Suggestions for Further Study No. 1

Readers who wish to build on this foundation might be interested in Does It Matter? — The Unsustainable World of the Materialists by Graham Dunstan Martin, published in 2005 by Floris Books, Edinburgh, at £20.00.

The first three paragraphs of the final chapter read:

"In this book I have inquired into the present state of scientific knowledge, and (despite the materialist preferences of most scientists) I have concluded that the weight of probability favours the reality of the soul and the presence of conscious intelligence in the Universe.

"First, what is our likely candidate for the soul? It is consciousness, which is the root and foundation for all experience and knowledge, and without which life would be but darkness. I have asked whether consciousness might be the product of unconscious matter. Reductionists contend that one day it might be simulated by computers. In part these claims depend on a number of verbal confusions about the meanings of the words 'simulate', 'represent', and 'information'. More profoundly still, they depend on a failure to understand the nature of conscious experience. For there are two kinds of knowing, tacit and explicit, and by the very nature of their functioning, computers are incapable even of simulating the more fundamental of the two. We may dispose therefore of the claims, famed both in science fiction and in universities, for artificial consciousness.

"What 'is' this matter of which materialists tell us mind is made? The man-in-the-street usually claims to 'know by experience what matter is'. On investigation, however, we find that this 'knowledge' is no more than how his senses present the outside world to him, namely as hard/soft, resistant, coloured, cold/hot, etc. Thus matter is merely the way the mind prceives its surroundings, that is, matter is appearance. This is exactly how Indian philosophy has always seen it. The physicist on the other hand does not claim to 'know what matter is'. Whatever it is, however, it provides calculations and pointer readings, that is, it is that aspect of appearance which can be quantified, reduced to measurements, and thereby manipulated. The 'true nature' of matter is absent from both these views, nor is it possible to ascertain what that 'true nature' might be. Berkeley's view of matter chimes with this. For him, there are only two elements in nature: percipere (what perceives and cannot by its nature be perceived) and percipi (what is perceived and cannot by its nature perceive). Materialists deny the former, and believe that the latter is all there is: yet they seek to derive the former from the latter."

For making the better acquaintance of Bishop Berkeley, the reader is referred to Three Dialogues.