More than Matter?: What Humans Really Are

by Keith Ward

'The question of what it is to be a human person is the biggest intellectual question of our day.' Keith Ward has taught philosophy and theology in British universities for the past 40 years, and he is now weighing in on a major intellectual whether human persons are purely materialistic - nothing but matter - or whether there is another, deeply valuable part of us, which transcends our bodies in nature and moral the soul. For centuries philosophers have debated the question, but the battle has taken the limelight through the works of the New Atheists. In this book Professor Ward guides the reader through a panoply of thinkers and traditions, arguing that there is more to humanity than bodies. In fact, he argues, there is more to the entire universe than the naked eye perceives. (And contrary to the New Atheist assertions, there are good philosophical arguments to back this up!)

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, Theology

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2010

About the author

Keith Ward was formerly the Regius Professor of Divinity and Head of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford. A priest of the Church of England and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, he holds Doctor of Divinity degrees from Cambridge and Oxford Universities. He has lectured at the universities of Glasgow, St. Andrew's and Cambridge.

Reviews

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of the best books I ever read, and I read it three times. Every time I read it I understood it better. For me anyway, this is the best book, the best take, on what reality really is, when you see it in a way that most of our experience (and what else do we have?) makes sense. It's the case for philosophical idealism. The view that ultimate reality is mind-like, and what we call matter, or empirical or physical reality, are appearances of this reality in our own consciousness. What ultimate reality is really like we cannot find out by perception, because we can never step out of our own mind to see what is really going on. To see what reality is really like when it is not perceived. The only way to get any intimations about it is via our own consciousness, since this must be more fundamental than the physical reality it creates. Consciousness itself is nowhere to be found in physical reality because it's the other way round: everything is in consciousness.

This view is the mainstream of thousands of years of philosophy and spiritual traditions through the ages all over the world. It's also completely compatible with modern science, which, at least for me, is very important, as science gives us our best shot at reality as we experience it, and if some philosophy is in contradiction with science I don't believe it can be true. Idealism isn't something you can prove, and neither is materialism. Both are assumptions, but idealism can cover a much larger part of all the data about the total human experience than materialism, which rather has to deny most of it, including even our own consciousness.

So consciousness, instead of being a mysterious, bizarre and inexplicable by-product of certain complex physical processes, is in idealism seen as fundamental, as the ground of reality, giving a direction to the universe, towards more organized complexity and conscious experience of intelligent beings such as humans. This is in line with many of the eastern, and western, mystical traditions. It's also supported by quantum physics.

After all, we are not sitting in our heads like a tiny person, looking through the windows of our eyes at the world outside as it really is, even when noone is looking at it. This is an illusion. Physical reality is pure perception. Everything we experience, everything we see, hear, feel, smell and taste is a kind of virtual reality generated in our consciousness from information processing, algorithms (it could be 1's and 0's), in what we perceive as our brains and body.

Keith Ward's books deserve to be best sellers. They're very well written, with a fine sense of humour and old fashioned decency, far away from the harsh clashes of the ideological fundamentalists of our times. That instead the bookshops are stacked with Dawkins' and Dennett's books is part of a cultural trend, or modern belief system, which seems very powerful but is really transient I think. More and more books are being published that question the materialist dogma. I very much recommend this one.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the more hotly discussed issues in the academic world today is the question of whether the mind exists as anything more than an epiphenomenon of the synaptic impulses in our brains. Clearly there is a very close connection. Related to this is the question of whether mental activity is causal in any real sense of physical activity.

Ward argues for a form of dual aspect idealism that while arguing for the close connection of mind and body in human beings argues that Mind or Consciousness is properly basic and causal to the cosmos and that human minds reflect this relationship to the physical world. Along the way, he discusses the reality of our inner, lived experiences, the question of the soul and much more.

This is a philosophical argument for that is pitched for both philosophers and educated laypersons. It is understandable but not easy reason that lays out the different positions taken on these questions and Ward's own argument for his particular form of Idealism.

(I will add my apologies as a non-philosopher if I have mis-understood this discussion or Ward's position in any way!)

[Zach Waldis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ward writes clearly and without the typical philosophical jargon here. I am not as convinced as he is that the basic stuff of the universe (multiverse?) is mind, but he does make a strong case for the importance of the mind, our inner life and experience, and morality and purpose in a rational universe, all of which I'm all for. The touches of humor are also appreciated.

[Gary Woolley · Rating 4 out of 5]

See
https://meaning2mean.blogspot.com/201...

[Sam Eccleston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ward is a peculiar writer. He is witty and entertaining, and all his arguments are developed in an even handed way which avoids insistence at every turn. This makes him an enjoyable author to read, but sometimes it makes his conclusions land somewhat too lightly for their full import to be properly absorbed. His lightness of touch extends even to the logic of his arguments, which are often not spelled out in particularly great detail, leaving the reader to fill in some of the gaps themselves. This isn't a problem if you have seen similar arguments outlined at greater length elsewhere, but could be tricky for the philosophically uninitiated.

The book also has a curious, rambling feel to it; it seems as if it could have been a much more powerful tract had it simply been organised differently. It is worth reading, but it would probably be good to pair it with Ray Tallis' 'Aping Mankind' which plugs many of the discursive holes quite nicely.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

While it makes some good points (for example, about the primacy of experience and how while we can be sure we are having experiences, we cannot know whether the content of those experiences corresponds to anything actual.), I wasn't convinced by his arguments. I personally believe that matter can't explain consciousness but I felt the arguments in this book were short on either empirical or rational support. I also felt that the author seemed to support alternative but mutually exclusive viewpoints. On the one hand, he claimed that mind was the inwardness of matter (ALL matter). Conversely, he claims that matter is dependant on mind. If the former viewpoint were correct then it would preclude anything surviving death since consciousness would be a temporary coalescence of simpler consciousnesses which would dissove when the matter of which the mind was 'inward' went its separate ways at death. And yet at various points he supports a view that consciousness could survive in other bodies/types of bodies which seems to undermine the idea of mind as the inward aspect of matter, since presumably the mind associated with any given piece of matter cannot be diassociated from it. One positive in the book is that it affirms values and human concerns whereas pure materialism has no rational basis for doing so. Keith Ward is an entertaining writer who makes a lot of amusing asides about various philosophers. However I think that there are stronger arguments that could be made in favour of idealism.

[Roger Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keith Ward's books are rarely a casual read, and this was no exception. But it is well worth sticky with this densely packed book and pushing on to completion. I particularly liked Ward's treatment of biblical concepts of the soul and how he was careful to distinguish the Christian doctrine of bodily resurrection from the disembodied soul after death characteristic of Plato and Aristotle.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not only a great discussion about philosophy of mind, Ward will also make you chuckle throughout the book.