Materialism and the Possibility of Awareness

Materialism is a kind of exclusivism in the realm of existence; it was first put forward, in the modern era, in the framework of mechanical philosophies and by relying on atomism. Although this version of materialism has little adherents due to the dogmatism governing it, materialist presuppositions are still strongly present in epistemology. The present article uses a critical perspective to investigate the implications of these presuppositions in relation to two parameters of awareness and free will. In this way, we will discuss the physicism, bahaviorism, computer model of mind, and naturalized epistemology as materialistic approaches present in contemporary epistemology, and finally we will review the common implication of these approaches, that is determinism and the possibility to predict individual and collective behaviors of human beings. The method of discussion is analytical, and the findings of this study stress the inefficiency of materialistic approaches in the realm of humanities.