The Closure of the Physical, Consciousness and Scientific Practice

TL;DR

This paper examines how the concept of the physical's closure impacts experiments in consciousness science, revealing conflicts with scientific practice and challenging physicalist approaches.

Contribution

It identifies fundamental flaws in current experimental paradigms for studying consciousness based on physicalist assumptions.

Findings

Closure of the physical conflicts with experimental practices

Reveals flaws in physicalist models of consciousness

Challenges grounding consciousness research solely on empirical physical data

Abstract

We analyse the implications of the closure of the physical for experiments in the scientific study of consciousness when all the details are considered, especially how measurement results relate to physical events. It turns out that the closure of the physical has surprising implications that conflict with scientific practice. These implications point to a fundamental flaw in the paradigm underlying many experiments conducted to date and pose a challenge to any research programme that aims to ground a physical functionalist or identity-based understanding of consciousness on empirical observations.