Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Materialism is Self-Refuting


It occurs to me that materialism is self-refuting.

By "materialism" I mean the concept that everything that exists is made up just of matter and energy, or matter-energy if you prefer.

Materialism does not seem to be logically possible.

Why?

Because the very concept of materialism is non-material. You can touch material but you cannot touch materialism. You cannot measure the pressure of materialism against a gauge.

And it does not help one little bit to say that materialism is simply "a description of what is," because "a description of what is" is also a non-material concept.

Some may argue that you cannot have ideas without matter and energy.

Perhaps, but that answer concedes that materialism is false, because whether non-material ideas can exist without material is not the question. I cannot exist without air, but my need for air does not prove that I am air or that I do not exist.