Physicalism and Consciousness

 By Mathew Goldstein

It is both easier and better to identify the best commentary on a given topic and link to it than to put in the time and effort to try to make a similar argument myself only to find that my arguments end up being inferior by comparison. So here is philosopher Massimo Pigliucci’s compelling argument why consciousness is most likely a strictly physical phenomenon: physicalism and consciousness.

To summarize: The overall available empirically verifiable and relevant evidence from physics and biology favor the conclusion that consciousness has a strictly physical basis. The argument that it is inconceivable to us for consciousness to have a strictly physical basis, so therefore it cannot be strictly physical, is weak relative to that collection of more meaningful and powerful evidence that it is a physical phenomenon. 

It is apparent that the mysterious phenomenon of consciousness is a difficult to solve mystery. Yet it appears that various scientists who specialize in studying consciousness have plausible competing ideas regarding how consciousness arises from physical information processing occurring in the brain. Furthermore, they also sometimes have ways of experimentally evaluating which such ideas may have merit and which such ideas lack merit. In other words, that it is inconceivable for us to provide a strictly physical explanation for consciousness is probably a reflection of our ignorance. In the (maybe distant) future a detailed understanding of the physical basis for consciousness may eventually be realized, yet even then that understanding may remain out of reach for almost everyone who is not a scientist that has spent years learning about the mechanisms that produce consciousness.