The concept of intentionality, however, is capable of linking these outlooks. The choice is free insofar as the system is considered formally, as an abstraction. It is bound in that it is driven concretely by reality. In the materialist version, we began in bondage to matter and the game of survival, have conceived the possibility of freedom, and strive to make it actual. The search in both worlds is for underlying unity and first principles.
Science inquires about the physical world, the object of experience.
Spirituality inquires about the subject and its relationship to experience at large. Science seeks the underlying unity of objects, while religion seeks the underlying oneness of subjects. Science inquires into the ultimate truth of the object, spirituality into that of the subject. Because this awareness presupposes consciousness of self, the mind-matter split is intimately involved with subjectivity and selfhood. Self-consciousness may be defined as the ability to place a frame around some portion of experience, so as to consider its contents as the property of a self rather than of the world.