The Argument from Meaning

We'll be discussing whether the argument from meaning successfully justifies God's existence. My opponent will be arguing that it does not. He is someone I greatly respect as a fellow Christian philosopher and I am very pleased that he took the time to debate this issue with a second-rate philosopher such as myself. This argument has not been presented in any scholarly journal or book that I know of but was originally developed by my good friend Apologician. I have taken it upon myself to develop this into a stronger argument and encourage everyone to assess whether it succeeds or has potential. Without further ado, here's how I'd currently formulate the argument: 1. If meaning exists, it is either created by matter or a rational mind. 2. Meaning exists in a mind. 3. If naturalism is true, then matter is ultimately meaningless. 4. Meaning cannot arise from meaninglessness. 5. Therefore, naturalism is false. (from 2, 4) 6. Therefore, the best explanation for the existence of meaning is God. (from 1, 5) This argument is not to be confused with the meaning of life. While certainly related, I do not seek to show that naturalism is a life of despair and theism is full of happiness but that meaning does exist and it cannot be explained naturally. To avoid equivocation, it is important to define what I mean by "meaning". Meaning itself is information that is expressed in various forms such as words, things, etc when accompanied by a rational mind and is used by us to express what one intends or wishes to communicate about something. In contrast, meaninglessness holds no information value to any person and is constantly disorderly so that no sense can be made from it. There are two kinds of information that we possess. One is perceivable and the other is intentional. An example of the former is the Earth. We do not create the information about the Earth but instead perceive it by observing its properties (such as color). The way in which we express these properties can be done through different languages but the perception is largely the same. Intentional information, on the other hand, is something that minds intend to communicate about something by creation of things like languages. Both kinds of information overlap each other but it is helpful to distinguish them for the sake of clarity. Having made the necessary clarifications, let's give our attention to the premises. In Premise (1), I propose that there are only two possible explanations for meaning. Ultimately, only a rational mind is capable of having any intention of expressing information "about" something. This characteristic is found nowhere in matter itself because matter doesn't have intentions to be meaningful. Intrinsic meaning is therefore only found in a mind as mentioned in premise (2). The question is, is this mind material? It might well be the case that our mind has a physical mechanism but I am not concerned about our mind's composition. It could be material or immaterial for all I know. The important question here is, why is there meaning rather than meaninglessness? A naturalist would respond by saying that meaning is a subjective phenomenon of the brain. It has no objective existence, and any attempt to infer meaning from nature is an illusion because matter is ultimately meaningless (p3). The contents of that meaning may be subjective, but the fact that meaning exists is still true. For example, qualia is subjective but it still exists. To deny the existence of meaning altogether would be contradictory since that very statement is meaningful! So while the naturalist can deny meaning in matter, it cannot deny that it exists in at least the human mind. Since premise (4) is the central refutation of naturalistic explanations, I will have to give it a proper defense. If matter truly is valueless, unintentional, inanimate and meaningless then it has no potential to create something meaningful on its own. In order to have that potential, it must have some un-actualized property of meaning in itself which seems absurd. The burden of proof would be on the one who makes such a claim. For meaning to come from meaninglessness is as much as a contradiction as something coming from nothing. Therefore, any rational person should abandon naturalism from this fact alone. However, a stronger case can be made by granting the assumption that all meaning can be reduced to mechanical operations within the physical mind. This view, however, fails to recognize that the mechanism itself is meaningful! It is important to realize that my argument never depended on meaning only as it exists in the human mind. I am speaking of it in general terms which includes what I had coined perceivable information. How does this matter? Well, I think C. S Lewis says it best: ["If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning. "] This is a crucial point. What should we expect from a universe that's meaningless? Such a world would have no continuity between events and things, thus making it absolutely unpredictable. Without any order or connection between causes or effects, there could never be any science. There'd be no patterns to discern. Do we see this in our universe? Absolutely not. So how could we say everything is ultimately meaningless? If there is no meaning, then we should have not known this. The naturalist's appeal to a mechanical explanation of the mind must assume that the universe is meaningful. To believe otherwise is to argue that scientists, mathematicians etc are in a sea of madness and delusion. They have absolutely no clue what they're saying apart from the meaning that they invented in their minds. This is obviously ridiculous and will destroy the very claim that the naturalist wishes to make. As the Nobe Prize winner physicist Weinberg said: ["But if there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself. Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators, and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather. The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. "] But this is precisely the type of world one would expect if the universe is meaningful. Having established that naturalism is false and disastrous toward scientific investigation, we have good reason to believe that (5) is true. The only explanation that we have left is a rational mind. We know that matter in itself has no capability of creating anything meaningful on its own. A rock for example, cannot create a meaningful structure without the support of some mind to form it into say a house. Since all meaning is ultimately received or created by a mind and is not founded on matter, it follows that there must be a mind like God who existed eternally. Therefore, I conclude that God is the best explanation for the existence of meaning (p6)