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Searle’s Biological Naturalism vs Spinoza’s One Reality

Searle’s Biological Naturalism and Spinoza’s One Reality: Embodied Mind and Graded Consciousness, compared field by field from their entries in the Atlas.

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Materialism Searle’s Biological Naturalism John Searle
Neutral Monism Spinoza’s One Reality: Embodied Mind and Graded Consciousness Baruch Spinoza

The claim

In brief
Searle’s Biological NaturalismBiological Naturalism posits that consciousness is a real, irreducible, subjective biological feature of the brain, entirely caused by lower-level neurobiological processes and realized as higher-level system features. This approach seeks to solve the mind-body problem by accepting the scientific worldview while acknowledging the first-person ontology of conscious experience.
Spinoza’s One RealityBaruch Spinoza holds that there is only one substance, God or Nature, known to us under two attributes, thought and extension. A human mind is the idea of an actually existing human body: one and the same thing as the body, conceived under thought. Because every body has a corresponding idea, mind runs through all of nature, and consciousness varies by degree with the complexity and power of the body.
What consciousness is
Searle’s Biological NaturalismConscious states are identified as real parts of the real world that are higher-level, system features of the brain, defined as states of awareness, sentience, or feeling that persist during wakefulness.
Spinoza’s One RealityThe mind is the idea of the body, the same individual conceived under the attribute of thought rather than extension. Spinoza does not single out phenomenal consciousness as a category; his interpreters read consciousness as higher-order awareness, cognitive access, power or complexity of thinking, or affective awareness.

Big questions

Can AI be conscious?Both agree
Searle’s Biological NaturalismConditionalSearle rejects consciousness via simulation (Chinese Room Argument) but argues that if the causally sufficient biological mechanism is known, an artificial machine that implements that same mechanism could be conscious, as consciousness does not strictly require biological neurons, only sufficient causal power.
Spinoza’s One RealityConditionalSince every body has a corresponding mind whose richness tracks the body's complexity and power, a sufficiently complex artificial body would have a correspondingly rich mind; whether that mind would be conscious in the human sense is contested.
Does consciousness survive death?
Searle’s Biological NaturalismNoConsciousness is entirely physical and solely the product of biological brains; therefore, death of the brain and body means irrevocable, permanent non-existence.
Spinoza’s One RealityNo position
Could a mind be uploaded?
Searle’s Biological NaturalismYesIf consciousness is entirely explainable by physical/biological states, then duplicating those states (and their causal relations) in a non-biological medium would, in principle, allow for the uploading and continuation of the first-person mental self.
Spinoza’s One RealityNo position
Does it give life meaning?Differ
Searle’s Biological NaturalismHumanistic onlyAs a materialist theory, Biological Naturalism struggles to rationalize ultimate cosmic meaning or purpose, though humanistic meaning created by ourselves remains possible.
Spinoza’s One RealityCosmic/UltimateMinds are modes of God or Nature, and freedom lies in understanding the causal order of Nature through more adequate ideas.

Nature of mind

Ontology
Searle’s Biological NaturalismPhysicalism (Biological Naturalism). It holds that consciousness is part of nature as a subjective, qualitative biological property, rejecting attempts to 'naturalize' it by denying its subjective ontology.
Spinoza’s One RealitySubstance monism (dual-attribute)
Mind and body
Searle’s Biological NaturalismConscious states are causally reduced to lower-level brain processes (causal reducibility), but are ontologically irreducible to these processes because consciousness has a subjective (first-person) ontology while its basis has an objective (third-person) ontology.
Spinoza’s One RealityMind and body neither interact nor merely correlate; they are one thing under two descriptions. ‘The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things’ (Ethics 2p7), so thought is explained only through thought and extension only through extension.
Fundamental or emergent
Searle’s Biological NaturalismEmergent
Spinoza’s One RealityPrimitive
Qualia
Searle’s Biological NaturalismConscious states are inherently qualitative, in the sense that there is a distinct qualitative feel to being in any particular conscious state, and this qualitative feel is a real and irreducible part of the world.
Spinoza’s One RealitySpinoza has no explicit theory of phenomenal character. Interpreters reconstruct it from his accounts of sensation, imagination and affect, where an affect is both a change in the body's power of acting and the idea of that change.

How it works

Mechanism
Searle’s Biological NaturalismThe principle is that all conscious states are reliably and universally caused by lower-level brain processes and realized as system features, functioning as a real biological machine.
Spinoza’s One RealityPsychophysical identity under parallel attributes: whatever happens in the body as extension happens in the mind as an idea, so no causal bridge between them is needed.
Where it is
Searle’s Biological NaturalismLocalized in the biological brain, specifically realized in the brain as higher-level or system features.
Spinoza’s One RealityMentality is everywhere in nature, since all individuals are ‘animate’ in some degree (2p13s). Whether this means every physical thing has phenomenal experience is contested, and Spinoza does not treat God or Nature as one human-like conscious subject.
What it does
Searle’s Biological NaturalismConscious states function causally (causal efficacy) as real parts of the real world, providing a basis for intentional action and interaction with the environment.
Spinoza’s One RealityMind never causes bodily motion and body never causes thought. Affects make ideas matter to behavior by increasing, decreasing or fixing the mind's striving, and freedom comes from forming more adequate ideas of the causes acting on us.

Evidence and criticism

Testability
Searle’s Biological NaturalismEmpirically testable in principle, as the theory requires finding the exact causal details of how lower-level brain processes cause consciousness.
Spinoza’s One RealitySpeculative
Tests so far
Searle’s Biological NaturalismThe theory is generally supported by empirical evidence from neuroscience showing the link between consciousness and brain activity (e.g., brain impairment, brain stimulation).
Spinoza’s One RealityNot stated
Criticisms
Searle’s Biological NaturalismCritics dispute the claim that the causal connection between brain states and consciousness is fully established. Tension exists in maintaining materialism while arguing consciousness is ontologically subjective and irreducible to objective physical processes.
Spinoza’s One RealityThe identity formula says mind and body are one thing but not what makes the thought side felt. The ideas-of-ideas reading makes every idea conscious, which Bennett called absurdly excessive, and LeBuffe notes that a mind's overall power and the power of its ideas can diverge, giving odd verdicts on degrees.

Sources

Key sources
Searle’s Biological Naturalism
  • The Rediscovery of Mind (1992)
  • Biological naturalism (2007)
  • What things are conscious? (2007)
Spinoza’s One Reality
  • Ethics, Baruch Spinoza (E. Curley, Ed. and Trans., The Collected Works of Spinoza) (1677)
  • Spinoza’s Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation, E. Curley (1969)
  • A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, J. Bennett (1984)

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