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Material vs. Immaterial: the faulty distinction
What we think of substance is unsubstantial. What we think is unsubstantial may be substance.
In other words, the world we think of as real is made of substances. We call it matter. We perceive it through our senses, we run into it every moment of the day, we dream with it, it is we, ourselves, and everything else — well, almost everything else. We consider it substantial precisely because we can experience it through our senses and it gives way to inquiries and measurements.
What is left of what we consider real, if anything, is without substance. Our thoughts, our ideas, our feelings, our mind, our consciousness, ideas, mathematical truth. Because we have great difficulty seeing how the unsubstantial interacts with the substantial, some believe that the unsubstantial doesn’t exist. Consciousness, the mind and our thoughts are only as real as we can measure them from the matter operating in our brains, say the monistic physicalists. We seek then to equate our thoughts, feelings and ideas with the activity of cells, chemicals, electricity, and atoms in our brains. The denial of the existence of anything other than the substantial leads many to reject any idea of spirit, external mind or consciousness, or any transcendent entity.
