Materialism vs Idealism

This is an email I sent to a friend of mine regarding the classic philosophical debate between Idealism and Materialism. Basically, idealism says consciousness came first, and materialism says matter came first. I am an idealist.

Dear G,

You say you are not a materialist but yet you say that your consciousness ends when you die. This is classic materialism. Materialism believes that matter precedes mind and consciousness, that consciousness is a product of the brain. Materialists also believe that all consciousness is limited, individual consciousness, existing inside each being separately. My consciousness is not your consciousness, etc. This is what you believe, I am pretty sure.

Whence then comes natural laws? What causes gravity? Electromagnetism? If you are one who believes in a big bang, what caused that? You see, it's absurd to me to say that insentient matter produced sentience. If there is a force behind matter (causing it to move, say), then that force has to be sentient. I know you disagree with this. But this is the crux of why I am an idealist. All these problems are solved if consciousness came first, if consciousness is projecting this universe and is therfore involved in it. Why? Because you aren't left with the fruitless task of trying to explain the ultimate cause of every phenomenon in terms of yet another phenomenon. For example, if you say that gravity is caused by small particles called "gravitons" (something I believe), you can then ask what caused gravitons. It will go on forever in an infinite regress.

"So what," you might say? You may not be disturbed by an infinite regress. You might agree with Tom Van Flandern that the universe is infinite in time, space and scale, and thus it makes sense that causes will continue to be found forever. "This is just the nature of the physical universe," you might say, "big deal." Well, I happen to agree with Van Flandern, but still the question forces itself upon us; what caused all of this to be happening? You can trace both material and efficient causes back forever, but that only makes the question, "what caused this whole infinite process" all the more important and profound--at least to me.

And the answer we are given by Eastern philosophy is, essentially, idealism. This whole infinite universe is the projection of a single, infinite Consciousness. This Consciousness is both the material and the efficient cause of the universe. (Here is a quick definition of these two types of causes.)

This makes so much sense to me, intuitively and also rationally. The alternative (that insentient matter moves on its own, according to natural laws that, well, just happen to be what they are because... well, because that's what they are, that's all) is absurd to me. It doesn't explain anything.

In the idealist view, Consciousness pervades the universe, and therefore matter is sentient. This does not mean a rock is sentient per se. A rock is a collection of molecules. But what is sentient is the force that keeps the rock together, that binds the atoms, that keeps the electrons circling their protons, etc. (Here is a quick and dirty explanation of sentience according to Eastern philosophy.

That matter moves according to natural laws makes sense in this view, since Consciousness is immanent inside everything, and has Will that can make things move. Natural laws are nothing more than the will of this consciousness.

Idealists also believe that this Universal Consciousness, after becoming involved in the universe, then evolves back to Itself through a process of ever-increasing wholes. Hegel was only one of many idealists who attempted to describe this. Alfred North Whitehead is another. So are Sri Aurobindo, Ken Wilber, etc. The list is endless, and it all goes back to the Upanishads.

"What is it, knowing which, all else becomes known?" - This is a quote from the Upanishads. It speaks directly to this issue. Of course Brahman (the One Universal Consciousness) is the answer, and a person can come to "know" Brahman via spiritual practice (which really means becoming Brahman, since Brahman cannot be known as an object, since it is the eternal subject). But when one achieves Self-realization and "all else becomes known," this does not mean that all the particular causes of all the physical phenomenon of the universe become known. One does not become an expert in every field of study, in other words. What it means is that the cause of the universe as a whole becomes known, which relieves one of the inquiry so many people have as they keep searching for more and more material and efficient causes within matter, hoping to get a final explanation (an infinite regress).

Again, you might not care that science will never come to explain everything--the grand unified field theory or whatever they call it. This may not bother you. You may acknowledge that material and efficient causes of phenomena are infinite. But this certainly bothers a lot of other materialists. (Ok you are not a materialist.) They keep searching and believing they are getting closer and closer to explaining everything in the universe. The more deluded among them even posit a big bang and then just ignore the obvious question of what caused it? What I am saying is simply that the ultimate question cannot be ignored. Or at least I cannot ignore it.

Why is all this happening? Or similarly... Why is something happening rather than nothing? Materialism cannot answer this.

Emanuel