Inherent to physicalism is micro-reductionism, which reduces the mind to a biological process, and biology to physics. The universe would be built (- and here again we find this dangerous reduction of creation to a mere construction! -) out of elements which form more complex wholes. The objects coming to existence in that way are being divided into eight levels: on level zero we find the logical-mathematical objects, on level one, the quarks or the most elementary building-stones of reality, and so it goes on via atoms and molecules until, at the end, at the seventh level, we get the groups of pluricellular organisms, and on level eight, their products. Vermeersch admits that there exists a parallel between, on the one hand, the levels mentioned and, on the other hand, the generality of the theories about the objects situated in the corresponding levels, and the number of descriptions of the structure in relation to the types of objects. In the first parallel there is a direct proportionality, in the second parallel there is an inverse one.

Let us notice that such a division relies upon the degree of generality with which one considers these objects. In other terms: by considering the objects in view of their generality, one creates, through this specific perspective, the levels 1, 2 or 3. On the other hand, by considering the objects in view of the discovering of specific structures, one creates, just by that specific view, for instance the levels 5, 6 and 7. In other terms, it is tautological to admit that one can ascertain that for instance with the levels 0 to 3 more general theories and less descriptions of structure in the concerning science should correspond, meanwhile for instance with the levels 5 to 7 more descriptions of structure in the concerning science do correspond. In still other terms: the fact of the generality of the theories and of the specificity of the descriptions of structure is not following from the levels, but the existence of the levels in fact relies on the way one is considering the existing things. Expressed in still another way: drawing one’s attention to what things have in common, one creates the levels 0 or 1. Drawing one’s attention to the mutual differences between things, one creates for instance the levels 5, 6 or 7.

According to micro-reductionism, the existence of man is unnecessary for the existence of whatever else. In other terms: the human being is the most contingent being.

Now the micro-reductionist asserts that the elements of the universe put themselves together to more complex units, all the time. In this perspective, the human being still is a fairly complex unity. Considering him as being contingent, one must also judge the laws that effected him out of more elementary particles, and equally one must judge these more elementary particles as they are. Going on in this way, down to the more elementary, one must judge eventually nothing to be necessary. Yet if nothing is necessary, this pair of concepts ‘necessity-contingency’ becomes irrelevant.

If one considers on the contrary the human being as a necessary being, one must also consider the human products, containing the theory of micro-reductionism, to be necessary. Yet a necessary theory cannot consider man as being contingent without considering itself at the same time as being contingent. So this supposition results into a contradiction and must be considered as an absurd one.

Subsequently, let us examine the thesis that the existence of man is not necessary for the existence of some other thing. True enough, micro-reductionism neglects the existence of goals, but at the same time it is even so true that everything has a reason of existence, and so all levels (which antecedent to humanity) are necessary for all levels they produce. But then one must accept also that eventually something must be necessary for the existence of quarks. Since at this point quarks are hypothetical constructions, their condition of possibility consists of nothing else but human consciousness. From this follows that man is not the most contingent being, for he is necessary for the existence of quarks ànd for everything quarks are necessary for. In other terms, this is not about necessary and contingent things in reality but about necessary and contingent suppositions of things in reality, which means that only necessary and contingent suppositions have relevance in this context.

Now let us consider the concept ‘accident’ more in general. One speaks about ‘accident’ when an event occurs that deviates from the predictions of a theory. But it is clear that by reasoning in that way, one is guilty to induction. The fact that I am unable to predict an event by the hand of my ordering theory, does not give me the right to name this event ‘accidentally’. My reasoning would be correct only by saying that in such a case my theory is incomplete. For a fact is necessary because of its factuality. The only thing I can say about an unpredictable event is, that in fact it is incompatible with my prediction, and that its unpredictability is not accidentally, for it results from the incompleteness of my theory. In other terms: accepting the incompleteness of my theory, I will also have to recognize the necessity of an unpredicted event, and, as a consequence, I cannot consider this event to be ‘accidental’. Later we will give an application in connection with the Darwinist theory of the process of selection.

Kant already wrote that we can only understand nature to the degree to which we would be able to construct it by ourselves. The significance of this proposition may not be underestimated: we are not able to (re)construct nature, for nature itself is not a construction. Because all the things we construct by our hands and plans are made out of elements we find in nature, we are inclined to believe that nature itself is the result of such a process of construction. Giving in to this inclination, we are arguing by induction. Suppose we should analyze a tree into material components, we would find as a result a whole of different elementary particles such as water, carbon and others. In fact, this tree is not at all the result of a construction of such elementary particles, and reconstructing these particles would never result into a new tree. For our analysis has been limited to the material analysis of one specific tree. Everything beyond this, cannot be analyzed any more, and this fact excludes each imitative reconstruction. But first of all, reconstruction is impossible because a tree, and more generally nature as a whole, is not a construction. For instance, a parrot is able to imitate a human expression, but the essence of an expression, namely its sense, cannot be comprehended by the parrot, which makes its achievement irrelevant. The parrot only repeats sounds. And exactly in his reckless belief concerning the reconstruction of creation, man equals such a talking parrot, unaware of his grotesque attitude. Man with his mechanical world-view is comparable to the deaf musician who is unable to have the slightest feeling for his own performance as a result of his own deafness: to him, the playing of music is hard labour, something comparable to the operating of a very complex machine. As a matter of fact, physicalists now believe that nature is such an absurd orchestra without noise, and they believe so only because they are unable to hear.

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In fact, it suffices that we prove the irrelevancy of the applicability of Carnap’s verification principle to the reality as a whole, in order to be able to declare the basic intuitions of physicalism and its rejection of metaphysics to be invalid. Blinded by recklessness, yet the physicalist is not someone to come easily to an understanding with. So we will have to meet him on his own territorial, and we will try to question his thesis from the inside.

To begin with, Vermeersch’s basic intuition, namely: that the knowledge about the ‘knowing subject’ can teach us more about the knowledge of the ‘knowing subject’, is strikingly evident. For is not also the knowledge about, a knowledge of the ‘knowing subject’? So this intuition says little more than that knowledge benefits from knowledge.

Concerning the pursued description of the knowing subject in terms of the mechanical, first of all two remarks must be made. In the first place, an information-system is not a knowing subject: it derives its sense from the (working) human: a pair of tongs does not pinch by itself and neither does an information-system do anything by itself: in both cases, it is their agent who carries out the act. Secondly, the presupposed knowledge concerning the act of knowing is in its turn submitted to the problem of self-reference: there is a fundamental discrepancy between information and the act of knowing: without the act of knowing, a text does not give any information.

Additionally, it may be remarked that this is also valid in the case that this information holds that there is a structural equivalence between the thing and its concept: in his theory of forms, E. Vermeersch puts the case that structural equivalence is a material matter. But we claim that structural equivalence is a sort of information, and so it cannot exist until it is being known - by a subject.

Man reduces the in se neutral reality to an instrument, and he does do so by bestowing sense upon it and by transforming it into his own world. He does this for his own sake: he wants to live and to raise the quality of his life. Nevertheless, our world is nothing but a ‘superficial’ phenomenon: an animal is unable to distinguish it from the rest of the landscape: to an animal our houses mean nothing but rocks; manifestations of our language are nothing to them but sounds. No creature can see further than to where it reaches. Our instruments, and especially our own world, have no other existence but their ‘function for us’: the simplest lever alike, they all exist out of natural laws that we took advantage of in order to enlarge our grasp on reality. Obviously this applies to both our information- and communication-tools: they have no self, no needs and as a matter of course they have no need to communicate.

The world is visible, soil can be walked on, rain is wet and the wind is cold: the attributes of things, especially the attributes of our instruments, are related to our bodily being, which is necessarily our ultimate parameter. A book, like a machine, derives its functionality or its being from the acts of writing and reading. Further more, we describe an information-system by concepts derived from our own information-processing activity: the terms “sender” (or: “transmitter”) and “receiver” are nothing but more general terms for “speaker” and “listener”, or “writer” and “reader”. As tools are modelled on the human body (because they are extensions of the body), the information-system is modelled on human communication.

Nevertheless, we can verify by experiment that the reliability of an expert is not at all evident. Turing’s computer is a trompe l’ oeil. Even today the legendary Tijl Uilenspiegel has hypocrites applauding empty canvases. And we remember the suspicious death of Van Meegeren after he had confessed to be the author of a painting, experts thought to be by Vermeer.

No machine can properly take the initiative to create whatsoever. But exactly this initiative, this specific purposefulness, is of essential importance in relation to the act.

On the other hand, the musicians in an orchestra performing the Brandenburg Concertos have only a technical part in this creation: in this quality they merely operate as the composer’s instruments; though Bach is physically absent, these musicians are directed by him; the subjectivity of the performer is not of fundamental importance because the performer can be replaced by another one. However, the irreplacebility of the musician applies only to his willingness to function as a mere instrument of the composer. As a consequence, no one can judge the aesthetic qualities of the performer when he performs in a correct way an unknown piece of music. For this performer may be someone who perfectly governs the technical skills that can be imitated by a programmed pianola. By the way, it seems that education nowadays is perfectly satisfied by teaching this kind of acrobatics: for the solving of problems via problem-solving programs that must be learnt before, cannot be properly called ‘problem-solving’: this way of action is nothing but the mere application or execution of programs - a way of action that ignores creativity, out of a fundamental distrust in the human person and a misplaced trust in l’ homme machine...

Franklin’s lightning conductor makes firewood of all former theories, for the ability to ‘create’ something implies the complete understanding of that thing, according to Vermeersch.

The urgency of praxis confirms indeed that each resolution of a problem makes the problematisation itself redundant. Nevertheless, the ability to make a thing does not necessarily imply the full understanding of that thing.

In conclusion we notice that the physicalist accepts that thoughts arise from the activity of the brain. Here, he seems to forget that the ‘certainty’ he relies on to explain thought, is less certain than the act of thinking itself: for the activity of the brain supposed to produce thinking, does not come to us but by thinking itself: the activity of the brain is in the first place a matter of thinking , as is the existence of a chair (- see: Kant’s Ding an sich). But just as we cannot judge about the existence of the chair, we cannot do so about the existence of the activity of the brain either. That the brain activity has to be presupposed in order to give a physicalistic explanation of thinking, is all we can say for certain; put otherwise: the brain activity is hypothetical and subordinated to thought itself.

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Sometimes, the metaphysical question concerning the ultimate ground of being has been restricted to the mere technical question concerning its ultimate building-stones. This is a mistake, because reality is not a construction. Kant says that we can only understand nature to the extend in which we are able to construct it by ourselves; which means, properly, that we are unable to understand nature, because we cannot (re)construct it (H. de Vos 1968: 63). Spinoza distinguishes between what is causa sui (God, Nature) and things that have an exterior cause (Spinoza 1974). Also Gödel distinguishes between the creation of something (- out of nothing) and the construction of something (- out of something else which already has been created) (H. Wang 1996: 14: "Gödel distinguishes creation, in the sense of making something something out of nothing, from construction or invention, in the sense of making something out of something else"). Concerning these important warnings, Kant, Spinoza and Gödel have been preceded by Augustinus, who criticises the unbelievers: "Thus, forsooth, [they reason] from their carnal familiarity with the sight of craftsmen and house-builders, and artisans of all descriptions, who have no power to make good the effect of their own art unless they get the help of materials already prepared. And so these parties [i.e.: the unbelievers] in like manner understand the Maker of the world not to be almighty, if thus He could not fashion the said world without the help of some other nature, not framed by Himself, which He had to use as His materials" (Augustinus 1999: II, §2). Even in the case that God created things out of something (- e.g.: 'clay', 'matter unseen', 'matter without form'), He has been the creator of it - thus says Augustinus.

Apart from art and ethics, we can say that all man-made things are tools, or: extensions of our physical bodies. Our world is an instrument: it is our common, extended body. From nature we recruit the raw material or the elements for that instrument.

Because our world is a (man-made) construction, we tend to conceive nature in the same way: we tend to see nature as a construction that we can break up into elements in order to build up our world with them. But this is a mistake. Nature in its turn has not been built out of elements that have been retrieved from still somewhere else. Where we do believe so, we conceive ourselves as potential (re)constructors of nature, or as Gods.

Carnap disapproves of metaphysics for the reason that its propositions are not experimentally verifiable. But the claim of applicability of this principle to the whole of reality, actually veils the conviction that reality can be (re)produced. In Logical Positivism, in Physicalism and in Micro-reductionism, we deal with the misconception Augustinus, Kant, Spinoza and Gödel warn against: the misconception in which man sees himself as God. He is not God, says Spinoza, because he is not causa sui.

By our conception, reality finds its foundation in its destination: all the ‘lower’ things come out of the ‘higher’ wherein they have their reason and their ultimate sense of being. It is our conviction that only in this way, a satisfactory ‘explanation’ of reality as a whole can be obtained.

Opposed to this conception stands the nowadays as successful as it is malicious conception concerning reality by physicalism, the newest form of materialism, in which things have been turned upside down. Materialism did not understand the cautious words of mentioned philosophers.

Physicalism is principally a part of atheism, because atheism accepts coincidence while denying any form of teleology: it rejects a priori the question of sense and pretends to find satisfaction in a reductionistic know-how about micro- and macrocosm, which in fact are conceived as if they were nothing more than an accidental happening. It is ethically irresponsible that physicalism leaves man orphaned. In this text however, physicalism will get our attention in the perspective of its cognitive irresponsibility.