We Are Entirely Physical Beings

Copernicus

The Physical Hierarchy of Mind: How Complexity Gives Birth to Consciousness

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 substrates—neurons, synapses, chemical gradients—yet 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 behaviors—rudimentary 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 trajectory—the 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 law—it 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 itself—a 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 game—the organization of matter into information and experience.
Humanity’s 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.

unenlightened

This paper argues ... — Copernicus

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.

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. — 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.

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. — unenlightened

I don't see what that has to do here.

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. — 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.

apokrisis

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 substrates—neurons, synapses, chemical gradients—yet each transcends its parts through emergent organization. — Copernicus

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?

Copernicus

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? — apokrisis

Can you ask in simpler terms exactly what your objection was?

unenlightened

We're still at the top of the animal kingdom, — Copernicus

we restore a unified vision of existence — 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'.

Copernicus

If you do not see the contradiction — unenlightened

I actually can't. Help in pointing out?

'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'. — unenlightened

Well, our sapience is a tangible proof of our excellence above the rest of the earthly creatures.

apokrisis

Can you ask in simpler terms exactly what your objection was? — Copernicus

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?

Copernicus

↪apokrisis

At the most basic level, codes don’t 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 (A–T–G–C) 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. It’s 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. That’s when information becomes meaningful.

It’s 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 isn’t magic; it’s novelty with continuity. Each higher level follows the same physical laws but introduces new behaviors that the lower level alone can’t produce. An atom doesn’t 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 aren’t exceptions to physical law — they’re 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 that’s 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. They’re 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 aren’t supernatural — they’re emergent designs within physics. They’re 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.

apokrisis

For example, the genetic code (A–T–G–C) is just chemistry, but evolution selected the combinations that could store and replicate information. — Copernicus

So physics did not organise this new situation and evolution did. Thus your simple complexity thesis has a sudden hole in it.

The key difference lies in the informational architecture, not the physics underneath it. So life and mind aren’t exceptions to physical law — they’re extensions of it. The universe, in a way, learning how to encode itself. — Copernicus

Sure. But this isn’t 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.

If biology starts at the point where “a molecule can be a message,” then that’s the threshold where matter becomes reflexive — where it starts encoding its own persistence. — Copernicus

Or where organisms first arise as not a new state of matter but a novel form of organisation.

In short, codes aren’t supernatural — they’re emergent designs within physics. — 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 don’t 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:

unenlightened

Well, our sapience is a tangible proof of our excellence above the rest of the earthly creatures. — Copernicus

Your claim of superiority entails a separation. This separation contradicts the other claim of a unified vision.

The parts of the body were having a meeting, trying to decide who was the one in charge...

"I should be in charge," said the brain , "Because I run all the body's systems, so without me nothing would happen."

"I should be in charge," said the blood , "Because I circulate oxygen all over so without me you'd waste away."

"I should be in charge," said the stomach," Because I process food and give all of you energy."

"I should be in charge," said the legs, "because I carry the body wherever it needs to go."

"I should be in charge," said the eyes, "Because I allow the body to see where it goes."

"I should be in charge," said the rectum, "Because Im responsible for waste removal."

All the other body parts laughed at the rectum And insulted him, so in a huff, he shut down tight. Within a few days, the brain had a terrible headache, the stomach was bloated, the legs got wobbly, the eyes got watery, and the blood Was toxic. They all decided that the rectum should be the boss

The Moral of the story? Even though the others do all the work.... The ass hole is usually in charge

Metaphysician Undercover

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 behaviors—rudimentary 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 trajectory—the culmination of matter learning to model and predict itself. — Copernicus

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.

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 law—it is physical law in a higher-order configuration. — 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.

Copernicus

So physics did not organise this new situation and evolution did. Thus your simple complexity thesis has a sudden hole in it. — apokrisis

How is evolution separate from physique?

Evolution rather than emergence. — apokrisis

Evolution happens in the body, the source of them all.

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

Can you elaborate?

Copernicus

Your claim of superiority entails a separation. This separation contradicts the other claim of a unified vision. — unenlightened

What separation?

unenlightened

↪Copernicus

Separation between 'us' and 'them', between superior and inferior, between human and the rest of nature.

We are the universe contemplating itself — 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.

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. — unenlightened

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.

RogueAI

↪Copernicus

So information processing is the key?

Copernicus

↪RogueAI

I'm too trifling to understand how the universe works.

JuanZu

↪Copernicus

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.

Copernicus

↪JuanZu

We haven't reached that level of sentience/sapience yet to crack that. Don't think we will.

T Clark

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. — JuanZu

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 predict—construct—phenomena at another level. That’s all it is. That’s all it does. It’s not magical. I don’t know what that says about physicalism.

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. — JuanZu

I don’t think anyone claims mathematics of any sort emerges from physics. Mathematics is a language that describes the world. That’s it.

We Are Entirely Physical Beings

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Categories

More Discussions