Two MYSTICAL MATERIALISM
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Two MYSTICAL MATERIALISM If we head back to a mere ten millionths of a second after the beginning [Big Bang], the universe gets so dense and so hot that ordinary matter disintegrates into a primordial plasma of nature’s elementary constituents. —Brian Greene (2004) Physics itself…is a closed circle into which the study of consciousness does not enter, but physical objects are metrical constructions which imply the action of the mind, much as the shape of the statue implies the artist’s chisel. The objects of physics are groups of metrical characters that are not perceptual objects but only symbolic of them. In a striking passage Sir A. Eddington writes: “Our knowledge of the external world cannot be divorced from the nature of the appliances with which we have obtained the knowledge.” —Samuel Alexander Mystical materialism is the thought that the entire universe is composed of matter, without mind. This philosophy is mystical since matter has never been observed directly, but is an idea in the mind of materialist philosophers. If it were to be observed, it would be perceived as external to the mind of the observer, in the mental activity of perception. Matter is a construct of the mind. The idea that matter pervades the universe, even parts of the universe that have never been observed is again, an idea in the mind of materialists. The material model, that is, the models of matter created by scientists, such as the “Bohr atom,” are reconstructions of the scientific imagination, that is, models crafted in the minds of scientists. In short there can be no “matter” without mind, since matter is a conceptual hypothesis of the mind. It is a concept since it applies to multiple instances: it is a universal. The application of the concept to different individual bodies, or more precisely their constituents, is an act of the mind. The hypothesis that this can be done is also mental in origin. Thus the denial of mind by reductive materialists is mystical. In this chapter I will argue that materialism without mind is impossible. Some materialists write about matter as if it were a self-evident starting point, in effect a latter day version of “myth of the given.” They presume that the monistic materialist view is plausible, ignoring the point that this view has been constructed entirely by their minds. Moreover, the “mechanical” understanding of organisms in modern philosophy, one that is shared by dualists and materialists, is not only wrongheaded but totally confused. In the first place, the analogy of machines and nature requires the mind. Moreover, the “mechanical” understanding of nature by means of a metaphor from 52 SPECULATIVE EVALUATIONS artifice collapses the natural-artificial distinction and reduces “nature” to artifice, undermining the distinction. Indeed, mechanism is also mysterious, given this view: how can nature be a machine when machines were invented long after nature? Finally, I will critically evaluate materialism on the ground that materialism is a philosophy, and not equivalent to the modern scientific understanding of the basic elements of the universe. Nor is it equivalent to “physicalism.” On the contrary, recent changes in physics make either a materialist or even a “physicalist” metaphysics dubious. But the thesis of modern materialists that the mental is incompatible with a “scientific” philosophy is the third form of mystical materialism. For the question is, how can physicalism—science—apply to all of reality without theories and hypotheses that originate in the mind? 1. Matter and Mind We can conveniently divide the history of materialism into ancient and modern episodes. Ancient materialism was an “eclectic” compromise between the unchanging universe of Parmenides and the flux envisioned by Heraclitus. While change was apparent at a perceptual level, the underlying reality was unchanging atoms. These atoms were indivisible, solid, and eternal. Since they were eternal, the universe is also eternal, as the universe consists solely of atoms and the void (Epicurus). Early materialism was primarily an ontological and cosmological doctrine that later added a basically contemplative view of humans (Democritus, Epicurus, T. Lucretius Carus). Ancient materialists do not speak of “mechanism,” no doubt since mechnisms are largely a modern development. Contrary to Wilhelm Windelband (1901/1958) and Frederick Copleston (1947), otherwise excellent historians of the history of philosophy, ancient materialism was in no way conceived mechanistically, nor could it have been. The widespread use of mechanisms such as the clock postdated ancient times. Lucretius does not mention “mechanism,” nor conceive animals in this way, as Rene Descartes does. The ancient materialists speak in terms of “collision,” and “necessity.” A purely materialistic metaphysics is also inconsistent with telos. Modern materialism began with the rediscovery and appropriation of Epicureanism by Thomas Hobbes, Pierre Gassendi, and others. However, it soon became entangled with the mechanical metaphor borrowed from Cartesian rationalism. What it shared with ancient philosophy was monism: the attempt to explain mind in terms of matter. Modern materialism also abandoned the contemplative view of humans in favor of a practical model, in the economic sense of “practical.” This development was concurrent with the establishment of the study of economics during the Enlightenment, especially in France. Human struggle was for material wealth. Materialism in modern philosophy became an economic doctrine whose view of humans was more .