Fault-Lines of the Old Paradigms: 3 Materialism’s Missing Matter: How Physicalism Depends on What It Cannot Theorise

Materialism (in its contemporary physicalist form) promises the opposite of idealism:

no minds without matter, no experience without neurons, no properties without particles.

The physical is supposed to be the fundamental, the objective, the ground.

But the moment physicalism tries to define what “physical” is,

the floor drops out.

It turns out that “matter” cannot be specified

without already invoking meaning, measurement, constraint, modelling practices, and relational organisation.

Physicalism depends on what it cannot theorise.

Let’s cut into the fault-lines.

---

1. “The Physical” Has No Coherent Definition

Ask a physicalist to define “physical,” and you get one of three answers—

all of them self-defeating:

1. The physical is whatever physics studies.
   But physics is a practice, embedded in conceptual frameworks, models, instruments, conventions of measurement, and interpretive constraints. None of these are themselves physical.

2. The physical is whatever has physical properties.
   Circular. It explains nothing.

3. The physical is whatever exists independently of interpretation.
   But “independence of interpretation” is itself an interpretive stance, not a property.

The concept of the physical cannot stand on its own legs.

It needs relational scaffolding to have any meaning at all.

---

2. Measurement Is Not Physical

Physicalism claims everything is physical.

But measurement—its primary mode of access to the physical—is not.

Measurement requires:

• conventions

• linguistic categories

• systems of differentiation

• shared practices

• instrument design

• interpretive modelling

• meaning systems to coordinate results

None of these are reducible to matter.

They are semiotic and relational through and through.

You cannot define the physical in terms of measurement

when measurement is not physical.

---

3. Observation Is Relational, Not Material

Physicalism assumes that “observation” can be insulated from experience and meaning.

But observation is a perspectival construal—

a relational actualisation of meaning potential.

Even the simplest physical measurement depends on:

• how a phenomenon is construed

• what counts as data

• what the instruments are designed to distinguish

• interpretive choices that determine relevance, scale, scope

There is no uninterpreted observation.

Physicalism cannot cash the cheque it writes.

---

4. Matter Needs Meaning to Be Matter

There is no such thing as “matter” without:

• delimitation

• classification

• system-level differentiation

• constraints that define what counts as an entity

• relational coherence that makes the world legible

If you subtract all meaning and relational organisation,

you do not get a “pure physical world.”

You get nothing at all—not even the concept of nothing.

Matter becomes meaningful only through relational frameworks.

Physicalism quietly relies on them at every step.

---

5. Physical Causation Presupposes Relational Organisation

To say “A causes B” presupposes:

• a system in which A and B are identifiable

• a structure of constraints that defines their possible interactions

• an interpretive stance that distinguishes cause from background conditions

• a temporal horizon that gives the relation intelligibility

Causation cannot be metaphysically physical

if its very intelligibility depends on relational articulation.

Without relational organisation, there is no causation—

only unpatterned flux, which physicalism denies.

---

6. The Closure Move Fails

Physicalism claims that all phenomena must “close” under the physical domain.

But no domain can close itself:

• A domain requires a system.

• A system requires distinctions.

• Distinctions require relational cuts.

• Relational cuts are not physical—they are semiotic/meaning-laden.

A metaphysical closure that denies relation

cannot account for its own boundary.

Physicalism depends on relational constraints to define what counts as “physical”

and then tries to erase those constraints to maintain its metaphysics.

The contradiction is built in.

---

7. The Punchline: Matter Is Meaning-Dependent

Once we track the logic:

• matter cannot be defined without meaning

• measurement depends on conceptual frameworks

• causation is relational

• observation is construal

• system boundaries are interpretive

• physical categories rely on non-physical organisation

Physicalism cannot explain the physical

without appealing to the non-physical.

The ontology collapses

because it mistakes an interpretive stance for metaphysical structure.

Matter is not primary.

Relation is.

Matter is an instance, a perspectival cut through relational potential—

not a metaphysical root.