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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Reason, Physicalism, and Islam MATERIALIST PHYSICALISM The success of secular Western culture and worldview over the revealed or faith-based worldview was facilitated by the emphasis on individuality, personality, and the power of the self.

The conventional wisdom still prevails that: “It is the moment of secularity , freedom from religious/ecclesiastical tutelage, that separates the Modern Period, especially its science and philosophy, from the Middle Ages.”[^8] The preponderant sway of empirical science over modern thought results in neurobiology and psychophysiology studying intelligence at the level of neural chemistry, where mental and behavioral phenomena are understood merely as manifestations of physical processes.

Contemporary discussions on consciousness and the philosophy of mind also reflect this conceptual drift toward a (monist) brain conception, where ‘mind’ substitutes for the ‘soul’ concept of the past.

‘Mind’ is frequently allied with brain functions and given a physical locus, or alternatively it is denied any spatial locale and simply reduced to “ mental events ”.[^9] However, this dominant biological-materialist or physicalistic paradigm is now increasingly being perceived as conceptually inadequate, with rational empirical methods proving to be unreliable and insufficient in providing a theoretically adequate conception of mind or intelligence.

In reviewing the pitfalls of current thinking on the ‘mind-body problem’, Colin McGinn concludes: “But we have not explained how a physical organ of the body, namely the brain, could be the basis of consciousness—how a physical object can come to have an inner aspect.”[^10] Sergio Moravia observes, “They have spoken of ‘mind’ and ‘mental’—and the unsettling, real question was whether one may admit a human dimension which is autonomous and irreducible in relation to the bodily.” And he goes on to ask: “Can one posit something which exists, and yet at the same time is non-physical ?

… Do the rejection of the ‘soul’ and the achievements attained by the bio- and neurosciences oblige us to hold that man is nothing but body ?”[11] Thinkers are thus being forced into the fields of epistemology, ontology and psychoanthropology in search of answers to such questions.