Materialism
What is it and does it make sense? It is a reductionistic or atomistic account of existence, and, no, it doesn't make sense.
At the most basic, logical level there is the problem of modality. Consider the property of mass. Mass is resistance to force. Mass is not strictly a fact. It is a counterfactual concept. It makes sense only in the hypothetical, ideal context of theoretical physics. It is not something superficially given. It is not an atomic fact. It is a highly interpreted conceptual handle.
Am I saying that mass is not material? Is it not physical? No, it is not physical because it is *P*hysical. It is not a sui generis thing. It is a theoretical construct taken out of the discipline of Physics that has only very indirect observational effects. And so is everything else that we can refer to scientifically. This is simply the problem of holism. A scientific theory does not depend on or refer to any individual facts. It is an interpretation of a very ill-defined collection of facts.
Could we not resort then to a plain language sort of materialism or naturalism? Well, sorry, but a language has only that much more theoretical and historical baggage. This baggage cannot get us any closer to the noumenal reality that is supposed to be the 'raw' or 'naked' material world.
Why do we even bother to suppose that such a world exists, when it has no support from science or from common sense? My answer is a question. Have you ever known anyone to espouse materialism for other than ulterior motives? This is not to say that metaphysics isn't always so burdened. It is simply to point out that materialism is about as far as anyone can get from being an exception to that rule. The fact that any materialist has ever pretended otherwise is perhaps the biggest strike against them.
So do we just throw metaphysics into the dustbin of history? Don't get me started, but that is a whole other piece of the intellectual blood sport that frolics under the innocuous label of (anti-) 'metaphysics', and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
There is only one alternative to all the blood-letting, figurative and otherwise, and that is coherence. When was the last time anyone checked to see if the world could possibly be coherent? Was it less than a century ago? Not to my knowledge. What's the matter? Not enough blood, yet, sacrificed to the gods of incoherence? Any time now, boys and girls.
9/7/02