Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart) / quote 143 of 171
Physicalism and how neurons create meaning
Physicalism in its most general form is the belief that the only things in the universe that are observer-independent are physical. This is also what ontological objectivity means: once again, what things in the Universe exist without human observers? Physicalism further asserts that human observers or conscious agents, and consciousness itself, are ultimately physical phenomena. The problem as we have seen is to understand how the elementary forces and particles of physics organize into conscious agents and create subjectivity. A related issue is how this process leads to semantics. In other words, how do the neurons in our head create meaning? The epistemological problem is