Abstract

In this work I defend a theory called moderate materialism. Moderate materialism is an anti-reductionistic theory of mind that understands consciousness to be an emergent, but not a separable, feature of complex neurobiological systems. My thesis is that, consciousness necessarily depends upon neurobiological states; but consciousness is not reducible to neurobiological states, since research into neural plasticity provides evidence that conscious experiences, such as learning, facilitate neurobiological changes in organisms. A sound theory of consciousness should therefore provide an explanation of those neurobiological items that underlie conscious activities, in conjunction with an explanation of higher-level mental activities, such as intentions, that influence a number of neurobiological processes. I argue that a mereotopological theory of part-whole relations can be used to describe human beings as integral wholes, whose conscious and non-conscious parts hang together as ontologically dependent items. A theory of ontological dependence relations, specifically weak rigid dependence, provides a way to formalize how conscious states can emerge from and supervene upon neurobiological states