Minimal Materialism
Minimal Materialism
A worldview which affirms that the mind is not ultimate has three minimal characteristics.2 First, the“basic level” must be mechanistic, and by that I mean that it is free of purpose, free of intentionality, free of normativity, and free of subjectivity. It is not implied here that a naturalistic world must be deterministic. However, whatever is not deterministic in such a world is brute chance and nothing more.
Second, the“basic level” must be causally closed. Nothing that exists independently from the physical world can cause anything to occur in the physical world. That is, if a physical event has a cause at time t, then it has a physical cause at time t. Even if it is merely a necessary condition or contributing cause, that cause is not a determining cause; there cannot be something nonphysical that plays a role in producing a physical event. If, before an event occurred, you knew everything about the physical level (the laws and the facts), you could add nothing to your ability to predict where the particles will be in the future by knowing anything about anything outside of basic physics.
Third, whatever is not physical, at least if it is in space and time, must supervene on the physical. Given the physical, everything else is a necessary consequence. In short, what the world is at bottom is a mindless system of events at the level of fundamental particles, and everything else that exists must exist in virtue of what is going on at that basic level. This understanding of a broadly materialist worldview is not a tendentiously defined form of reductionism; it is what most people who would regard themselves as being in the broadly materialist camp would agree with, a sort of“minimal materialism.” Not only that, but any worldview that could reasonably be called“naturalistic” is going to have these features, and the difficulties I will be advancing against a“broadly materialist” worldview thus defined will be a difficulty that will exist for any kind of naturalism.
At the same time we must be careful. No planets are mentioned in basic physics, yet planets can and do exist as conglomerations of entities at the basic level. In the case of planets, however, given enough information about the basic particles, and knowing what a planet is, the question is closed as to whether a planet is there. I have not ruled out by definition the possibility that, for example, intentionality might exist at a nonbasic level even though it is missing at the basic level. I will instead argue that a naturalistic world would not contain such elements.