The most critical way to test the hypothesis that all matter is mind is to start with the epitome of materialist reasoning, which surely is the Atomic Theory of Matter. Virtually all directly testable phenomena can be accurately described as combinations of just three particles (i.e., protons, neutrons, and electrons). So let's imagine a bunch of atoms ganging together to make a molecule. It doesn't matter whether we're scientists imagining electron probability density clouds, or lay persons thinking of gummy-bears held together with toothpicks. Either way, when we "imagine" atoms making up molecules, we typically do so literally, by conjuring up visual imagery.

 

Yet if we think about it a bit, we realize that atoms are not actually visible — only the photons emitted by atoms are visible. So what are we seeing, when we think of a picture of atoms making up molecules?

 

The Atomic Theory is a construct, or a model of reality, which might show things that aren't actually visible. And just what kind of construct is it?

 

There are different kinds. Phenomenological constructs look like what they're explaining. A metaphor is a common form of this, where we explain something by citing another example of the same principle. The similarities between the two phenomena are accentuated when we think of both of them at the same time, while the differences cancel each other out, and then the understanding gets transferred from the one to the other. This only works if the explanation looks like what is being explained. Then there are constructs that don't look anything like what they're explaining, such as the Atomic Theory. These assert the presence of things that can combine to produce the observations, even if those things are not made of the same stuff as the observations. For example, the Atomic Theory asserts that electrons (which we cannot see) occur at specific distances from the nuclei of the atoms (which we cannot see). But when an electron drops down, from an outer shell to an inner one, it emits a photon, which we can see.

 

If the bulk of the mechanism responsible for the observations isn't accessible to us, how do we know that it's there?

 

The quick answer is that we don't, but we might reason that something has to be responsible for the observations, and we can wonder what that something would have to be like, for it to be capable of such outward manifestations. Thus a proposed model of matter can be evaluated by comparing what we're actually seeing to what we should be seeing, if matter were anything like what we thought. Over the years, many models have been proposed. The ancient Greeks thought that all matter was a mixture of earth, water, wind, and fire. (These actually turned out to be just the physical states of matter, i.e., solids, liquids, gases, & plasmas.) They also thought that elementary matter was continuous — it could be sub-divided ad infinitum, while each division would always be identical. So they thought of elements as continuous essences. Such ideas only yielded but so much progress, and by the 1700s, most scientists had given up searching for elementary essences. Then John Dalton tried the idea that matter is granular, and that the tiny grains (i.e., atoms) can combine in a variety of ways to produce the complexities that we observe. And that construct has yielded a lot of value, so this is now what we believe.

 

Where do such beliefs live? By what rules do they play? Constructs are mental entities. Thus the Atomic Theory — the most mechanistic model of the Universe — is a creation of our minds.

 

Furthermore, if somebody asks us to imagine the innards of a molecule, and we were born blind, we're not going to do it with visual imagery. Rather, we could only have grasped the concept of molecular structures if somebody had made a gummy-bear model that we could touch. Now when asked to think of a molecule, we remember those tactile sensations. But what if we were all born blind paraplegics, and could not reach out and touch anything, nor see anything — now how are we going to imagine a molecule?

 

Put formally, anyone who does not have a particular type of physical sensation (e.g., seeing, hearing, touching, etc.) cannot think in that sense. Thoughts, in fact, are just left-over sensations that we keep tossing around, sometimes mixing and matching to make new combinations that don't even exist already. So not only do constructs play by the mental rules, they're even made of sensations, which are definitely in the mental realm. If it was not for the mind, matter would not exist (at least so far as we're concerned), and the way in which matter exists for us can be demonstrated to be fully mental. Hence all matter is mind. There are primary sensations (e.g., colors, tastes, sounds, etc.), which philosophers call "qualia," and there are collections thereof (e.g., emotions, memories, ideas, theories, etc.), and such is all that we will ever know.

 

Interestingly, the supremacy of the mental realm is certified by mechanistic scientists, even if they don't admit it. For example, a neuroscientist studies people as neural machines, which don't necessarily have any internal states. But if a test subject announced that she has never known anything except that which has impacted her sensory transducers, the neuroscientist would conclude that such is a self-aware CNS that has correctly assessed its relationship with its surroundings.

 

More curiously, while materialists aren't sure that consciousness exists, but are pretty sure that it doesn't do anything, they also hold perception as the final arbiter of truth, in that the ultimate test of any hypothesis is whether or not it is demonstrable. In other words, the proposed mechanisms must trigger sights, sounds, touches, tastes, and/or smells. If the effects cannot be sensed, they don't exist, and the hypothesis is not real. Thus sensation, fully contained within the mental realm, is the most rigorous scientific test of any materialist hypothesis.

 

Clearly, the mental realm is the master realm.