Reflections

If materialism is defined as the theory that all that really exists is matter, then how does the materialist explain how matter thinks and feels; categorizes and explains; questions and asserts; imagines and hopes; and believes and doubts? Is it not paradoxical that matter should be able to wonder about itself, define itself, describe itself, and objectify itself?

Or has the materialist got things the wrong way around, by abstracting the concept of ‘matter’ from the objects of experience, and then reifying it into some stuff that is supposed to explain that very experience? Doesn’t the materialist presuppose the very thing that needs to be explained? Why doesn’t the materialist take ‘awareness’ to be the fundamental given? Can there even be ‘matter’ without awareness?