Post-Materialist Metaphysics, Causality and God | Jean-Philippe Marceau (#53)

Jean-Philippe is a writer and philosopher helping to resolve the "Meaning Crisis".

Modern science increasingly suggests that materialism may not fully explain reality, yet it remains deeply entrenched in our culture. What's wrong with materialism and what can replace it?

We discuss the issues with materialism, the opposite of materialism (idealism), ancient metaphysical views of reality, the nature of God, miracles, and more...

00:00 - Problems of Materialism
12:00 - Why We're Materialists
16:50 - How to Think Non-Materialistically
25:08 - Form vs Potential & Christian Metaphysics
35:35 - God
39:50 - Miracles and Causality
46:00 - Could Adam and Eve Have Not Sinned? Determinism and Agency
50:50 - The Incarnation and Making Sense of Reality

JEAN-PHILIPPE MARCEAU

[Dragonface]

I am sympathetic to certain critiques of materialism myself, but I must say: this isn't exactly the most compelling one I've ever heard. The connection between "materialism" as a metaphysical/philosophical position and "materialism" as a cultural attitude is tenuous at best, and the speaker undermines his own arguments by conflating the two in my opinion.

[lucacuradossi]

It's depressing if you used to believe that you are the center of the universe (most religion world views). Materialism is true, we are made of matter, values and emotions are our perspectives. Acknowledging the true nature of the world dosen't have to be depressing

[kayvee]

I agree that metaphysical materialism is an insufficient worldview to describe reality as we observe it. That said, something I don't like about criticism of materialism - and it's present here - is this monocle-and-top-hat attitude of "oh, those poor silly materialists that think they're so smart, they're actually so very silly and bad and imorral and depressed, not at all like us, the _wise ones_ who know materialism is all of those things" and such.

Materialism does have the advantage of referring to physical stuff you can touch, which does exist, and gives you a very straightforward reason to dismiss the metaphysical claims of the people who say we should stone gay people to death because an invisible bully in the sky will burn us forever in the afterlife if we fail to stone them to death. It's insufficient, yes, but it does have its strengths and there's good reasons why people do tend to adopt it that aren't just a matter of being greedy resource hogs who hate meaning and spirituality.

[markwrede]

Projecting assumed beings could only be infantile and wrong.

[kevconn]

Comparing cultural and scientific materialism is comparing apples and oranges.
I think you are hugely exaggerating the demise of materialism in the sciences. Even your discussion of emergence glosses over the idea that emergent properties "emerge" from a lower, material, level.
I agree that the hard problem of consciousness is still a puzzle, but less than 10 years before the Wright brothers, top scientists thought flying machines were impossible.