The Materialist-Idealist False Dichotomy
Idealism has long-claimed that consciousness (the “soul”) is spiritual, divine, that it is a “mystic ingredient longing to escape the ‘prison of the flesh’.”1 This sets the false-dichotomy: either accept overt spirit mysticism by endorsing the consciousness or reject the consciousness and reason to be “scientific.”
Despite their implicit mysticism, materialists typically declare that their viewpoint constitutes the only scientific or naturalistic approach to philosophy. The belief in consciousness, they explain, implies supernaturalism. […] the idealists invented the false alternative of consciousness versus science. The materialists simply take over this false alternative, then promote the other side of it. This amounts to rejecting arbitrarily the possibility of a naturalistic view of consciousness.2