Re: Is Materialism Self-Refuting?

Asst Prof Clarence F Sills Jr (sills@norfolk.nadn.navy.mil)
Thu, 29 Jun 1995 16:20:16 -0400 (EDT)

Sorry, but there you go again. You do not seem to have grasped the
problem for a consistent materialism to which I pointed in the reference
to David Ray Griffin's essays a week or so ago. Leibniz made this clear
over 200 years ago in critiquing the (only thoroughgoing and still
fascinating) attempt at a materialist metaphysics by Hobbes. In
paraphrase, his argument is "If all is matter, then all has extension.
Mind, you say, is simply a concatenation of 'particles' in various states of
motion. Fine. Let us then inspect this mind. Imagine that we can
expand it to a large enough size to do this at our convenience. If all
is extended matter, then we have only changed the scale, not the inner
structure. Make the brain large enough so that we can walk around in the
neurons and check it out. Take your time. See any ideas? I didn't
think so.
Materialism *is* incoherent as a final metaphysical system,
although obviously useful as a research hypothesis. We make what A N
Whitehead called a "category mistake" when we imagine that the concepts
(which inevitably reflect our subjective dimensions in some way) we
propose for explaining the objects we perceive are themselves proof that
"all is matter".
Or, as Hegel put it, "Pure matter"--is an IDEA!"
Incidentally, the position of "all is ultimately matter, but at
certain levels we can ignore this" is called "Epiphenomenalism". It
tries to have the materialist cake while eating the idealist cake. An
epiphenomenalist basically accounts for "subjective" or "ideal" phenomena
(like the idea of a right angle) by saying, "ultimately, all is matter.
The mind is ultimately just a material complex of some sort. BUT we can
solve problems in arithmetic by referring only to the rules of
arithmetic, without having to refer to matter. Why? Because mind is an
"epiphenomenon" of matter. All genuine causation is from the "bottom
up"--from matter to mind, but a sort of quasi-causation WITHIN the
"bubble" of mind can be allowed so long as we do not permit it to react
back on matter."
Frankly, this gambit does not work any better than simple materialism.
One of the most common experiences we have is PLANNING (subjective
categories) an action (like throwing a fast ball instead of a slider) and
then carrying it out. The evidence of our experience is that "mind" CAN
have causal effects on "matter." Clearly the materialist and
epiphenomenalist strategies are INHERENTLY flawed. This must be grasped,
and no technological improvement has the slightest bearing on this issue.