> If you think there's something else, that is by definition supernatural.
First, how others perceive your words usually matters more than the precise definitions you have in mind. If I describe myself as believing in the supernatural, it has a lot of connotations I don't want.
Second, the possibility that consciousness (in some sense) could be built into physics themselves. So it doesn't contradict that the brain is made of subatomic particles, but the workings of the universe have more correlations built in that could work at different levels. Something I think is comparable is that many cosmologists think that the arrow of time, which events come before which, can be explained by a universe with initial conditions of extreme low entropy. So there's nothing within the universe that explains why the initial conditions were like that, but it's a real property of our universe.
Maybe consciousness could be an end state that the universe is progressing toward. Is that really so much weirder than working from an initial state of extremely low entropy?
First, how others perceive your words usually matters more than the precise definitions you have in mind. If I describe myself as believing in the supernatural, it has a lot of connotations I don't want.
Second, the possibility that consciousness (in some sense) could be built into physics themselves. So it doesn't contradict that the brain is made of subatomic particles, but the workings of the universe have more correlations built in that could work at different levels. Something I think is comparable is that many cosmologists think that the arrow of time, which events come before which, can be explained by a universe with initial conditions of extreme low entropy. So there's nothing within the universe that explains why the initial conditions were like that, but it's a real property of our universe.
Maybe consciousness could be an end state that the universe is progressing toward. Is that really so much weirder than working from an initial state of extremely low entropy?