In
philosophy,
materialism is that form of
physicalism which holds that the only thing that can truly be said to
exist is
matter; that fundamentally, all things are composed of
material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions; that matter is the only
substance. As a theory, materialism belongs to the class of
monist ontology. As such, it is different from ontological theories based on
dualism or
pluralism. In terms of singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism stands in sharp contrast to
idealism.
Overview
The view is perhaps best understood in its opposition to the doctrines of immaterial substance applied to the mind historically, famously by
René Descartes. However, by itself materialism says nothing about how material substance should be characterized. In practice it is frequently assimilated to one variety of
physicalism or another.
Materialism is often associated with the methodological principle of
reductionism, according to which the objects or phenomena individuated at one level of description, if they are genuine, must be explicable in terms of the objects or phenomena at some other level of description -- typically, a more general level than the reduced one.
Non-reductive materialism explicitly rejects this notion, however, taking the material constitution of all particulars to be consistent with the existence of real objects, properties, or phenomena not explicable in the terms canonically used for the basic material constituents.
Jerry Fodor influentially argues this view, according to which empirical laws and explanations in "special sciences" like psychology or geology are invisible from the perspective of basic physics. A vigorous literature has grown up around the relation between these views.
Materialism typically contrasts with
dualism,
phenomenalism,
idealism,
vitalism and
dual-aspect monism. Because it is now a scientifically established fact that less than 4% of the universe is composed of
matter as commonly understood
[1] modern philosophical materialists attempt to extend the definition of matter to include other scientifically observable entities such as
energy,
forces, and the
curvature of space. However this opens them to further criticism from philosophers such as
Mary Midgley who suggest that the concept of "matter" is elusive and poorly defined
[2]
Materialism has been criticised by religious thinkers opposed to it, who regard it as a
spiritually empty philosophy.
Marxism also uses
materialism to refer to a "materialist conception of history", which is not concerned with
metaphysics but centers on the roughly empirical world of human activity (practice, including labor) and the
institutions created, reproduced, or destroyed by that activity (see
materialist conception of history).
History of materialism
In
Ancient Indian philosophy, materialism developed around 600 BCE with the works of
Ajita Kesakambali,
Payasi,
Kanada, and the proponents of the
Carvaka school of philosophy. Kanada was one of the early proponents of
atomism. The
Nyaya-
Vaisesika school (600 BCE - 100 BCE) developed one of the earliest forms of atomism. The tradition was carried forward by
Buddhist atomism and the
Jaina school.
Xun Zi developed a
Confucian doctrine oriented on realism and materialism in Ancient China. Other notable Chinese materialists of this time include
Yang Xiong and
Wang Chong.
Ancient
Greek philosophers like
Thales,
Parmenides,
Anaxagoras,
Democritus,
Epicurus, and even
Aristotle prefigure later materialists. The poem
De Rerum Natura by
Lucretius recounts the
mechanistic philosophy of
Democritus and
Epicurus. According to this view, all that exists is matter and void, and all phenomena are the result of different motions and conglomerations of base material particles called "atoms."
De Rerum Natura provides mechanistic explanations for phenomena, like erosion, evaporation, wind, and sound, that would not become accepted for more than 1500 years. Famous principles like "nothing can come from nothing" and "nothing can touch body but body" first appeared in the works of Lucretius.
Later Indian materialist Jayaraashi Bhatta (6th century CE) in his work
Tattvopaplavasimha ("the Upsetting of all principles") refuted the Nyaya Sutra epistemology. The materialistic Carvaka philosophy appears to have died out some time after 1400 CE. Later on,
Thomas Hobbes and
Pierre Gassendi represent the materialist tradition, in opposition to
René Descartes' attempts to provide the
natural sciences with
dualist foundations. Later materialists included
Denis Diderot and other French
enlightenment thinkers, as well as
Ludwig Feuerbach, and, in England, the pedestrian traveller
John "Walking" Stewart, whose insistence that all matter is endowed with a
moral dimension had a major imnpact on the philosophical poetry of
William Wordsworth.
Schopenhauer wrote that "...materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself." (
The World as Will and Representation, II, Ch. 1). He claimed that an observing subject can only know material objects through the mediation of the brain and its particular organization. The way that the brain knows determines the way that material objects are experienced. "Everything objective, extended, active, and hence everything material, is regarded by materialism as so solid a basis for its explanations that a reduction to this (especially if it should ultimately result in thrust and counter-thrust) can leave nothing to be desired. But all this is something that is given only very indirectly and conditionally, and is therefore only relatively present, for it has passed through the machinery and fabrication of the brain, and hence has entered the forms of time, space, and causality, by virtue of which it is first of all presented as extended in space and operating in time." (
ibid., I, §7)
Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, turning the
idealist dialectics of
Georg Hegel upside down, provided materialism with a view on processes of quantitative and qualitative change called
dialectical materialism, and with a materialist account of the course of history, known as
historical materialism.
Many current and recent philosophers — e.g
Dennett,
Quine,
Davidson,
Searle,
Fodor and
Kim — operate within a broadly physicalist or materialist framework, producing rival accounts of how best to accommodate
mind —
functionalism,
anomolous monism,
identity theory and so on.
In recent years,
Paul and
Patricia Churchland have advocated a more extreme position,
eliminativist materialism, which holds that mental phenomena simply do not exist at all -- that talk of the mental reflects a totally spurious "
folk psychology" that simply has no basis in fact, something like the way that folk science speaks of demon-caused illness.
Defining matter
The nature and definition of matter have been subject to much debate
[3], as have other key concepts in science and philosophy. Is there a single kind of matter which everything is made of (
hyle), or multiple kinds? Is matter a continuous substance capable of expressing multiple forms (
hylomorphism)
[4], or a number of discrete, unchanging constituents (
atomism)?
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10] Does it have intrinsic properties (
substance theory)
[11][12], or is it lacking them (
prima materia)?
Without question science has made unexpected discoveries about matter. Some paraphrase departures from traditional or
common-sense concepts of matter as "disproving the existence of matter".
However, most physical scientists take the view that the concept of matter has merely changed, rather than being eliminated.
One challenge to the traditional concept of matter as tangible "stuff" is the rise of field physics
in the 19th century. However the conclusion that materialism is false may be premature.
Relativity shows that matter and energy (including the spatially distributed energy of fields) are interchangeable. This enables the ontological view that energy is
prima materia and matter is one of its forms. On the other hand,
quantum field theory models fields as exchanges of particles —
photons for
electromagnetic fields and so on. On this view it could be said that fields are "really matter".
All known solid, liquid, and gaseous substances are composed of protons, neutrons and electrons. All three are
fermions or spin-half particles, whereas the particles that mediate fields in
quantum field theory are
bosons. Thus matter can be said to divide into a more tangible fermionic kind and a less tangible bosonic kind. However it is now known that less than 5% of the physical composition of the universe is made up of such "matter", and the majority of the universe is composed of
Dark Matter and
Dark Energy - with no agreement amongst scientists about what these are made of
[13]. This obviously refutes the traditional materialism that held that the only things that exist are things composed of the kind of matter with which we are broadly familiar ("traditional matter") - which was anyway under great strain as noted above from
Relativity and
quantum field theory. But if the definition of "matter" is extended to "anything whose existence can be inferred from the observed behaviour of traditional matter" then there is no reason
in principle why entities whose existence materialists normally deny should not be considered as "matter"
[14]
Some philosophers feel that these dichotomies necessitate a switch from materialism to physicalism. Others use materialism and physicalism interchangeably.
[15]
Criticism and Alternatives
A number of philosophers and scientists are highly critical of materialism.
Religious and spiritual objections
It is incompatible with
Islam,
Hinduism, almost all forms of
Christianity (including
Thomism), and arguably minorly some schools of
Buddhism. Theologian-philosopher
Alvin Plantinga criticises it, and Theologian-philosopher
Keith Ward suggests that materialism is rare amongst contemporary UK philosophers: "Looking around my philosopher colleagues in Britain, virtually all of whom I know at least from their published work, I would say that very few of them are materialists."
[16].
Coherence as an idea
Philosopher
Mary Midgley[17], among others
[18][19][20], argues that materialism is a
self-refuting idea, at least in its eliminative form. While some critics hold that matter is an ill-defined concept, it is not clear that substitutes, such as
Spirit, or Hegelian
Geist fare any better.
Other ontologies
Bundle Theory. It can be argued that it is the properties of material bodies, such as size and shape, which are perceived, and not the material substrate itself.
Locke said we "know not what" the basic substance is.
[21]As
Berkeley wrote "I acknowledge it is possible we might perceive all things just as we do now, though there was no Matter in the world; neither can I conceive, if there be Matter, how it should produce any idea in our minds". If mind-independent properties (properly speaking property-instances or
tropes) are held to exist
in association with each other but without a material substrate,
bundle theory results. If bundle theory is shown to be illogical or inconceivable, the existence of a substrate is thereby demonstrated conceptually, despite the unpercievability of matter per se.
Idealism. An argument for
idealism, such as those of
Hegel and
Berkeley is
ipso facto an argument against materialism. Matter can be argued to be redundant, as in bundle theory, and mind-independent properties can in turn be reduced to subjective
percepts.
Dualism. If matter is seen a necessary to explain the physical world, but incapable of explaining mind,
dualism results.
Emergence,
Holism and
Process philosophy are some of the approaches that seek to ameliorate the perceived shortcomings of traditional (especially
mechanistic) materialism without abandoning materialism entirely.
Skepticism about metaphysics in general
Kant argued against all three of materialism, normal idealism (which he contrasts with his "transcendental idealism"
[22]) and dualism.
[23] However, Kant also argues that change and
time require an enduring substrate.
[24], and does so in connection with his Refutation of Idealism
[25]
Postmodern/
poststructuralist thinkers also express a skepticism about any all-encompassing metaphysical scheme.
Materialism as methodology
Some critics object to materialism as part of an overly skeptical, narrow or
reductivist approach to theorizing, rather than to the ontological claim that matter is the only substance.
Particle physicist and
theologian John Polkinghorne objects to what he calls
promissory materialism — claims that materialistic science
will eventually be able to explain phenomena it has not so far been able to explain.
[26] He prefers dual-aspect monism to materialism
[27].
The psychologist Imants Barušs suggests that "materialists tend to indiscriminately apply a 'pebbles in a box' schema to explanations of reality even though such a schema is known to be incorrect in general for physical phenomena. Thus, materialism cannot explain matter, let alone anomalous phenomena or subjective experience
[28], but remains entrenched in academia apparently for largely political reasons"
[29] (Compare with
Charles Fort).
The scientist and philosopher Axel Randrup suggests that "The scientific study of cognition in the context of biological evolution (Cognition and Evolution, CE) has led to the result, that all our thoughts and cognitions, including science and philosophy, are dependent on our cognitive apparatus in its present stage of evolution. I find, that this result is in contradiction with ... the philosophy of materialist realism
[30].
See also
Notes
[1]
1. Turner, M. S. (2007). Quarks and the cosmos. Science 315, 59–61.
1.
^ Michael S. Turner
Quarks and the CosmosScience Vol. 315. no. 5808, pp. 59 - 61
2.
^ Mary Midgley The Myths we live by
3.
^ Catholic Encyclopedia
4.
^ Concise Britannica on hylomorphism
5.
^ Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Atomism: Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century
6.
^ Dictionary of the History of Ideas:Atomism in the Seventeenth Century
7.
^ Article by a philosopher who opposes atomism
8.
^ Information on Buddhist atomism
9.
^ Article on traditional Greek atomism
10.
^ Atomism from the 17th to the 20th Century at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
11.
^ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on substance theory
12.
^ The Friesian School on Substance and Essence
13.
^ Bernard Sadoulet
Particle Dark Matter in the Universe: At the Brink of Discovery? Science 5 January 2007: Vol. 315. no. 5808, pp. 61 - 63
14.
^ eg
C S Lewis in
The Great Divorce suggested that
Heaven was composed of super-massive matter that was more substantial than normal matter
15.
^ Dictionary of the Philosophy of mind -- "Many philosophers and scientists now use the terms `material' and `physical' interchangeably"
16.
^ Is Religion Dangerous? p 91
17.
^ see
Mary Midgley The Myths we Live by
18.
^ Baker, L. (1987).
Saving Belief Princeton, Princeton University Press
19.
^ Reppert, V. (1992).
Eliminative Materialism, Cognitive Suicide, and Begging the Question. Metaphilosophy 23: 378-92.
20.
^ Boghossian, P. (1990).
The Status of Content Philosophical Review 99: 157-84. and (1991)
The Status of Content Revisited. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 71: 264-78.
21.
^ Locke, J. Essay Concerning Human Understanding/
22.
^ see
Critique of Pure Reason where he gives a "refutation of idealism" in pp345-52 (1st Ed) and pp 244-7 (2nd Ed) in the Norman Kemp Smith edition
23.
^ Critique of Pure Reason (A379, p352 NKS translation). "If, however, as commonly happens, we seek to extend the concept of dualism, and take it in the transcendental sense, neither it nor the two counter-alternatives — pneumatism [idealism] on the one hand, materialism on the other — would have any sort of basis [...] Neither the transcendental object which underlies outer appearances nor that which underlies inner intuition, is in itself either matter or a thinking being, but a ground (to us unknown)..."
24.
^ "Kant argues that we can determine that there has been a change in the objects of our perception, not merely a change in our perceptions themselves, only by conceiving of what we perceive as successive states of enduring substances (see Substance)".
Routledge Encyclopedia of philosophy
25.
^ "All determination of time presupposes something permanent in perception. This permanent cannot, however, be something in me [...]" Critique of Pure Reason, B274, P245 (NKS translation)
26.
^ However, critics of materialism are equally guilty of prognosticating that it will
never be able to explain certain phenomena " Over a hundred years ago
William James saw clearly that science would never resolve the
mind-body problem".
Dembski, W. Are We Spiritual Machines
27.
^ Interview with John Polkinghorne
28.
^ Baruss, I. (1993). Can we consider matter as ultimate reality? Some fundamental problems with a materialist interpretation of reality.
Ultimate Reality and Meaning: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Philosophy of Understanding, 16(3-4), 245-254
29.
^ Baruss, I. (2001). The art of science: Science of the future in light of alterations of consciousness.
Journal of Scientific Exploration, 15(1), 57-68
30.
^ Axel Randrup
Cognition and Biological Evolution
References
- Churchland, Paul (1981). Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes. The Philosophy of Science. Boyd, Richard; P. Gasper; J. D. Trout. Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press.
- Flanagan, Owen (1991). The Science of the Mind. 2nd edition Cambridge Massachusetts, MIT Press.
- Fodor, J.A. (1974) Special Sciences, Synthese, Vol.28.
- Kim, J. (1994) Multiple Realization and the Metaphysics of Reduction, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 52.
- Lange, Friedrich A.,(1925) The History of Materialism. New York, Harcourt, Brace, & Co.
- Moser, P. K.; J. D. Trout, Ed. (1995) Contemporary Materialism: A Reader. New York, Routledge.
- Schopenhauer, Arthur, (1969) The World as Will and Representation. New York, Dover Publications, Inc.
- Vitzthum, Richard C. (1995) Materialism: An Affirmative History and Definition. Amhert, New York, Prometheus Books.
- Buchner, L. (1920). Force and Matter. New York, Peter Eckler Publishing CO.
- La Mettrie, Man The machine.
External links
Materialism refers to how a person or group chooses to spend their resources, particularly money and time. Literally, a materialist is a person for whom collecting material goods is an important priority.
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According to many followers of the theories of Karl Marx (or Marxists), dialectical materialism is the philosophical basis of Marxism. The name, which was never used by Marx himself, refers to the notion that Marxism is a synthesis of philosophical dialectics and
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Philosophy is the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); and what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic).
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Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things.
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existence is a branch of philosophy known as ontology.
Many questions arise concerning existence. Is what we experience and observe all there is to existence? Do abstract ideas, such as virtue, exist? Is existence orderly and knowable or chaotic and unknowable? Does there
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matter is commonly defined as the substance of which physical objects are composed, not counting the contribution of various energy or force-fields, which are not usually considered to be matter per se (though they may contribute to the mass of objects).
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Substance theory, or substance attribute theory, is an ontological theory about objecthood, positing that a substance is distinct from its properties.
Substance is a core concept of ontology and metaphysics.
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God
General approaches
Agnosticism Atheism
Deism Dystheism
Henotheism Ignosticism
Monism Monotheism
Natural theology Nontheism
Pandeism Panentheism
Pantheism Polytheism
Theism Theology
Transtheism
Specific conceptions
..... Click the link for more information. Ontology is a study of conceptions of reality and the nature of being. In philosophy, ontology (from the Greek ὤν, genitive ὄντος: of being (part.
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For other uses, see Dualism (disambiguation).
Dualism is the view that two fundamental concepts exist, such as good and evil, light and dark, or male and female. Often, they oppose each other.
..... Click the link for more information. Pluralism is the name of entirely unrelated positions in metaphysics and epistemology. In metaphysics, pluralism claims a plurality of basic substances making up the world; in epistemology, pluralism claims that there are several conflicting but still true descriptions of the world.
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- This article is about the philosophical notion of idealism. Idealism is also a term in international relations theory and in Christian eschatology.
For the Digitalism album, see .
..... Click the link for more information. René Descartes (French IPA: [ʁə'ne de'kaʁt]) (March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius
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Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things.
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Reduction is the process by which one object, property, concept, theory, etc., is shown to be entirely dispensable in favor of another. For example, we say that chemical properties such as the boiling point of a substance are reducible to that substance’s atomic properties,
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Jerry Alan Fodor (born 1935) is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist currently teaching at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He is the author of many works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science in which he laid the groundwork for the modularity of
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dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, which begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical.[1]
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In epistemology and the philosophy of perception, phenomenalism is the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in space.
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- This article is about the philosophical notion of idealism. Idealism is also a term in international relations theory and in Christian eschatology.
For the Digitalism album, see .
..... Click the link for more information. Vitalism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary,
[1] is
- a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from physicochemical forces
..... Click the link for more information. In the philosophy of mind, double-aspect theory is the view that the mental and the physical are two aspects of the same substance. The theory's relationship to neutral monism is ill-defined, but one proffered distinction says that whereas neutral monism allows the context of a
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matter is commonly defined as the substance of which physical objects are composed, not counting the contribution of various energy or force-fields, which are not usually considered to be matter per se (though they may contribute to the mass of objects).
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energy (from the Greek ενεργός, energos, "active, working")[1] is a scalar physical quantity that is a property of objects and systems of objects which is conserved by nature.
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In physics, force is an action or agency that causes a body of mass m to accelerate. It may be experienced as a lift, a push, or a pull. The acceleration of the body is proportional to the vector sum of all forces acting on it (known as net force or resultant force).
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General relativity (GR) (aka general theory of relativity (GTR)) is the geometrical theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915/16.[1] It unifies special relativity, Newton's law of universal gravitation, and the insight that gravitational
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Mary Midgley, née Scrutton, (b. 13 September 1919) is a British moral philosopher. She was a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and is best known for her popular works on religion, science and ethics.
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Spirituality, in a narrow sense, concerns itself with matters of the spirit. The spiritual, involving (as it may) perceived non-physical eternal verities (or even abilities) involving humankind's ultimate nature, often contrasts with the earthly, with the material, or with the
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Marxism is both the theory and the political practice (that is, the praxis) derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Any political practice or theory that is based on an interpretation of the works of Marx and Engels may be called Marxism; this includes
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Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science, traditionally including cosmology and ontology. It is also concerned with explaining the ultimate nature of being and the world.
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Institutions are structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of two or more individuals. Institutions are identified with a social purpose and permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with the making and enforcing of
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