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materialism

  (mə-tîr'ē-ə-lĭz'əm) pronunciation
n.
  1. Philosophy. The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
  2. The theory or attitude that physical well-being and worldly possessions constitute the greatest good and highest value in life.
  3. A great or excessive regard for worldly concerns.
materialist ma·te'ri·al·ist n.
materialistic ma·te'ri·al·is'tic adj.
materialistically ma·te'ri·al·is'ti·cal·ly adv.
 
 
Antonyms: materialistic

adj

Definition: thinking mainly about things
Antonyms: spiritual, thrifty, ungreedy


 
Political Dictionary: materialism

Generally: belief that all that matters is material welfare, as opposed to spiritual or other ideals. Specifically: Marx and Engels developed what they called ‘historical materialism’ and ‘dialectical materialism’ in reaction to the idealism of earlier nineteenth-century thinkers, especially Hegel. Since the seventeenth century, thinkers had been divided between those who insisted that, put crudely, physical matter is all there is, and those who gave an independent role to mind. A clear example of the first is Hobbes, whose mechanical conception of nature (so labelled in an important study by F. Brandt, 1928) led him to claim, for instance, that our sensations of colour derived wholly from the coloured object we saw and not from anything in our minds. A clear example of the second was Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753), famous for his scepticism that we could prove that anything existed outside our mental images of it. Hegel sided with Berkeley, and Marx and Engels with Hobbes.

Marx wrote: ‘My investigation led to the result that legal relations as well as forms of state are to be grasped neither from themselves nor from the so-called general development of the human mind, but rather have their roots in the material conditions of human life . . . . It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness’ (Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859). This is Marx's historical materialism. It states that ideology, aesthetics, ideas about ethics and religion, and so on, are all parts of the superstructure, while economic relations are the base (see also base/superstructure). This idea has been widely criticized as self-refuting—if ideas are superstructural, how could the middle-class intellectual Marx and the capitalist Engels have developed Marxism?—but has been ably defended in G. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (1979).

Dialectical materialism is more associated with Engels. Briefly, this is historical materialism made dynamic. It includes the idea that each stage of society except the last contains the seeds of its own destruction, so that capitalism emerged out of feudalism and socialism will emerge out of capitalism.

 

In metaphysics, the doctrine that all of reality is essentially of the nature of matter. In the philosophy of mind, one form of materialism, sometimes called central-state materialism, asserts that states of the mind are identical to states of the human brain. In order to account for the possible existence of mental states in creatures that do not share the human nervous system (e.g., octopuses and Martians), proponents of functionalism identified particular mental states with the functional or causal roles those states play with respect to other physical and mental states of the organism; this allows for the "multiple realizability" of the same mental state in different physical states. (Strictly speaking, functionalism is compatible with both materialism and non-materialism, though most functionalists are materialists.) As a form of materialism, functionalism is "nonreductive," because it holds that mental states cannot be completely explained in terms that refer only to what is physical. Though not identical with physical states, mental states are said to "supervene" on them, in the sense that there can be no change in the former without some change in the latter. "Eliminative" materialism rejects any aspect of the mental that cannot be explained wholly in physical terms; in particular, it denies the existence of the familiar categories of mental state presupposed in folk psychology. See also identity theory; mind-body problem.

For more information on materialism, visit Britannica.com.

 

In philosophy, the view that the world is entirely composed of matter. Philosophers now tend to prefer the term physicalism, since physics has shown that matter itself resolves into forces and energy, and is just one amongst other physically respectable denizens of the universe. Materialism in this philosophical sense has a history stretching back to Greek atomism, and emerges in the modern period in Hobbes's Leviathan, and the works of La Mettrie. It is opposed to mind-body dualism, and bears uneasy relations to realism about universals and other abstract entitites.

In this sense materialism but it has nothing to do with the excessive desire for goods and wealth, which is a different meaning of the term, although the ambiguity is frequently exploited in polemics against an undifferentiated ‘materialism’. See also central state materialism, dialectical materialism, historical materialism.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: materialism,
in philosophy, a widely held system of thought that explains the nature of the world as entirely dependent on matter, the fundamental and final reality beyond which nothing need be sought. Certain periods in history, usually those associated with scientific advance, are marked by strong materialistic tendencies. The doctrine was formulated as early as the 4th cent. B.C. by Democritus, in whose system of atomism all phenomena are explained by atoms and their motions in space. Other early Greek teaching, such as that of Epicurus and Stoicism, also conceived of reality as material in its nature. The theory was later renewed in the 17th cent. by Pierre Gassendi and Thomas Hobbes, who believed that the sphere of consciousness essentially belongs to the corporeal world, or the senses. The investigations of John Locke were adapted to materialist positions by David Hartley and Joseph Priestley. They were a part of the materialist development of the 18th cent., strongly manifested in France, where the most extreme thought was that of Julien de La Mettrie. The culminating expression of materialist thought in this period was the Système de la nature (1770), for which Baron d'Holbach is considered chiefly responsible. A reaction against materialism was felt in the later years of the 18th cent., but the middle of the 19th cent. brought a new movement, largely psychological in interpretation. Two of the modern developments of materialism are dialectical materialism and physicalism, a position formulated by some members of the Logical Positivist movement. Closely related to materialism in origin are naturalism and sensualism.

Bibliography

See D. M. Armstrong, Materialist Theory of the Mind (1968); P. M. Churchland, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of the Mind (1979) and Matter and Consciousness (1984).


 
Quotes About: Materialism

Quotes:

"Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom." - Thomas Carlyle

"Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership." - Edward M. Forster

"It all depends on whether you have things, or they have you." - Robert A. Cook

"The best things in life aren't things." - Art Buchwald

"The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment." - Herbert Marcuse

"Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false." - Henri Frederic Amiel

See more famous quotes about Materialism

 
Wikipedia: materialism

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.[citation needed] 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 mindfunctionalism, 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.[citation needed]

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 particlesphotons for electromagnetic fields and so on. On this view it could be said that fields are "really matter". [citation needed]

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.[citation needed]

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

http://www.stolaf.edu/events/sciencesymposium/speakers.html
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


 
Translations: Materialism

Dansk (Danish)
n. - materialisme

Nederlands (Dutch)
materialisme

Français (French)
n. - matérialisme

Deutsch (German)
n. - Materialismus

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (φιλοσ.) υλισμός

Italiano (Italian)
materialismo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - materialismo (m)

Русский (Russian)
материализм

Español (Spanish)
n. - materialismo

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - materialism

中文(简体) (Chinese (Simplified))
唯物主义

中文(繁體) (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 唯物主義

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 물질주의, 유물론

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 唯物論, 唯物主義, 物質主義, 実利主義, 物質本位の考え方

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) مذهب الماديه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮חומריות, מטריאליזם, גשמנות, חמרנות‬


 
 

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