Materialists believe that consciousness is a by-product of the brain and that physical reality is fundamental and can only be perceived through the senses and the brain itself. Meanwhile, idealists believe the opposite to be true. They think that consciousness actually creates physical reality and that therefore consciousness must be fundamental. In this article, I would like to analyze and dissect both views in order to demonstrate their inherent fallacies.

First, let us consider the materialist view. As I mentioned earlier, materialists posit that matter is fundamental, and that the brain, the nervous system and the attached senses are responsible for creating the perception of this physical world, which is “out there”. That perception, they assume, is what allows us to experience physical reality. Materialists also consider subjective experience, including consciousness and imagination, to be some sort of epiphenomena that must also be generated by the brain. However, according to their own view, materialists cannot possibly deny the fact that any perception of a physical reality must necessarily occur inside the brain; and here is the main problem. In fact, if nothing can be known or perceived irrespective of the brain, then the knowledge and perception of the brain itself must necessarily depend on the brain as well. In other words, materialists must be assuming that the brain can only be known to exist because of itself, which presupposes that the brain must be ultimately real in the first place. But how could they know that the brain exists independently of it being perceived? Actually they don’t. In fact, materialists simply believe that matter and the brain in particular, must be real a priori, just like Christians or other religious people believe that God exists, period. However, the certainty about the reality of the brain cannot possibly rely on what the brain itself is able to perceive through the senses, not even from a materialistic viewpoint, since materialists themselves must concede that sensory perception is insufficient to prove that something is real or exists independently of the brain and the senses.

Idealists, on the other hand, believe that consciousness is fundamental and that it is responsible for creating everything else, including physical reality. However, idealists fail to answer essential questions such as “What is consciousness?” or “What is mind?” just as materialists are not able to fathom what matter ultimately is. Similarly, religious people admit that it is impossible to know the essence of God. Nevertheless, how do idealists know they are conscious in the first place, if not by relying on consciousness itself? Therefore, it would be interesting to ask what consciousness really is; and as we are going to see, the breaking down of this “hard philosophical question” will eventually allow us to understand similar ontological ones.

When people are faced with any question, they usually tend to take the validity of that question for granted and they rush to find out what the answer could be. That is to say, people do not usually investigate thoroughly enough the accurate meaning or validity of the question itself beforehand. For example, let us consider the aforementioned question “What is consciousness?” and ask ourselves what do we actually mean when we ask what is something? In fact, when we inquire about the reality of anything, we are either attempting to describe what it is made of [case 1], if it is a physical thing, or what causes it to happen or exist [case 2], if it is an event for instance. Some other time, it boils down to asking how a thing relates to other things [case 3], the latter being the effects or outcome of the former. Obviously, in the first two cases, we should end up with subtler sub-elements and causes, which we could still ask and inquire about. For example, if we ask what a stone is, we will discover that a stone is a solid aggregate of one or more minerals or mineraloids. Subsequently, we can still ask what each of those minerals or mineraloids is, only to conclude that it must be made of atoms and other sub-elements. Eventually, we should reach a point where we can still ask what a sub-element is without being able to settle on a definite answer. The same process applies to event inquiry in that whatever may have caused an event should also have its own cause, ad infinitum. What does this all mean? Well, it means that the nature or essence of whatever could be perceived must depend on other perceivable things, which should in turn depend on other things, and so on. In other words, all perceived phenomena must be interdependent and related to each other. Therefore, all perceivable things must be transient and without intrinsic essence.

Back to our main question “What is consciousness?” which is twofold: “What is” and “consciousness”. Since we already investigated the first part (except for case 3, which will become relevant later on), let us now consider the second part of our question, which is “consciousness”. If consciousness, whatever it may really be, is considered fundamental as most idealists believe it is, then consciousness per se still cannot be considered ultimate or absolute, since it is posited to have effects (e.g. physical reality) despite it not requiring any cause from an idealistic viewpoint—whereas that which is ultimate cannot be qualified in any way or related to anything. Therefore, consciousness must be fundamental in the strict sense that it is not caused by anything else—even though idealists believe that it must create everything else. That said, let us verify whether the two parts of our question still fit together or not. In fact, as I explained earlier, asking what something is necessarily implies that our subject of inquiry must either be made of sub-elements or components (from a spatial perspective, if it is a physical thing), or must have some cause or effect (from a temporal perspective; if it is an event or a subjective phenomenon). Consequently, since idealists believe that consciousness is not made of or caused by anything but itself, it becomes impossible to know a fortiori the essence or cause of consciousness, and the question “What is consciousness?” becomes invalid in this sense. The same conclusion applies to any other ontological question in which the inquired subject is considered fundamental in its essence, e.g. matter, or God. Indeed, if matter is fundamental, it becomes senseless to ask what matter really is. Likewise, if God is fundamental, it becomes meaningless to ask what God is, unless we are willing to define matter, God or consciousness by providing an accurate description of what might be their respective outcomes or effects—cf. case 3 earlier.

Therefore, a fundamental thing can be defined only by describing its actual and potential effects. It is moreover impossible to know anything about either its essence or its cause. In other words, the essence and cause of a fundamental thing must be unknowable, which leads us to the following question. If something is assumed to be fundamental just in order to explain the essence and cause of everything else, and if it is valid and acceptable in such a case that the essence and cause of that fundamental thing be ultimate and unknowable, then why would it not be as valid and acceptable to consider that the essence and cause of everything else are equally ultimate and unknowable, in other words fundamental and absolute? For instance, why would matter or consciousness be final but not perceptual experience as such? Why should we consider it inconceivable that perceived reality should not necessitate a cause but still consider it conceivable that its presumed cause should not necessitate a cause of its own? If anything must be fundamental, then let it be this immediately perceived reality itself!

Everything is fundamental but knowable only in relation to other things. Everything is therefore final and ultimate in its very essence. This essence however is neither something, nor nothing. The great Indian philosopher Nagarjuna (c. 150 – c. 250 CE) called this essence Sunyata, which is literally the relinquishing of all views regarding the metaphysical nature of phenomenal reality. Sunyata is also the cornerstone of the Middle Way, which rejects both eternalism (i.e. that everything has real essence) and nihilism (i.e. that nothing has real essence). In fact, according to Nagarjuna, both views are the manifestation of the same reality that is essentially empty—in the sense that it lacks inherent essence, as I explained earlier. Indeed, all phenomena are interdependent and transient, if you think about it. Therefore, the ultimate essence and nature of reality become this very intuitive understanding, rather than any specific “stuff”, concept or thing as such. Nothing subsequently should necessitate a more fundamental cause or essence than what it appears to be: Things are just as they are, and all metaphysical questions hence become a manifestation of the same ultimate and immediate reality.

Original article on my website:
https://blog.patrickaoun.com/fundamentalism-in-mainstream-metaphysics/

Related articles I have written can be found on my website, mainly this article:
https://blog.patrickaoun.com/dualism-and-redundancy-in-idealism/

PS. Thank you for taking the time to read this short essay. I would appreciate your feedback and comments. However, I may not be able to respond as quickly and as much as I would want to due to personal and family commitments. However, I will definitely read all comments and messages and I will do my best to reply as soon as I can. Thanks again.

I would also like to thank The Philosophy Forum very much for accepting my membership. It's a great honor.

Patrick Aoun