# Biological Naturalism **Domain:** Philosophy of Mind / Consciousness / Biology **Doc Type:** Theory Node **Classification:** Causal-Powers Objection **Maturity:** Established Debate **Related:** [[wiki/John Searle|John Searle]], [[wiki/Consciousness|Consciousness]], [[wiki/Substrate Independence|Substrate Independence]] --- ## Position **Biological Naturalism** is John Searle's view that consciousness is a real biological phenomenon caused by lower-level neurobiological processes and realized in biological systems. Conscious states are not separate substances, but neither are they exhausted by an abstract program description or an observer-relative simulation. ## Challenge to Functional Reconstruction A system may duplicate input-output behavior or computational organization without duplicating the causal powers that produce subjectivity. On this account, simulating a brain is no more sufficient for consciousness than simulating digestion is sufficient for digesting food. The objection targets the inference from functional equivalence to phenomenal instantiation. ## Evidence Consequence Continuity claims require more than behavioral indistinguishability if biological naturalism is possible. The architecture must keep open at least three hypotheses: consciousness is multiply realizable; only certain physical causal organizations realize it; or biological processes are indispensable. Current evidence does not authorize silently selecting the first. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "Describing a machine as "thinking" could be a simple heuristic convenience or machine design might be explicitly biomimetic." > **— Julia Clarke**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Calling Machine Thought Human Is Only a Metaphor by Julia Clarke|Calling Machine Thought Human Is Only a Metaphor by Julia Clarke]] > "What I think about machines thinking is that it won't happen anytime soon. I don't imagine that there is any in-principle limitation; carbon isn't magical, and I suspect silicon will do just fine." > **— Gary Marcus**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Carbon Is Not Magical but Thinking Machines Are Not Near by Gary Marcus|Carbon Is Not Magical but Thinking Machines Are Not Near by Gary Marcus]] > "If the right combination of chemicals can perform thinking and feeling emotions, and it does—the proof being ourselves—then sure there should be many other analogous mechanisms for doing the same." > **— Carlo Rovelli**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Chemistry Proves Minds May Have Other Mechanisms by Carlo Rovelli|Chemistry Proves Minds May Have Other Mechanisms by Carlo Rovelli]] > "While I find this a tricky idea on the one hand, it is utterly simple and elegant on the other. Pattee has given us a schema and a way to think about how, using nothing but physics (including the principle of complementarity), life comes out of non-living stuff. The schema, way up the evolutionary scale, also accounts for how the subjective mind can emerge from objective neurons. Pattee suggests that instead of approaching conscious cognition as either information processing or neural dynamics, there is a third approach available. Consciousness is not reducible to one or the other. Both should be kept on the table. They are complementary properties of the same system. I say hats off to Pattee. We brain scientists have our work cut out for us." > **— Michael Gazzaniga**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Mind and Neurons May Be Complementary Properties of One System by Michael Gazzaniga|Mind and Neurons May Be Complementary Properties of One System by Michael Gazzaniga]] > "The "brain-body" view is dangerous because it requires many scientists to change the way they think: it allows back common sense interactions between brain and body that medical science feels uncomfortable with, makes more sense of feelings like falling in love and requires a different approach for people who are trying to create machines with human-like intelligence. And if this all sounds like mere assertion, there's plenty of interesting research out there to back it up." > **— Alun Anderson**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Brains Cannot Become Minds Without Bodies by Alun Anderson|Brains Cannot Become Minds Without Bodies by Alun Anderson]] > "Sorting is the sort of thing digital computers do. Now imagine sorting a bigger & bigger & bigger deck; can you see consciousness emerging at some point, when you sort a large enough batch? Nope. (And the inevitable answer to the inevitable first objection: but neurons only do simple signal transmission; can you imagine consciousness emerging out of that? An irrelevant question. The fact that lots of neurons make a mind has no bearing on the question of whether lots of anything else make a mind. I can't imagine being a neuron, but I can imagine executing machine instructions. No mind emerges no matter how many of those instructions I carry out.)" > **— David Gelernter**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Software Alone Cannot Make a Mind by David Gelernter|Software Alone Cannot Make a Mind by David Gelernter]] ## Relationships - **Edge Annual Question source relationship:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] preserves the annual-question source corpus from which a proposition-specific quotation is connected to this entry. ## Sources - John R. Searle, *The Rediscovery of the Mind* (MIT Press, 1992). - [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Qualia](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/) ## See Also [[wiki/Hard Problem of Consciousness|Hard Problem of Consciousness]] · [[wiki/Qualia|Qualia]] · [[wiki/State Sufficiency Problem|State Sufficiency Problem]]