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Materialism — Bullet Gist (Overview)
Core Idea
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Consciousness is entirely physical—fully produced by the brain; all mental states reduce to physical states at fundamental levels (fields, particles).
Scientific Context
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Dominant among scientists and many philosophers.
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Strong support from neuroscience (brain damage, stimulation, correlations).
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Seen as promising—though not yet complete—regarding the hard problem.
Why It Matters
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Offers a unified, naturalistic framework for explaining consciousness.
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Integrates with established science; potentially dissolves metaphysical mysteries.
Major Challenges
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Persistent “explanatory gap” for subjective experience (qualia).
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Debate over whether physical accounts can truly capture phenomenality.
Key Positions & Thinkers
Neuroscientific Support
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John Searle (Biological Naturalism): Consciousness is fully biological.
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Susan Greenfield: Rejects irreducible consciousness as a “get-out-of-jail-free card”; explanation must stay in brain/body terms.
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Sean Carroll: Consciousness is an emergent way of talking about physical processes; no special mental realm.
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Gerald Edelman: Qualia do not block a materialist theory; a theory explains experience but cannot reproduce it.
Philosophical Landscape
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Majority of philosophers lean physicalist (~52%).
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Chalmers’ types of materialism:
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Type A: No epistemic gap.
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Type B: Gap is epistemic only, not ontological.
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Type C: Deep gap, but theoretically closable.
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Conceptual Tool
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Supervenience: No change in mental states without changes in physical states.
Introspection
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Relation to consciousness varies by theory; central in some (e.g., neurophenomenology), irrelevant in others.
Scope & Subcategories
Materialism theories spread across 12 subdomains, including:
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Philosophical
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Neurobiological
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Electromagnetic field
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Computational / informational (non-fundamental)
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Homeostatic / affective
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Embodied / enactive
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Relational
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Representational
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Language-related
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Phylogenetic/evolutionary
(List not exhaustive; categories overlap.)
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Global Workspace Theory: Treated as neurobiological materialism.
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Integrated Information Theory: Placed outside materialism (under “Information as ontology”).
General Insight
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Many materialist theories explain how consciousness arises, but not always what consciousness fundamentally is.
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A broad, pluralistic approach is encouraged for understanding consciousness.
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