Critique of Reductionist Reason: A Roadmap Beyond Scientism and Toward Integrative Realism
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) May 18, 2026 Nadji Belkheiri
Contemporary reductionist scientism fails to account for consciousness. Starting from the explanatory gap in materialism, alternative models of the mind-brain relationship are examined: the filter model, panpsychism, and predictive processing. An expanded contemplative epistemology is developed by bridging Western religious epistemology (Alston, Plantinga) with contemporary Islamic philosophy (Nasr, Al-Jabri, Taha Abdurrahman) to analyze the cognitive legitimacy of insight (baṣīra). A new framework called Integrative Realism is reconstructed from the principle of irreducible ontological pluralism. The paper confronts objections including epistemic relativism and the problem of suffering, serving as a prospectus for multidisciplinary research in philosophy, neuroscience, and theology.