Suppose There Is No Borderzone

Suppose that reality consisted entirely of what we see and that which we can measure by our scientific instruments. Those who live in a reality defined like that have to see people like me as stubbornly clinging to a vast illusion. Turn-around is fair play. I view people who think like that as hopelessly benighted. Not that there is any virtue or vice attached to either view. Both are natural. The difference lies in some kind of openness to the hidden reality—a capacity to perceive it. I can no more help reaching my conclusions than the materialist his. Turning such things into moral categories is a mistake.

What piques my interest is that people can live side by side with contradictory views of reality. I was reminded of this this morning while reading an article in the New York Times’ Science Section concerning life on other planets, an interview with Alan Boss, a gent on the forefront of the hunt for earth-like so-called “extra-solar” planets. So far as I know, there may or may not be life on other planets; but the categorical assumption in this article is that if the right conditions prevail, there will be life—because life is considered to arise spontaneously from matter. The certainty is on the same level as that concerning gravity: where there is mass, there will be gravity. When it comes to gravity, I agree. When it comes to life, I don’t.

Wherein lies the difference? In the materialist conception, there is no such thing as an agency independent of matter. One need but trace that way of thought to discover that concepts such as selves, souls, or minds are all derived. They are derived from matter. Put another way, if you destroy the material substrate associated with the manifestations of selves, selves vanish. Those who haven’t delved deeply enough into the technical literature of modern science are unaware of the fact that this is orthodox thought today. In the traditionalist thought, agency exists separately from material manifestations. Traditionalist modes of thought diverge in all sorts of directions, to be sure, but they agree that humans are agents. They do not grant the same status to other living phenomena. I do. I think that the logic of the situation drives you there. Therefore I see agency behind every form of life. And if I see agency, I conclude that it is something permanent rather than subject to destruction.

When you think the way I do, it becomes obvious why I take an interest in all kinds of cosmologies and myths. The study of matter is interesting, but for me not exhaustive of all things real.