Why materialists are predominantly materialists

[bennyboy]

Chomsky once said something like, 'Before you start asking questions about 'physical' and 'non-physical', you have to define what physical even means.'

It's a good question. Did he provide an answer?

My answer is that whatever is or isn't "out there," the human experience of it is purely experiential/idealistic. In other words, the study of physics is a category of idea-- about the nature of and relationship among objects. It doesn't really require a position on the underlying nature of reality. But I'm happy defining "physical" as "whatever physicists are studying today," as I know what rich fields lay in that direction.