Owen’s Mind-Body Powers: NCC are Philosophically and Religiously Neutral

Philosopher Matthew Owen holds that the search for neural correlates of consciousness is not only philosophically neutral but also religiously inclusive, inviting the atheist materialist as well as the theistic dualist to scientifically investigate the miraculous link between, as he puts it, the wine of consciousness and the water of biological brains (Owen, 2020, 2021; Owen et al., 2025a).^[1] Neural correlates of consciousness (“NCC”) are the minimal neuronal mechanisms physically sufficient for consciousness (Chalmers, 2000; Crick & Koch, 2006; Hohwy & Bayne, 2015; Owen & Guta, 2019).

The search for NCC is a long-term project fueled, as Owen puts it, by our curiosity about the link between our conscious minds and our brains, as well as a desire to treat neurological diseases and empirically detect consciousness in unresponsive patients and other noncommunicative entities, such as brain organoids (Laureys et al., 2016; Massimini & Tononi, 2018; Owen et al., 2024).

NCC and the Question of Neutrality

Research focused on identifying NCC was initiated largely by Francis Crick and Christof Koch (1990) at a time when physicalism was philosophical orthodoxy. Physicalism provides a philosophical foundation for searching for neuronal mechanisms that correlate with conscious states, suggesting that conscious states are, or at least supervene on, neurons. Following the lead of J. J. C. Smart (1959), one might also argue that reductive physicalism provides the most parsimonious explanation of NCC, as it ontologically reduces consciousness to its neuronal correlates.

However, the parsimony of reductive physicalism, Owen says, has also been seen as poverty, as consciousness has proven difficult to reduce to its neural substrate (Koch, 2012, p. 152; Kim, 2005). Many philosophers think this is due to the phenomenal aspect of consciousness—i.e., what it feels like to be in a particular conscious state, such as tasting Swiss chocolate or experiencing a sense of flow as you surf a wave or ski a chute in the backcountry.

Physicalism, Mental Causation, and Limits

Yet, Mihretu Guta also reminds us that all conscious states have a bearer, the conscious subject, which Tim Bayne calls the conscious creature (Guta, 2019; Bayne, 2007). Consciousness is not a free-floating property, but as far as we know always has a bearer who is the conscious subject or creature. And Bayne (2010) robustly defends the commonsense position that our phenomenal consciousness is a unified whole. Explaining how phenomenal consciousness fits into the reductive physicalist framework is one hard problem (Chalmers, 1995). But explaining how a unified conscious experience arises is a harder problem, and accounting for the oft-forgotten conscious subject could be the hardest problem (LaRock, 2019; Owen, 2024).

For some, such problems make denying the real existence of consciousness seem attractive (Churchland, 1986; Churchland, 1988). For others, such problems have made embracing nonreductive physicalism seem necessary (Kim, 2005). But, Owen argues, if conscious states are distinct from yet supervene on their neural correlates, as non-reductive physicalism claims, then conscious states risk being excluded from any causal roles by their subvenient base, argued prominent physicalist Jaegwon Kim (2005).

Nevertheless, it seems obvious and significant that some of our conscious states are part of the causal explanation for some physical events in our body. In Owen’s example, it can be legally vital that one’s conscious intention to sign a check is causally responsible for neural events in their nervous system involved in their signing.

In light of the challenges confronting physicalism regarding the nature of consciousness and mental causation (Kim, 2001), the waning of its prominence (Koons & Bealer, 2010), and the diverse landscape of views about consciousness (Kuhn, 2024), Owen stresses that the search for NCC is philosophically neutral (Hohwy, 2007). Koch (2019, pp. 48-49) makes this explicit in The Feeling of Life Itself:

“Francis Crick and I meant the NCC language to be ontologically neutral (which is why we spoke of ‘correlates’) with regard to the age-old battles of the -isms (dualism versus physicalism and their many variants, see chapter 14)…No matter what you believe about the mind, there is no doubt that it is intimately related to the brain. The NCC is about where and how this intimacy takes place.”

Mind-Body Powers and Hylomorphic Framework

An example of a nonphysicalist interpretation of NCC, which Koch cites in an endnote just prior to the above quote, is found in Owen (2020), which presents his Mind-Body Powers model of NCC. This model provides a philosophical explanation of NCC informed by Aristotle’s metaphysics of causation and a dualist hylomorphic human ontology inspired by the medieval Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas (Owen, 2021).

Hylomorphism, Owen explains, is a compound Greek word, with “hyle” meaning matter and “morphe” meaning form. As these words together constitute the word “hylomorphism,” a real form and matter together constitute a material object. In Metaphysics Z 17, Aristotle asks why some matter composes a house while other matter composes a body. His answer is that each material entity is composed of its matter plus a form in virtue of which the matter is unified into one thing of a particular kind (Aristotle, 1984a, p. 1644).

In De Anima, Aristotle argues that the form of a natural living body, such as Socrates’s body, is Socrates’s soul (Aristotle, 1984b, pp. 656-59). Aquinas followed Aristotle and likewise thought that the form that unifies a human body is the human soul (Aquinas, 2002, pp. 18-47). From this hylomorphic perspective, which Owen says his Mind-Body Powers model updates in light of neuroscience, there is no need to explain how the aurora borealis of a single unified conscious experience emerges from countless neural nuts and bolts (Owen, 2024). Because consciousness is ontologically prior to its neural mechanisms.

Aquinas argued that the body and all its parts exist so that its form—a metaphysically simple soul devoid of parts—can manifest its powers (or capacities). Thus, Aquinas referred to the “well-ordered brain” necessary for the human soul to naturally manifest its powers of sense and rational thought (Aquinas, 1984, p. 116; 2002, p. 76). On this line of reasoning, which the model applies to the cellular and sub-cellular levels of neurons and neurotransmitters, consciousness doesn’t exist because of its neuronal mechanism. Rather, the neuronal mechanisms of consciousness exist in the human brain (and many animal brains) because it is part of a body unified by a form with the mental power to be conscious.

And NCC exist because the neural correlates and corresponding conscious states co-manifest interdependent biological powers in the body and mental powers of the mind. The conscious subject’s mental and bodily powers mutually manifest, via neural mechanisms and conscious states, as, according to Owen, mind-body powers. Oftentimes the bodily powers are active, instigating the co-manifestation of the mental power through a conscious state, such as when one sees a face (see Owen et al., 2025a, diagram 1). But a mental power can also be active, bringing about the co-manifestation of bodily powers manifested by neuronal mechanisms, such as when one consciously signs a check (see Owen et al., 2025a, diagram 2).

Given the nonphysicalist ontology informing Owen’s Mind-Body Powers model of NCC, it provides an alternative philosophical foundation for the scientific study of consciousness. The model and its hylomorphic framework have been applied to measuring consciousness, empirically detecting it in brain-injured patients, and brain organoid consciousness (Owen, 2021; Owen et al., 2025a, 2025b). And current research focuses on applications to artificial neural networks. Yet, Owen’s model also applies to religion, as its hylomorphic framework is compatible with life after death and provides warrant for anticipating a bodily resurrection (Owen, 2020, p. 1117).

Footnote

[1]. Colin McGinn (1989, p. 349) first referred to consciousness as the wine that emerges from the water of the brain.