Materialist Theory Of Consciousness

Consciousness is difficult to define. It is an intangible phenomena that causes us to be awake and aware of our surroundings; it is the window that allows us to look out on the world and apprehend concepts about it. It helps us to realize realities apart from our tangible, physical existence. Human consciousness is one of the differentiating factors between people and animals. It is something more than common sense which is the factor that allows us to differentiate what our various senses are telling us. Consciousness is an activity qualitatively different from any proper activity of matter because it cannot be broken down into parts. How, then, could such a complex, immaterial element arise as an emergent property from material substances?

They also say that “Two or more concepts, which can have different meanings, can refer to the same property or object. . . Materialists, then, explain that it is essential to distinguish between mental properties and our concepts of those properties. By analogy, there are so-called “phenomenal concepts” which uses a phenomenal or “first-person” property to refer to some conscious mental state, such as a sensation of red (Alter and Walter 2007). In contrast, we can also use various concepts couched in physical or neurophysiological terms to refer to that same mental state from the third-person point of view. There is thus but one conscious mental state which can be conceptualized in two different ways: either by employing first-person experiential phenomenal concepts or by employing third-person neurophysiological concepts. It may then just be a “brute fact” about the world that there are such identities and the appearance of arbitrariness between brain properties and mental properties is just that.” (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, October 28,http://www.iep.utm.edu/consciou/#SH3b ) Their argument here is that when we refer to consciousness, we are simply confusing the mental properties and our concepts of those properties and that there is only one mental state which we conceptualize in two different

While the firing of neurons can explain the mechanism by which a sensation such as pain or smell is transmitted, it cannot fully account for the experience. There is also no explanation for the experience of qualia. Subjective experiences are known only in terms of subjective experience, not in terms of mathematics. How can the emergent theory explain the complexity of consciousness? The process of how our senses actually work might be able to be explained by emergent theory, but the qualia is too complex. Consciousness is especially resistant to explanation in physical terms due to the inherent differences between our subjective and objective modes of