Home – Home – Jornals – Philosophy of Sciences 2025 number S5

The article examines the metaphysical foundations of naturalism in relation to consciousness. Naturalism is the most natural and widespread, but not devoid of contradictions, philosophical position. Its weak points are the assertion of the priority of scientific knowledge, while the criteria of scientificity often turn out to be vague; the proclamation of reduction as the main principle, adherence to which can deprive the subject of study of its specificity; denial of the significance of ontological foundations in solving epistemological issues. Naturalism in relation to consciousness, in turn, is faced with the need to assert the ontological status of consciousness: it is a separate ontological entity and then all laws known to science must apply to it, or it is not a separate ontological entity and must be considered as a property of the brain or something similar. Non-reductive naturalism regarding consciousness appears as an internally contradictory philosophical position: by refusing to reduce consciousness to the brain in an attempt to defend the uniqueness of the qualitative qualities of mental states, we thereby violate one of the main postulates of naturalism. It turns out that the ontological status of consciousness cannot be ignored when considering consciousness as a special phenomenon; any of our theories of consciousness directly depend on the definition of this status.