Objections to physicalism

What follows here are a series of critical statements that I originally posted as comments, or replies to others' comments, on various discussion forums and social media platforms.  As such, the result as presented below regrettably lacks the expository flow or cohesion of an actual essay.  Nevertheless, I believe the remarks are both valid and cogent enough to stand as objections to physicalism, a.k.a. materialism.

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Neuroscience has so far shown only correlation, not causation, between consciousness and the brain. But even on that front, a more subtle and overlooked point is that what those correlations pertain to isn’t even consciousness per se, but rather the various (often subtle) contents of consciousness in the form of thoughts, feelings, intuitions, perceptions, interoceptions, baseline sense of energy, and attentional disposition.  The purely subjective element that gives those contents their defining salience, and that serves as their noumenal basis, is absolutely nowhere to be found in any fMRI and EEG data.  Rather, the purely subjective element is always implicit in the many and varied contents of consciousness.  

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It seems fair to say that idealism and materialism each rests on an inference.  The problem with materialism is that the inference it rests on is epistemologically unsound, since it posits a reality outside of consciousness, something which even in principle could never be validated.  It posits an abstract and unverifiable ontological category — matter independent of awareness — and tries to make that abstraction foundational.  

Since reality at large should be expected to behave identically whether idealism or materialism is the case (more about that below), the choice of which ontology has the greatest likelihood of being true would seem to favor the one whose inference is less of a stretch.  It seems clear to me that this points to idealism.

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One sticky argument for materialism concerns its purported ability to make accurate predictions, as well as the overall durability, tenacious realism, and consensus validation of reality at large.  

First, it’s crucial to note that each of those facets of predictability, realism, and consensus validation is predicated on, and animated by, consciousness.  What is it that makes any prediction and either confirms or disconfirms the result?  Consciousness.  And the very notion of realism depends on subjectivity or consciousness.  Same with consensus validation of anything at all: it's nothing other than consciousness or subjectivity that is registering whatever is the object of consensus. 

There's simply no way to get behind, around, or outside of consciousness, even speculatively, because, again, all speculations and confirmations or disconfirmations transpire via consciousness.

Second, the suggestion that only materialism could account for these things is circular, since it's based on a materialistic definition of objectivity.  True, there's a deeply compelling sense of object permanence, inculcated in early childhood and reinforced by direct experience ever since.  But to say, as materialism does, that this compelling object permanence is based on something existing independently of, and even causally prior to, subjectivity or awareness is a nonstarter because, again, it's only ever consciousness that can posit any such theory and either validate or invalidate it.

Additionally, the assertion that materialism better accounts for features like object permanence or consensus validation seems to be based on an assumption that under idealism everything should be unpredictable, unstable and dreamlike.  Setting aside the fact that even dreams have a sense of realism and self-consistency while one is identified as a character within them, the important point here is that whether any contents of consciousness are stable or unstable has absolutely nothing to do with the purely subjective aspect of consciousness by which those contents are known.  Truly, whether "reality at large" is made of subatomic matter, some laws of physics, information, or pure awareness, has no bearing whatsoever on how it behaves and how seemingly consistent it is. In other words, the world will look and function exactly the same whether materialism or idealism is true. 

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Regarding the the tendency to take objectivity as contraindicative of an idealist ontology, this seems to be based at least partly on confusing subjectivity per se with the private inner lives of individuals — i.e., their minds.  Something it's crucial to understand about an awareness-only alternative to materialism is that this awareness has nothing to do with the subtle contents that define individual minds (e.g., thoughts, feelings, intuitions, a sense of personal energy and agency, and any states at all, from the highest and most sublime to the lowest and most depressed).  "Consciousness is not content," as the slogan goes.  

Another crucial point is that while mind content is personal and discrete, pure subjectivity or awareness is transpersonal and unlocated.  If you do the thought experiment of discriminatively stripping away layer after layer of your personal history, memories, inclinations, behavior tendencies, thought patterns and so on, what you'll finally be left with is the bare fact of being aware (though, n.b., not someTHING that's aware), and this is utterly the same in any sentient being (not just humans).  What we are talking about here is simply the "light" by which anything at all is known.

A fair, though imperfect, analogy is how electricity can power any number and variety of appliances and devices without itself partaking of any of their unique and individual characteristics and functions, and also without being a discrete unit of something contained within any of the appliances or devices as if it were a property of them.  In a comparable sense, you could say that awareness is the purely subjective dynamic that illuminates (and possibly animates) any number and variety of forms and functions.

Having said that, this doesn't necessarily mean that awareness or subjectivity exists independently of objects any more than objects can be said to exist independently of awareness.  It could be, for example, that there are subjective and objective poles to all phenomena, with neither having primacy and each being superseded by something yet more fundamental and irreducible.  (For the record, I don't mean to imply anything theistic there.)

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One other sticky point for materialism, or more accurately, a stronger materialist objection to idealism, has to do with the contents of individual minds not being accessible to others.  The resolution to this seeming conundrum lies in recognizing that awareness is neither a localized property of individuals, nor any sort of field (q.v. the electricity analogy above).

So, regarding the former, it must be understood that people are not what's aware; that is, people don't "have" awareness.  Awareness is simply the registering of, and the unifying context for, the countless elements that make up the person.  Thus it's always simply generic, transpersonal awareness, not any personal mind, that's privy to anyone's inner experiences.

Regarding the latter, idealism — at least in my view and experience of it — doesn't pressuppose that awareness exists as some sort of field or ground or substratum.  It just means that, unlike what materialism contends, awareness isn't produced by physical laws or matter.  But as mentioned previously, it may well exist as a sort of reciprocal co-arising with so-called objective content, in which case they may be two aspects of some kind of pure potential.

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There's also the so-called hard problem of consciousness: the problem of how strictly physical processes could produce consciousness.  In my view, this is a flat-earth "problem" that's only vexing because the starting assumption is wrong.  Physicalism has put the cart (matter, which is only ever an inference) before the horse (consciousness, which is epistemologically fundamental and thus never an inference) and wonders why the cart isn't able to (explanatorily) move the horse.  

And yet we continue to hear appeals to the solubility of the so-called hard problem, in the form of promises that we will eventually figure out how matter produces consciousness.  As I see it, though, as long as the starting assumption is wrong — and we've seen here several compelling reasons to suppose that it is — no amount of time and experimental effort will eventuate in a genuine solution since the "problem" isn't actually hard but impossible.  At best what will be offered will amount to the neuroscientific equivalent of Ptolemaic epicycles, until an appropriately Copernican shift out of physicalism occurs.†

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Finally, there are many reports of out-of-body experiences during NDEs, or under general anesthesia on the operating table, that include verified accounts of veridical perception from a non-local perspective, which would be impossible to account for under the assumption that consciousness is produced by the brain.  (Note that such accounts are not infrequently verified by medical professionals, such as physicians or nurses or technicians who were present.  In other words, the corroboration isn't necessarily from family or friends of the NDEr.)

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A few thoughts on physicalism serving the same wish-fulfillment function as religion

I think many arguments against physicalism tend to be perceived or interpreted by physicalists as 1) arguing for anti-realism (which I've addressed above), and 2) at the very least, opening the door to theism‡, which, of course, the materialist/physicalist paradigm's ascendency over the past several centuries is a poignant reaction against.   

And not all of the baggage complicating these arguments is historical and paradigmatic.  For instance, since most people (including materialists and atheists) intuitively associate the consciousness of their private inner lives with principles such as value, meaning, purpose, intelligence and love, the prospect of this consciousness itself being fundamental and constitutive of reality at large feels dangerously close to acknowledging the theistic/deistic ground of all religions.

Of course, for one thing, this is another instance of conflating the contents of consciousness with consciousness proper (see the second paragraph at the top).  But for another, idealism per se isn’t theistic.  Even if it tends to be true that most people who argue for idealism are at least theistically inclined, the premise that mind or consciousness is fundamental and constitutive of reality does not at all entail that it possesses any properties often ascribed to the supreme beings associated with the major religions.  

But going even deeper, I believe that the premise of physicalism supports a primal psychological need some people have to see that death equals the end of experience and thus the end of suffering.  And it's not hard to see how this assumption or belief might be even more influential if the individual was brought up in a religion that included an eschatology of eternal torment for non-believers, etc.  Clearly, the end of all experience is a better prospect, no?  That's precisely what physicalism promises.

As for the seemingly contraindicative fact that at least some materialists purport to consider the end of all experience at death to be terrifying, I think it's telling that they often speak of this speculative "end" using expressions like "eternal darkness" or even simply "nothingness", which both share at least a suggestion that this putative "end" is getting reified as a condition of deprivation or lack, as if this would pose some sort of threat to the one imagining it while very much alive today...  In short, I think that anyone who interprets the prospect of an absolute end at death as scary is confused, and hasn't gotten to the bottom of the fear.  The fear is never about "nothing" but always "something," and not knowing what "something" might be in store.  (For a deep dive into this topic, see my essay What the fear of death is really about.)

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†  To my mind this question of the irreducibility or reducibility of consciousness may very well come down to the presence or absence of a compelling intuition that no amount of neuronal complexity could magically produce the phenomenon of subjectivity.   I'm reminded of that famous "Then a miracle occurs" single-panel cartoon by Sydney Harris.  

‡  I say "at the very least, opening the door to theism" because, in my observation, many who argue for idealism are either theistically inclined (including the many who are in the "spiritual but not religious" camp), or outright religious (which includes proponents of the generic theism known as intelligent design, I would say).  To be clear, I'm not suggesting that everyone who argues for any form of idealism is guilty (intentionally or not) of "god smuggling."  I've just noticed a lot of instances of it.  

For what it's worth, despite my point-of-view being steeped in idealism (not merely philosophically but mystically-experientially), I consider myself to be both an atheist and a metaphysical nihilist.  This is because, while I do take consciousness and intelligence to be fundamental rather than emergent, I don't think this means there is any grand, overarching purpose or meaning behind how anything appears or plays out.  Further, because my view is nondual, I don't think this fundamental consciousness and intelligence is anything outside of or other than this very moment's experience, despite any qualities that may seem to mark or characterize any given moment's experience.  In other words, it's not contraindicated in the slightest by the presence of even the most abject and intractable suffering or unconscionably heinous acts of depravity, any more than it's indicated by the presence of joy or bliss or the largest scale acts of altruism.