Now we turn to one of the more perplexing aspects of materialism: one that prevents many from abandoning dualist beliefs. How can sentient living beings possibly arise from matter alone? Dualism asserts a sharp ontological divide between animate and inanimate (mind and matter as a parallel aspect), categorically prohibiting animate beings from being wholly composed of inanimate matter. The last post addressed the flaw in characterizing matter as being “inert” in the first place.
But even once past this barrier, our inability to connect all the dots from atoms to conscious experience (which no one has managed to do, and likely never will), strongly tempts us to declare—assuming phantasmic authority—that no such route even could exist, or that failure to map it means it may as well be declared non-existent (a reaction worthy of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast). Where’s the adventure in that?
As an aside, allusion to “phantasmic authority” above may elicit the reflexive charge that advocating materialist monism is an equivalent assertion devoid of authority. Not so fast. Materialist monism amounts to being satisfied that matter/interactions can plausibly form the entire basis of reality even if we don’t understand how. It is in claiming materialism to be insufficient—without evidence—that meat-brains seize more authority than they are due. Materialist monism cedes authority to the universe as we find it, rather than presuming to fabricate comforting alternatives.
Anyway, lacking a complete map, how does materialism deal with our experience as sentient beings, or other sentient life? We find a significant clue in the etymology of sentient. The root word is “sense.”
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