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Materialists claim that all things have physical properties, thus depending on the laws of physics. However, consciousness and other mental phenomena have been the focus of most challenges of materialism (Jaworski 1). Most materialists are unable to provide an acceptable explanation of the mind. According to Thomas Nagel, adequate descriptions confirm that a phenomenon is an expected outcome (Jaworski 2). For instance, an adequate expounding about consciousness should clarify how it is not just a mere chance happening. Since most materialists cannot spell this out, their views are inadequate when describing life. Nagel’s views against materialism have received support and criticism in equal measure.
Nagel identified materialists’ theories that are likely to be true. Emergentism, reductionism, and panprotopsychism are the ones he based his arguments on (Jaworski 3). Emergentism asserts mental properties emerge from physical attributes, while reductionism claims physics can describe everything. Panprotopsychism insists that nature is responsible for simpler versions of mental properties whose combination results in full-blown intellectual qualities. Nagel encountered challenges hindering these theories from providing adequate explanations about consciousness and other mental phenomena.
The problems that materialists encounter differ from one theory to another. According to Jaworski (3), emergentism fails to provide the understanding most researchers seek due to the inability to explain most laws of emergence. On the other hand, reductionist views leave out appearances that rely on personal feelings and opinions. Finally, panprotopsychism experiences challenge understanding how simple mental properties form fully developed intellectual states. In addition to these specific challenges, most materialists’ views rely on assumptions, thus failing to describe how consciousness is not a mere chance occurrence. Many individuals have developed alternative arguments to avoid stumbling blocks derailing their efforts to understand the appearance of life.
Nagel came up with his arguments after studying the purposes that phenomena serve. He chose not to pay too much attention to how things arise. Nagel believes applying teleological concepts to living organisms is unclear (Jaworski 5). Therefore, he came up with his proposal about our origin. He said that the fabric of the universe makes us susceptible to producing life, consciousness, and reason. Such proneness provides more concepts and resources, thus allowing people to understand life and mind. In that case, Nagel’s arguments yield better and more informative descriptions about the emergence of life than materialism.
The people who object to Nagel’s arguments claim that the theorist makes a lot of assumptions. They have scrutinized how Nagel uses existing theories in the literature because people interpret information differently. For instance, Nagel agrees with those who argue that there is an incompatibility between moral truths and natural selection (Jaworski 5). His susceptibility theory does not insist on the presence of environmental threats or moral realism for reproduction and natural selection to take place. In many cases, the living develops reproductive fitness by acting as if environmental factors require their adaptability. Failure to adapt to changes in the environment may result in their extinction. Nagel should have observed that moral truths and natural selection are compatible because the fear of surrounding factors like pain contributes to survival.
Second, Nagel’s suggestion that one can successfully explain the emergence of life if one can describe consciousness does not have concrete evidence supporting it. For instance, he said that simple versions of mental properties and proto-behavioral qualities interconnect at the microscopic level of a macroscopic organism (Jaworski 7). The proto-mental properties influence behavior at the tiniest level the way full-blown intellectual characteristics do at the observable stage. If an interconnection between mental and behavioral properties exists, then physical characteristics should be sufficient to explain life’s unfolding. They can provide reliable information about the level of consciousness and emergence of various biological processes. Since Nagel did not address these views, his suggestion that materialists need to explain consciousness before exhaustively describing life lacks authenticity.
Nagel proposes that a conceptual gap separating mental and physical characteristics is essential when describing consciousness. Understanding how living organisms bridge the gap to remain conscious makes the theorist’s assumption that the world is teleological irrelevant. In such a universe, teleological laws may dictate the emergence of consciousness and other mental phenomena (Jaworski 9). The presence of these rules means Nagel’s arguments are similar to those of materialists. One of the objectives of his theory was to eliminate unexplainable principles associated with emergentism. Nagel’s insistence on the universe being teleological means that those who adopt his arguments should understand the laws of nature. Therefore, it is hard to determine whether the alternative he suggests upgrades materialists’ views or not.
Materialists and opponents of materialism should not embrace Nagel’s arguments because they rely on contentious assumptions. However, I concur that materialism does not accommodate mental and biological phenomena. An excellent theory of consciousness should not rely on assumptions about intellectual and physical properties. It should consider biologists’ descriptions of how a collection of various structures become a living organism. Contrary to materialists’ claims that physics can exhaustively explain everything, other scientific laws are essential in describing the tiniest components of animate objects. Therefore, materialism is not the correct theory of explaining consciousness.
Work Cited
Jaworski, William. “Why Materialism Is False, and Why It Has Nothing to Do With the Mind.” Philosophy, vol. 91, no. 2, 2016, pp. 1–31. Crossref, DOI: 10.1017/s0031819116000036.
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