Good morning everyone,
As requested, I’m briefly presenting a conceptual framework I’ve developed over time, which I’d like to subject to critical scrutiny. I’m a materialist, and by inclination, I tend to eliminate metaphysics from any explanation of reality. Of course, I fully understand that what I propose is quite radical, but by accepting only matter as the foundation, a coherent framework emerges. A general summary is found on the first page of the mini-site I created, so I’m reproducing it here verbatim, to honor the request for a summary. This isn’t “copy-and-paste,” it’s actually my summary. In fact, at the bottom of the site, after the summary, I’ve placed various links for further reading. If anyone is interested in reading to give me a first impression and offer criticism, I could leave the link here (if specifically requested, because I truly have no intention of spamming or violating any of the Forum’s internal rules). In any case, I report the summary here: “In recent years I have carried out a series of reflections on the idea of dynamic time, reflections that have then branched out and touched on other topics: the future, determinism, free will, the dimensionality of space, in a concatenation of themes that “came naturally”, in the sense that every time I addressed a specific node that arose as a critical point and unexpected consequence of that first paradigm shift (from space-time to space-material), it then ended up fitting perfectly like a piece of a mosaic within a general conceptual framework that became gradually more solid and coherent.
There is, however, an element that precedes all this. Years ago (many years ago), I wrote a reflection on nothingness, convinced at the time that it was an autonomous and self-contained topic, and I would never have imagined that today it would fit into this journey. Now I realize that that text was the first piece of a broader framework that I had not yet fully grasped. The ontological rejection of nothingness was therefore not a conceptual provocation, but a clear indicator of a fundamental vision. By rethinking time as a dynamic, material emergence, and logically following the implications of that approach, a coherent framework emerged that I now consider solid.
What seemed like separate reflections have revealed themselves to be articulations of the same philosophical position: that of a radical realism that takes matter as its sole principle, fully accepting all its consequences.
With this article, I am not introducing any new theses, but I am presenting it as a conceptual map that can be useful in briefly and comprehensively outlining the entire framework that has consolidated over time. It shows how - assuming that only matter exists - the metaphysical residues that lurk (even) in sectors that should be free of them gradually dissolve, and questions that are traditionally treated as separate are coherently recomposed.
What follows is therefore an attempt to clarify the entire process, including that reflection on nothingness that I propose again today, reformulated and integrated, as a structural component of a system that I feel is finally complete.
“Only matter exists.”
The above statement is not a reductionist statement, nor is it an ideological, atheistic choice. Rather, it is the result of a speculative intent aimed at eliminating every superfluous entity from my conceptual framework. If something can be accepted without introducing a further, unexplained principle, then that further principle is a metaphysical excess, and my “anti-metaphysical battle” arose precisely from this assumption.
If only matter exists, this means that all those concepts we are accustomed to considering as independent -namely, time, the future, space understood as a container, free will as a suspension of causality, and even nothingness - must be rigorously reconsidered.
A conceptual relocation, starting with time, was therefore necessary. At the heart of the framework, which I have called “dynamic time,” time is no longer a dimension in which events are located: time is not a container, it is not an axis on which we can move, and it is not a fourth real coordinate: it is not dimensional.
Time is simply the name we give to the change of matter; if matter is dynamic, there is no need for a further dimension to explain change, since change is something internal to the material structure. Introducing time as an autonomous entity therefore becomes a superfluous duplication. Matter that changes is not time that flows, and with this shift, the idea of spacetime as an ontological structure collapses, with the existing taking on a dynamic space-material structure. By eliminating time from the ontological dimension, the future also ceases to exist as a “place in waiting.”
The future does not exist in any sense: it is not already given, it is not inscribed, it is not awaiting unfolding; it simply reflects the structural indeterminacy of material processes in progress, and the present itself is not a section of a hypothetical four-dimensional temporal block, but the contingent configuration of matter. The future, therefore, is merely a word, and its elimination from the existential framework consequently eliminates an enormous number of metaphysical pseudo-problems.
With the assumption of matter as a single/universal foundation, one might think that everything is rigidly determined, but this conclusion presupposes the assumption of a linear mechanistic model, which I also reject. In the processual realism I propose, matter is dynamic, relational, and structurally complex, not reducible to a mere sequence of linear causes, being a web of processes. Classical determinism idealizes a complete state of the world, with fixed laws and a necessary trajectory. However, in a dynamic material universe, the so-called “deterministic” processes are not reducible to a mere sequence of linear causes. “Laws” are nothing more than descriptions of emergent regularities, not a kind of metaphysical entities.
Freedom of action is not a causal suspension; it is the peculiar way matter organizes itself in complex, self-conscious systems. There is no intervening soul, but a material system that acts on states of consciousness that are themselves material states. This is not metaphysics; it is structural degrees of freedom. The last metaphysical shadow to be addressed was space, which proved to be the most critical point of the entire system. To assert that only matter exists also eliminates the concept of a containing space. This is counterintuitive, because space seems to be precisely the dimension in which matter is located. How can this apparent contradiction be resolved?
By taking a further leap: space is not an entity distinct from matter, but is an extension of matter. There is no empty space in which matter is immersed; there is extended matter, understood as a material configuration of varying densities.
This step completely eliminates the last refuge of metaphysics, given by an absolute, infinite, eternal, independent space.
Infinity and eternity, therefore, do not belong to a containing space, being attributes of matter itself. And so dimensions: why only three?
Because, if space is an extension of matter, then dimensions are not arbitrary coordinates, but are an intrinsic property of its organization. Three-dimensionality is not a convention or one of the possible dimensional modalities; it is the only way matter is arranged. There is no need to postulate additional dimensions as hidden ontological realities. The three dimensions are not an epistemic limit, but the absolute determination of the constitution of being.
Of all the topics discussed, however, nothingness has been the most deceptive, since we are not inclined to reason by de-attributions, since we cannot attribute properties to it, we cannot describe it, and we cannot even refer to it without speculating about something. Nothingness ultimately reveals itself for what it “is”: a linguistic misunderstanding, a conceptual distortion that must also be eliminated from the paradigm of reality.
At the end of this entire discussion, one last problematic residue apparently remained: consciousness.
If everything is matter, where does subjective experience reside? Who perceives pain? Who experiences phenomenal experience? These questions, however, also arise from an approach that implicitly reintroduces a distinction between a “subject” and material processes, reproposing in another form a dualism that had already been excluded: the problem, in this case too, stems from a metaphysical presupposition.
In materialist realism, consciousness is not an entity and is not an autonomous principle, because it too falls within a mode of material dynamism. There is no separate “who” that experiences, but experience is the way in which a material system can be configured according to complexity, and the so-called problem of consciousness dissolves the moment its false approach is eliminated. This work, which I have undertaken with the desire to eliminate metaphysics from the world, I have done not to impoverish it conceptually, but with the idea of restoring its coherence and coherence, albeit with a radicality of thought that some might perhaps consider excessively drastic.
Yet, an approach that justifies reality without the need for a God to corroborate attributes like eternity and infinity continues to strike me as extremely powerful and elegant; without the need for time to legitimize change; without the need for a soul to motivate free will; without the need for aleatory concepts that create the urgency of origin and extension.
Everything can be traced back to dynamically extended matter, while everything else is a nominal matter.