Platonism and Enchantment
Part 3, Antimaterialism
Perhaps the biggest force driving disenchantment in our time and place is the rise of materialism, the metaphysical assumption that only physical matter/energy exists. Materialism rules out any supernatural, non-material reality.
Science, of course, is the reason for this. Due to the amazing successes of science, a habit of mind is formed where truth is reduced to facts. Reality is reduced to the empirical.
It is helpful here to make a contrast between methodological materialism versus ontological materialism. Science is methodological materialism. That is, as an epistemological procedure of investigation science restricts its hypotheses and methods to the empirical. For example, if you take your car to a mechanic the mechanic will approach the issues as a methodological materialist. The mechanic will assume a material cause and will investigate the situation with empirical tests. The mechanic, as a method, restricts himself to an empirical framework.
A stronger and different claim is ontological materialism. Ontological materialism, sometimes called scientism, is the claim that material reality is the only reality that exists. In this view, science can and could exhaust the whole of reality. Stated negatively, if science can't observe or discover it, it doesn't exist.
Simply stated, science is an epistemology, a way of knowing. Scientism, by contrast, is an ontology, a claim about the nature of reality.
The point to be observed here is that we can embrace science while rejecting scientism. As an investigative strategy to explore the natural world, science is the best tool we have to discover the material, empirical facts about the universe. And yet, the scientific method doesn't imply that material facts exhaust reality.
As noted in the last post, Lloyd Gerson describes Platonism as "antimaterialist." I like this term because I don't know a great alternative label for the opposite of "materialism." People have used words like "idealism," "spiritualism," or "supernaturalism." But I don't really like those terms, and they have some connotations that can lead to confusion. So, given that void, I think the simplest way to describe a rejection of materialism and scientism is simply to say you're an "antimaterialist," that you believe reality is more than what science can investigate or reveal. An antimaterialist believes that truth is greater than facts, that reality includes more than the empirical.
In Hunting Magic Eels, as well as in my upcoming book The Shape of Joy, I try a variety of things to push against materialism and to promote antimaterialism. At the very least I try to get a throughly disenchanted reader to become haunted by antimaterialism, to create some niggling doubts about materialism. And if I can't get agreement at least I can evoke a longing for something more than materialism. I think materialism struggles to understand the nature of God. I think materialism struggles to give an account of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. I think materialism creates an existential vacuum that can become implicated in mental health issues. I think materialism cannot give an account of moral obligations or duties. I don't think materialism can give an account of the value that grounds human dignity and worth. And finally, I don't think materialism can give an account of mind and consciousness.
(And while it's hard for me to adjudicate the arguments, a lot of mathematicians and philosophers don't think materialism can give an account of mathematics. For example, Kurt Gödel, as a mathematical Platonist, felt that his famous Incompleteness Theorem proved antimaterialism in arguing that materialism cannot account for mathematics, reason, and mind.)
These, then, are just a few of the reasons why I'm an antimaterialist.
I look forward to reading The Shape of Joy.
The link to the Aeon article on Godel's letters to his mother in which he expressed hope for an afterlife consistent with the Apostle Paul's description in I Cor. 15 also has consonance with C. S. Peirce's thoughts on God, which your position, hinted at, and The Shape of Joy will almost mirror in its basic approach, if I understand correctly. Here is a quote from The Philosophy of Peirce, 377-8 [CP 6.494-6, 392-3]:
"Where would such an idea, say as that of God, come from, if not from...experience? Would you make it a result of some kind of reasoning, good or bad? Why, reasoning can supply the mind with nothing in the world except an estimate of the value of a statistical ratio... And skepticism, in the sense of doubt about the validity of elementary ideas--which is really a proposal to turn an idea out of court and permit no inquiry into its applicability--is doubly condemned by the fundamental principle of scientific inquiry...first, as obstructing inquiry, and...second because it is treating some[thing] other than a statistical ratio [as something] to be argued about. No: as to God, open your eyes--and your heart, which is also a perceptive organ--and you see him.
But you may ask, Don't you admit there are delusions? Yes: I may think a thing is black, and on close examination it may turn out to be bottle-green. But I cannot think a thing is black if there is no such thing..."
My problem with our overreliance Platonic thought is twofold.
First, it has tended to produce religion confined to the top three inches of our bodies.
Second (and most importantly) it has relegated the narrative story of Israel to the status of "that's nice" and encouraged supercessionalism and fueled Antisemitism.
As with most things, a "both and..." approach is best.