[Music] Hello everyone, welcome to Telos Bound. Today I'd like to provide a brief overview of a single argument which I

believe refutes materialism once and for all. I've never seen anyone else use this argument, although I haven't really

looked that hard, and I'm completely open to any and all critiques. And for all I know, there's a glaring flaw that I'm

completely missing. Uh, hopefully that's not the case. Now, I want to make this video short and concise because I believe the argument

I'll be presenting is very powerful despite its extreme simplicity. It's so simple that it almost seems

stupid, as if it can't possibly be sound. But I've thought deeply about this argument for months, and I haven't been

able to come up with any legitimate reasons for why it doesn't hold up. Now, the following argument is based on

the concept of distinction. Every entity in the world is distinct from every other entity. This is precisely what makes it an individual

entity. Now, there is no piece of matter, no particle, no quantum wave, and no string which is distinction. One can point to distinct and individual

entities in the world, and one may distinguish between two distinct entities, but that's not grasping distinction as

such. It's simply utilizing the concept of distinction and applying it to the material world. But what if distinction is just that, a

concept? What if distinction simply has no material existence and therefore, for the materialist, no existence at all? Just as many materialists

believe that objective morality doesn't exist because there's no piece of matter which is morality, perhaps distinction

also doesn't exist. Well, this parallel doesn't work, and that's because unlike with morality, it's simply logically impossible to conceive

of a universe without distinction. In order to prove this, we simply need to refer to the beginning of Hegel's

In Hegel's Science of Logic, he begins with the concept of pure or undifferentiated Being.

Being without any positive determinations; this is a pure identity without distinction. But what's great about Hegel is that he

demonstrates that pure Being negates itself. In fact, pure Being is nothing. When we abstract all positive

determinations from the world, we get pure Being, but pure Being is nothing; it's an empty concept, and because of this, it can't

possibly exist in reality. The lack of distinction necessitates pure Being, and because pure Being can't exist, distinction must exist. And of

course, distinction must have ontological existence for there to be distinct beings, just as morality must exist for there to be moral actions. But

our claim is that no materialist ontology can provide the basis for distinction because there is no material

thing which *is* distinction. If you're a materialist, you necessarily believe that everything that exists is matter. If you don't believe this, you

aren't a materialist. If distinction isn't matter—which it evidently isn't—then, according to

materialism, it can't exist. This means that materialists can't affirm the existence of distinct entities and

objects, as one can only do this if one affirms the reality of distinction. But distinction is immaterial.

And one can't even be stubborn and claim that distinction doesn't exist and that there is only undifferentiated Being,

since we know from Hegel that this is not merely absurd but logically impossible. And now, to conclude the video, the

following is the most concise form of this argument I could come up with: Distinction is immaterial yet real.

This Argument Refutes Materialism/Physicalism