In God and Phenomenal Consciousness, Yujin Nagasawa bridges debates in two distinct areas of philosophy: the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion. First, he introduces some of the most powerful arguments against the existence of God and provides objections to them. He then presents a parallel structure between these arguments and influential arguments offered by Thomas Nagel and Frank Jackson against the physicalist approach to phenomenal consciousness. By appealing to this structure, Nagasawa constructs novel objections to Jackson's and Nagel's arguments. Finally, he derives, from the failure of these arguments, a unique metaphysical thesis, which he calls 'non-theoretical physicalism'. Through this thesis, he shows that although this world is entirely physical, there are physical facts that cannot be captured even by complete theories of the physical sciences.
Yujin Nagasawa is Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham and Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the Australian National University. He is the author of numerous journal articles and co-editor of There's Something About Mary: Essays on Phenomenal Consciousness and Frank Jackson's Knowledge Argument and New Waves in Philosophy of Religion.
Part I. The Structure of Knowledge Arguments: 1. The structure of knowledge arguments; Part II. Knowledge Arguments in the Philosophy of Religion: 2. Grim's argument from knowledge de se; 3. The argument from concept possession (1); 4. The argument from concept possession (2); Part III. Knowledge Arguments in the Philosophy of Mind: 5. Nagel's bat argument; 6. Jackson's mary argument (1); 7. Jackson's mary argument (2); Part IV. Knowledge Arguments and Nontheoretical Physicalism: 8. Knowledge arguments and nontheoretical physicalism.