This month, real materialism, the reason the Brits don’t revolt and thirty-three scattered memories…
Real Materialism
Real materialism holds that everything in the universe is material, including consciousness, which solves the so-called ‘mind-body problem’ in that it makes it absurd to even think of it. Real materialism, however, does not mean that 1) consciousness does not exist, which is, at best, a silly belief, at worst a monstrous one. Nor 2) that matter is unconscious, which is the least likely, most unnatural view of its fundamental nature. Nor 3) that matter can be comprehended by the rational mind, when, as we know for certain, it cannot (outside certain spatio-temporal features of matter, which mind can, very usefully, apprehend). Nor 4) does it imply a mechanistic physics, or a mechanical mind, which, despite the four-hundred year old pedigree of the metaphor of a mechanistic universe (and it is a metaphor, and was knowingly used as a metaphor by its first proponents, Descartes, Newton, Bacon and company), is no longer fit for purpose. Nor 5) is it any different from real idealism, which is to real materialism as waves are to particles.
Those who maintain 1-5 are naive materialists one who takes things literally (no different from a naive idealist, who takes ideas literally).
(From The Apocalypedia)