7 Questions On the Ultimate Nature Of Reality

An open exploration with philosopher James Tartaglia.

Last week we had the pleasure of publishing this article by Dr. James Tartaglia that compares and contrasts the philosophical doctrines of Materialism and Idealism. As it generated a lot of questions for me, I asked if he would be open to answering them publicly which he has kindly done. If you have questions or comments, feel free to chime in below.

1. Both science and philosophy struggle with the origin of consciousness. Even if you take it as a brute fact of existence, doesn’t its origin (whatever it may be) potentially inform how we think about the ultimate nature of reality? 

I think it does, yes. I think that if you think consciousness is the basic stuff of reality, which is the idealist view, then your views about the origins of reality are immediately transformed – because you’re no longer talking about the origin of physical particles and forces, the Big Bang and all that, you’re talking about the origin of consciousness instead. As I see it, the idea that reality started from nothing, and the opposing idea that it’s always been around, are equally nonsensical. The idealist idea that the origin of consciousness is the origin of reality gives you third option: that since we can only make sense of things within consciousness (as your thoughts and feelings are within your consciousness), then it doesn’t make sense to ask about the origin of the universal consciousness, because that’s something which could never be within your consciousness, nor anybody else’s for that matter. The origins of reality provide my main argument for idealism, I set it out in chapter 4 of my book Gods and Titans.

2. What is the difference between something "supernatural" and something "metaphysical?"

These days they’re completely different. The supernatural defies the laws of physics – it’s magic, as that term has been understood since the Middle Ages, so séances, ESP, magic spells all tap into supernatural forces, while gods and spirits are the supernatural beings who wield this kind of power; Zeus throwing his thunderbolts, for example. The supernatural is what the scientists can’t investigate as a matter of principle, then, while metaphysics is just philosophical thought about the ultimate nature of reality, there’s not really much of a connection. You see this from the fact that one metaphysical view, the dominant one among today’s educated elite, is the materialist metaphysics according to which a perfected physical science would tell us everything there is to know about the ultimate nature of reality and hence that the supernatural is just mumbo jumbo. Supernatural and metaphysical have very little in common nowadays, then, but it wasn’t always like that, for in the highly sophisticated Neoplatonist metaphysics of the 3^rd to 6^th centuries, a time when the Roman Empire was in gradual decline but metaphysics was flourishing, the supernatural and metaphysical intermingle in a manner I find quite attractive, so long as it is not taken too literally.

3. Could "supernatural" just be a word we use to describe non-physical aspects of reality that are currently poorly understood? 

That’s not how I’d understand the word, no, I think to be supernatural you need a magical essence which divides you from the natural world, so it couldn’t just be something in the natural world that our science doesn’t understand very well. If ESP is for real, and the scientists can work out how it works, then ESP is natural, not supernatural.  

4. You've said that "materialism is not science." A lot of people would be confused by that as there tends to be an assumption that they fit hand and glove. How do you understand materialism if not as a science?

Materialism is a metaphysical theory that Leucippus thought up in Greece in the 5^th Century BCE; anonymous Indian philosophers came up with the same kind of theory at around the same time. So, materialism is an ancient philosophical theory, while science is that vast body of knowledge we have acquired over the course of history through the empirical study of nature. The connection between the two is that materialism, in its contemporary form at least, holds that everything which exists can be measured and tested using scientific methods, and that the ultimate reality is best described in scientific terms. Rival metaphysical theories like idealism don’t agree about this, of course, but that doesn’t mean they’re somehow less friendly to science – idealists accept everything science tells us about reality, just like materialists, but they reject the materialist philosophical interpretation of what science is telling us. Materialism should not try to claim science as its special ally, although it often does and succeeds. 

5. In what ways (according to Idealism) do physical things like rocks and pebbles exist and in what ways do they not?

They exist in whatever ways you think they exist in both everyday life and science: they look a certain way, feel a certain way, they’ve got a certain mineral composition which I could look into if I was interested, and if scientists tell me that they’re made of fermions and bosons you won’t find me disagreeing, I’m neither inclined nor qualified. The only way in which they don’t exist is in the ultimate, metaphysical sense. In the ultimate, metaphysical sense, the only thing that exists is consciousness, which we negotiate very effectively by thinking of it in terms of things like rocks and pebbles.

6. Does love exist? If so, in the same way as material things or in some other way?

Of course it exists, and certainly not in the way of material things. A material thing is a kind of a theoretical posit which we use to make sense of experience, whereas love is an actual kind of experience, so it belongs to the ultimate nature of reality. Love is not only an experience, of course, it is also behavioural – preparedness to die to save your loved one, for example, or any number of less dramatic behaviours in which people show love for one another, or for animals or even inanimate objects. The behavioural side of love has the same metaphysical status as the rocks and pebbles, but in addition to this love is part of the ultimate reality that is consciousness, because you can definitely feel love: it’s not exactly a high, it’s better than a high. 

7. Does a singular, immaterial, universal consciousness (as is posited in some versions of Idealism) not sound reminiscent of the core belief of classical theology? Could they not be one and the same thing? 

Isn’t the core belief of classical theology that some supreme singular immaterial consciousness, i.e. God, created the universe? If so, then I don’t see much of a connection. You could think that the universal reality of consciousness which we’re part of actually is God, as Spinoza did, but I don’t think were parts of God in any sense. You could take a reverential attitude to the supreme immaterial consciousness that bordered on religiosity without being rationally indefensible, however, I’m definitely into that kind of thing.  

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