The 3 Mysteries

 In a wonderfully succinct conversation (clip) between Roger Penrose (mathematical physicist) and  Bill Craig (philosopher/theologian) three great ontological mysteries are discussed:

1. The physical world is so extraordinarily precise in its mathematical descriptions (I would add that it is extraordinary in that it is inherently contingent)
2. Conscious experience arises in a material world: some arrangements of material (humans, maybe the 'higher' animals), and not others (rocks) are self-aware (and can communicate meaningfully with others).
   
3. The ability to use our consciousness to understand and comprehend mathematics and its extraordinary 'deep' ideas which are far from (and independent of) our experience, but nevertheless cohere with our experience of the physical universe and exist (abstractly) independently of it.

 For Craig these metaphysical questions arouse the ancient philosophical problem of 'the one and the many'. That is, what is the underlying unity of these three seemingly disparate realms of reality: the mental, the abstract and the physical.

These realms are so different, so causally unconnected, yet they come together in our experience, one has to wonder as to the underlying unity that brings them together.

The abstract realm cannot be the source of the mental or physical, because it has no effect on anything. For instance, the number 7 as a number, a concept applied to a quantity, is causally effete: it affects nothing physically 

Could the physical realm? But it doesn't give rise to consciousness: it is not able to explain either the mental, or the abstract. It doesn't explain intentionality (the about-ness of our mental states) which no physical object has. Nor is it able to explain itself. It is contingent. It is incapable of grounding logical and mathematical truths, and is plausible finite.

Nor can the abstract realm...it (the mathematical realm) is characterized by necessity--its logically necessary truths--and its plenitude; the infinitude of mathematical objects.

What about the mental?

We know that mental causes have physical effects in our brain-states and actions: one can will to arise from a chair or to speak.

Some philosophers regard the abstract realm as ideas in the mind of the beholder (I tend to disagree, as they seem to be part of the 'deep' structure of reality, but neither physical or mental).

Either way, no human mind can be the source of these realms, only engage in aspects or reflections of them because we are contingent and finite.

The mental realm is plausible the domain of an infinite (limitless, self-existent) consciousness. A mind that has created the physical and underwrites the abstract (without being Platonic) and is necessary.

This gives an underlying unity to the tripartite metaphysical that we live in and affirm.

This is a philosophical perspective, rather than a religious one, except Judeo-Christianity, or more strictly Christianity, which understands a necessary creator who experiences personhood (diversity of mind) it himself (is triune), does not need the physical or abstract realms and is external to the tripartite world and independent of it.

We know that minds can design things, and the view that there is a limitless mind who has designed the physical world on the mathematical blueprint, that it had in mind has a long philosophical history-- back to Philo of Alexandria, who said that the intelligible world, the intelligible cosmos exists in the Logos (Philo says 'mind of the Logos') and is instantiated in the physical world. QED.