Materialism as Metaphor

Materialism as Metaphor

I think materialism is at best false and at worst meaningless. But I won’t defend these opinions here (I have elsewhere, as have others[1]). I am here to praise materialism not to bury it. If I may descend to the demotic, my view is that materialism is crap, but it is good crap. It is not literally true (or even meaningful), but it is a good metaphor—helpful, liberating, apt, better than other metaphors, intellectually correct (also politically). Its heart and head are in the right place, but it goes too far. It presents the right picture, the right ideology, but in an exaggerated form. For it depicts the mind as a natural phenomenon not a manifestation of supernatural realities: nature not God, science not superstition. It liberates us from old worn-out modes of thought. Instead of religion and the ethereal soul, it preaches scientific naturalism and the animal body. It is a far better metaphor than traditional substance dualism. Its close ally, mechanism, is better than fanciful religious inventions—mysticism, pantheism, miracles, superstition. The mind is like a machine in that it works by natural mechanisms, causes, laws. It is as if the mind were a machine; that is a healthy way to think. It isn’t like a ghost in a machine, or an angel in heaven, but like a machine in a machine—a mental machine in a bodily machine. The physical world is a complex and surprising thing without being a supernatural thing (as described in sacred books), and so is the mind. Materialism is the best image we have to capture the utter naturalness of the human being as a whole (and the rest of nature). It isn’t true, but it points us in the right direction—or away from the wrong direction. It subverts old, outmoded ways of thinking—pre-scientific ways. It is intellectually respectable. Hopelessly reductive, to be sure, but not completely mad, not berserk and bizarre—not utter rubbish. It isn’t a kind of sickness of the intellect.

The best way to appreciate this is historically. Consider the state of astronomy prior to the scientific revolution: biblically based, unempirical, anthropocentric, magical, dogmatic, fantastic. God is at the center of it. Then begins a materialistic astronomy: the prime mover is gravity not God, we are not the center of the universe, the stars are physical objects not deities, the sky isn’t heaven, etc. The so-called heavens are really a gigantic whirling machine. There is no dualism of the sublunary and superlunary. In fact, as we know now, the universe is made of matter obeying scientific laws not some sort of divine playground. Here materialism is true, as it is true of our planet and other nearby planets—a hunk of rock among other rocks, basically. Now consider the organic world: what is it? People used to speak of the elan vital, entelechies, the spark of life, animal spirits, and humors. Then we recognized that bodies are machines made of chemicals, evolved by mutation and natural selection, subject to the laws of physics. Materialism is true of bodies. Bodies are not discontinuous with inorganic matter but a modified form of inorganic matter. At the same time ghosts, spirits, angels, and fairies fell into disrepute; not material enough. All this was a move in the right direction and perfectly true, as far as it goes. Granted, there were quibbles here and there—the nature of causation, Newton’s occult gravitational force, difficulties of actual theory reduction, the workings of evolution. But the materialist impulse seemed to be gaining ground. It opposed the right things, and it had strong intellectual support. It belonged to the enlightened modern world.

But then we come to the nature of mind: here the old ways of thinking are still dominant and disturbing to the materialist outlook. Naturally, scientific people hope for new conquests, vanquishing old foes, keeping religion out of the picture; but alas, it didn’t work out that way. The mind resisted materialistic analysis; the old ways still seem on their feet and kicking. Are we forced to go back to them? Let’s hope not, but the anxiety persists. At this point I would prescribe a dose of healing mysterianism, but that is not my current concern; I am diagnosing our historical moment and promoting the utility of materialist rhetoric. I want to say that the metaphor is still good, useful, healthy; it keeps us on the right track. The mind may not literally be a material machine, but it is like a machine—a naturalistic, law-governed, cause-and-effect, naturally evolved, intelligible, non-supernatural, biological entity. There is no act of divine creation behind it, propping it up. It isn’t pure matter, like a rock, but it is akin to a rock—a distant cousin maybe. That is not an unhealthy or insane way to think, especially given that our theories of mind are still quite incomplete. It is a nice metaphor, image, object of comparison. It’s a lot better than all that wacky mumbo-jumbo people peddled in the bad old days before science gleamed forth. Pain isn’t reducible to C-fiber stimulation, but it is in important respects like C-fiber stimulation—a natural phenomenon evolved by natural means from natural beginnings, not a rather cruel gift from almighty God, who is definitely not material. If you think of pain as roughly akin to C-fiber firing, you won’t fall into superstitious nonsense or bad metaphors. But don’t get carried away; don’t mistake helpful metaphor for literal truth. It’s like thinking of nations as individuals or genes as selfish or electrons as attractive—useful but not real. You can think of pain as a brain state, metaphorically.[2]

I actually like the metaphor; it strikes the right note. And it contains large elements of truth: the mind is essentially bound up with the body and brain, and it is quasi-physical (as Cartesian immaterial substance is not—the immortal soul, etc.). It just isn’t the whole truth. There is something machinelike in the way the mind works—mechanistic, law-governed, deterministic, reflexive. It dabbles in the material—a soft machine within a hard machine. This is a much better metaphor than behaviorism, say, because it doesn’t deny the inner workings of the mind; the mind isn’t a kind of input-output device devoid of innards. Materialism at least directs us to the brain, where we should be looking. Behaviorism is no more plausible than the idea that the body is behaviorally defined—as if it had no insides. The mind is mostly interior, and materialism recognizes that; indeed, it provides a good metaphor for the interiority of mind. It reminds me of necessity and possible worlds: there are not literally such things, but the idea provides a helpful heuristic metaphor for modal reality (otherwise hard to think about). All in all, materialism is not a complete disaster, despite its clear falsity. It points us in the right direction at any rate. We can even declare it obviously false but still get some mileage out of it. Let’s call this metaphorical materialism.[3]

[1] E.g., T. Nagel and N. Chomsky.

[2] Suppose I am excited and say “My neurons are on fire”; I am speaking metaphorically, relying on my hearer’s knowing the association between mental states and neural states. I am not assuming the literal truth of the identity theory. Materialism is this kind of talk writ large.

[3] A personal note: I was first smitten with materialism as an undergraduate in psychology studying neurophysiology. I even invented an identity theory without knowing it had already been done. I gradually weakened the theory with the passing years, influenced by Davidson’s anomalous monism. But I could never accept full-blown reductive materialism. I am glad that I have now come to accept all-out materialism as a metaphor. Even irreducible qualia are material-ish. They hobnob with material entities and maybe even emerge from them. They function like physical particulars. You can think of them by analogy with physical stuff. Just as we can personify material objects, so we can “bodify” mental objects–metaphorically. The mind is of the body, even if not reducible to it.