François Recanati

Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Collège de France

Année 2023-2024

Colloque - Transparency, Indexicality and Consciousness : A Conceivability Argument for Atheism

Colloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit

Intervenant(s)

Philip Goff, Durham University

If God exists necessarily and is essentially conscious, then there is a conscious being in every possible world. However, it is conceivable that nothing is conscious, which perhaps gives us reason to think that it's possible that nothing is conscious and hence that there are no necessarily existent essentially conscious beings. On the other hand, God's existence seems conceivable, which perhaps gives us reason to think that God is possible, which seems to entail that God exist in all possible worlds (given that God by definition does not exist contingently). I will argue that reflection on these arguments has important lessons for modal rationalism – the view that conceivability and possibility are linked in interesting ways – in particular the form of modal rationalism which links conceivability to possibility via transparent concepts. Ultimately, I will argue there could be a necessary being, but that if there is one, then its nature is beyond human understanding, because everything we can conceive of is possibly non-existent.