- The following article is excerpted from J. Allan Hobson’s 2002 book “The Dream Drugstore: Chemically Altered States of Consciousness.” Hobson, a Harvard psychiatrist, pioneering sleep researcher, and prolific author, died in 2021.
- Materialism (Wikipedia)
Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions of material things. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are by-products or epiphenomena of material processes (such as the biochemistry of the human brain and nervous system), without which they cannot exist. Materialism directly contrasts with idealism, according to which consciousness is the fundamental substance of nature.