Consciousness is physical

Physicalism is the doctrine that everything is physical. If everything is physical then consciousness is physical as well. So a conscious computer or robot could be built out of physical parts.

Physicalism

Jaegwon Kim (1996) takes three principles is defining minimal physicalism:

1) Mind body supervenience: physical indiscernability entails psychological indiscernability. 

2) Anti-Cartesian principle: There are no purely mental things.

3) Mind-body dependence: What mental properties a thing has depends on its physical properties.

Note: Other philosophers would describe physicalism differently.
RELATED ARTICLESExplain
Artificial Intelligence
Can computers think? [1]
No: computers can't be conscious [6]
Consciousness is physical
A conscious robot is in principle possible
Building a conscious machine
Conscious robot would solve mind-body problem
Can't reduce consciousness to physical processes
Issue can't be settled a priori
Physical workings don't explain conscious machine
What about God?
What the scientist Mary doesn't know
Can never have a conscious experience
Computers are not introspective
Computers can't have feelings
Consciousness excluded by definition
Consciousness is necessary to thought
Mechanisms can't possess consciousness
Higher-order representational structures
Implementable in functional system
Let's just say robots are conscious
Rejection has undesirable consequences
Rule following doesn't deny consciousness
Graph of this discussion
Enter the title of your article


Enter a short (max 500 characters) summation of your article
Enter the main body of your article
Lock
+Comments (0)
+Citations (0)
+About
Enter comment

Select article text to quote
welcome text

First name   Last name 

Email

Skip