We Are Entirely Physical Beings
[b]The Physical Hierarchy of Mind: How Complexity Gives Birth to Consciousness[/b]
Abstract
This paper argues that consciousness, sentience, sapience, and conscience are not immaterial or metaphysical substances but emergent phenomena arising from the increasing complexity of physical systems. Drawing upon neurobiology, evolutionary theory, and philosophy of mind, it posits that human mental capacities represent advanced stages of biological organization rather than categorical deviations from the rest of life. It aims to dissolve the perceived dualism between mind and matter by reframing consciousness as an inevitable expression of physical law at high levels of informational integration.
I. Introduction: The Mind as a Biological Phenomenon
Philosophical traditions have long debated whether mind and matter are distinct (dualism) or identical (monism). The scientific advances of the past century, however, overwhelmingly suggest that mind is not an entity separate from the body but a function of it. Neural activity, hormonal feedback, and sensory processing together constitute what we experience as emotion, thought, and will. In this view, consciousness is not what we have but what we are when matter organizes itself to perceive, feel, and reflect.
II. Defining the Spectrum of Mind
Human cognition exists along a continuum of increasing physical complexity:
Sentience the ability to feel or experience; found widely among animals with nervous systems.
Sapience higher reasoning, foresight, and abstraction; a hallmark of human cortical evolution.
Consciousness awareness of the environment and oneself; emerging from multi-level neural feedback loops.
Conscience moral awareness; the social and reflective layer of consciousness shaped by empathy and memory.
Each is built upon physical substratesneurons, synapses, chemical gradientsyet each transcends its parts through emergent organization.
III. Evolutionary Foundations
From the first single-celled organisms, life has evolved mechanisms to process information about its surroundings. Bacteria move toward nutrients (chemotaxis) and away from toxins; while simple, these are proto-cognitive behaviorsrudimentary information processing loops.
As organisms developed nervous systems, the ability to distinguish pain from pleasure, safety from danger, and kin from stranger conferred adaptive advantages.
Human consciousness, therefore, is not a cosmic anomaly but the peak of an ancient biological trajectorythe culmination of matter learning to model and predict itself.
IV. Emergence: When Physics Becomes Experience
Though each neuron obeys physical law, the collective pattern of billions of neurons yields subjective experience. This phenomenon, known as emergence, marks the transition from matter behaving mechanically to matter behaving meaningfully.
A single water molecule is not wet, yet collective behavior gives rise to wetness. Likewise, a single neuron does not think, but structured neural networks do.
Hence, consciousness does not violate physical lawit is physical law in a higher-order configuration.
V. The Human Distinction
What makes humans uniquely reflective is not a new kind of substance but a new level of integration:
A vastly developed neocortex capable of symbolic representation and imagination.
Advanced prefrontal circuitry enabling moral reasoning, long-term planning, and empathy.
The ability to simulate reality internally, creating narratives, ethics, and philosophy itself.
Thus, human spirituality is the evolutionary byproduct of material intelligence scaling into self-awareness.
VI. Philosophical Implications
If mind is physical, meaning and morality are not cosmic decrees but cognitive constructs derived from biology and social necessity.
This does not render life meaningless; rather, it grounds meaning in reality itself.
We are the universe contemplating itselfa self-aware node in an evolving physical continuum.
By dissolving the false dichotomy between matter and mind, we restore a unified vision of existence: consciousness as the apex of complexity, not its contradiction.
VII. Conclusion: The Continuum of Conscious Matter
From microbe to mammal, all life participates in the same fundamental gamethe organization of matter into information and experience.
Humanitys unique depth of awareness does not elevate us beyond nature but reveals what nature can become.
The mind is not a ghost in the machine; it is the machine achieving a state of reflection.
Thus, to understand consciousness is to understand the physical universe finally becoming aware of its own motion.
Abstract
This paper argues that consciousness, sentience, sapience, and conscience are not immaterial or metaphysical substances but emergent phenomena arising from the increasing complexity of physical systems. Drawing upon neurobiology, evolutionary theory, and philosophy of mind, it posits that human mental capacities represent advanced stages of biological organization rather than categorical deviations from the rest of life. It aims to dissolve the perceived dualism between mind and matter by reframing consciousness as an inevitable expression of physical law at high levels of informational integration.
I. Introduction: The Mind as a Biological Phenomenon
Philosophical traditions have long debated whether mind and matter are distinct (dualism) or identical (monism). The scientific advances of the past century, however, overwhelmingly suggest that mind is not an entity separate from the body but a function of it. Neural activity, hormonal feedback, and sensory processing together constitute what we experience as emotion, thought, and will. In this view, consciousness is not what we have but what we are when matter organizes itself to perceive, feel, and reflect.
II. Defining the Spectrum of Mind
Human cognition exists along a continuum of increasing physical complexity:
Sentience the ability to feel or experience; found widely among animals with nervous systems.
Sapience higher reasoning, foresight, and abstraction; a hallmark of human cortical evolution.
Consciousness awareness of the environment and oneself; emerging from multi-level neural feedback loops.
Conscience moral awareness; the social and reflective layer of consciousness shaped by empathy and memory.
Each is built upon physical substratesneurons, synapses, chemical gradientsyet each transcends its parts through emergent organization.
III. Evolutionary Foundations
From the first single-celled organisms, life has evolved mechanisms to process information about its surroundings. Bacteria move toward nutrients (chemotaxis) and away from toxins; while simple, these are proto-cognitive behaviorsrudimentary information processing loops.
As organisms developed nervous systems, the ability to distinguish pain from pleasure, safety from danger, and kin from stranger conferred adaptive advantages.
Human consciousness, therefore, is not a cosmic anomaly but the peak of an ancient biological trajectorythe culmination of matter learning to model and predict itself.
IV. Emergence: When Physics Becomes Experience
Though each neuron obeys physical law, the collective pattern of billions of neurons yields subjective experience. This phenomenon, known as emergence, marks the transition from matter behaving mechanically to matter behaving meaningfully.
A single water molecule is not wet, yet collective behavior gives rise to wetness. Likewise, a single neuron does not think, but structured neural networks do.
Hence, consciousness does not violate physical lawit is physical law in a higher-order configuration.
V. The Human Distinction
What makes humans uniquely reflective is not a new kind of substance but a new level of integration:
A vastly developed neocortex capable of symbolic representation and imagination.
Advanced prefrontal circuitry enabling moral reasoning, long-term planning, and empathy.
The ability to simulate reality internally, creating narratives, ethics, and philosophy itself.
Thus, human spirituality is the evolutionary byproduct of material intelligence scaling into self-awareness.
VI. Philosophical Implications
If mind is physical, meaning and morality are not cosmic decrees but cognitive constructs derived from biology and social necessity.
This does not render life meaningless; rather, it grounds meaning in reality itself.
We are the universe contemplating itselfa self-aware node in an evolving physical continuum.
By dissolving the false dichotomy between matter and mind, we restore a unified vision of existence: consciousness as the apex of complexity, not its contradiction.
VII. Conclusion: The Continuum of Conscious Matter
From microbe to mammal, all life participates in the same fundamental gamethe organization of matter into information and experience.
Humanitys unique depth of awareness does not elevate us beyond nature but reveals what nature can become.
The mind is not a ghost in the machine; it is the machine achieving a state of reflection.
Thus, to understand consciousness is to understand the physical universe finally becoming aware of its own motion.
Comments (101)
This is a fine summary of physicalism. It doesn't really argue though, it is a statement of belief, what used to be called a 'creed' from the latin, 'credo' - I believe. Nothing wrong with that, but probably best not to consider that the statement proves itself.
Quoting Copernicus
One thing I can give you any amount of evidence for, is that we do not have 'a unified vision of existence'. If we did, we would be able to tackle our problems - poverty, climate change, overpopulation, pollution, and ongoing intractable global human conflict.
In view of our failures in this regard, it seems somewhat pessimistic to call us 'the apex of consciousness'; I think we have a long way to go yet.
I don't see what that has to do here.
Quoting unenlightened
We're still at the top of the animal kingdom, just as we were at the dawn of civilization when we learned to light fire.
Life and mind depend on the emergence of codes. The information processing possibilities of genes, neurons, words and numbers. So how do codes just emerge from more complex physics?
Biology starts where a molecule can be a message. Is that simply more physics. A property of matter that simply follows from a continuing continuum of complexity?
Or is it something a little more novel?
Can you ask in simpler terms exactly what your objection was?
Quoting Copernicus
If you do not see the contradiction, I probably cannot convince you, but the 'we' at the top do not seem to be unified with the animal kingdom as long as we are obsessed with 'our' dominance of 'them'.
I actually can't. Help in pointing out?
Quoting unenlightened
Well, our sapience is a tangible proof of our excellence above the rest of the earthly creatures.
Probably not.
But what is it in terms of a simple continuum of physical complexity that a DNA base carries a semiotic meaning. Try to make that connection. How does a scrap of chemistry make the leap to being a scrap of information?
In what sense is that just more physics and not something now more complex than just physics? In what sense is it - as you claim - physics organising itself?
At the most basic level, codes dont break the rules of physics they emerge from them. Every code is just a structured pattern of energy inside a physical system, one that starts to matter when it gains some functional or survival value.
For example, the genetic code (ATGC) is just chemistry, but evolution selected the combinations that could store and replicate information. The neural code shows up when electrochemical signals start representing external conditions that affect survival. Language and math are cultural versions of the same thing symbolic systems for storing and sharing useful information between minds.
So, codes appear when matter begins organizing itself around information that has consequences. Its not new physics just a new level of order emerging out of the old one.
Claude Shannon called information a difference that makes a difference, and Gregory Bateson took that even further. In living systems, physical differences chemical, electrical, mechanical begin to make a difference for survival. Thats when information becomes meaningful.
Its a feedback loop: physical interactions ? self-organization ? representation ? communication ? meaning. That loop is how physics turns into biology when raw matter starts to carry and respond to information about itself.
Emergence isnt magic; its novelty with continuity. Each higher level follows the same physical laws but introduces new behaviors that the lower level alone cant produce. An atom doesnt have purpose. But a cell made of atoms does it acts to keep itself alive. The key difference lies in the informational architecture, not the physics underneath it. So life and mind arent exceptions to physical law theyre extensions of it. The universe, in a way, learning how to encode itself.
If biology starts at the point where a molecule can be a message, then thats the threshold where matter becomes reflexive where it starts encoding its own persistence. At some level of complexity, the universe learns to remember, anticipate, and eventually, to think.
So yes, codes absolutely emerge from physics but not as trivial side effects. Theyre what happens when physics folds back on itself: when the universe begins to process information and in us, realizes that it does.
In short, codes arent supernatural theyre emergent designs within physics. Theyre configurations of matter that gain meaning and purpose through self-organization. Life and mind are simply physics that learned how to remember, and matter that learned how to mean.
So physics did not organise this new situation and evolution did. Thus your simple complexity thesis has a sudden hole in it.
Quoting Copernicus
Sure. But this isnt just more physics. And you are now needing to invoke informational architecture rather than entropic architecture. Semiotic complexity rather than merely physical complexity. Evolution rather than emergence.
Quoting Copernicus
Or where organisms first arise as not a new state of matter but a novel form of organisation.
Quoting Copernicus
Yes, there is nothing supernatural here. But it is wrong to minimise things by saying life and mind are merely physically emergent. If you dont deal with what changes at the level of molecular biology then you really start getting into a mess by the time you are dealing with neurobiology. A small metaphysical misstep turns into a hugely handwaving one.
To science, this matters. Well it matters to biologists and neuroscientists who like to feel they are getting to tackle big questions too. :smile:
Your claim of superiority entails a separation. This separation contradicts the other claim of a unified vision.
If the first single-celled organism required something immaterial (the soul) then physicalism is excluded. So this basic description does not provide any evidence to support physicalism.
Quoting Copernicus
If each neuron disobeys physical law, which seems to be the case as quantum physics describes activities which disobey physical law, obeying laws of probability instead, then this is evidence against physicalism.
How is evolution separate from physique?
Quoting apokrisis
Evolution happens in the body, the source of them all.
Can you elaborate?
What separation?
Quoting Copernicus
If this is true, then you are trying to say we are superior to ourself - superior to the universe. You thereby recreate the division you deny.
Because the universe is not uniform. The sun and the moon aren't the same, nor are the elephants and the fungus. Each is on its own level and game.
My problem with the concept of emergence is that it does not seem to be an explanatory concept that provides us with a mechanism for moving from one level of reality to another without presupposing the already established levels of reality. And if it has no explanatory power (reconstruction rule), then I do not understand why anyone would choose physicalism as a general ontology of the world. For example, how do we explain Pythagoras' theorem with the concepts of physics? Emergence should explain how we move from talking about mass, particles, velocity, momentum, etc., to talking about numbers without presupposing knowledge of numbers as sui generis entities.
The idea of emergence is descriptive. It tells us that each level of scale or organization has its own scientific principles and phenomena. Usually you cannot use the principles of one level of organization to predictconstructphenomena at another level. Thats all it is. Thats all it does. Its not magical. I dont know what that says about physicalism.
Quoting JuanZu
I dont think anyone claims mathematics of any sort emerges from physics. Mathematics is a language that describes the world. Thats it.
But the truths of mathematics seem a little more robust than ordinary truths. 2+2=4 is true in all possible worlds, but "all ravens are black" might or might not be true. If mathematics was on par with ordinary propositional sentences, why would there be different categories of truth?
None of this explains abiogenesis, which is how chemicals turned into living entities. Evolution describes how life transforms over time, but not how life begins. While there is evidence suggestive of chemicals moving toward biological systems, there is no direct empirical observation (lab created, fossil evidence, or otherwise) of chemistry becoming biology. The origin of biological entities of all types (from bacteria to humans) is not the Big Bang, but something well after it, where for some reason chemicals yielded life, and, and for some reason, it did it once and never again.
If you want to discuss pre-biological "evolution," you're not going to be looking at how biological systems moved from bacteria to complex beings, but how chemicals interacted over time to change into biology, but that's not what we call "evolution" and it creates a host of issues that cannot be answered through looking at the fossil record.
I think we can say there's most likely a physical explanation that can be given for the origin of life, but that's really speculation, as we've never seen examples of chemicals turning into life forms.
Yes, many disagree that mathematics is a language. That doesnt change the fact that it doesnt emerge out of physics. It is my understanding that it emerges, if thats the right word, out of counting.
What is commonly known as quantum uncertainty, is an uncertainty which is caused by the objects in question not following the laws of physics.
Book suggestionWhat is Life How Chemistry Becomes Biology by Pross. It doesnt contradict what youve written, but provides more detail and explanation.
Everything follows the law of physics. We're just a few decades or centuries away from understanding them.
What is your suggestion on that?
If we leave theistic views aside, I'd say it's a complex process that we're too early to understand. The same way the universe came into being or formed planets and oceans and lives.
Fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and other maths of complexity do a good job of modelling physical processes over all scales. A vortice is a vortice from the level of a Bose-Einstein condensate to a black hole accretion disk.
Similarly, semiosis covers all scales of life and mind from cell metabolism to human political and economic organisation.
Levels are of course different in a qualitative sense. But the maths describing the constraints can be basically the same.
It is our sapience that got us into this fine mess.
The ecosystem was getting along swimmingly, everything was in equilibrium, flourishing diversity and colonisation of pretty much every environment and then we came along and f*cked it up.
When we came along, we thought we knew better and disturbed the equilibrium for purposes of internal conflict (within social groups) power struggles and greed.
This is what the allegory of Adam and Eve is all about.
* The equilibrium does from time to time get disturbed when one, or more species hit on something more exploitative in the environment, or ecosystem. But usually, a correction is made and the equilibrium is restored.
So your argument, that we are all physical beings is based on what you are hoping physics will discover some day. OK, I'm a millionaire too, based on my hopes of winning the lottery some day.
Of course not. Laws are laws whether we understand them or not.
If you only provide two options: physicalist and theistic and you jettison theism, then physicalism by necessity.
Thats why I said usually. As I understand it, engineering mechanics is the science of phenomena that can be constructed using the principles of lower levels of organization.
Sure. But I am drawing attention to the tricky fact that Nature is organised by both complicity and simplexity as Stewart and Cohen waggishly put it.
So there is simplicity that applies across all scales of being. And there is complexity that arises because topological order than cuts across the smooth change to create its abrupt phase transitions.
You get a world being organised by two apparently quite different types of hierarchical cause. Hence the word play of complicity versus simplexity as an attempt at unifying these oppositions - making them both fundamental in their own right as complementary ways to slice up the hierarchical order of Being.
The laws of physics are what is stated by physicists according to their understanding.
Even if we assume that the stated laws of physics correspond with some natural laws, we still have no indication that any natural laws not yet discovered, which would make the uncertainty of quantum uncertainty into something certain, are out their. So you are just hoping that such laws exist, and physicists will find them, just like I'm hoping that I'll win the lottery and become a millionaire. Good luck with your hopes, I suggest a few prayers.
Absolutely not. Math (formula) is a language a human creation.
Laws of physics means the nature of the universe. It can be uniform or disorganized.
If ultimately, the universe is chaotic, then that is its nature.
Flight is a physical process that we can measure in various ways. How fast is something flying. How high is it. What direction is it moving in. we also know how it works. We know that air flows is faster over the curved top of the wing then the flat bottom. This results in less air pressure on top then on bottom, which causes aerodynamic lift.
A hurricane is also a physical process that we can measure in various ways. we can measure its circumference and diameter. We can measure the speed of its spin, and the speed and direction it moves over the surface of the planet. We can calculate how much water it contains. A hurricane's behavior is influenced by far too many constantly changing factors for us to predict its behavior perfectly. But we understand it.
Quoting NOAAWeather.gov has more info without going overboard.
These are all examples of macro physical things caused by smaller physical things. Consciousness is different. We can't detect it. We can't measure anything about it. We can't calculate anything about it. We can't determine its physical causes because there's nothing physical about it to to follow down to lower level structures or particles. It's just a broad assumption that it must be caused but the physical.
I don't think we need empirical lab test before statement in philosophy. Philosophy is argumentative proposition.
So is the mind or emotion. Or dark matter and dark energy. Or quantum mechanics. Each is on its own league and level of difficulty.
Covid19.
I guess we could say any fatal disease threatens it's own existence by possibly wiping out all hosts. But it doesn't work out that way. At least not when humans are the host. I don't know if there have been other diseases that no longer exist because all hosts were killed?
Let me see if I understand what you are saying. If there are aspects of the universe which we cannot understand, we could assume a law of physics which says that these aspects are chaotic, and not governed by laws. And by means of that self-contradicting law, the law that says there is no law which governs their behaviour, we could draw your conclusion "everything follows the laws of physics".
So, how would we distinguish whether things just appear chaotic, due to our misunderstanding, when they are really not chaotic, and whether things are really obeying a self-contradictory law, which stipulates that they will act in a way which is not governed by laws?
Do you see what I mean? Every time we cannot figure something out, we could just assume a law which makes it impossible to figure it out, and then we just get lazy and never have to figure anything out, because we've assumed that the laws make it so we cannot figure them out. Wouldn't it be better just to say that self-contradictory laws are impossible, and the universe is not chaotic? Then we can hope and pray that we will discover those laws, but still knowing that it might turn out to be something other than "laws".
My point was that such a proposal lacks soundness.
I don't think you can prove that we aren't physical.
That you can't prove we aren't nonphysical.
Seems to be the central idea in Vedantic philosophy, is it not?
Seeing and licking are physical processes. We can describe and measure them physically. And we can discuss the lower level structures, down to the particles, that allow for, and give rise to, the processes.
I'm hoping someone can tell me about the physical aspects of consciousness that are physically describable and measurable. It could be that, like a hurricane, it is far too complex for us to figure out in every detail, and far too complex for us to fully describe how its constituent parts allow for, and give rise to, its existence. But what are it's physical characteristics?
What do you think the nature of the nonphysical part is?
Unfamiliar with that.
The mind is physical process (neural and hormonal). But not tangible. Energy, in a way, is also physical (because it can be converted into matter, or at least because it's not empty space).
Physical property doesn't have to have tangibility.
What I meant is that the viewer can't see itself, sometimes. The mirror can't see its own reflection within itself.
Consciousness cannot explain consciousness. The brain can't dissect a brain. You need a hand.
If you're starting from "consciousness is the universe experiencing itself" then you are starting from the central truth of Vedanta. You might be interested to know how individual consciousness fits in with that. Perhaps do a search on Vedanta and go from there.
No, that's not my view. I don't see the universe as a collective body or discard the idea of a creator/programmer. When I said the universe, I meant the physical components that constitute what we call the cosmos.
And being a theist, if I must bring soul into the equation, I'd say it can work as the covert catalyst giving sentient organisms the upper level that we call sapience or consciousness.
For example, a chemical reaction may produce heat and light, and I consider them both to be physical things because they were born from physical properties, even though I can't quantify or put them in my pocket.
Of course you can quantify heat and light. We do it all the time. We feel heat on our skin, and can measure it in degrees with a thermometer. We can see light with our eyes, and measure it in lumens per square meter, or square foot, with a light meter. We also know what they are made of/how they comes into being.
But not consciousness. It can't be sensed with any of our senses, and it can't be measured or quantified with any of our technology. Although it is inextricably bound to the physical, and doesn't exist without a physical component (at least we are not aware of any consciousness without a physical componentry), it is not, itself, physical. If every other product of physical events is, itself, physical, why would we think this lone, non-physical thing is also the product of physical events? Why would we not think this lone, non-physical thing is the product of something non-physical?
I meant to say "count" (like physical objects).
Quoting Patterner
Like eyes can't see themselves. Consciousness itself is a kind of sense.
Quoting Patterner
I may accept soul to be a catalyst of some sort here, but the generation or origin of consciousness, in my view, stems from the body.
Quoting CopernicusI said consciousness can't be sensed with any of our senses. That is not similar in any way to an eye not being able to see itself. Eyes can still be sensed visually, by other eyes. Further, my eyes can be felt, tasted, etc., even by my own senses. They are physical, because they have physical characteristics.
Consciousness has none.
Exactly. Both have different classes.
You again miss the point. Both are different.
In 100-500 years, we may find out that time, space, color, energy, etc, are physical properties that become intangible because of dimensional (or something new) complexities.
My point is, everything came from the Big Bang (assuming it's legit), but varies in characteristics. All are physical. The universe is physical. I don't know about any covert abstract Big Bang that gave birth to consciousness or anything of its kind.
They may well do, but why? What role does experience play in that? Why can't neural activity, hormonal feedback and sensory processing happen without experience?
They may. But we won't know. Just like we can't see infrared or hear ultrasonic.
Unless anyone can point out any physical characteristics of consciousness.
Are you able to flesh out your concept of 'physical'?
Sometimes people seem to mean 'not mental' or even 'not supernatural'
Sometimes people seem to mean 'possessing structure and function only'
I think that the latter view perhaps captures 'physicalism' best, because that's what physicalists tend to assert: structure and function is enough to account for or explain everything else, including consciousness. Is that your view?
Then your op is misleading. I thought you said you were putting forth an argument. Anyone can put forth wild, unsupported speculation, but to claim that it is an argument with a conclusion is a little misleading.
If they stemmed from physical properties, then they're also physical properties, regardless of characteristics.
Philosophy IS propositional conclusions without empirical evidence.
Aristotle's four-element posit was a speculative conclusion.
I have already discussed it here.
Sorry I missed that. But what have you said about an event when you say it is physical? What is it about an event that makes it physical?
Anything born out of (may or may not be within) the universe.
That sounds like general monism to me, rather than physicalism in particular.
If something does not have physical characteristics, then it is not physical.
Just as if something does not have solid characteristics, then it is not a solid.
Just as, in chemistry, if something does not have carbon in it, then it is not organic.
If something does not have wood in it, then it is not wooden.
If something does not have metal in it, then it is not metalic.
I think most serious philosophers work very hard to maintain consistency with empirical evidence. Otherwise it would be just like pure mathematics, where you make up axioms with complete disregard for empirical evidence.
I think this is an undisputed issue and needs no further argument.
Perhaps I'd have to use a better-suited word.
But I've explained what I mean by "physical".
But perhaps I can use or coin a word that would underscore this nuance.