Why Materialism Is False, and Why It Has Nothing To Do with the Mind

Why Materialism Is False, and Why It Has Nothing To Do with the Mind

William Jaworski

Materialism claims that everything is physical; everything can be exhaustively described and explained in principle by physics. For over half a century challenges to materialism have focused on mental phenomena such as consciousness, reason, and value.

The tacit assumption among most materialists – one shared by most of their critics – has been that more basic biological phenomena, such as metabolism and reproduction, do not pose a serious obstacle to the materialist program, that these can be easily accommodated within a materialist framework. But there is reason to think that this assumption is false.

Thomas Nagel has recently argued that materialism cannot countenance biological phenomena at large. Like so many anti-materialist arguments, however, his focuses on mental phenomena. After explaining why this is a liability for him and other would-be critics of materialism, I advance an anti-materialist argument that appeals directly to biology. Materialism is false, it says, because our best empirical descriptions and explanations of biological phenomena appeal to biological organization or structure, and there is good reason to think that these appeals cannot be eliminated, reduced to, or paraphrased in favor of descriptions and explanations framed in exclusively physical terms. As a result, not everything can be described and explained exhaustively by physics. Materialism must be false. The reason, however, has nothing to do with mental phenomena specifically.

Why Materialism Is False, and Why It Has Nothing To Do with the Mind

William Jaworski

"According to Nagel, (mostly) all (materialist) theories fail to explain consciousness, reason, and value for reasons that are well rehearsed in the philosophical literature. Emergentism faces the familiar problem of psychophysical emergence: it must posit laws of emergence as brute, unexplainable matters of fact; as a result, it fails to provide the kind of understanding we seek. The problem with reductionist views, on the other hand, which include forms of behaviorism, psychophysical identity theory, and what most philosophers would call forms of ‘nonreductive physicalism’, is that they leave out subjective appearances. Finally, panprotopsychism faces the so-called combination problem, the problem of understanding how a number of proto-mental states might combine to form full-blown mental states."

Having chosen philosopher Nagel's anti-materialist arguments as representative Jaworski then proceeds to attempt to weaken or dissipate these arguments with the various materialist rejoinders. Then following philosophical lines of reasoning he argues for his own different approach.

Overall I don't find this sort of enterprise to be very rewarding. Philosophical debate is never-ending, and I think it is ultimately futile because it is never finally resolved.

What is always missing, the unmentionable in academic circles "elephant in the room", is the obvious approach of appealing to the actual existence of a large body of empirical evidence for the invalidity of materialist mind-body theories. This is the large body of excellent empirical evidence that has accumulated in the various areas of psychical research, especially NDEs, reincarnation, and mediumistic communication. In my opinion it trumps all the philosophical argumentation. 

Of course materialists totally reject this evidence (generally without serious examination) simply because it is "impossible" in their paradigm, in their world-view. As far as they are so closed-mindedly concerned, no amount of such evidence would make any difference. 

This still leaves the culture war issue unresolved, but if the issue were left at that, at least no more time and effort would be wasted. As has been observed, progress only slowly occurs and is measured generally by the numbers of funerals of experts.

What is always missing, the unmentionable in academic circles "elephant in the room", is the obvious approach of appealing to the actual existence of a large body of empirical evidence for the invalidity of materialist mind-body theories. This is the large body of excellent empirical evidence that has accumulated in the various areas of psychical research, especially NDEs, reincarnation, and mediumistic communication. In my opinion it trumps all the philosophical argumentation. 

Perhaps this would be convincing, but it seems the philosophical arguments have moved more people (including skeptics Sam Harris & to an extent Michael Shermer) than an elephant that AFAICTell is in fact barely even in the room.

It seems the acceptance of parapsychology will come in part by the acceptance of non-materialist positions in STEM academia. (I suspect the other part is quantum biology + field effects related to the brain.)

This still leaves the culture war issue unresolved, but if the issue were left at that, at least no more time and effort would be wasted. As has been observed, progress only slowly occurs and is measured generally by the numbers of funerals of experts.

This seems like a strategy that would leave parapsychologists "howling at the gates" of major acceptance. Beyond that the questions of philosophy only partially concern the questions related to parapsychology.