1.2.5.3 Materialism Helps Find Values

Materialism also helps us with non-scientific areas related to values, meaning and purpose.

We adopt a materialistic approach to the universe because it enable us to understand it better and make better choices.  If on the other hand we were to assume that the whole universe consists only of mental events, or includes (non-physical, immaterial) mental events, then we would seem to be saying that some events occur outside the normal laws of nature, i.e. they are by definition incomprehensible.  And we can't make any definite conclusions from something that is incomprehensible. 

Many people, often without thinking, adopt the view that values can't be found in a materialist universe, which they think of as being rather like immensely complex mechanical clockworks. 

●   If the universe is governed by causal laws, they say, there is no room for free will, because our choices are in theory at least predictable.  We examine these issue more in Chapter 1.4 (Mind). 

●   Some people can leave the issue of free will aside and still believe that values cannot be intrinsic in a material universe, so they must come from some non-material source.

But there are difficulties if values are dependent on the supernatural rather than the natural world.

●   We don’t know what the moral rules are.  If the so called spiritual world, or the noumenon, or whatever we call it, is beyond our ordinary perceptions and beyond reason then how can we figure out what is right?

●   We don’t know how advocating moral rules can effectively influence non-material minds.  At least with materialist minds we can use psychology and neuroscience to work out how to persuade others to follow the rules.  With non-material values we can only berate them.

●   Religious people will suggest that their tradition has the answers, be it Daoist, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh, Jewish, Christian, Muslim or some other.  We discuss religion further in Part 4.

●   Alternatively, many religious people suggest we can have spiritual experiences, or a spiritual connexion to the supernatural that will reveal, or at least help us to know, what is right.

●   But at this stage of our philosophy we have no grounds to choose between the various religious approaches, revelations or the various philosophical approaches.

The point of our analysis is to work out how to behave, and how we can find meaning and purpose.  If we chose to believe that values, meaning and purpose arise in some fundamental substance of the universe, that we perhaps can call mental events, and they are at least in part independent of the material universe, then to that extent, the world is beyond our control, random rather than reasonable, chaotic rather than causal.

We can of course be accused of adopting a rather circular approach here.  We choose to adopt materialism rather than dualism or idealism because it is more amenable to our purpose.  But we address the issues that these other approaches purport to solve (in section 1.2.7), and continually reassess our core choices so that the leap of faith we take in adopting this view is minimised.