Summary of arguments for and against theism

Intro

The following are the most important arguments for and against theism (the existence of God). I do not endorse any of the below claims strongly. This page is for educational purposes.

Evidential arguments

Argument from Religious Experience. 

Claim: God must exist because we have religious experiences which are unlike our experiences of the physical world.

Response: But religious experiences could be caused by neural firing or by demons.

Argument from Probability. 

Claim: In all probability, given the evidence, and Bayes' Theorem, God likely exists. (Swinburne).

Response: But if you set the probability of this universe very low, then you need to set the probability of theism very low, in Bayes' equation, since a very high number in the numerator (e.g. that you think Prima Facie God exists), would result in a very low posterior probability (after calculation) if the universe Prima Facie would not exist (the denominator). If you follow the maths and then set the numerator low, you're effectively admitting the chances that God exists are low, Prima Facie.

Cosmological Argument. 

Claim: The fact that this universe contains life is a miracle because it was so improbable that the fundamental constants that make life possible have a wide range of possible values, so, God must have set them to create life. (Lane Craig gives a good version of this in his exposition of the Islamic Kalaam argument).

Response: Stenger shows that a quite wide range of values (10^500) could have produced a life-bearing universe; moreover if there are millions of parallel universes, life certainly exists in one of them.

Argument from Providence. 

Claim: The fact that our lives are mostly good and mostly pleasant with blessed experiences such as love, children, etc., that God must exist, because only a good God would allow such things.

Response: Benatar argues that life is mostly hard and therefore we should stop having children. This is because they will mostly suffer, and you're imposing suffering on new beings, which is unethical. This is a position called Antinatalism.

Teleological Argument. 

Claim: Our world seems designed for a purpose; to enable life. Just as if we find a watch in a desert, we would assume it was not there by accident but was created for a purpose. Life was intelligently designed. We do not know how life started.

Response: Our life-teeming world is more like a watch factory with parts available everywhere, than a desert. It's easy to create a watch in a watch factory. Also, a "purpose" is a question begging argument because it implies a person who has that purpose. Meaning you can only make sense of the "teleological" argument if you assume that there's a Person with a purpose (ie that God exists).  Scientists admittedly have not solved the question of abiogenesis (how life started from non-life), but, there are several theories and papers on the topic recently which offer reasonable theories - more explanatory than "Then God said" (which is tantamount to saying it was just a miracle, not an explanation).

Argument from Scriptural Authority. 

Claim: Scriptures are old and have stood the test of time, therefore they must be true and by inference, their contents must be true, including reference to God.

Response: But then any suitably old book must be totally true, even if it refutes itself or refutes other old books. The Gita is proof Rama exists, the Quran is proof that Allah exists, etc. Spiderman comics are proof that Spiderman exists, etc.

Argument from Consciousness. 

Claim: We have consciousness which is amazing and unexplained by science. Therefore God created us and imbued us with a soul (consciousness).

Response: This is question-begging as it assumes consciousness cannot be explained, or will forever remain unexplained. It's a version of God of the Gaps. Over time we have seen our knowledge gaps, which we used to explain by reference to God, now have scientific explanations. So we assume that within a short time, we will have an explanation for consciousness.

Argument from Miracles. 

Claim: Since miracles occur (e.g. when someone survives a plane crash or cancer), it follows that God exists.

Response: (a) That's survivor bias, (b) confirmation bias, (c) what about the other 199 passengers or cancer patients who didn't survive and (d) no one has regrown a limb no matter how much they prayed.

Argument from Human Morality. 

Claim: Humans have moral behaviour. Only a good God would create us with moral behaviour. Therefore God exists.

Response: Apes and others display moral behaviour therefore it is a side-effect of group structures in gregarious or herd animals. Morality can be better explained by evolution, since non-gregarious animals display low moral scruples.

Evidential Argument from Evil. 

Claim: Evil is allowed by God because he is testing our faith. Since he gave us free will to choose good or evil, it is up to us to choose or not choose evil.

Response: There is too much evil in this world, it is too widespread, and the individual acts of evil are too horrible, for them to be tolerated by a good God. Only a neutral or evil god would allow this. Furthermore, some cases of evil (e.g. the ability to suffer needlessly from accidents), supports the theory of evolution (that we evolved the ability to suffer to ensure that we avoid harm). Lastly, the biblical story is clear that the Devil gives free-will to Eve. Not God.

Logical arguments

The Problem of Evil. 

Claim: Evil exists. God is omnibenevolent (all good, perfectly good), therefore God should not create or allow evil. God is also omnipotent (all powerful), so he is perfectly able to stop any evil. He is also omniscient (knows all), therefore he knows about all evils. Therefore because God is God, he must stop all evil. Yet God does not stop evil. Therefore he does not exist or he is not all good, all knowing, or all powerful (ie he is not God).

Response: God allows only those evils that he could not stop without causing an even greater evil (Plantinga's "could not properly eliminate"). Also, there's theodicy of suffering: God allows evil because suffering builds character and makes us worthy of Heaven.

Argument from Theistic Coherence. 

Claim: God is all-good because he is omnipresent (everywhere), and all-powerful (nothing is inaccessible to him), and all-knowing (omniscient), so nothing can hide from him, including the truth. And when a person knows all the facts about what is right to do, and nothing can prevent them acting, they must be all-good. Therefore the idea of God is logically necessary and coherent.

Response: If God is omnipotent he can create a wall. If God is omnipotent he can create a wall that is too hard to knock down. If God is omnipotent he can create a wall that even he can't knock down. If he can't create such a wall he is not omnipotent. If he can't knock it down, he's not omnipotent. Therefore omnipotence is logically impossible. If God is omniscient he knows what he will do in the future. If God knows what he will do in the future, he can't change his mind. If he changes his mind, he didn't see the future clearly and therefore is not omniscient. If he can't change his mind he is not omnipotent. Therefore God is not logically coherent.

Prima Causa argument. 

Claim: Everything has a cause. And those prior causes have prior causes. Therefore, there is an infinite chain of causes going back in time. At some point, if we are to explain the universe (have a complete explanation), we have to stop at one particular cause and say this was the First Cause. That is God. (St Aquinas).

Response: The first cause could have been a big bang, or a quantum event. It did not have to be God. Indeed a big bang or quantum event is simpler to explain than an infinite being with plans, thoughts, moral values, etc. Furthermore, quantum random events do not have causes, so most atomic events are uncaused causes. Yet they are not God. If you say "God did it", you are still left with "Why?". The precise initial cause - be it a Big Bang, a Cosmic Bounce, etc., are all up for further research.

Ontological Argument. 

Claim: Perfect things necessarily contain the property of existence. Anything that is perfect necessarily exists. God is perfect. Therefore God necessarily exists. (St Anselm).

Response: I can imagine a perfect unicorn. Perfect things necessarily exist. Therefore at least one unicorn exists. We can do this with any item. I can imagine a perfect dragon, or a perfect flying car. We therefore must reject the claim that perfection entails existence, otherwise we can wish anything into existence.

Reliability of journals and academic expertise

How to tell if someone is in fact an expert:

Look up their citation index in their field. 

https://subjectguides.uwaterloo.ca/calculate-academic-footprint/

..if they have a low or negligible citation index, ignore them. 

You can also see their informal rating on https://www.researchgate.net 

Another way is to see how many journal articles they've published. 

If they've never published a journal article OR it is in a dodgy journal, ignore them. 

Dodgy journals are those published for profit which do not do proper peer review. 

https://predatoryjournals.com/journals/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_publishing

https://beallslist.net/

Correct English

Introduction

Please note this page contains the author's opinions only and may differ from the Rules and Regulations of the University. Please consult the University Rules, which overrule these.

Nice page: http://www.vox.com/2015/3/3/8053521/25-maps-that-explain-english

On this page I list common errors people make in their usage of English, and provide the corrections. You'll notice that I can't make up my mind whether English is capitalised or not. I have the same problem with "earth." Anyone want to correct me?

PS If you don't think learning to spell is important, please consider the below:

Punctuation

Apostrophe, possessive and plural forms. This is used to indicate a missing letter which was historically present. Hence, the word "don't" contains an apostrophe because it is a contraction of "do not." the apostrophe replaces the O. Other examples are "let's", which is short for "let us", and "he's", which is short for "he has" or "he is". E.g., "He's got a car" means "he has got a car". Similarly, in the past, i.e., about 1000 years ago, English used -as for plural and -es for possessive (genitive). Since the loss of the vowel in these suffixes, we now use the apostrophe to denote the E in -es (genitive). e.g., John's apple's red colour—meaning, the red colour of the apple of John. If John has more than one apple, it would be apples (without an apostrophe) to indicate the presence of more than one apple, however, if we still want to talk about the red colour of John's apples, we have to add an apostrophe to indicate that we're not putting the -es of possessive form, but we know it should be there. So it would be: John's apples' red colour. American usage retains the second S, i.e., John's apples's red colour.

upcoming projects

I'm presently working on research on fake news and conspiracy theories and how they relates to epistemology (the study of knowledge, or how we know what we know) and the psychology of religion. 

My prima facie opinion of fake news is that it appeals to human sociability, and combined with our instincts to believe things that fit into our world view, it leads us to share this information online without checking its validity.

My prima facie opionion of conspiracy theories is that they're an emergent form of religion (ie a cult). They have many features in common: a larger than life enemy, persecution of a chosen people who know the truth, a prophetic leader, an ingroup/outgroup distinction, a doctrine which is not questioned.

Three types of Fake news in the academic world

 How to tell if something is a fake publication

Fake publications come in three forms: prank publications, predatory publications and just plain bad science. For more on predatory publications and how to identify them, please see our earlier post below. An example of an AI that generates prank mathematics publications is here.

On the matter of prank publications, those are generally easier to detect since they make obviously ridiculous claims. However, the ability to detect whether the claims in the publication are indeed ridiculous depends on your academic backround. A particularly notorious case is the Sokal Hoax. In brief, a physicist called Alan Sokal sent a nonsense paper to a humanities journal:

"In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal's intellectual rigor, and specifically to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies—whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross—[would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."  Unfortunately the article was published. You can read more about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair.

This prank demonstrated that academics are prone to Confirmation Bias — that is, that we are inclined to believe more things which are similar to what we already believe, or, which support our existing beliefs. Confirmation Bias is the bias which leads us all to fall prey to fake news and fake science. Most people fall for such things due to some or other cognitive bias. A definitive list of cognitive biases is here. You can obtain a nice poster about biases here.

On the matter of bad science, these are cases where the scientist or research has an ulterior motive behind their research. This is why declaring your funding source is so important, as is a literature review. Because unless you show an understanding of the existing literature, and show who is funding your research, it remains suspect. As an example, consider the case of Wakefield, 1998. His article caused hysteria around vaccines which still has not died down, despite the article being retracted.

"The final episode in the saga is the revelation that Wakefield et al.[1] were guilty of deliberate fraud (they picked and chose data that suited their case; they falsified facts).[9] The British Medical Journal has published a series of articles on the exposure of the fraud, which appears to have taken place for financial gain." (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/)

The same rubric applies as with fake news. If an article (be it from a professor or not), sounds hysterical and incredible, it probably is not worthy of serious consideration. Science is a sober serious business. Anything that is radical should be looked at with very careful scrutiny, and a replication of its experiments should always be performed to validate the findings.

Different positions on "the mind"

The reason philosophy of mind exists, is because the physical evidence generally does not support the view known as dualism. Dualism is the position that we have "spirits" or "souls" and our minds are not somehow dependent on our bodies; that is, that there are two types of existence; mental/spiritual, and physical/material. Most of the work in this area of philosophy is an attempt to account for why it feels like dualism is true, when the evidence seems to show that it is not. 

I am aware of ten positions on this debate which try to explain what the mind is:

Target: Dualism

1. Supervenience

2. Epiphenomenalism

3. Functionalism

4. Eliminativism

5. Central state materialism

6. Extended mind theory

7. Panpsychism 

8. Emergence

9. Temporal model

I last studied this material around 2005 so I may be rusty and mis-remember authors and how to present the cases, but here's a summary. If I've left any out, please contact me on social media and advise. Any material mistakes or corrections welcome.

Target: Dualism

David Chalmers (older work) and Rene Descartes. This is the default theistic or spiritualist position. It denies the materialist premise that minds are created by or caused brains. It claims that there is a separate mind (or soul, or spirit), which correlates with or follows the body. It appeals to our intuition that there's something special about the mind and its unique "incorrigible" first-person perspective, that is, that we have access to our private thoughts and experiences. However, there are a number of problems with the position which strongly hint that it's not correct. 

Firstly as mentioned, if the brain itself is struck, we lose consciousness. This suggests that it is tied to the head, not a disembodied soul. 

Secondly, commissurotomy studies demonstrate split consciousness (Marks 1981 disputes this but I believe he fails to make his case). Commissurotomies were performed in more barbaric times so as to control epilepsy. If the commissures (joining area between the two sides of the brain) are cut in a commisurotomy operation, the two halves start behaving like separate people. For example, one hand pulls up the trousers, the other pushes down. One hand writes something under a concealing surface, the other cannot draw a picture of what was written. Yet both sides are individually aware of what they did, and neither side is aware of what the other side did. There are also experiments which show that we are not aware of our brain activity anyway, e.g. Soon et al (2008) show that our brain "Decides" what to do about 10sec before we actually do it, yet we're only "aware" of the decision about 300msec before we move. 

Thirdly, it's trivial to show that our access to our mind's contents is not incorrigible (faultless) and in fact it is very poor. For proof of this, google "visual illusions", "Elizabeth Loftus memory reliability", "blind spot", "cocktail party effect". You'll find many other related cases where in fact it can be shown that we're mostly aware of what we're looking at, or focusing on, and only for a short period of time. Optical illusions show how our brain makes up content. We are actually barely conscious at all. For example, this illusion (Hermann Grid illusion) shows grey blobs in the white intersections. There ARE no grey blobs. Also, in one of the variants, the blobs seem to shimmer and appear/disappear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_illusion

Fourth, the causal efficacy problem. Descartes was a famous case of a dualist in the scientific era. His problem is the well-known pineal gland problem. He discussed the nature of the mind and concluded that it must have a way to control the body. He proposed the pineal gland as the interchange point between the spiritual and physical. However there's no modern scientific evidence or reason to support that choice, or to explain why that part of the brain only, can transmute spiritual events into physical world events. So this is the problem of causal efficacy of the spiritual. 

If you commit to the view that the spiritual is causally efficacious, you commit to the view that the spiritual just is physical. Maybe it's a field, or particles, but it's physical, because it manifests effects in the physical world through presumably contact. The same argument can be extended to any spiritual entities (ghosts, demons, deities, etc). Either they're not able to have any effects (do not exist, even?), or they are physical (and therefore testable by science).

Chalmers used to support dualism, as I interpret him, and I do not believe he was successful. He now seems to have migrated to Clarke's view, below.

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_the_illusion_of_consciousness

1. Supervenience: the mind somehow "floats" or "supervenes" or "sits" on the brain. More like a field. I believe John Searle (2001 articles) would hold this position. The trouble with the position is it seems to be quasi-dualism; like it wants to separate the mind (to give it its magical first-person perspective properties and subjective properties) but still make it physical. However this does not seem to explain how the physicality of the mind makes consciousness possible, nor provide a route for us to hope that consciousness could be causally efficacious (ie that we control our actions at all). It just allows that the mind is physical and the brain is physical, without saying how the mind is generated and whether it can do anything other than represent "seemings" to "us".

2. Epiphenomenalism: Author: Daniel Dennett. The mind is a side-effect of the brain's activity, like a shadow is a side-effect of light shining on a body. It is visible, it exists, but it has no significant effects. Dennett argues that our belief in our own causal efficacy is little more than that; a belief. The actual bodily movements we make are controlled mechanically by brain processes. Dennett skirts dangerously close to eliminativism at some stage when he disparages mental "seemings" (e.g. that it seems to me that I now see pink), as "qualia" and "figment" (a play on figment of your imagination and "pigment"). I am sympathetic to this view, because it explains certain anomalies in how we can respond fast to physical threats but only become aware of them consciously afterwards.

The main trouble with the position is that if the mind is not causally efficacious, that is, it's just a shadow-like effect, why does it exist, from an evolutionary standpoint? Prima facie it seems that the purpose of the mind, from an evolutionary standpoint, would be to keep us alive and safe from holes in the ground, predators, etc. However if the mind is not causally efficacious, why have it? I suspect the answer is it might be an anachronism or similar; something like an appendix or tonsils. It's there because having it hasn't killed us all off. 

3. Functionalism: Author: David Lewis (Article: Mad Pain and Martian Pain). The mind is caused by the brain, and the physical substrate itself doesn't matter as long as it's functionally equivalent. So if a Martian has a hydraulic brain rather than an electrical one, we won't deny him consciousness even though his brain is different. 

For AI to be possible in the true sense - that is, conscious robots - we'd need functionalism to be true, since robots' minds are implemented with doped silicon and metal circuits. Not neurons. That means that if functionalism is false, robots will never be conscious unless they're made of cells, neurons, etc.

The problem is best explained as the emulation-vs-instantiation problem: Even if you emulate the behaviour of neurons in hardware or software, you're still not instantiating a mind, you are emulating or copying one. 

I am sympathetic to functionalism because I think if we're committed to the scientific world view - that ultimately everything is just matter and interactions between particles of matter, forces, etc.,  - then necessarily functionalism follows. The position is however not really able to explain why human brains have the qualitative experience of consciousness in the first place, because it just makes it possible for any suitable system to have consciousness. In short, functionalism is not discriminating enough in what it would count as conscious. It doesn't say how it's caused or why it feels like that. To parody it, a jersey is complex and has patterns and networks and threads. But we do not think jerseys are conscious.

4. Eliminativism: Author: Patricia Churchland.  Position: There's no such thing as a mind. There's only the brain and its activities. The mind - consciousness - is eliminated. I cannot recall the argument for this position other than to say it is a strong form of central state materialism (below). I have presented it very poorly here. However I do not see we should entertain it.

I think it's clear that this position is just throwing the problem out rather than answering it. We all do very clearly know that we feel conscious. Even if eliminativism were true, that there's no such thing as a mind, it still doesn't explain this experiencing now, or for example why we feel like a colour-blind person really does have a different experience of the world to a non-colour-blind person. There's a thought experiment called "Mary the scientist". It goes as follows. Mary grows up in an all-white room where everything shown to her is shades of grey. She never has a mirror. When she goes outside finally into the outside world and sees coloured objects for the first time, does she learn anything? All of us, I think, would say yes, she would be startled. Churchland however has to bite the bullet and say no. But I seriously doubt it - Mary would definitely notice. It can be empirically demonstrated. Give colour-blind correction glasses to a colour-blind person and watch how dramatically they respond even though they are generally only unable to see half of the colours. They definitely learn something. Now imagine someone who has never seen colour ever! They'd be overwhelmed. You can also find videos of deaf children achieving hearing for the first time. Their astonishment is visible. To me this is a demonstration that eliminativism is false.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6QuYiY1EJg

5. Central state materialism: The mind is just the activities of the brain or central nervous system (CNS). Author: DM Armstrong (1968). This is the default position in science, I think, but it doesn't answer the question of how the brain produces the mind, because computers are very brain-like but give no sign of having minds of their own (well, except when they crash or play other pranks on you). 

The simple and obvious explanation of why CSM must (largely) be true comes from the Ancient Greeks: if you drop a block or object on your toe, your toe feels painful. If you drop the same block on your head, you are knocked unconscious. Therefore, consciousness is inside your skull. The issue of why we feel sensations e.g. in our limbs is well-explained in terms of how the mind maps the body in space. Hence the phenomenon of "phantom limbs" in amputees who still "feel" their limb even though there is no limb. Similarly, it is very clear that the neural density of the body is maximal at the brain, and if nerves are severed, then consciousness of that extremity is severed (well except when people get phantom limb illusions. For more on that, google "false hand illusion"). So we know that consciousness has something to do with neurons. 

Similarly, when people are placed under fMRI, we are able to see changes in the energy use in the brain at various locations depending on the mental task used. The Japanese have even been able to extract images from the brain. 

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/mind-reading-algorithm-can-decode-pictures-your-head

The science in this area is quite advanced now. They can read pictures, words, and music, from the mind, just using fMRI and an AI that inteprets the scan. The accuracy is over 80% in most cases.

So consciousness resides in the brain; that much is conclusive. Whether it depends on the brain, or whether it is limited to just the brain, or whether it can be instantiated elsewhere, are open questions. 

The main problem with CSM is it doesn't say how consciousness is made.

6. Extended mind theory: This is Andy Clarke's position and it's a relatively new one (this century; I first encountered it in 2008). It supposes that the mind is extended - not just the brain, but extended to things like our social circles, memory storage methods, the environment, etc. More like a hive mind. It is characterised as an "active externalism", meaning the mind isn't just in the skull. 

https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/concepts/clark.html

I do not see that it solves the problem because it doesn't account for the first-person perspective, even if it's true. And I find it problematic to make the claim simply because of the existence of individual consciousness. While I am sympathetic to the idea of a hive mind - like we see in say, termite colonies - it's not really one mind with one point of view; it's just coordinated activity. I recognise however that as Dennett and Eugene Marais argue, our minds are a lot like termite colonies: millions of small agents working together to create a metaphenomenon or emergent phenomenon we call the mind. However, I suspect that extending it to the outside world is stretching the truth. I am sure I am parodying the position, however, so see the below videos for more detail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc-TdMjuJRU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg00gK43Id4

7. Panpsychism. This position is that everything has a mind - even particles of matter. There is something-it-is-like-to-be an electron. And so, we should not be surprised that brains have minds. A more nuanced defence of a similar position is available in my paper on Academia.edu:

https://www.academia.edu/26866868/A_Scientific_Model_of_Pantheism

I also explain why it's not useful. The pantheism model explained in the paper relies on a version of panpsychism, so don't be distracted by that difference. Pantheism is the view, roughly, that the universe is God. Panpsychism is the view that everything has a soul or mind. So, these two theories may well be coextensive if God is just an infinitely large soul. (To put it more pedantically: If God is an infinite soul - pantheism - and if the universe is infinite and all things are conscious - panpsychism - then panpsychism and pantheism have the same extension - thing they point to - even if they have a different intension or meaning).

The trouble with panpsychism is that it just makes consciousness an unexplained phenomenon or a property of matter, like "charge" or "mass" or "extension". It also creates further problems, e.g. with ethics. It means that, for example, we can't mine minerals anymore because we are literally hurting the earth by so doing. But the most implausbile thing about panpsychism is that it is just "kicking the can down the road." If our neurons are conscious because electrons are conscious, that doesn't explain why electrons are conscious. It's still not answering the question except to offer us a brute fact (matter just is conscious).

The main advantage to panpsychism is you would now have good reason to swear at the coffee table when you stub your toe.

8. Emergence. I suspect the correct answer to the problem of consciousness lies in a combination of epiphenomenalism, functionalism and emergence theory. 

We want a model which creates consciousness out of specific arrangements of forces, energy, matter, etc., just like life is made out of, or comprises, DNA, cells, osmosis, energy transfer, mitosis, meiosis, etc. all of which are mere physical/mechanical processses. So we want a model of emergence; that is how a certain arrangement of matter/energy gives rise to consciousness; in the same way that traffic emerges from cars, or ocean currents and whirlpools emerge from water molecules, or fields of energy emerge from many energetic particles. This is not to say the mind is not real, but that it is indeed a kind of summative effect or consequent effect of subsidiary processes.

Let's return to question of 'what is life', so as to provide an analogy. People debate whether viruses count as "alive". Viruses reproduce using other cells, but they do not have respiration or combustion, and they comprise only a cell wall and DNA/RNA (excuse my poor definition). They're more similar to organelles inside living cells - such as mitochondria - than living cells. So it's clear that there are certain threshold conditions of complexity for something to be considered alive. 

Inasmuch as we are not clear whether a virus could be alive, or whether a mitochondrion can be considered alive, or whether a bacterium is really alive, we might ask the same about consciousness, using the same kind of grading scale. In virtue of what do we get consciousness, and how many neurons do we need? Is a jellyfish conscious? A tapeworm? A bacterium? What about an amoeba? A starfish? A lizard? A spider? Etc. 

Let's put it this way. To explain living things, at some point, you have to talk about non-living components, systems, and energy flows. Otherwise you are forced to kick the can down the road and say all atoms and quarks and electrons have elan vital. The same for consciousness. Either we explain it by reference to non-conscious mechanical parts, or, kick the can, all particles are conscious and consciousness is a property like magnetism, electrical charge, etc.

I think the matter relates to (a) complexity and (b) neurons, nothing more.

But even if we succeed in making a robot with a brain which operates exactly like ours (except made say of silicon), we can at most say that the robot looks conscious and says it is conscious and says is is having conscious experiences, but we can never know; it could just be lying or programmed to say so. As Nagel observes: we do not know what it is like to be a bat, and feel the experience of using the sense of echolocation. So we would not know what it was like to be a robot.

9. Temporal model. A temporal model of the mind would argue that the mind either just is the same as time, or, it exists in time only (4th dimension), or it is supradimensional (e.g. 5th dimension). I've heard this view from a few people but I've not thought about it enough to give it either a positive or negative response. In some sense, the experiencing of time is fundamental to our consciousness (e.g. how a dream seems to be a few minutes but actually in real time is an hour). And our awareness of time passing is something central to what we consider consciousness. However, whether the mind is coextensive with time, or coextensive with another dimension, or whether it merely accesses another dimension, is interesting but speculative and would need some significant argument.

Disclaimer

Please note that all the above positions are strongly defended by many competent authors, most of whom hold professorships. The articulation I have presented above does not do these positions justice as to how nuanced they are.

My position

I am not firmly convinced by any of the above but I think a combination of emergence, epiphenomenalism, CSM, and functionalism, must be approximately right.

Detecting fake news

1. Detecting fake news.
- Does it make you frightened?
- Does it make you angry?
- Does it come from social media?
- Did you see it on a website with lots of adverts?
- Is it sensational?
- Does it agree with your existing biases or prejudices?
If your answer to any of the above is "yes", it could be fake news. If you answer "yes" to most of the above, it is almost certainly fake. The purpose of fake news is to stir up political sentiment or just to spread like a virus, or sometimes to drive you to a commercial site, e.g. a site that spreads fake news and encourages you to buy a product, such as a conspiracy book or a fake medicine.

2. How to verify
Before assuming something is fake news, learn how to verify.
- Take the image and upload it into google image search. You can only do this from a laptop or PC. See what the search returns. If it returns lots of sites with similar content, it is probably fake. If it returns links saying it is fake, then it is probably also fake.
- Look at common "debunking" sites like snopes.com and africacheck.org (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fact-checking_websites)
- If it is about a medication, check www.quackwatch.org
- if it is about a get rich quick solution, check www.mlmwatch.org
- look at a reliable site on the topic.

3. Lists of reliable sites
Reliable websites are as follows:
- Universities: their website addresses end in .ac.za (South African), .ac.uk (British), .ac.nz (New Zealander), .edu (American), and .edu.au (Australian). I mention these website "domains" simply because they are in the english-speaking domain. If you want to consult other academic sites, German and French university sites are also reliable.
- Wikipedia. Speaking as a PhD researcher with published papers, I can tell you for certain that Wikipedia is highly reliable, as it references journal articles (academic research papers)
- Journals. Academic journals vary in quality. You should trust those published by Taylor and Francis, Elsevier, Springer. Avoid journals published by predatory journal publishers (most of which are based in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and similar areas).

A Predatory journal is called such because it tricks academics into submitting papers with promises of publication. When the paper is submitted, it is always accepted, and then the academic is asked to pay "fees". It is a money-making scam. The reason predatory journals are fake, is that they do not do peer-review. Peer review is the process whereby academics "mark" each others' work to check the quality is good enough. Proper journals do peer review, predatory journals do not.