Materialism: Consciousness as Physical Phenomenon
Exploring how materialist theories explain mind and consciousness through physical processes
The Materialist Framework
Materialism, in the philosophy of mind, is the monistic view that matter is fundamental, and that mind and consciousness are entirely products of material processes1. According to this view, conscious mental activity is identical with neural activity in the brain2.
Materialism stands in stark contrast to dualism or idealism, which treat consciousness as irreducible or fundamental on its own34. Materialists argue that as neuroscience advances, it will fully explain consciousness in terms of brain events, or even that our very concepts of "mind" will be refined or replaced by physical terms.
Core Materialist Position: There is no non-physical "mind-stuff" separate from the body; what we call the mind is simply the functioning of the physical brain.
However, materialist theories still grapple with explaining how physical processes yield the feel of experience—the notorious "hard problem" of consciousness5. Below we survey the major variants of materialist theories, following Khan's comprehensive framework.
Philosophical Materialism: The Foundation
Core Philosophical Approaches
Key Subcategories: Eliminative, Epiphenomenalism, Functionalism, Emergence, Identity Theory
Core Idea: Consciousness can be fully explained through physical processes without resorting to non-physical substances.
Eliminative Materialism: The Radical Revision
Our folk psychological concepts of mind are fundamentally flawed and will be replaced by neuroscientific vocabulary.
Eliminative materialists argue that our common-sense understanding of mental states (beliefs, desires, pains) is a primitive "folk psychology" that will eventually be eliminated in favor of direct neuroscientific explanation, much as alchemy gave way to chemistry.
Epiphenomenalism: The Ghost in the Machine
Mental events are caused by physical events in the brain, but have no causal influence on physical events.
Consciousness is seen as a byproduct of brain processes—like steam from a train engine—that doesn't itself do any causal work. This preserves materialism while acknowledging the apparent difference between physical and mental properties.
Functionalism: The Software of Mind
Mental states are defined by their causal roles rather than their physical implementation.
Functionalism abstracts away from the physical substrate, focusing on the computational or causal organization that gives rise to mental states. This allows for multiple realizability—the same mental state could be implemented in brains, computers, or alien biology.
Emergence: More Than the Sum of Parts
Consciousness emerges from complex physical systems but is not reducible to them.
Emergent materialism posits that consciousness is a novel property that arises from complex neural organization, similar to how wetness emerges from H₂O molecules or life emerges from complex biochemistry.
Identity Theory: Mind-Brain Unity
Mental states are identical to brain states—there is no ontological distinction.
The classic materialist position: mental states just are physical brain states, much as lightning is electrical discharge or water is H₂O. This type identity theory faces challenges from multiple realizability but remains foundational.
Philosophical Materialism's Core Challenge: All these approaches must confront the "explanatory gap"—how to bridge the chasm between objective physical processes and subjective conscious experience.
Neurobiological Approaches
Biological Foundations of Consciousness
Key Proponents: Edelman, Crick, Koch, Baars, Dennett, Mirsky
Core Idea: Consciousness arises from specific biological structures and processes in the brain.
Neurobiological materialism focuses on identifying the specific neural correlates and mechanisms that give rise to consciousness. This approach emphasizes empirical research into brain structures, neural networks, and biological processes.
Neural Darwinism
Gerald Edelman: Consciousness emerges through selectionist processes in neural populations.
Global Workspace
Bernard Baars: Consciousness arises from information integration in a global workspace.
Neural Correlates
Francis Crick & Christof Koch: Focus on identifying specific neural activity patterns correlated with conscious experience.
Electromagnetic Theories
Electromagnetic Field Theories
Key Proponents: Pockett, McFadden, Llinas
Core Idea: Consciousness arises from or is identical with the brain's electromagnetic fields.
Electromagnetic theories propose that consciousness is directly related to the brain's electromagnetic field rather than (or in addition to) neural firing patterns. These theories often emphasize the unity and binding properties of electromagnetic fields.
Key Insight: Electromagnetic fields can integrate information across large neural populations simultaneously, potentially solving the binding problem of how disparate brain activities unite into single conscious experiences.
Computational and Informational Approaches
Information Processing Models
Key Proponents: Grossberg, Complex/Adaptive Systems, Critical Brain Theory, Pribram
Core Idea: Consciousness is a form of information processing or computation.
Computational approaches view the brain as an information processing system and consciousness as a particular form of computation. These theories range from classical computational models to more recent complex adaptive systems approaches.
Adaptive Resonance
Stephen Grossberg: Consciousness arises through resonant states in neural networks.
Holographic Brain
Karl Pribram: Memory and perception work like holographic processes.
Critical Brain
The brain operates near critical points for optimal information processing.
Pharmacological and Medical Approaches
Chemical and Predictive Models
Key Proponents: Predictive Processing, Seth, Damasio, Friston, Solms
Core Idea: Consciousness is deeply tied to bodily states, prediction, and homeostasis.
These approaches emphasize the role of neurotransmitters, predictive processing, and interoception in consciousness. They often focus on how the brain models the body and the world to maintain homeostasis.
Predictive Processing: The brain is essentially a prediction engine that constantly updates its models of the world, with consciousness emerging from this predictive processing.
Embodied and Enactive Approaches
Embodied Cognition
Key Proponents: Varela, Thompson, Noë, O'Regan
Core Idea: Consciousness emerges from the dynamic interaction between organism and environment.
Embodied and enactive approaches reject the idea of consciousness as purely brain-bound, instead emphasizing the role of the entire body and its interactions with the environment.
Enactivism
Francisco Varela & Evan Thompson: Consciousness arises through the organism's active engagement with its environment.
Sensorimotor Theory
Alva Noë & Kevin O'Regan: Perception depends on mastery of sensorimotor contingencies.
Relational Approaches
Relational and Process Views
Key Proponents: Process Philosophy, Whitehead, Bitbol
Core Idea: Consciousness emerges from relationships and processes rather than substances.
Relational approaches emphasize that consciousness cannot be understood by examining isolated components but must be studied in terms of the dynamic relationships and processes that constitute experience.
Representational Theories
Representational Models
Key Proponents: First-Order, Higher-Order, Lamme, LeDoux, Metzinger
Core Idea: Consciousness involves mental representations of the world or of mental states themselves.
Representational theories focus on how the brain represents information and how certain representations become conscious. These range from first-order representations to higher-order thoughts about mental states.
First-Order Representation
Consciousness arises when sensory information is represented in a particular format.
Higher-Order Thought
Consciousness requires meta-representations—thoughts about mental states.
Global Workspace
Consciousness arises when information is globally available to multiple cognitive systems.
Ring/Bank Theory (Materialist, Geometry-First)
Core Claim: Consciousness is what it feels like for a physical brain to manipulate meaning—both geometric and non-geometric—in service of goals.
Key Components:
- Meaning: Abstract information from the top of the sensory neural network
- Goals: Abstract behavior filters from the top of the motor/thought neural network
- Attention: The dynamic sequence of low-dimensional manifolds (discrete or continuous) that performs the initial geometric processing of rhythms, events, and pre-linguistic thought, serving as the union setting that coordinates all cognitive schema
Union Set: The geometric coordination state rendered from a singular conceptual mic voice—already high-dimensional in concept space—that binds all cognitive schemas into unified attention. One example of a 'voice' could be intensity fluctuations that are about 'crunch of lettuce' for 500 ms as you are biting into a sandwich. Then you lean back in your chair and the voice (intensity fluctuations) now model the tactile qualia and shape and location of your back sinking into the chair. The mic voice updates at 0.1-5 Hz, while ringframes refresh at 2-20 Hz, creating layered temporal dynamics where conceptual content evolves independently of geometric rendering frequency.
Core primitives:
- Rings ~ Frames: Incipient, pre-modal attentional sweeps—transient "screens" cut through the world-sim by onsets (drum hits, snaps, fear spikes, heartbeats). They set the momentary where/when of sampling before full content is deduced.
- Bank: The lifelong, layered geometry library (spheres/cylinders/cubes/etc.)—concentric schema volumes the system reuses to scaffold space, body, and scene structure.
- Flow: What happens when a ringframe is printed and then kicked out—the ongoing conveyor of frames that gives continuity.
- Throw: Inertial jostles that re-position the union set (and bank printhead) relative to the content. Vestibular or proprioceptive perturbations that redirect where the next ring lands.
- Vibes: Amplitude modulation on the transient stream that position-, rotation-, frequency-, opacity-, or scale-modulates the union set (and bank as it prints).
- Paint: Schema-specific detail with semantics—colors, surfaces, objects, body—the meaningful content realized or deduced from the geometrically sparse touchpointing and tagging of mic and ringframes.
- Union Set: The current ringframe as a common coordinate manifold that binds every active schema volume to the same "now-here" reference.
Where agency or mechanical switching might enter:
- Quantum threshold levers (agency): At axon hillocks and synapses near decision thresholds, tiny fluctuations (ion-channel gating, vesicle release probabilities) can be amplified into all-or-nothing spikes. If any quantum indeterminacy is biologically leveraged, this is the plausible site: tipping a marginal spike that selects which selects between options or says yes or no to an option.
- Folded neural net (mechanical switching that feels agential): In the brain, sensory inputs (V1, A1, S1) go up one neural net of categorization and abstraction of meaning (to PPC/HPC). Action comes out the bottom (M1) of another neural net. These two are cross-connected (anterior-posterior connectivity) such that abstract meaning (posterior parietal, medial temporal) can trigger appropo abstract response (prefrontal poles) and drive an explicit motor program out the 'bottom' (motor cortex).
TL;DR: A crafted mic, where crests in the signal become new union sets, i.e., shared geometric manifolds (ringframes), from which content is painted/deduced—materialist and representational at core, with a realistic slot for agency via threshold-level gating if biology uses that trick.
Language-Based Approaches
Linguistic and Narrative Models
Key Proponents: Chomsky, Searle, Jaynes, Dennett
Core Idea: Language and narrative structure play a crucial role in consciousness.
Language-based approaches explore how linguistic capabilities and narrative construction shape and possibly constitute conscious experience. These theories range from viewing consciousness as inherently linguistic to seeing language as a tool that structures pre-existing consciousness.
Phylogenetic and Evolutionary Approaches
Evolutionary Perspectives
Key Proponents: Evolutionary Psychology, LeDoux, Jablonka, Reber
Core Idea: Consciousness evolved through natural selection and serves adaptive functions.
Phylogenetic approaches examine consciousness from an evolutionary perspective, asking why consciousness evolved, what adaptive advantages it provides, and how it developed through evolutionary history.
Adaptive Function
Consciousness evolved because it provided survival advantages to organisms.
Evolutionary Continuity
Consciousness exists on a continuum across species rather than being uniquely human.
Evolutionary Origins
Trace the evolutionary development of consciousness from simpler forms to human complexity.
Synthesis: The Materialist Landscape
The diversity of materialist approaches reflects the complexity of consciousness itself. While all materialist theories share the fundamental commitment to physical explanation, they differ in their focus:
Level of Analysis
From quantum fields to evolutionary history, materialists analyze consciousness at multiple scales.
Mechanism Emphasis
Different theories emphasize different mechanisms: neural, computational, representational, etc.
Explanatory Strategy
Some focus on correlates, others on functions, emergence, or evolutionary history.
The Persistent Challenge: Despite this diversity, all materialist theories must ultimately address the "hard problem" of why and how physical processes give rise to subjective experience.
Materialist Outlook: The hope of materialism is that being is one—that if we follow the trail of physical processes far enough, we will find our qualia and our "selves" there too, finally understood in the language of physical reality.
References
- "Materialism." Wikipedia. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org ↩
- "Identity Theory of Mind." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from iep.utm.edu ↩
- "Dualism (philosophy of mind)." Wikipedia. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org ↩
- "Idealism." Wikipedia. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org ↩
- Chalmers, D. J. (1995). Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies ↩
- Edelman, G. M. (1989). The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness. Basic Books ↩
- Crick, F., & Koch, C. (1990). Towards a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness. Seminars in the Neurosciences ↩
- Baars, B. J. (1988). A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness. Cambridge University Press ↩
- McFadden, J. (2002). The Conscious Electromagnetic Information (Cemi) Field Theory. Journal of Consciousness Studies ↩
- Pockett, S. (2000). The Nature of Consciousness: A Hypothesis. Writers Club Press ↩
- Grossberg, S. (1999). The Link between Brain Learning, Attention, and Consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition ↩
- Friston, K. (2010). The Free-Energy Principle: A Unified Brain Theory? Nature Reviews Neuroscience ↩
- Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. MIT Press ↩
- Caldwell, B. (2025). Ring Bank Theory: Insights into Consciousness from Observed Geometry and Neural Dynamics of Hyperpolarization. DeSci Nodes. https://doi.org/10.62891/81469666 ↩
Continue the Conversation
Materialism represents one of the most influential approaches to understanding consciousness. If you have thoughts, critiques, or want to discuss how materialist theories interface with other approaches, reach out at caldwbr@gmail.com.