July 18, 2026

What’s The Matter?

Questioning Materialist Assumptions In LDS Thought

Cade Alvey

Latter-day Saint scripture claims that “All spirit is matter.” But what is this matter? LDS thinkers have long supposed that this scripture (and others) are sufficient grounds to say that Latter-day Saints are materialists1 (I will refer to this view as “theological materialism”). I intend to cause trouble for that position in this paper. I will first give a brief summary of LDS thought on the question of minds and souls, showing that physicalism has long been the conventional interpretation of LDS scripture. Then, I will show that there are major problems with theological materialism that require explanation. I will then consider some possible options for dualism in a Latter-day Saint Framework.

Materialism in LDS Thought

Materialism, for my purposes in this paper, will be referring to the view that the only stuff that exists is material, extended matter. In other words, everything that exists is physical. In this paper the discussion will be more localized to materialism about minds, souls, or spirits. Traditionally, religious thinkers have made a distinction between the material world around us and the immaterial world, which includes spirits, minds, God, and other supernatural entities. At first pass, restoration scripture appears to depart from this tradition. “There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.”2 Whatever a “spirit” is, it is allegedly made of some kind of matter. Further, we will one day see that “all” is matter. At a glance this is straightforward enough. Restoration scripture also claims “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be. All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.”3 Using chiefly these scriptures as justification, Parley Pratt drew a radical materialist conclusion: “God the Father is material. Nothing exists which is not material… immateriality is but another name for nonentity– it is the negation of all things, and beings, of all existence.”4 There is obviously little room for a dualistic view of minds, spirits, consciousness, or anything for that matter (pun intended) in Pratt’s framework. Terryl Givens claimed that the restoration position is “That matter and spirit are not just similarly eternal; they are ultimately two manifestations of the same reality or substance. The consequence in Smith’s thought is a collapse of the radical divide between body and spirit, the earthly and the heavenly.”5 This description depicts the traditional materialist view accurately; there are two types of matter (both very different from one another), but both are ultimately reducible to physical parts. Philosopher and theologian Sterling McMurrin echoes this view “The Materialism of Mormonism is not in any way a denial of the reality of the spirit or of heavenly beings. Mormonism teaches a strict numerical dualism of the spirit and body; though they are both material, they are two different entities.”6 Theologian Stephen Webb follows Givens and McMurrin in his depiction: “[Joseph Smith] inferred from his vision that the world consists of levels or layers of matter, rather than two kinds of substance, one material and the other not material at all. These layers can be graded on a scale from the most material to the most spiritual. Even at the bottom of the scale, however, no bit of matter, however miniscule, is completely isolated from God’s sweeping majesty, just as at the very top of the scale… no spiritual being is void of material form.”7

The Hard and Easy Problem of Theological Materialism

It should be obvious that the (admittedly scant) literature on a philosophy of mind from a Latter-day Saint perspective strongly leans towards a materialism of sorts. The issue however, is that positing a physical soul, and simultaneously rejecting the possibility of any immaterial stuff, places LDS theological materialism in a uniquely difficult position.

David Chalmers makes the key distinction between the “easy problems” and the “hard problem” of consciousness.8 I think these two concepts are key to understanding the problems that face theological materialism. Consider the easy problem first. Chalmers classifies the easy problems as “those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive mechanisms.”9 In other words, there is little trouble explaining the so-called easy problems of consciousness reductively. We can reduce phenomena such as wakefulness and sleep to certain brain states without much issue. Chalmers classifies the hard problem of consciousness as experience itself. This is to say, that our actual experiences of certain brain states or phenomena are far more difficult (some would say impossible10) to reduce to physical processes or brain states. There are generally two main theories that attempt to explain both the hard problem, and the easy problems: Materialism and dualism. Dualists frequently point to the hard problem and attempt to argue that an immaterial mind/soul is the best or only explanation for the hard problem of consciousness. Materialists will often point to the amount of “easy problems” that have turned out to be reducible to physical processes, and inductively conclude that the hard problem is no exception. My contention is that theological materialism falls between the cracks of the two competing views, failing to account for the correlations found in the sciences between brain states and mind states, as well as failing to explain the hard problem adequately. Dualist views have the advantage of claiming strength in explaining why it is that our physical processes feel like anything at all. Materialists have the advantage of claiming strength in appealing to demonstrable correlations between brain states and mind states. Essentially, theological materialism finds itself between a rock and a hard place. It cannot lay claim to the benefits of materialism or dualism, and is susceptible to the arguments against both as well

Let’s examine the first of these issues. Materialists attempt to explain that the mind is reducible to the brain by appealing to correlations between minds and brains in neuroscience. Philosopher Karen Bennett calls this argument the “argument from optimistic Metainduction.” Bennett summarizes the argument as follows: “Science has always managed to make do without before. It has never before needed to postulate irreducible nonphysical properties to solve tricky, long-lasting problems, so why here, in this one isolated instance?”11 Paul and Patricia Churchland have championed such a view by examining the many correlations we find between brain processes and mental processes. Many think that these continued findings in brain science are best explained by physicalism… and that eventually all of the necessary correlations will be empirically verified. Seems fair enough, even if there are ways around it for the dualist. However, these considerations are not at all helpful for the theological materialist. As Bennett noted, science has proceeded forward just fine in many scenarios without positing irreducible non-physical properties, even if the scientific problem in question is extremely tricky. Theological materialists are positing an additional physical property, one that is not available for observation, testing, or scientific inquiry. This additional physical component the theological materialist posits does nothing to explain the brain-mind correlates that the materialist often appeals to as a powerful consideration. From the materialist perspective, the theological materialist is adding an unverifiable physical entity to the equation which has none of the explanatory power of the traditional materialist view. The materialist can point to thick correlations between the brain and mind to explain their reduction, the theological materialist seems to make a reduction that cannot rely on any of these correlates. It is opting in for a less simple theory with less explanatory power.

Perhaps the theological materialist could claim that their position is similar to the dualists’, in that it does not claim to account for the “easy problems” for which we see brain-mind correlations, but it does account for the “hard problem” of explaining why there is any subjective phenomenal experience at all. I think this position ultimately fails as well. Just as theological materialism posits an extra entity that fails to account for the merits of materialism, the physical soul seems to be an addition to the equation that lays claim to none of the benefits of dualism. For instance, consider David Chalmers’s famous “philosophical zombies” argument. “A philosophical zombie is a being that is atom-for-atom identical to a conscious being such as you and me, but it is not conscious.”12 Chalmers claims that if we suppose that this type of thing is conceivable, that it works as an argument against physicalism

The hard problem of consciousness might then be put as the problem: Why are we not zombies? In our world, in fact, there is consciousness. But everything in physics and in neuroscience seems to be compatible with the hypothesis that we are zombies. If that is right, then physics and neuroscience alone cannot explain why we are not zombies. More generally, it appears that no purely physical explanation can explain why we are not zombies. If so, no purely physical explanation can solve the hard problem of consciousness.13

Now, suppose theological materialism is true. It seems theoretically possible that “spirit zombies” exist. A physical spirit that is constructed out of the same parts, but is non-conscious. If this is possible, then there must be something about consciousness that is not reducible to a physical spirit, the same way it is not reducible to a physical body or brain. One could argue that this drifts into highly speculative and unverifiable territory. After all, we have no idea what kind of powers or properties this spirit matter has in the first place. This however, fits perfectly into my point. The arguments from dualists like Chalmers attempt to explain the hard problem with a simple, non-physical mind. The theological materialist is positing a physical spirit which somehow is supposed to explain the hard problem of consciousness. The problem here, is that we have no reason to suppose this physical spirit is the grounding source of phenomenal consciousness.

It seems that theological materialism faces tough objections from both sides of the ledger. It positions itself in an extremely unfortunate and peculiar position; unable to explain the easy problems nor the hard problems of consciousness, while simultaneously adding what both dualists and physicalists would consider unnecessary and complex elements (pun intended) to the problem. In what follows, I will attempt to open the door for some alternative models consistent with restoration scripture and theology. I want to know the territory Latter-day Saints can explore Without attachment to theological materialism.

Towards an LDS Philosophy of Mind

It does not take long to discover the difficulties in advancing a philosophy of mind in a Latter-day Saint framework. This is, in part, due to the various terms that could possibly refer to a mind. Soul, spirit, intelligence, and mind are all used in restoration scripture. Often they are distinguished, often they are conflated, and occasionally they are described or defined. For example, Philosophers Taylor-Grey Miller and Derek Haderlie make use of restoration scripture14 to claim that “spirits are distinct from souls. Souls, according to Latter-day Saint scripture, are fusions of spirits and bodies… Thus, embodying a spirit yields a soul.”15 Restoration scripture also introduces the concept of “intelligence.” Occasionally, this term seems to be used in the colloquial sense, “Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection.”16 In other circumstances, intelligence seems to describe something like a mind or spirit. In the King Follett Discourse, Joseph Smith seems to indicate that mind and spirit are interchangeable “The mind or intelligence which man possesses is coequal with God himself”17

I note these complexities in terms because it is essential in discovering the available options for a philosophy of mind for Latter-day Saints. We have several terms at play here, all with a decent degree of semantic range: Intelligence, mind, spirit, and soul. The question becomes, which of these (if any) could plausibly be non-physical? Due to scriptures such as D&C 131 (cited previously), “spirits” are probably the first to be discarded as a possible candidate (although I will question this later). Additionally, if we take the definitions extrapolated by Miller and Hadderlie from D&C 88 and Abraham 5, “souls” seem to be off the table as well. But, I see little reason to believe that minds and intelligences must be physical in LDS thought. It is possible that LDS thinkers were too quick in their interpretations of the key proof-texts. “All Spirit is matter” only conclusively establishes theological materialism if other key terms such as “intelligence” and “mind” are the same thing as “spirit.” It is certainly possible that this is the case. As has been shown, these terms carry a wide semantic range. However, I think there are strong reasons to exclude spirits and minds from these physicalist proof-texts. In LDS Biologist Steven Peck’s book “Evolving Faith” he gives what is to my knowledge the most complete treatment of the hard problem of consciousness from an LDS perspective to date. He argues that three concepts can be pulled from restoration scripture relating to this subject

  1. the universe contains things that act and other things that are acted upon
  2. consciousness in its basic form is not created; and
  3. consciousness can exist without the material world as we know it.18

Peck goes on to argue that “Ideas about consciousness are tied very closely to ideas about intelligence or intelligences.”19 What Peck seems to be implying is that there is relatively little we can gather about whether or not consciousness itself is reducible to physical things based on restoration scripture. Certainly one could take the Pratt/Widtsoe interpretation, but Peck rightly points out that saying that our spirits are made of physical “stuff” does nothing to explain why the physical stuff gives rise to first-person phenomenological experience. Under Peck’s minimal commitments, it is feasible that an immaterial mind (or intelligence, if we are granting Joseph Smith’s conflation) arises out of physical things; namely, bodies and spirits. In short, Peck points out that the phrase “all spirit is matter” only runs contrary to mind/body dualism if we take “spirits” to be the same things as minds. Adam S. Miller also offers a similar (but more granular) critique of Terryl Givens’s assertion of theological materialism, arguing that the Givens’ theory of atonement requires the existence of immaterial abstract objects (in this case, eternal laws).

There is also another question that remains to be exhaustively explored in LDS thought: that is if the kind of materialism described in restoration scripture amounts to materialism at all. LDS Scholar Samuel M. Brown seems to think not “On the precise question of materialist monism, Smith’s dualism of fine and coarse matter would satisfy almost no materialists. It sounds more like Ptolemy’s gradations of matter into spirit along a scale of coarseness than any sort of actual philosophical materialism.”20 It seems possible that what Latter-day Saints are talking about when we talk about theological materialism is simply just dualism with more steps. This can be further illustrated by taking a look at Thomas Aquinas’ conception of angels. For Aquinas, angels are incorporeal, non-physical intellects and wills. On the question of if angels are actually incorporeal, Aquinas responds to an objection by saying “Incorporeal substances rank between God and corporeal creatures. Now the medium compared to one extreme appears to be the other extreme, as what is tepid compared to heat seems to be cold; and thus it is said that angels, compared to God, are material and corporeal, not, however, as if anything corporeal existed in them.”21 Aquinas seems to think that it can still be proper to call an immaterial thing “material” as long as it is in relation to something else. As he notes, tepid water could be considered cold in relation to something that is extremely hot. Perhaps restoration scriptures about the metaphysics of the soul could function in a similar way. Just as Aquinas sees angels as occupying a middle ground between God and man, perhaps the “spirit” referred to in D&C 131 occupies a middle ground between two extremes, in which case we could properly refer to spirit as material, even if it is not at all like the material substances we engage with in the natural world. It is also worth noting that Section 131 seems to imply a gradation: “more fine or pure.” Both Joseph Smith and Aquinas conclude that it is proper to call an immaterial thing material, and both reference a gradation or hierarchy of materiality. It is not inconceivable that something similar is going on, and that we need not draw radical materialist conclusions from these passages.

It is also worth noting that Aquinas, in many places in this discussion, uses the term “intelligence” drawing on the long history of thinkers who used the term (in large part) to refer to an immaterial intellect. In Herbert A. Davidson’s work discussing the theories of intellect of the major Islamic thinkers, he notes that the major islamic thinkers posited “A first supreme being consisting in pure thought, and hence an intellect, presides over the entire cosmos; and there follow other beings consisting in pure thought, that is to say, other intellects—or, as they are conventionally termed, intelligences—which have the function of maintaining the celestial spheres in motion”22 Davidson notes that the conception of “intelligence” as a pure intellect or thinking thing has its roots in Greek philosophy, and ultimately influences scholastic thinkers, Thomas Aquinas included.23 All this to say, “intelligence” is not a word that was created by Joseph Smith as it relates to a human intellect or mind. There is a long tradition of usage reaching back to ancient Greek philosophy which understands intelligence as the immaterial source of consciousness. I am not suggesting that JS was aware of these thinkers to be sure. However, I am suggesting that the word’s long history can perhaps inform us on what we might make of the LDS conception of intelligence.

Conclusion

In the history of Latter-day Saint thought, theological materialism has, for the most part, been assumed. I showed the key proof-texts for this view, and the key thinkers that have entrenched theological materialism in LDS thought. I then offered critiques of theological materialism which demonstrated that the view falls short of the explanatory power of both physicalism and dualism. I lastly argued that there are multiple ways Latter-day Saints can accept some form of mind-body dualism. One of which is to grant that spirits are physical, but that minds or intelligence are still plausible candidates for non-physical entities. Another is to question whether or not the materialism described in restoration scripture is even materialism at all. Of course, none of these arguments are conclusive. There is a lot of work that has yet to be done on a Latter-day Saint philosophy of mind consistent with modern consciousness studies and brain science.

Bibliography

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947. Bennett, Karen. “Why I Am Not a Dualist.” In Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind, vol. 1, edited by Uriah Kriegel, 208–231. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Brown, Samuel M. “Mormons Probably Aren’t Materialists.” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 50, no. 3 (2017): 65–81. Chalmers, David. “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 2, no. 3 (1995): 200–219. Chalmers, David. “The Hard Problem of Consciousness.” In The Norton Introduction to Philosophy. New York: W. W. Norton, 2018. Davidson, Herbert A. Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Givens, Terryl L. Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Haderlie, Derek Christian, and Taylor-Grey Miller. “Evil and Embodiment: Towards a Latter-day Saint Non-Identity Theodicy.” Religious Studies (2024). Larson, Stan. “The King Follett Discourse: A Newly Amalgamated Text.” BYU Studies 18, no. 2 (1978): 193–208. McGinn, Colin. “Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?” Mind 98, no. 391 (1989): 349–366. McMurrin, Sterling M. The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2000. Peck, Steven L. Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist. Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2015. Pratt, Parley P. Key to the Science of Theology. Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1855. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Doctrine and Covenants of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Pearl of Great Price. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2013. Webb, Stephen H. Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn from the Latter-day Saints. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Footnotes

  1. I will generally speaking use “physicalism” and “materialism” interchangeably in this paper. And, while these uses usually have some bearings on an overall view of what sorts of things exist in the universe, I am using the terms with a specific emphasis on the nature of minds, souls, or spirits. ↩

  2. Doctrine and Covenants 131:7-8. ↩

  3. Doctrine and Covenants 93:29-30. ↩

  4. Pratt, Parley P. “ Key to the Science of Theology, by (Liverpool: F.D. Richards, 1855), 44. ↩

  5. Givens, Terryl. 2015. “Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought : Cosmos, God, Humanity.” 83. Oxford University Press. ↩

  6. McMurrin, Sterling M. , “The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion” 6. Signature Mormon Classics ↩

  7. Stephen H. Webb, Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn from the Latter-day Saints (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 84. ↩

  8. David Chalmers, “Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 2, no. 3 (1995). ↩

  9. Ibid, 2. ↩

  10. Colin McGinn, “Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?” Mind 98, no. 391 (1989): 349–366. ↩

  11. Karen Bennett, “Why I Am Not a Dualist,” in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind, vol. 1, ed. Uriah Kriegel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 208–231. ↩

  12. David Chalmers, “The Hard Problem of Consciousness,” in The Norton Introduction to Philosophy (New York: Norton, 2018), sec. 4. ↩

  13. Ibid., 1. ↩

  14. Namely, Doctrine and covenants 88:15, and Abraham 5:7. ↩

  15. Derek Christian Haderlie and Taylor-Grey Miller, “Evil and Embodiment: Towards a Latter-day Saint Non-Identity Theodicy,” Religious Studies (2024). ↩

  16. Doctrine and Covenants 130:18. ↩

  17. Stan Larson, “The King Follett Discourse: A Newly Amalgamated Text,” BYU Studies 18, no. 2 (1978): 4. Emphasis mine. ↩

  18. Steven L. Peck, Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist (Provo: Maxwell Institute Publications, 2015), 93. ↩

  19. Ibid., 94 ↩

  20. Samuel M. Brown, “Mormons Probably Aren’t Materialists,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 50, no. 3 (2017): 68. ↩

  21. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, q. 50, art. 1 ↩

  22. Herbert A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 4. ↩

  23. Ibid,. 214. “Alfarabi and Avicenna probably made their strongest mark upon the Latin world by helping convince a fair number of thirteenth-century Scholastics that the active intellect, in the original sense of the agent leading the human potential intellect to actuality, is an incorporeal being transcending the human soul” ↩