At Big Think, theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel asks a question: Does physics truly have anything to say about consciousness? He offers some observations from a materialist perspective that are worth commenting on.

He starts with a number of questions and then makes two declarations:

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The questions:

What does it truly mean to be conscious? Where does consciousness come from? Are humans the only conscious species, or do other animals, non-animal forms of life, or even non-living things possess some form of consciousness? While many have opined and put forth hypotheses on the matter, it remains a mystery.

“Does physics truly have anything to say about consciousness?, May 14, 2025”

Consciousness is very hard to define or pin down when approached in the manner of the first two questions. It’s not so hard when approached experientially, as it is in the third question.

Many animal species show consciousness in philosopher Thomas Nagel’s sense: There is something that it “is like” to be a dog or a cat. That’s sentient consciousness — awareness of circumstances and feelings. But perhaps, by contrast, there is nothing that it “is like” to be a sand dollar or a sea cucumber. The fact that some animals have sentient consciousness does not show that all do.

We also know by experience that human consciousness includes the capacity, when fully developed, for reason and moral choice, which is a higher order of consciousness than sentience.

What about objects? If we want to argue that they have consciousness too, we need to define the term differently from the experiential way we usually do.

For example, if I tell you that two dogs, Bowser and Scout, get along well, I am telling you something different from saying, perhaps, that two lamps suit the rec room decor. In the first instance, I am telling you something about the inner states of Bowser and Scout, as inferred by a human. But in the second instance, I assume that no lamp has any inner state and it is a matter of my human judgment whether they outwardly suit the decor.

Let’s go back to the first two questions for a moment: What does it truly mean to be conscious? and Where does consciousness come from? The first question can’t be answered generally because the answer might be different for many different conscious beings. The second is easily disposed of: We have no idea, at present, how consciousness originates. But we can say, if we dare, that materialist theories do not appear to be shedding much light.

Now for his declarations

Here’s what physics — the most fundamental of all the sciences — has to say about consciousness.

At the very core of the matter are two basic ideas:

● the idea that we live in a material reality, and that everything that exists in our material reality can be described in terms of, well, the constituent parts of reality that exist in space and time,

● and the idea that any phenomenon — including consciousness — can be rigorously defined and put to experimental, observational, and/or measurable tests.

To a physicist’s way of thinking, these are non-negotiable starting points for attempting to gain a physical understanding of any phenomenon in the Universe. About consciousness?

But if the ship sinks, so does the cargo…

In short, Siegel seeks an account of consciousness that places it squarely within a materialist framework. The problem is that, as Michael Egnor and I show in The Immortal Mind: (Worthy, June 3, 2025) — and others have shown in similar works — consciousness is not a material thing and cannot be put into a materialist framework. Only a distorted understanding of consciousness would emerge.

But, in fact, a number of thinkers have tried to do precisely that: Their slogan is typically some variant of “The mind is simply what the brain does.” The overall point of view is called eliminative materialism.

The trouble is, eliminative materialism is itself a project of consciousness. And if the ship sinks, so does the cargo.

Siegel appears not to understand the problem clearly. He closes with

Consciousness is a very difficult puzzle: one that is difficult to even define, much less to solve. But it is just as much a part of our physical reality as anything else we interact with, and any approach that asserts otherwise has a fatal flaw from the outset: it’s already abandoned science. About consciousness?

Let’s stop and take this in. Science is, in the first instance, a product of human consciousness. It gains its prestige from the fact that its correct predictions and the reasoning behind them form an immaterial intellectual construct in human minds. The scientist implicitly understands that her reasoning in these matters is something that stands apart from the material things she is reasoning about. Otherwise, it would not be reasoning at all; it would just be more data.

In that sense, her consciousness is not “just as much a part of our physical reality as anything else we interact with.” As philosopher Edward Feser has warned, eliminative materialism is a snake that eats its own tail. There is no escape, on its own terms, from its dilemma.

Abandoning science?

If there is talk of abandoning science, the first thing that must be said is this: If science, as interpreted by some, cannot address immaterial realities like our ability to reason and thus do science — on their own terms — then so much the worse for that interpretation of science.

Many people go into science (or other fields) hoping that it will validate what they believe about reality. Some are rewarded and others are not. But validating one’s view of reality is not the purpose of science. Insisting that it do so tends to limit its growth.