ABSTRACT
Consciousness is among the most mystifying features of the cosmos. Geoffrey Madell opines that “the emergence of consciousness, then is a mystery, and one to which materialism signally fails to provide an answer.”1 Naturalist Colin McGinn claims that its arrival borders on sheer magic because there seems to be no naturalistic explanation for it: “How can mere matter originate consciousness? How did evolution convert the water of biological tissue into the wine of consciousness? Consciousness seems like a radical novelty in the universe, not prefi gured by the after-effects of the Big Bang; so how did it contrive to spring into being from what preceded it?”2 Finally, naturalist William Lyons argues that “[physicalism] seem[s] to be in tune with the scientifi c materialism of the twentieth century because it [is] a harmonic of the general theme that all there is in the universe is matter and energy and motion and that humans are a product of the evolution of species just as much as buffaloes and beavers are. Evolution is a seamless garment with no holes wherein souls might be inserted from above.”3
