The materialists believed that all phenomena, including consciousness, could be explained solely in terms of physical matter and its interactions. According to materialists, consciousness was a by-product of physical processes—the activity of neural networks along with other chemical processes within the brain. For noeticists, however, the picture was infinitely less confined. Noeticists believed that consciousness was not created by brain processes, but rather was a fundamental aspect of the universe—akin to space, time, or energy—and was not even located inside the body.
