Book Reviews

Materialist philosophies have had some notable advocates in recent times, but they have also drawn vigorous criticism, both in academic works and in writings aimed at more popular audiences. Graham Dunstan Martin’s Does It Matter? belongs firmly to the latter category, eschewing detailed technical analysis for an impassioned and often entertaining exploration of an impressive array of topics to demonstrate that ‘matter is not all’. In the book, physicists nuzzle up with mystics, French philosophers with science fiction writers, neurologists with poets. Martin takes seriously the view that the puzzle of consciousness demands radical reconceptualizations, and he is not afraid to look at theories that might all too easily be dismissed as fanciful. In fact, one of the book’s attractions is its showcasing of some audaciously speculative theories. ‘Materialism’ gives only a partial sense of the range of views that Martin criticizes. His targets include not only eliminativists, reductionists and functionalists, but anyone who does not seem to give consciousness its proper due, by denying free-will, by envisaging consciousness in computers, or by taking neo-Darwinism and evolutionary psychology too far. Thus, Martin takes issue with the likes of Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Susan Blackmore, Steven Pinker and Nicholas Humphrey. He tries to pull the rug from under materialism in two ways, by exposing what he considers to be theoretical confusions and by assembling evidence to suggest that consciousness is fundamental to the universe. He argues that materialism survives behind a smokescreen of ‘equivocation and slippery use of words’. If matter has been defined as devoid of consciousness, then consciousness can be derived from matter only by a verbal sleight of hand, a philosophical conjuring trick. In one of his more innovative moves,