CONCEPT
Biological Naturalism
Searle's positive thesis — consciousness is real, biological, and caused by neurobiological processes in the same way that digestion is caused by stomach processes — neither mysterious nor reducible to formal computation.
Biological naturalism is Searle's attempt to occupy a position that neither side of the traditional mind-body debate will accept. Against dualists, he insists that consciousness is a natural biological phenomenon, not a separate substance. Against reductive materialists, he insists that consciousness is real in its own right, not eliminable in favor of behavioral or functional descriptions. Against computationalists, he insists that consciousness is caused by specific biological processes whose causal powers include the generation of subjective experience, and that these causal powers cannot be replicated simply by running programs that model the computational structure. The position is simple in outline and contested in every detail: mental states are features of the brain, caused by lower-level neurobiological processes, and possessing their own causal powers at the level at which they exist.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The position generates immediate objections from multiple directions. Dualists argue that if consciousness is caused by brain processes, it is not genuinely irreducible — it