Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart) / quote 142 of 171
The physicalist starting point
Again, Searle lays out in very clear terms the basic issue about foundational ontology as it relates to consciousness: We know independently that the world consists entirely of physical particles in fields of force (or whatever the ultimately correct physics tell us are the final building blocks of matter) and that these physical particles are organized into systems and that some of the carbon-based systems have evolved over a period of about five-billion years into a very large number of animal and plant species, among which, we humans are one of the species capable of consciousness and intentionality. This then seems to be the general starting point for most philosophers, artificial intelligence researchers, and neuroscientists: the broad metaphysical assumption that the universe is physical. While only philosophers discuss metaphysical assumptions openly and argue about them, the vast majority of those building AI systems and doing neuroscience experiments implicitly subscribe to an ontological view of the universe that can roughly be described as “materialism” or “physicalism.” This means that we assume that the universe is somehow physically comprehensible—i.e., knowable by humans using physics. And more fundamentally, that the universe and everything in it—including human consciousness—are physical phenomena.