is irrational. Therefore the objection based on the problem of causal interaction cannot be rationally affirmed. In sum, the most widespread and influential philosophical objection to substance dualism and, hence, to divine incorporeality fails. Ultimately, physical causation is just as inexplicable as mental causation. Given the sound arguments for a transcendent Creator and Designer of the universe, we can be confident that God can interact causally with the physical world, even if we do not understand how, just as, given our direct acquaintance with ourselves and the arguments for the existence of the soul, the dualistinteractionist can be confident that the soul does interact causally with the body, even if we do not understand how. Finally, the impossibility of causal interaction between soul and body and, hence, between God and the world cannot be rationally affirmed, since to affirm the causal closure of the physical is irrational, pending some justifiedly believed, reliabilitypromoting, materialist, epistemic origin story. 2.3.2.2 The Causal Pairing Problem The problem here for dualisminteractionism, as identified by Jaegwon Kim, is how to explain the causal connection between a particular cause and a particular effect, which Kim believes to be insoluble in a case involving an immaterial mental substance like the soul.73 In the case of physical substances, a causal connection between two events exists in virtue of theirspatial relations, such as their spatial orientation and the spatiotemporal path along which a causal chain between them lies. But assuming that the soul, being immaterial, is not spatially located, the causal connection between mental events and physical events is inexplicable. We are invited to imagine two souls, A and B, who are in the same mental state, for example, willing to lift one’s left arm. If souls are not spatially located in their respective bodies, then there seems to be no explanation why A’s willing causes A’s arm to rise rather than B’s arm. It does no good to rejoin that A wills to lift this arm rather than that one, for we can imagine that A and B both will to lift this arm, but only A’s volition is effective.74 What then explains the causal connection between A’s mental state and the physical event of A’s arm’s rising One cannot say that the explanation lies in the fact that the body in question is A’s body, for the reason it is A’s body is because of A’s causal connection to it, both affecting it and being affected by it, so that such an explanation would be viciously circular. Dualism thus seems unable to explain the pairing of mental causes with their physical effects. Since Kim’s argument is meant to hold for immaterial mental substances in general, there should be a theological application of it, which has been called the divine causal pairing problem.75 The challenge here is to explain, given God’s transcendence of space, why his mental events are causally connected with certain events in the physical world rather than others. Granted the causal pairing problem for human souls, “it is unlikely that God stands in the right kind of relation to the world such that his action can cause, for example, the Red Sea to part rather than the Mediterranean Sea. The problems that plague nonphysical human minds plague the divine mind as well.”76 Kim’s causal pairing problem thus involves two claims 1 causation requires pairing relations connecting cause to effect and 2 there are no such relations for minds that are not spatially located. Not only are both claims dubious with respect to anthropological dualism, but they become positively implausible with respect to God’s causal activity in the world. The first claim assumes that there must be some general pairing relation that connects causes and their effects. Why think this77 Kim does not say. Bailey, Rasmussen, and Van Horn speculate, “We have a guess as to the underlining sic reasoning for thinking that there must be a pairing relation pairing is required because the satisfaction of a generality condition is necessary for causation,” for example GC Necessarily, if A and B share all of their qualitative properties, then A is no more qualified to count as the cause of C than B is. Now Kim presupposes the truth of event causation, the view that the relata of causal relations are exclusively events. But many anthropological dualists embrace agent causation, the view that agents bring about effects by means of their actions. Bailey, Rasmussen, and Van Horn contend that libertarian causal agency constitutes an exception to any generality condition stipulating that qualitatively indistinguishable causes like souls cannot have different effects It’s common for immaterialists about human persons to think that a person can enjoy agent causal powers that allow her to choose an action among a range of alternative actions. The idea is that no property instantiated prior to the time of the agent’s action fixes exactly which action she performs. . . . We think such immaterialists would happily grant in addition that indistinguishable agents would or at least could have the same causal capacities. Now consider a world in which two persons, Tim and Tom, are exactly similar in all respects. . . . Suppose that Tim and Tom each have the same two options available to them – to cause A or to refrain from causing A. If Tom happens to cause A while Tim refrains, then we have a situation in which GC fails. The reason is that Tom and Tim are indistinguishable and yet Tom counts as the cause of A, whereas Tim does not.78 If libertarian free agents are causes of effects, then a soul could be the cause of a particular physical effect even though nothing distinguishes it qualitatively from another soul. Ganssle concludes that “Kim’s argument will work only against those versions of dualism that do not include an agentcausation view. Any position that involves this kind of agency will be immune from Kim’s argument.”79 Still, the Christian theologian will not want to make Christian theism hang upon the success of agent causation, so it will be prudent to ask why GC must hold even in the case of event causation. Why could there not be singular causal relations that do not fall under some more general condition This is the very plausible claim that two events can be causally related without their connection’s being explained in terms of some further relation such as Kim envisions. As Bailey, Rasmussen, and Van Horn explain, “if singular causal relations are possible, then it seems that it should be possible for a cause to stand in a singular causal relation to an effect while there is an indistinguishable candidate cause in the neighborhood, given that singular causal relations are not fixeddetermined by the properties that a thing has.”80 They observe, moreover, that “many immaterialists and materialists alike believe in the possibility of singular causation and are therefore committed to the denial of GC.”81 Being in such good company, the Christian theologian will rightly insist that he is far more confident that God acts in the world than that some such general condition is true. The second assumption of Kim’s objection, it will be recalled, is that no such pairing relations exist for minds that are not spatially located. Anthropological dualists who hold that souls do exist spatially in or throughout their bodies will therefore be unfazed by Kim’s objection, since souls meet successfully the condition for being causally connected to their effects.82 In the same way, theists who take God to exist spatially throughout the universe may be able to argue that God meets the same condition as well.83 But the objection remains relevant for dualistinteractionists who think that souls, including God, do not have spatial locations. The question, then, is why we should think that only spatial relations can pair a cause with its effect. Prima facie this seems surprisingly restrictive.84 Indeed, it is difficult even to state the pairing problem for God’s causal activity in a way that does not appear a bit silly. For example, Ganssle writes, “If we need some relation to be present to link cause and effect, we will need a link between God’s willing and its effect. God wills that the Red Sea part. What makes it the case that this results in the parting of the Red Sea rather than the Mediterranean Sea”85 How can such a question even be posed with respect to an omnipotent being whose volitions are inevitably fulfilled The will of such a being is indefectible – necessarily, it is linked to its effect.86 It is metaphysically impossible that God wills the parting of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean parts instead. So, while for some physical causes such as a rock’s hitting and breaking a window, “the spatiotemporal relation is sufficient to map the cause to a particular effect,” says Ganssle, “It is possible that, when God acts, it is the direct object of his volition that maps the cause to the intended effect.”87 Indeed, necessarily, whatever God wills shall be done, on earth as it is in heaven. God’s actions, then, are guided by divine intentionality, what he intends to accomplish. Ganssle correctly states that “When God parts the Red Sea, there is a causal relation at work. God wills, and the Red Sea parts. God’s picking out the Red Sea, however, is not causal.”88 But Ganssle’s further claim that “divine intentionality is a direct, noncausal relation. . . . The Red Sea itself – the particular body of water – is immediately present to God’s cognition” is inconsistent with his affirmation that intentionality “is not a relation at all,” but rather “a monadic property of being ofabout that is exemplified by the relevant mental state.”89 Given such an understanding, it is inept to think that when God picks out the Red Sea in thought, the Red Sea itself is immediately present to God’s cognition. As J. N. Findlay pointed out long ago, to think, for example, that China is a constituent of the property totheeastofChina is absurd, for then China must inhere, in all its solid immensity, in the Philippine Islands.90 Similarly, with respect to intentionality, if I think of X, my thinkingofX is plausibly a mental monadic property of which X is not a constituent. My state of mind has the monadic property of beingdirectedtoX, whether or not X exists. One may then causally bring about X. 91 2.3.2.3 The Problem of the Conservation of Energy The conservation laws require that energy be neither created nor destroyed. But if the soul produces effects in the brain, then neuroscientists ought to observe violation of the conservation laws because energy is increased in this physical system even when it is closed to outside physical causes. But no such violation of the conservation laws is observed by neuroscientists. By extension, God’s causing effects in the universe would involve an observable violation of the conservation laws governing the closed system that is the physical universe. There are two pertinent questions with respect to this objection. First, would the soul’s or God’s acting in the physical world violate the conservation of energy Here we must distinguish between violation of the conservation of energy and violation of the conservation laws. Brian Pitts explains that if the soul does act upon the body, then the conservation of energy and momentum obviously does not hold.92 Conservation of energy and momentum is fundamentally local in nature, varying with time and place “Dualism claims that immaterial souls affect bodies but souls are not present and active in the same way everywhere and always, so any causal influence from the soul on the body will vary with time and place, leading to the nonconservation of energy and momentum where and when they act and only there and then.”93 On the other hand The assumption of the conservation of energy and momentum at every point in space. . . at every moment of time implies . . . that the laws of physics are invariant under rigid time and space translations the temporal and spatial uniformity of nature. Hence any mental influence Ψt, x, y, z must be the same everywhere and always Ψ constant. But surely my willing to raise my arm on Earth in 2018 does not have a uniform influence everywhere and throughout the whole history and future of the universe.94 It follows that “it is perfectly clear that such a physical system lacks the symmetries of time and spacetranslation invariance in the regions of mental influence e.g., the brain. . . . the mere fact if it is a fact that my mind acts on my body and not on Mars implies that mental causation on the view in question violates momentum conservation.”95 By contrast the conservation laws are conditional propositions and so are not violated when the conditions are not met. Although the conservation laws can be stated technically,96 we scientific laymen can appreciate the point by realizing that the conservation laws state that energy is conserved for some system only if there is no external force acting on that system. Pitts calls this response to the present objection the “conditionality” response “conservation fails but that is no objection because the law is conditional on the lack of outside influence.”97 As conditionals, the laws are not violated when, as a result of the soul’s influence, energy and momentum are not conserved “since dualism contradicts the antecedent no external force, dualism’s contradicting the consequent the conservation of energy and momentum cannot be refuted merely by talking about supposed but overly strong ‘laws’ of conservation. No true conservation ‘law’ is violated even if conservation fails.”98 Therefore, if the energy of a physical system increases in the absence of any physical cause, no law if violated if the increase is due to the action of a nonphysical cause outside the scope of the laws. This is the lesson learned from discussion of the hoary problem of miracles.99 Although we shall have more to say about this when we come to the locus De creatione, suffice it for now to say that a miracle is a naturally impossible event, that is to say, an event beyond the causal capacity of the natural causes at the time and place in question, but its occurrence is not a violation of nature’s laws, since those laws have implicit ceteris paribus conditions that no supernatural causes are intervening. Similarly, the laws of thermodynamics have conditions and so are not violated when those conditions are not satisfied. This failing of the objection should not be confused with the common reply that the physical laws are not violated because neither the brain nor the universe is a closed system. Such a reply is misguided because it implies that God and the soul are part of a wider physical system characterized by a certain energy, which contradicts dualism.100 Collins objects, “presumably the ‘energy’ of an immaterial substance does not gravitationally attract other masses, nor does it have inertia, nor can one write a Hamiltonian function for it. Accordingly, it is difficult to see how the concept of ‘mind energy’ is anything like the concept of physical energy.”101 Rather than finding in the soul or God a wider reality governed by the laws of thermodynamics, we should simply deny that such physical laws hold for immaterial substances. Be all this as it may with respect to the action of the soul upon the body, the present objection becomes relevant to God’s action in the world, it would seem, only in the case of miracles. Since the conservation laws are fundamentally local, God’s actions on the world to conserve it in being, rather than in the world, do not involve any spikes in energy or momentum in the universe. Hence, God can be causally related to the world as cause to effect without any impact on the conservation in the scientific sense of energy and momentum. To borrow Pitts’ phrase, God’s mental influence Ψt, x, y, z could be the same everywhere and always, so that in contrast to my willing to raise my arm God’s willing has a uniform influence everywhere and throughout the whole history and future of the universe.102 Only in the case of miracles like parting the Red Sea or changing water into wine would God’s action involve nonconservation of energy. The second and more appropriate question for dualisminteractionism is, if the soul through its causal interaction with the body is constantly creating spikes in the energy of the brain which are physically uncaused, then why do we not observe such mysterious, seemingly uncaused changes in the entropy level of the brain Why are such miraculous effects hidden from us Pitts considers this problem to pose a serious challenge to anthropological dualisminteractionism.103 Anthropological dualists may appropriate the point of certain divine action theorists that even if there were such energy increases, the indeterminacy involved in quantum physical processes permits undetectable increases in energy to be involved in the mind’s interaction with neural processes in the brain.104 What Nancey Murphy, an anthropological monist, allows for God could be said with equal justice for the soul’s action on the neural processes of the brain within the wider range of effects allowed by God’s action in and through subatomic entities, God restricts his action in order to produce a world that for all we can tell is orderly and lawlike in its operation. . . . God affects human consciousness by stimulation of neurons – much as a neurologist can affect conscious states by careful electrical stimulation of parts of the brain. God’s action on the nervous system would not be from the outside, of course, but by means of bottomup causation from within. Such stimulation would cause thoughts to be recalled to mind presumably it could cause the occurrence of new thoughts by coordinated stimulation of several ideas, concepts, or images stored in memory.105 The hidden activity of the soul, since it is invested by God with only finite powers, should not be viewed as a selflimitation, as it would be in God’s case.106 Such a proposal does not depend upon construing quantum indeterminacy ontically but at most epistemically, as allowed by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Hence, the mind could be causally influencing the brain without our ever being able to detect its influence upon the energy levels of the brain. In fact, however, no such recourse to quantum indeterminacy is necessary. Uwe Meixner provides a more realistic assessment of the situation when he writes, In every second, countless physical events take place in any human brain. Do all of these events have a sufficient physical cause, and does the cause, in turn, itself have a sufficient physical cause, and so on How could we know – scientifically know – that this is indeed the case . . . the assertion of a purely physical sufficient causation of all the events in the human brain has more to do with adopting physicalism a position which is just as metaphysical as dualism than with respecting science and scientific evidence.107 Mihretu Guta identifies two conditions which must be satisfied in order to exclude the soul’s causal influence upon the brain 1 the soul’s actions must be empirically identifiable within the brain’s complex neurophysiological processesevents, and 2 there must be some way of determining whether or not we have succeeded in satisfying 1.108 An immediate problem is that the overwhelming majority of neuroscientists have no interest whatsoever in detecting the activity of the soul, so that the question has not been adequately investigated. Be that as it may, the most promising way to identify the soul’s activity would be by employing brain imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI, positron emission tomography PET, and electroencephalogram EEG. Unfortunately, these imaging techniques have limitations that are in some ways analogous to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Ideally speaking, when neuronal signals are recorded, we want to get complete information on the time it takes for a particular population of neurons to fire and where in the brain those electrical signals occur. But no techniques are available that allow us to do that in one experimental setting. We cannot get information about the spatial resolution and the temporal resolution of electric brain signals simultaneously. Moreover, even if complete information were in principle achievable, the sheer volume of neurons exceeding 100 billion and neuronal synaptic connections exceeding 100 trillion make the task difficult. To all this, we may add that chemical signals also work in a highly complex fashion in conjunction with electrical signals. Correlating such electrical and chemical signals with some sort of mental content is extremely tricky. Thus, there does not seem to be a feasible way of satisfying 1 or 2. In any case, whether or not entropic changes in the brain constitute a serious challenge to anthropological dualisminteractionism, the present objection falls completely flat when it comes to theism. The analogue to the soul’s causal action on the brain will be God’s miraculous intervention in the universe. The objection, then, is not to theism or divine incorporeality as such but reduces to the problem of miracles we do not observe the sudden decrease in entropy that would be associated with a dramatic miracle. But here we need no entropic measure to discern a miracle. As Pitts quips, “While sufficiently gross violations of energy conservation wouldn’t require the mathematics to discern – such as if an aircraft carrier suddenly appeared in a wheat field in Kansas ex nihilo, or even levitation. . . there seem not to be such cases pertaining to the philosophy of mind.”109 Unlike the soul’s actions, God’s may be easy to discern. Since we have no expectation of the frequency of miracles, there is just no objection to God’s miraculous activity in the physical world. The classical theist need not, like some of these timorous divine action theorists, be looking for a way for God to act in the world without miraculous interventions or decreases in entropy. So this third problem is exclusively a neuroscientific objection to anthropological dualisminteractionism that has no relevance to divine incorporeality. What other philosophical objections might be raised against divine incorporeality In their treatment of divine incorporeality, Joshua Hoffman and Gary Rosenkrantz discuss a few additional objections to God’s materiality 2.3.2.4 The Problem of Individuation For entities of any ontological category, there must be an adequate principle of individuation distinguishing one from another. Physical objects that are qualitatively indistinguishable, like two perfectly similar spheres, may be individuated on the basis of their spatial location. But now imagine once more two souls who are qualitatively indistinguishable. Since two souls of this kind would lack a principle of individuation, the concept of a soul is unintelligible. Hoffman and Rosenkrantz assume that souls are not spatially located, which many anthropological dualists deny. But even if souls are aspatial, it seems to me that the anthropological dualist may plausibly respond to this objection by maintaining that two such minds are individuated by their irreducible, real, exclusively private, firstperson perspectives that make one awareness belong to one subject and another similar awareness belong to another subject.111 What has been rightly called the transcendental ego is ineliminable because every attempt at selfobjectification presupposes a subject who does the objectifying. Two selves who have similar mental states thus refer to different persons by their use of the firstperson indexical “I.” As we shall see when we come to a discussion of the Trinity,112 even the three Trinitarian persons are irreducibly distinct in virtue of their different firstperson perspectives. Be that as it may, the objection is a nonstarter when applied to God, for God is a single, unique, immaterial substance or soul. There is nothing else that might be confused with him. God is therefore necessarily individuated. 2.3.2.5 The Problem of Description The complaint here is that souls must be negatively described, for example, as immaterial. But that leaves us bereft of any positive concept of what a soul is. Anthropological dualists rightly respond that not only are many physical entities also negatively described, for example, as massless in the case of photons, but more importantly, just as such physical entities can also be positively described, so can the soul, for example, as conscious. So Moreland and Rickabaugh flatly reject this objection “it is just false to claim that there is no positive characterization of a soul. Dualists hold that it is a substance essentially characterized by the actual and dispositional properties of consciousness and, perhaps, life.”113 They explain that substance dualists characterize the soul as essentially that which , where the blank is filled with at least the following eight features 1. exemplifies mental properties. 2. holistically unifies mental properties. 3. is an enduring mental continuant. 4. is the employer and referent of “I.” 5. has an irreducible “FirstPerson Point of View.” 6. is possibly disembodied as a unified center of consciousness. 7. ontologically grounds claims like “Necessarily, thoughts have thinkers.” 8. exercises active power and teleologically guides a deliberative process towards an end.114 Though formulated with creaturely souls in mind, almost every item on this list also describes God. Indeed, as this locus illustrates, the concept of God is a rich, positive concept characterized by many extraordinary properties, not just a blank left unfilled by the via negativa. 2.3.2.6 The Problem of Diachronic Identity The claim is that whereas physical objects can be given persistence conditions in terms of spatiotemporal continuity, souls lack any principle of persistence that make souls identical over time. But if there is anything that I know persists through time, it is I myself. I am the same person now who began this sentence a moment ago. Therefore I cannot be an immaterial object. In that case God, too, as an incorporeal entity, would have no grounds for personal identity over time.115 Theists who construe divine eternity in terms of timelessness would obviously be unfazed by this objection, but theists who think that God does exist temporally must face the question of God’s persistence conditions. Anthropological dualists will, however, find comfort in the fact that persistence conditions for physical objects are, in fact, extremely difficult to give in terms of spatiotemporal continuity or anything else, for that matter.116 If necessary and sufficient conditions for diachronic personal identity cannot be given, so be it. Diachronic personal identity is brute. Dualists will sometimes hold that what grounds the persistence of a human being over time is his simple, irreducible, rational, substantial self or soul, which endures through bodily changes. But the diachronic identity of the soul itself is a brute fact. However that may be, the objection is once again inapplicable to God, not because God does not persist through time if he is timeless, but because it is metaphysically impossible for there to be more than one God. Whereas it is possible for there to be a multiplicity of finite persons, God cannot be multiplied. Therefore if God exists at any time, there is no other God at any other time. Moreover, in view of his essential necessity and eternity, it is metaphysically impossible that he fail to persist through time. Moreover, whereas personal memories fail for human beings as a sufficient condition for personal diachronic identity due to the possibility of false memories, in God’s case his personal memories are sufficient for personal identity over time. For in view of his essential omniscience God cannot have false memories. It is metaphysically impossible that his memories of his past be mistaken. Therefore, necessarily, God persists over time. But such an account should not be thought to ground God’s personal identity over time so much as to provide evidence for it. God has memories of himself because he is identical over time he is not identical over time because he has memories of himself. Still, it is striking that one of the accounts of personal identity over time does not fail for God as it fails for human beings. 2.4 Concluding Remarks The Christian theist has ample scriptural grounds for affirming divine incorporeality, grounds that are powerfully reinforced by multiple arguments of natural theology and by perfect being theology. God’s immateriality is thus our starting point, and we then ask whether there are overriding arguments against divine incorporeality that would serve to defeat this biblical teaching. We need not pick sides here in the heated debate over anthropological dualism, since Ockhamistic, scientific arguments against anthropological dualism and in support of anthropological materialism are irrelevant to God’s being an immaterial Mind. Only those arguments that would have application to an unembodied, transcendent Mind need be considered. The most important of the six arguments we examined, the problem of causal interaction, was seen to be reduced in force, not merely by the fact that physical causation is in the end just as inexplicable as mental causation, but especially by the fact that we have sound arguments for a transcendent Creator and Designer of the universe that imply that God can interact causally with the physical world, even if we do not understand how. In any case, Plantinga’s EAACCP shows that the claim that causal interaction between mind and body does not and cannot occur is selfdefeating and so incapable of rational affirmation, a devastating defeater of this objection. The causal pairing problem is multiply flawed even on a human level, but becomes outrageously implausible when applied to God, since God’s actions are infallibly paired with their effects in virtue of God’s intentions and so always and inevitably produce their intended effects. The problem of the conservation of energy is in one respect a nonstarter when it comes to the effects of the immaterial soul or God, since neither is a physical entity governed by natural laws insofar as the observability of their effects is concerned, the effects of the soul on the brain could occur undetected within the range of the fluctuations of the energy permitted by quantum indeterminacy, while God’s macroscopic acts may be there for all to see. The problem of individuation is inapplicable to God in view of his uniqueness, while the problem of description has no relevance to God in light of his many positive attributes. The problem of diachronic identity is no worse for God and souls than for physical objects, for which adequate persistence conditions are equally difficult to state, and is in any case inapplicable to God in view of his uniqueness and other attributes, which precludes different Gods’ existing at different times. Having thus good scriptural and philosophicotheological reasons for affirming divine incorporeality and no overriding defeaters of that doctrine, we may safely proceed on the presupposition that God is incorporeal.117