Lay Perspectives on the Physical and Non-physical Nature of Consciousness

We used a survey to explore laypeople’s intuitions about the physical or non-physical nature of consciousness. The survey asked the same questions about consciousness and about digestion, a well-understood biological process. Participants rated agreement with statements that probed whether consciousness and digestion are constituted of physical substrates, whether physical substrates are necessary and sufficient for them, and whether they interact with the physical world. Results showed that participants generally attributed physical properties to digestion, while physicalist judgments about consciousness were mixed. Stronger belief in an immortal soul was associated with non-physicalist judgments about consciousness. These findings suggest that both physicalist and non-physicalist attitudes towards consciousness are common. Public intuitions about consciousness are important because of their potential to inform theories of consciousness itself — not because such beliefs can be taken at face value (they cannot), but because beliefs about consciousness constitute part of the phenomenon in need of explanation.