Aug 25, 2026 04:25 PM
https://iai.tv/articles/the-myth-of-dead..._auid=2020
INTRO: Matter, physical stuff, in contemporary intellectual circles, gets a bad rap. Matter is often described as “mere matter” or as “dead material”. However, philosopher James Croft argues this is deeply mistaken. Matter is not mere or dead. It is self-organizing, able to produce life, and makes up the wonders of the world around you. This new picture of matter, Croft argues, has profound consequences for our feelings of disenchantment in the modern world and for the so-called hard problem of consciousness.
EXCERPTS: The “deadness” of matter is not a discovery, but a strategy: for hundreds of years this flattened picture has been employed as an apologetic tool against atheist worldviews. If matter is dead, and we are alive, we cannot possibly be made only of matter—that is the claim. But matter resists its misdescription.
[...] The misenchantment of matter is thus unmasked: it is based on misdescription. The terms used to describe matter by its detractors are either literally false or metaphorically misleading. Matter is not “concatenated” but stunningly self-organizing. Most matter has never been alive, but it is not metaphorically “dead”—it is strikingly “lively.” It does not exist in “random lumps,” but in profound relational networks exhibiting extraordinary connectivity. The misdescription is a rhetorical trick, a strawman to burden materialists with, smuggling in the desired metaphysical outcome.
Now we can expect an objection: “Wait a minute!” the misenchanters will say, “It is not we who believe that matter is dead—it is the materialists! They gave us this picture of matter, and we are just making them own it!”
There’s not nothing to this response: some materialists genuinely do offer deflationary accounts of matter, and they are wrong to do so. But it is simply false that most materialists do so, let alone all.
[...] Today, the holdout problem giving hope to those who wish to avoid a materialistic picture of reality is the development of mind. Instead of incredulously asking how “brute matter” can give rise to gravity, matter-skeptics now ask how it can give rise to consciousness.
We do not yet know—the “hard problem” is genuinely hard, and I do not claim we’ve solved it. Instead, I seek to trouble the assumption behind the problem: that matter is “brute” at all. We’ve seen that matter is fecund, generative, self-organizing, motive. So, let’s pose the question anew:
“How can fecund, generative, self-organizing, motive material create minds?”
That, it seems to me, is not an obviously absurd question. Perhaps the fact that a pipe can “open our mind up” is not a “paradox” at all—perhaps it reveals the deep connection between the two... (MORE - details)
INTRO: Matter, physical stuff, in contemporary intellectual circles, gets a bad rap. Matter is often described as “mere matter” or as “dead material”. However, philosopher James Croft argues this is deeply mistaken. Matter is not mere or dead. It is self-organizing, able to produce life, and makes up the wonders of the world around you. This new picture of matter, Croft argues, has profound consequences for our feelings of disenchantment in the modern world and for the so-called hard problem of consciousness.
EXCERPTS: The “deadness” of matter is not a discovery, but a strategy: for hundreds of years this flattened picture has been employed as an apologetic tool against atheist worldviews. If matter is dead, and we are alive, we cannot possibly be made only of matter—that is the claim. But matter resists its misdescription.
[...] The misenchantment of matter is thus unmasked: it is based on misdescription. The terms used to describe matter by its detractors are either literally false or metaphorically misleading. Matter is not “concatenated” but stunningly self-organizing. Most matter has never been alive, but it is not metaphorically “dead”—it is strikingly “lively.” It does not exist in “random lumps,” but in profound relational networks exhibiting extraordinary connectivity. The misdescription is a rhetorical trick, a strawman to burden materialists with, smuggling in the desired metaphysical outcome.
Now we can expect an objection: “Wait a minute!” the misenchanters will say, “It is not we who believe that matter is dead—it is the materialists! They gave us this picture of matter, and we are just making them own it!”
There’s not nothing to this response: some materialists genuinely do offer deflationary accounts of matter, and they are wrong to do so. But it is simply false that most materialists do so, let alone all.
[...] Today, the holdout problem giving hope to those who wish to avoid a materialistic picture of reality is the development of mind. Instead of incredulously asking how “brute matter” can give rise to gravity, matter-skeptics now ask how it can give rise to consciousness.
We do not yet know—the “hard problem” is genuinely hard, and I do not claim we’ve solved it. Instead, I seek to trouble the assumption behind the problem: that matter is “brute” at all. We’ve seen that matter is fecund, generative, self-organizing, motive. So, let’s pose the question anew:
“How can fecund, generative, self-organizing, motive material create minds?”
That, it seems to me, is not an obviously absurd question. Perhaps the fact that a pipe can “open our mind up” is not a “paradox” at all—perhaps it reveals the deep connection between the two... (MORE - details)
