One major hangup in subscribing to a physics-based universe of material monism is that it appears to remove human agency as typically conceived in our culture. If atoms and their interactions are making everything happen, abiding by rules they (or we) cannot violate, is there any room left for human intervention or free will? As obvious as it is to us that we can weigh decisions and do things when/as we want, this disconnect alone is often enough to cause categorical rejection of materialism—retreating instead to the more comforting and self-promoting metaphysics of dualism. This is quite understandable: the notion that physics, not “soul” is the master of all “our” actions is an exceedingly challenging prospect for meat-brains to square—especially when modern language is constructed around first-person ownership of “ourselves” as subjects. Even if able to make intellectual sense of the matter, it’s still a tough pill for anyone to swallow. It sure doesn’t feel right, for what very little that’s actually worth.

Determinism also rubs people wrong in the context of history: suggesting that only one path was available to the present, precluding any potential counterfactual fantasies that are all-too-easy and entertaining to imagine (by leaving out almost the entire, actual universe in meat-brain models). It also might imply to some (erroneously) that humans played no role in shaping events, if there’s only one way said events could have played out.

Many react to determinism with a “then what’s the point, if everything is pre-determined” sort of response (another fallacious framing). Determinism seems to lay out railroad tracks to the future, leaving nothing for us to do. Why even get out of bed, then?

I’ll try to address these issues here. Perhaps I’ve said it all scattered across other posts and comments, but here it is all in one place, with a few new twists and perspectives. Bear in mind that I am presenting (advocating) the case against dualism and for materialist monism. Please forgive the fact that I do not couch every statement with “In the materialist monist view…,” the repeated absence of which may come across as laying claim to ultimate truth, which of course I cannot do.

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