Why Materialism Cannot Genuinely Explain Experience

“The terms Subject and Object (Subjective and Objective) denote complementary ‘moments’ of a concrete fact—‘moments’ which necessarily emerge as correlated opposites within any and every ‘actual’ cognizant experience when that is raised (or raises itself) to the reflective level; or when (as I expressed it less accurately before) it is subjected to philosophical (‘critical’) analysis. The terms mean nothing, except when applied to ‘moments’ within their ‘concrete fact’—within some specific form or individual type of ‘actual’ knowledge; and, when thus applied, each means precisely that which, within the concretum, is not (is the contrasted correlative of) that which is meant by the other. Nothing, in short, is a subject or subjective, an object or objective, as such and per se. There is no activity of knowing—no act or process, for example, of perceiving, judging, or inferring—which when abstracted from the concrete fact of knowledge (from, for example, the perception, judgment, inference) has any character at all. The activity of knowing (perceiving, judging, inferring, &c.) is one of two ‘moments’ inseparable within, and presupposing, a concretum; and, within that concretum both ‘moments’ deserve, and receive, their respective appellation (viz. subjective and objective) precisely because the one is not, and can never be or become, the other.” (Joachim, Logical Studies, 151-152) 

Experience is that which is exhaustively self-differentiated, to, through, and for itself; and, in conceiving any actual or possible “piece” of Reality, one is bound, by necessity, to conceive of an Experience, or a determination thereof. No actuality is conceivable otherwise; for all sensible and thinkable actualities are but unities of meaning, saturated and sustained in-and-through a continuous atmosphere of Experience; an Experience within which said unities of meaning have their respective places as beings of an intentional-constitution—moments of actual or possible appreciation and contemplation for a unique determination of that Experience itself—the Subject. Experience is a Many-felt-in-One; a Multiplicity-in-Unity; a world of interpenetrating microcosms of meaning and ideal content, enveloped within a richer, all-embracing macrocosm; a boundless, internally-differentiated nebula of feeling; a continuous sphere wherein Subjectivity and Objectivity live and move together as distinguishable factors participating in a single, organic unity—a unity that does not exclude or negate differences, but embraces and preserves them. 

Experience is neither mere Subjectivity, or a barren, isolated, private “I”, nor is Experience mere Objectivity, or a mere fulguration of an ordered sequence or pattern of “sensa” or “percepta”; rather, Experience is, strictly speaking, a concrete, living Substance—it is a Substance within which Subjectivity and Objectivity are abstractly-distinguishable, coordinate factors, aspects, or or determinations. Experience is not the mere “togetherness” or “compresence” of Subject and Object; for, there is always a relatively determinable margin of Experience which, despite being present, falls outside the radius of explicit attention; this subliminal “surplus” wades in the margins of any given Experience and always “coats” or “qualifies” each moment of Experience with a unique “aura” or “tone.”

The Empire of Experience is without circumference or margin; its Kingdom is infinite. Its infinitude is evidenced by its all-embracing inclusivity and self-transcendency. Indeed, there is nothing beyond its scope; for, to reach beyond the pale of Experience is to disclose that which hath already lied within its grasp.

Unfortunately, the sovereignty of Experience has not always been respected, let alone acknowledged. Time and again, Experience has been threatened by an ancient force that has sought to dissolve it into a storm of illusive material and physical factors. This ancient creed is none other than Materialism. Materialism stands or falls with its ability to explain Experience. Indeed, rather than treating Experience as the principle of explanation and discovery, the Materialist, “from defect of nature or of education, or probably both,” is led by an untutored instinct to explain the fact of Experience in terms of the abstract and unreal.  Let us follow the Materialist along this dreary path and see how he fares. 

Now, in explaining Experience, the Materialist starts off by making two fundamental mistakes—two missteps that are characteristic of all Materialistic explanations of Experience. Firstly, the Materialist fails to recognize two crucial facts that live and move within Experience: (i) the fact that, within Experience, the Subject of Consciousness and the Object of Consciousness are mutually implicative of each other, and (ii) the non-Objectified margin of Experience works to shape the character of the Object of Consciousness. The fatal consequences of the Materialist’s negligence of these facts will lurk in the background and haunt the entirety of his explanation. Indeed, the Materialist’s uncanny affinity for abstraction and division leads him to treat the Subjective and Objective factors within Experience as isolated, independent, and externally related units—forgetting that, within Experience, we find the Subject of Consciousness and Object of Consciousness to be two, abstract, mutually-implying determinations, aspects, or moments, of that “Many-felt-in-One” that the Materialist so desperately seeks to explain. Secondly, before anyone even has time to blink, the Materialist makes another blunder: he mistakenly identifies Experience with either (i) the Subject of Consciousness, (ii) the Object of Consciousness, or (iii) certain sensuous, qualitative determinations (e.g. qualia) of the Object of Consciousness (or the non-Objectified margin of Experience).

Let us illustrate this miserable mistake with help from a “part-whole” analogy. The Materialist mistakenly identifies a “whole” with one of its isolated “proper parts”—said “proper part” most evidently being less than that “whole” of which it is a constituent “proper part.” Furthermore, said “whole” (i.e. Experience) is not only richer in content than said isolated “proper part,” but also has a unique, qualitative, multi-dimensional structure (i.e. a Subject-dimension, a non-Perspectival-dimension, and a Perspectival-dimension) that is non-isomorphic to that of any of its “proper parts” taken singly. How on earth can a “proper part” of a “whole” give rise to that “whole” of which it is but a “proper part?” If you are a Materialist, and you wish to explain the fact of Experience, I only ask that you do justice to Experience by actually keeping in mind what Experience actually is.

Now, it doesn’t matter whether the Materialist mistakes Experience for the Subject of Consciousness, the Object of Consciousness, or certain sensuous, qualitative determinations of the Object of Consciousness; for, all three options are ultimately failures—but the Materialist doesn’t realize this. Indeed, he pushes even further by performing a biopsy on the Object of Consciousness.  The Materialist, forgetting that the Object of Consciousness’s determinate character is contributed in part by the Subject of Consciousness and that determinable, non-Objectified margin of Experience, attempts to strip the Object of Consciousness of any and all Subject-implying determinations and any and all Experience-implying determinations.  The biopsic operation destroys the datum upon which the Materialist was ravaging for answers, leaving him with a contentless, intangible, abstract, hypothetical, and unreal X. The Materialist divines this X to be an independent and self-subsisting “thing-in-itself” with causal efficacy. The Materialist cherishes this meager shadow of a reality as the answer to all of his difficulties. However, he soon realizes that his precious X has only a hypothetical existence—an existence “only in the understanding,” rather than an existence in reality. With the help of a bastardized form of the ontological proof, the Materialist establishes the unconditioned existence and reality of X by virtue of the fact that X would be much greater for his explanation if X actually existed in reality rather than as a mere concept “in the understanding.”

Having established to his liking the unconditioned existence of X, the Materialist now tries to spin the concrete and actual out of the desolate and the barren.  However, as was seen above, both the concept and unconditioned existence of X were arrived at with the help of several blunders and illegitimate inferences.  Further, X, as a concept, had its conceptual content and determinate meaning exhausted by facts “internal to” Experience. But this just means that X is conceptually sense-dependent upon facts “internal to” Experience; in other words, one cannot grasp or understand X without grasping or having a prior understanding of certain facts “internal to” Experience or Experience itself.¹ On the other hand, it is clear that one can grasp or understand Experience, and facts “internal to” Experience, without ever grasping or understanding the Materialist’s X.  Now, when the Materialist attempts to explain the existence of Experience in terms of X, or the emergence of Experience from X, he fails to see that the driving force of his explanation not only presupposes, but also depends upon for its meaning and “sense,” the presence of Experience within it. Furthermore, since facts “internal to” Experience exhaust X’s conceptual content and meaning, it follows that Experience cannot be eliminated from any posited X without said posited entity becoming meaningless and “sense-less.” As such, the Materialist’s explanation is self-condemned from the start. Indeed, vicious circularity haunts the Materialist at every turn. The following illustration should help visualize the Materialist’s dilemma. Let E represent Experience, and let (E—X) represent X. The Materialist, as we have seen, must explain E in terms of X; however, this just means that he must explain E in terms of (E—X). However, this cannot be done unless he first explains (E—X) in terms of ((E—X)—X); but this cannot be done unless he first explains ((E—X)—X) in terms of (((E—X)—X)—X); but this cannot be done unless he first explains (((E—X)—X)—X) in terms of ((((E—X)—X)—X)—X). And so on, and so on, ad infinitum. And this circle is clearly vicious.²

The Materialist is forced by his own hand to presuppose at the very beginning of his explanation, the very presence of the phenomenon which he professes to have reached as the final result. Therefore, it is impossible—in principle—for Materialism to genuinely explain Experience.3 

Footnotes:

^[1] Conceptual sense-dependence can be explained in the following way:

“Concept P is sense dependent on concept Q just in case one cannot count as having grasped P unless one counts as grasping Q….A paradigmatic sense dependence claim is Sellars’ classic argument in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind that one cannot master the use of “looks” talk without having mastered the use of “is” talk. The concepts nail and hammer may be related like this: one cannot understand what a nail is—something meant to be driven by a hammer—without understanding what a hammer is….Another example: the property being produced by a reliable belief-forming mechanism is conceptually dependent on that of being a true belief, because to be a reliable belief-forming mechanism is to produce beliefs that are likely to be true.” (Brandom, Holism and Idealism in Hegel’s Phenomenology, 78-79) 

^[2] I figured that it would be helpful to include several passages that go into detail about what constitutes a “vicious regress of explanation.”

“Vicious regress of explanation: At each stage, n, an instance of a puzzle is posed an an explanation offered, and this explanation gives rise to a new instance of the puzzle, forming stage n+1; and furthermore, the success of the explanation at stage n depends on the puzzle at stage n+1 being resolved.” (Cameron, The Moving Spotlight: An Essay on Time and Ontology, 60)   

“Here, again, I think Russell clearly right in holding that there is one kind of “regress” which is always fatal to any hypothesis which implies it. No intelligible proposition can be such that an infinite “regress” arises in the very attempt to state its meaning. An apparent proposition P₀ which turns out to be such that we cannot state its meaning without first stating as parts of that meaning the infinite series of propositions P₁, P₂,…, P_n,…, P_ω, must be no proposition at all but a mere unmeaning noise. For, as we can never exhaust an infinite series by enumeration of its terms, we could never know definitely what such a P₀ means, and every proposition must have a fully determinate meaning. Hence for us, at any rate, P₀ is no proposition at all.” (Taylor, Philosophical Studies, 47-48)

^[3] Although my argument focuses on Materialism, it may be looked upon as a vindication of Epistemological Idealism (i.e., the knowing and the known are of a piece with each other as internally-related factors within Experience). Although my argument does not establish the truth of Ontological Idealism, its conclusion may be said to vindicate Explanatory Idealism and Conceptual Idealism.