Quentin Smith

The standard view of philosophers is that the existence of particular events within our universe is capable of being explained in terms of initial conditions and natural laws, but that the existence of our universe itself is a 'brute given' that is incapable of naturalistic explanation. A supernatural explanation of the existence of our universe may be alleged to be possible ('God created our universe so that humans may exist and the existence of humans is an intrinsic good'), but an explanation that appeals only to factors, situations or regularities in nature is deemed to be in principle impossible. It is also a standard view of philosophers that the less fundamental natural laws of our universe are capable of being explained in terms of more fundamental laws of our universe, but that the most basic natural laws of our universe are incapable of being explained naturalistically. Perhaps they can be explained supernaturally, by asserting that God ordained them so that humans may eventually evolve, but no other explanation is supposed possible

In "A Cosmological Argument for a Self-Caused Universe," one of us (Smith) argued that the universe explains its own existence because (i) its existence is entailed by (and so explained by) the existence of the infinitely many instantaneous universe states that compose it, and (ii) each of those states is caused by (and so explained by) infinitely many earlier universe states.[1] Moreover, (ii) is true even if the universe is finitely old because, given standard Big Bang cosmology (Friedmann cosmology), the universe does not exist at t0 (i.e., the Big Bang singularity is not real) and no matter how close some moment tn (at which the universe does exist) is to t0, there are infinitely many (indeed continuum-many) moments at which the universe exists that are even closer. Thus, even a finitely old universe has no beginning in the sense of a first moment, and hence its state at any moment is (sufficiently) caused by (all of) the universe states that precede it. Further, since this explanation of the existence of the universe is complete despite making no reference to God, and since God by definition is a part of any complete explanation of the universe, it follows that God does not exist.

Consciousness is perhaps the most puzzling problem we humans face in trying to understand ourselves. It has been the subject of intense study for several decades, but, despite substantial progress, the most difficult problems have still not reached any generally agreed solution. Future research can start with this book. Eighteen original, specially written essays offer new angles on the subject. The contributors, who include many of the leading figures in philosophy of mind, discuss such central topics as intentionality, phenomenal content, knowledge of mental states, consciousness and the brain, and the relevance of quantum mechanics to the study of consciousness.