Materialism Is an Illusion

Materialism is the philosophical position that all things are made of matter, or at the very least that all things evolve from the physical laws of nature. In other words, it could be said that materialism represents the fundamental belief in science above all things. Because physics is based on science, it follows that with a sufficiently advanced science, all of physics, and therefore the universe as a whole, can be explained.

Unfortunately, there are some gaps in that line of thinking. I will show you two arguments for why, at best, materialism is an incomplete view of the universe. And once we’ve established that, we can see why the material world itself is ultimately nothing but an illusion.

Gaps in Materialism

The first argument against materialism is a simple but philosophical one. If this one fails to convince you, we’ll see a more complex one rooted in physics itself right after.

The Philosophical Argument Against Materialism

Physics is the scientific theory that aims to explain and describe all observable phenomena. This is a lofty goal and one I fully endorse. Yet we must acknowledge its inherent limitation: It can only explain and describe observable phenomena. This must be true, because without observation the scientific method itself does not apply. But this leads us to one of science’s great mysteries: What is observation? Science can describe all observable phenomena, but it cannot explain the concept of observation itself.

Does it matter? Yes, it does. Because there is at least one concept that we can simultaneously observe as well as not observe. This is our consciousness. Everyone knows they’re conscious, because they observe it first hand. We’re all witnesses of our own consciousness, so we know it exists, and yet we cannot observe or measure the consciousness of others. We can presume others are as conscious as we are, because there is no rational argument against this, but we cannot scientifically prove it.

Consciousness cannot be scientifically measured or observed and therefore falls outside the realm of physics. This means that materialism, at best, provides an incomplete view of the universe. Within the idea of falsification, it only takes a single counter example to disprove a theory, and the concept of consciousness is such a counter example to the theory of materialism.

Of course materialists have identified this shortcoming of their theory, and they “solved” it by presuming that consciousness itself is a physical property as something that “emerges” from other physical properties. In my opinion, it is quite unfortunate that so many scientists seem to have accepted this notion of emergent consciousness, since there is nothing scientific about it. When does consciousness emerge? Nobody knows. How does consciousness emerge? Nobody knows. It’s not even a theory, but merely an assumption.

The only reason I’ve heard for people to believe in emergent consciousness is because it must be true. But it mustn’t be true for any rational or scientific reason. The only reason it “must” be true is because it shatters their world view otherwise. It is a belief — faith — and an unscientific one at that.

For us to remain intellectually honest, we cannot accept emergent consciousness as fact. We must remain open-minded to the idea that, at best, materialism is an incomplete view of reality.

The Physical Argument Against Materialism

But there’s more than just a philosophical argument against materialism. Physics itself also points us towards an outside force that must be responsible for observation. Here, the use of the word “must” is a logical one, because if physics itself was responsible for its own observation, it would lead to a paradox — a logical contradiction.

Let me explain.

Quantum physics is a part of physics. It’s a very weird part of physics, but also certainly one of the most foundational parts of it. I have occassionally heard the argument that we cannot draw any meaningful conclusion from quantum physics, because it’s so weird that nobody fully understands it. And it’s true that the reality as to why quantum physics is as weird as it is cannot be fully understood by the scientific method and therefore we cannot make hard scientific conclusions based on it. But that doesn’t mean that we cannot draw any conclusions from it, such as the falsification of the idea of materialism.

Quantum physics shows us that physical matter doesn’t exist as an independent entity. Matter doesn’t just exist as particles — as neutrons or electrons — but it exists in a so-called wave-particle duality. Matter can manifest as particles, but it can exist in a mathematical wave function too. So when is matter a particle, and when is it a wave? The answer is: It depends on observation.

If you read the previous argument, you can probably feel there’s trouble on the horizon, because science cannot explain the concept of observation itself. Yet science can experimentally prove that the wave-particle duality exists. And the wave-particle duality doesn’t merely apply to neutrons and electrons either. It applies to atoms and entire molecules too. We don’t know where the boundary is, because as far as we know, there is none. It all depends on observation.

So is it possible that observation is something that exists within the realm of physics? As some kind of “emergent” property maybe? Without observation, matter is nothing but a form of energy constrained by a mathematical wave function. The particle manifestation of matter relies on observation to exist in order for itself to exist. So particles — the materialistic manifestation of matter — could never give rise to observation itself, or we’d introduce a circular dependency. That’s the paradox. We’d be trapped in a chicken-and-egg problem that we cannot get out of without invoking yet another outside force.

So then, could observation arise from the wave form of energy instead? Possibly, but we cannot observe energy in this state, because as soon as we attempt to observe it, it turns into particles again. That’s the whole problem with the wave-particle duality. So yeah, maybe observation does “emerge” from there, but we still wouldn’t be able to observe or measure it, and it would still remain locked outside the realm of physics.

Is it all just math then? I said that energy is constrained by its mathematical wave function, so maybe all of reality is just math? Unfortunately, even math isn’t the answer either. Gödel’s incompleteness theorems show us that math itself is not a self-consistent truth. At the least it relies on an outside form of truth to exist. And applied to physics, math cannot explain why observation triggers the wave function collapse either.

Matter Is But an Illusion

No matter how we slice it, observation and consciousness are concepts that continue to elude us. We know that consciousness exists, because we observe our own. And through our consciousness, we observe the world. And within this world, we see each other, other instances of consciousness, somehow foreign to us, and yet familiar.

So what is all that matter that separates us? It surely isn’t some self-existent materialistic universe, because materialism doesn’t explain us. But there’s more ways to look at the universe than materialism: Philosophical idealism posits that the only reality is that of the mind, spirit, or consciousness.

The existence of the mental universe was argued from a scientific perspective by Richard Conn Henry, professor in physics and astronomy. But well before, philosophies such as Taoism and Buddhism already accepted it for what it was.

To remain intellectually honest, not just with ourselves, but with the universe at large, we must accept that materialism is a mere illusion, a projection of the mind. The higher truth is that of the mind itself, of consciousness, or spirituality. We may not be able to define those things, but we can practice humility in the face of something that transcends ourselves.

In the Philosophy of Balance, I decided to call this concept the idea of the Universal God. Because I believe that all honest attempts at religion, and all forms of spiritual conviction, were ultimately just attempts to describe this higher truth, either directly or by trying to describe a path that leads to it. And as Richard Conn Henry articulated well, even the path of science leads us there… so long as we don’t get blindsided by illusions of materialism.