Materialism, Freedom & Ethics

Philip Badger constructs a materialist ethical theory, with the help of John Rawls.

- Philip Badger

I want to begin this article with the assumption that reality consists entirely of physical things and the forces which bind them. That is to say, I will assume the truth of materialism: the idea that the only things that ultimately exist are matter, energy, and physical forces. I will argue that this is consistent with a ‘materialistic compatibilism’ which preserves some sense of freedom and responsibility, and that this implies a positive conception of political and social liberty.

You might wonder what on earth might possess me to want to start with something like that, but as I unpack it, I hope you’ll see that it makes sense.

Reality Consists of Physical Things

A materialist view of the world might strike you as characteristically modern and Western. In fact, it isn’t quite so modern, as Democritus was talking about reality consisting of ‘atoms and the void’ 2,500 years ago. You might be itching to tell me that the idea is not originally a Western one, either. Nevertheless, let’s acknowledge that, for most of history, most people have lived with an explicitly dualist understanding of reality: they’ve thought that the world consists of what we might call ‘lumps of stuff’ on the one hand, and minds, spirits, or souls on the other. Yet what a great number of us think these days is that consciousness is not some non-physical thing, but something physical which emerges from the processes of the brain.