The Natural Philosophy of Experiencing

A new philosophy of nature is needed because physicalism cannot account for consciousness. The authors propose 'experiencing' as a conceptual primitive: a process involving an agent's interaction with its world through action based on phenomenal experience. This process has two aspects: a subjective 'what-it-is-likeness' and an objective physical description. Experiencing is distinguished from metacognitive awareness, and scientific theories of awareness should respect this distinction. Experiencing is non-exclusive, a-personal, and primitive, not limited to humans. The concept is linked to theoretical biology through information processing by organisms.

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Abstract

A new philosophy of nature is urgently needed. The received ontological view, physicalism, is unable to account for experiential phenomena and in particular for consciousness in all its varieties. We shall outline the concept of experiencing which should figure as a new conceptual primitive in natural philosophy. Experiencing refers to a process which comprises the interaction of an agent with its world through action based on phenomenal experience. This process can be viewed under two different aspects. One regards the subjective aspect of experiencing, the other one regards it in terms of physical objects. The first case illustrates the “what-it-is-likeness„ of experiencing, the second illustrates how experiencing gets “objectified„ in nature. We furthermore wish to delineate our concept of experiencing from the concept of (meta-cognitive) awareness. Scientific theories that explain how awareness comes about in sufficiently organized brains should respect the distinction between experiencing and awareness. We also sketch how experiencing could be related to theoretical biology in terms of information processing by organisms. Experiencing is non-exclusive; it refers to a primitive and a-personal natural process and not to a property possessed only by humans or other persons.