Reconciling Consciousness with Physicalism

Abstract

Concerning the face-off between idealism and physicalism, both schools of thought have strengths and weaknesses.  In proposing a novel approach to the question of consciousness, this article capitalizes on the strengths and rejects the weaknesses. The result is a reconciliation between the materialistic ontology of physicalism and the unitary cosmic ultimate of idealism.  The “Bottom-Up/Top-Down” theory, presented here, combines two physical operations.  The first is “access,” how the nervous system receives and processes external stimuli, up to and including the stage of “binding.”  The second physical operation involves encoded signals bound together in the brain, as interpreted by a Universal Mind.  How that can work as a material process is largely explained through the agency of embodied cognition.