The Trouble with Matter

Sir Alfred East, Twilight in Windsor Forest

In response to a recent comment, I wrote:

Matter is always matter-for. You've already reduced a unique object to "raw materials-for" something-or-other. I light a match. The match is made of matter? No, it's made of wood from a tree. The tree is made of matter? No, it's made of cells. The cells? And so on down to electrons. The electrons are made of matter? No, they're made of...and so on. "Matter" is a form of blinkered thinking. It suits correlationism.

The commenter continues:

But a match is wood-for, isn't it? I mean, as in wood-for-lighting-a-fire? I would think it might be possible to believe that “purpose-built” objects are indeed at least to some degree objects-for without being a correlationist? I mean, if I thought that a match was only wood-for, I would be a correlationist, but If I thought a match was also wood-for, I wouldn't.

Yes I think you could imagine that objects are purpose built without being a correlationist. Perhaps as long as you realize that they are objects-for “to some degree.”

But by then you've gone quite a long way towards conceding that the match is also wood-for a particle of dust that settles on it. It's also wood-for an ant who climbs over it. It's also wood-for a toy house made of matchsticks. Once you've gotten rid of the idea that it's “raw materials-for” then you have no good reason to cling to the human telos of matches.

Now I'm not arguing that the commenter is doing that. I'm simply pointing out that a non-materialist but realist view might include more entities in its vision of what things are “for” (the Heideggerian as-structure).

Alexander Pope's poem Windsor Forest admires the scope of a beautiful forest (which still exists to some extent). Look, says the poem: look at all those potential battleships for the English Navy.