Materialism

For other uses of the term materialism, seeMaterialism (disambiguation).

Materialismis a form ofphilosophical monismwhich holds thatmatteris the fundamentalsubstanceinnature,and that all things, includingmental statesandconsciousness,are results ofmaterialinteractions of material things. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are caused by physical processes, such as theneurochemistryof thehuman brainandnervous system,without which they cannot exist. Materialism directly contrasts withidealism,according to which consciousness is the fundamental substance of nature.

Materialism is closely related tophysicalism—the view that all that exists is ultimately physical. Philosophical physicalism has evolved from materialism with the theories of the physical sciences to incorporate more sophisticated notions of physicality than mere ordinary matter (e.g.spacetime,physical energiesandforces,andexotic matter). Thus, some prefer the termphysicalismtomaterialism,while others use the terms as if they weresynonymous.

Discoveries of neural correlates between consciousness and the brain are taken as empirical support for materialism, but somephilosophers of mindfind that association fallacious or consider it compatible with non-materialist ideas.Alternative philosophies opposed or alternative to materialism or physicalism include idealism,pluralism,dualism,panpsychism,and other forms ofmonism.Epicureanismis a philosophy of materialism fromclassical antiquitythat was a major forerunner of modern science. Though ostensibly adeist,Epicurus affirmed the literal existence of theGreek godsin either some type of celestial "heaven" cognate from which they ruled the universe (if not on a literal Mount Olympus), and his philosophy promulgatedatomism,whilePlatonismtaught roughly the opposite, despite Plato's teaching ofZeusasGod.

Overview

In 1748, French doctor and philosopherLa Mettrieespoused a materialistic definition of the human soul inL'Homme Machine.

Materialism belongs to the class ofmonistontology,and is thus different from ontological theories based ondualismorpluralism.For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism is in contrast toidealism,neutral monism,andspiritualism.It can also contrast withphenomenalism,vitalism,anddual-aspect monism.Its materiality can, in some ways, be linked to the concept ofdeterminism,as espoused byEnlightenmentthinkers.

Despite the large number of philosophical schools and their nuances,all philosophies are said to fall into one of two primary categories, defined in contrast to each other:idealismandmaterialism.^[a]The basic proposition of these two categories pertains to the nature of reality: the primary difference between them is how they answer two fundamental questions—what reality consists of, and how it originated. To idealists, spirit or mind or the objects of mind (ideas) are primary, and matter secondary. To materialists, matter is primary, and mind or spirit or ideas are secondary—the product of matter acting upon matter.

The materialist view is perhaps best understood in its opposition to the doctrines of immaterial substance applied to the mind historically byRené Descartes;by itself, materialism says nothing about how material substance should be characterized. In practice, it is frequently assimilated to one variety ofphysicalismor another.

Modern philosophical materialists extend the definition of other scientifically observable entities such asenergy,forces,and thespacetime continuum;some philosophers, such asMary Midgley,suggest that the concept of "matter" is elusive and poorly defined.

During the 19th century,Karl MarxandFriedrich Engelsextended the concept of materialism to elaborate amaterialist conception of historycentered on the roughly empirical world of human activity (practice, including labor) and theinstitutionscreated, reproduced or destroyed by that activity. They also developeddialectical materialism,by takingHegelian dialectics,stripping them of their idealist aspects, and fusing them with materialism (seeModern philosophy).

Non-reductive materialism

Materialism is often associated withreductionism,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, at a more reduced level.

Non-reductive materialismexplicitly rejects this notion, 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 Fodorheld this view, according to which empirical laws and explanations in "special sciences" like psychology or geology are invisible from the perspective of basic physics.

History

Early history

See also:History of metaphysical naturalism

Before Common Era

Materialism developed, possibly independently, in several geographically separated regions ofEurasiaduring whatKarl Jasperstermed theAxial Age(c.800–200 BC).

Inancient Indian philosophy,materialism developed around 600 BC with the works ofAjita Kesakambali,Payasi,Kanadaand the proponents of theCārvākaschool of philosophy. Kanada became one of the early proponents ofatomism.TheNyaya–Vaisesikaschool (c. 600–100 BC) developed one of the earliest forms of atomism (although their proofs of God and their positing that consciousness was not material precludes labelling them as materialists).Buddhist atomismand theJainaschool continued the atomic tradition.

Ancient GreekatomistslikeLeucippus,DemocritusandEpicurusprefigure later materialists. The Latin poemDe Rerum NaturabyLucretius(99 – c. 55 BC) reflects themechanisticphilosophy of Democritus and Epicurus. According to this view, all that exists is matter and void, and all phenomena result from different motions and conglomerations of base material particles calledatoms(literally "indivisibles" ).De Rerum Naturaprovides mechanistic explanations for phenomena such as erosion, evaporation, wind, and sound. Famous principles like "nothing can touch body but body" first appeared in Lucretius's work. Democritus and Epicurus did not espouse a monist ontology, instead espousing the ontological separation of matter and space (i.e. that space is "another kind" of being).

Early Common Era

Wang Chong(27 – c. 100 AD) was a Chinese thinker of the earlyCommon Erasaid to be a materialist.Later Indian materialistJayaraashi Bhatta(6th century) in his workTattvopaplavasimha(The Upsetting of All Principles) refuted theNyāya Sūtraepistemology. The materialisticCārvākaphilosophy appears to have died out some time after 1400; whenMadhavacharyacompiledSarva-darśana-samgraha(A Digest of All Philosophies) in the 14th century, he had no Cārvāka (or Lokāyata) text to quote from or refer to.

In early 12th-centuryal-Andalus,Arabian philosopherIbn Tufail(a.k.a.Abubacer) discussed materialism in hisphilosophical novel,Hayy ibn Yaqdhan(Philosophus Autodidactus), while vaguely foreshadowinghistorical materialism.

Modern philosophy

In France,Pierre Gassendi(1592–1665)represented the materialist tradition in opposition to the attempts ofRené Descartes(1596–1650) to provide thenatural scienceswith dualist foundations. There followed the materialist andatheistabbéJean Meslier(1664–1729), along with theFrench materialists:Julien Offray de La Mettrie(1709–1751),Denis Diderot(1713–1784),Étienne Bonnot de Condillac(1714–1780),Claude Adrien Helvétius(1715–1771), German-FrenchBaron d'Holbach(1723–1789), and other FrenchEnlightenmentthinkers.

In England, materialism was developed in the philosophies ofFrancis Bacon(1561–1626),Thomas Hobbes(1588–1679),andJohn Locke(1632–1704).Scottish EnlightenmentphilosopherDavid Hume(1711–1776) became one of the most important materialist philosophers in the 18th century.John "Walking" Stewart(1747–1822) believed matter has amoraldimension, which had a major impact on the philosophical poetry ofWilliam Wordsworth(1770–1850).

Inlate modern philosophy,German atheistanthropologistLudwig Feuerbachsignaled a new turn in materialism in his 1841 bookThe Essence of Christianity,which presented ahumanistaccount of religion as the outward projection of man's inward nature. Feuerbach introducedanthropological materialism,a version of materialism that views materialist anthropology as theuniversal science.

Feuerbach's variety of materialism heavily influencedKarl Marx,who in the late 19th century elaborated the concept ofhistorical materialism—the basis for what Marx andFriedrich Engelsoutlined asscientific socialism:

The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.

— Friedrich Engels,Socialism: Scientific and Utopian(1880)

Through hisDialectics of Nature(1883), Engels later developed a "materialist dialectic"philosophy of nature,a worldview thatGeorgi Plekhanov,the father of RussianMarxism,calleddialectical materialism.In early 20th-centuryRussian philosophy,Vladimir Leninfurther developed dialectical materialism in his 1909 bookMaterialism and Empirio-criticism,which connects his opponents' political conceptions to their anti-materialist philosophies.

A morenaturalist-oriented materialist school of thought that developed in the mid-19th century wasGerman materialism,which includedLudwig Büchner(1824–1899), the Dutch-bornJacob Moleschott(1822–1893), andCarl Vogt(1817–1895),even though they had different views on core issues such as the evolution and the origins of life.

Contemporary history

See also:Contemporary philosophy

Analytic philosophy

See also:PhysicalismandScientific materialism

Contemporaryanalytic philosophers(e.g.Daniel Dennett,Willard Van Orman Quine,Donald Davidson,andJerry Fodor) operate within a broadly physicalist orscientific materialistframework, producing rival accounts of how best to accommodate themind,includingfunctionalism,anomalous monism,andidentity theory.

Scientific materialism is often synonymous with, and has typically been described as, areductive materialism.In the early 21st century,PaulandPatricia Churchlandadvocated a radically contrasting position (at least in regard to certain hypotheses):eliminative materialism.Eliminative materialism holds that some mental phenomena simply do not exist at all, and that talk of such phenomena reflects a spurious "folk psychology"andintrospection illusion.A materialist of this variety might believe that a concept like "belief" has no basis in fact (e.g. the way folk science speaks of demon-caused illnesses).

With reductive materialism at one end of a continuum (our theories willreduceto facts) and eliminative materialism at the other (certain theories will need to beeliminatedin light of new facts),revisionary materialismis somewhere in the middle.

Continental philosophy

See also:New materialisms,Speculative materialism,andTranscendental materialism

Contemporarycontinental philosopherGilles Deleuzehas attempted to rework and strengthen classical materialist ideas.Contemporary theorists such asManuel DeLanda,working with this reinvigorated materialism, have come to be classified asnew materialists.New materialismhas become its own subfield, with courses on it at major universities, as well as numerous conferences, edited collections and monographs devoted to it.

Jane Bennett's 2010 bookVibrant Matterhas been particularly instrumental in bringing theories of monist ontology andvitalismback into a critical theoretical fold dominated bypoststructuralisttheories of language and discourse.Scholars such asMel Y. Chenand Zakiyyah Iman Jackson have critiqued this body of new materialist literature for neglecting to consider the materiality of race and gender in particular.

Métis scholarZoe Todd,as well asMohawk(Bear Clan, Six Nations) andAnishinaabescholar Vanessa Watts,query the colonial orientation of the race for a "new" materialism.Watts in particular describes the tendency to regard matter as a subject of feminist or philosophical care as a tendency too invested in the reanimation of aEurocentrictradition of inquiry at the expense of an Indigenous ethic of responsibility.Other scholars, such as Helene Vosters, echo their concerns and have questioned whether there is anything particularly "new" about "new materialism", as Indigenous and otheranimistontologies have attested to what might be called the "vibrancy of matter" for centuries.Others, such asThomas Nail,have critiqued "vitalist" versions of new materialism for depoliticizing "flat ontology" and being ahistorical.

Quentin Meillassouxproposedspeculative materialism,apost-Kantianreturn toDavid Humealso based on materialist ideas.

Defining "matter"

The nature and definition ofmatter—like other key concepts in science and philosophy—have occasioned much debate:

• Is there a single kind of matter (hyle) that everything is made of, or are there multiple kinds?
• Is matter a continuous substance capable of expressing multiple forms (hylomorphism)or a number of discrete, unchanging constituents (atomism)?
• Does matter have intrinsic properties (substance theory)or lack them (prima materia)?

One challenge to the conventional concept of matter as tangible "stuff" came with the rise offield physicsin the 19th century.Relativityshows that matter and energy (including the spatially distributed energy of fields) are interchangeable. This enables the ontological view that energy isprima materiaand matter is one of its forms. In contrast, theStandard Modelof particle physics usesquantum field theoryto describe all interactions. On this view it could be said that fields areprima materiaand the energy is a property of the field.

According to the dominant cosmological model, theLambda-CDM model,less than 5% of the universe's energy density is made up of the "matter" the Standard Model describes, and most of the universe is composed ofdark matteranddark energy,with little agreement among scientists about what these are made of.

With the advent of quantum physics, some scientists believed the concept of matter had merely changed, while others believed the conventional position could no longer be maintained.Werner Heisenbergsaid: "The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible...atoms are not things."

The concept of matter has changed in response to new scientific discoveries. Thus materialism has no definite content independent of the particular theory of matter on which it is based. According toNoam Chomsky,anypropertycan be considered material, if one defines matter such that it has that property.

Thephilosophical materialistGustavo Buenouses a more precise term thanmatter,thestroma.

Physicalism

Main article:Physicalism

George Stack distinguishes between materialism and physicalism:

In the twentieth century, physicalism has emerged out of positivism. Physicalism restricts meaningful statements to physical bodies or processes that are verifiable or in principle verifiable. It is an empirical hypothesis that is subject to revision and, hence, lacks the dogmatic stance of classical materialism.Herbert Feigldefended physicalism in the United States and consistently held that mental states are brain states and that mental terms have the same referent as physical terms. The twentieth century has witnessed many materialist theories of the mental, and much debate surrounding them.

But not all conceptions of physicalism are tied to verificationist theories of meaning or direct realist accounts of perception. Rather, physicalists believe that no "element of reality" is missing from the mathematical formalism of our best description of the world. "Materialist" physicalists also believe that the formalism describes fields of insentience. In other words, the intrinsic nature of the physical is non-experiential.

Religious and spiritual views

Christianity

Main article:Materialism and Christianity

Hinduism andTranscendental Club

See also:Vaisheshika

MostHindusandtranscendentalistsregard all matter as an illusion, ormaya,blinding humans from the truth. Transcendental experiences like the perception ofBrahmanare considered to destroy the illusion.

Criticism and alternatives

From contemporary physicists

Rudolf Peierls,a physicist who played a major role in theManhattan Project,rejected materialism: "The premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being... including knowledge and consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing. "

Erwin Schrödingersaid, "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."

Werner Heisenbergwrote: "Theontologyof materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible... Atoms are not things. "

Quantum mechanics

Some 20th-century physicists (e.g.,Eugene WignerandHenry Stapp),and some modern physicists and science writers (e.g.,Stephen Barr,Paul Davies,andJohn Gribbin) have argued that materialism is flawed due to certain recent findings in physics, such asquantum mechanicsandchaos theory.According to Gribbin and Davies (1991):

Then came our Quantum theory, which totally transformed our image of matter. The old assumption that the microscopic world of atoms was simply a scaled-down version of the everyday world had to be abandoned. Newton's deterministic machine was replaced by a shadowy and paradoxical conjunction of waves and particles, governed by the laws of chance, rather than the rigid rules of causality. An extension of the quantum theory goes beyond even this; it paints a picture in which solid matter dissolves away, to be replaced by weird excitations and vibrations of invisible field energy. Quantum physics undermines materialism because it reveals that matter has far less "substance" than we might believe. But another development goes even further by demolishing Newton's image of matter as inert lumps. This development is the theory of chaos, which has recently gained widespread attention.

— Paul Davies and John Gribbin,The Matter Myth,Chapter 1: "The Death of Materialism"

Digital physics

The objections of Davies and Gribbin are shared by proponents ofdigital physics,who view information rather than matter as fundamental. The physicist and proponent of digital physicsJohn Archibald Wheelerwrote, "all matter and all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe."Some founders of quantum theory, such asMax Planck,shared their objections. He wrote:

As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.

— Max Planck,Das Wesen der Materie(1944)

James Jeansconcurred with Planck, saying, "The Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter."

Philosophical objections

In theCritique of Pure Reason,Immanuel Kantargued against materialism in defending histranscendental idealism(as well as offering arguments againstsubjective idealismandmind–body dualism).But Kant argues that change and time require an enduring substrate.

Postmodern/poststructuralistthinkers also express skepticism about any all-encompassing metaphysical scheme. PhilosopherMary Midgleyargues that materialism is aself-refuting idea,at least in itseliminative materialistform.

During the 20th century, several other philosophers also offered specific criticisms related to the fundamental concepts underlying scientific materialism. Among them was the Australian scholarColin Murray Turbayne,who in hisThe Myth of Metaphoranalyzes the limitations associated with several metaphors routinely incorporated as literal constructs in the "mechanistic" explanations of the universe first outlined byIsaac Newtonand Descartes'smind-body dualism,such as "substance" and "substratum", which according to Turbayne have little if any meaning. He further argues that such physicalist theories of the universe generally rely upon mechanistic metaphors drawn through the use of deductive logic for the synthesis of their respective hypotheses.Turbayne observes that modern man has become victimized by the metaphors underlying these hypotheses, which have been unintentionally interpreted as examples of literal truth despite their limitations.

Varieties of idealism

Arguments foridealism,such as those ofHegelandBerkeley,often take the form of an argument against materialism; indeed, Berkeley's idealism was calledimmaterialism.Now, matter can be argued to be redundant, as inbundle theory,and mind-independent properties can, in turn, be reduced to subjectivepercepts.Berkeley gives an example of the latter by pointing out that it is impossible to gather direct evidence of matter, as there is no direct experience of matter; all that is experienced is perception, whether internal or external. As such, matter's existence can only be inferred from the apparent (perceived) stability of perceptions; it finds absolutely no evidence in direct experience.

If matter and energy are seen as necessary to explain the physical world, but incapable of explaining mind,dualismresults.Emergence,holismandprocess philosophyseek to ameliorate the perceived shortcomings of traditional (especiallymechanistic) materialism without abandoning materialism entirely.

Materialism as methodology

Some critics object to materialism as part of an overly skeptical, narrow orreductivistapproach to theorizing, rather than to the ontological claim that matter is the only substance.Particle physicistand AnglicantheologianJohn Polkinghorneobjects to what he callspromissory materialism—claims that materialistic science will eventually succeed in explaining phenomena it has not so far been able to explain.Polkinghorne prefers "dual-aspect monism"to materialism.

Some scientific materialists have been criticized for failing to provide clear definitions of matter, leaving the termmaterialismwithout any definite meaning.Noam Chomskystates that since the concept of matter may be affected by new scientific discoveries, as has happened in the past, scientific materialists are being dogmatic in assuming the opposite.

See also

• Aleatory materialism
• Antimaterialismbeliefs:
  • Gnosticism
  • Idealism
  • Immaterialism
  • Maya (religion)
  • Mind–body dualism
  • Platonic realism
  • Supernaturalism
  • Transcendentalism
• Cārvāka
• Christian materialism
• Critical realism
• Cultural materialism
• Dialectical materialism
• Economic materialism
• Existence
• French materialism
• Grotesque body
• Historical materialism
• Hyle
• Incorporeality
• Madhyamaka,a philosophy ofMiddle Way
• Marxist philosophy of nature
• Materialist feminism
• Metaphysical naturalism
• Model-dependent realism
• Naturalism (philosophy)
• Philosophical materialism
• Philosophy of mind
• Physicalism
• Postmaterialism
• Quantum energy
• Rational egoism
• Reality in Buddhism
• Scientistic materialism
• Substance theory
• Transcendence (religion)

Notes

a.^{^}Indeed, it has been noted it is difficult if not impossible to define one category without contrasting it with the other.

Further reading

• Buchner, L. (1920).Force and Matter.New York, Peter Eckler Publishing Co.
• Churchland, Paul (1981).Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes.The Philosophy of Science. Boyd, Richard; P. Gasper; J. D. Trout. Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press.
• Field, Hartry H.(1981), "Mental representation", in Block, Ned Joel (ed.),Readings in Philosophy of Psychology,vol. 2, Taylor & Francis,ISBN9780416746006
• Flanagan, Owen J. (1991).Science of the Mind 2e.MIT Press.ISBN978-0-262-56056-6.Retrieved19 December2012.
• Fodor, J.A. (1974). "Special Sciences",Synthese,Vol. 28.
• Gunasekara, Victor A. (2001). "Buddhism and the Modern World".Basic Buddhism: A Modern Introduction to the Buddha's Teaching ". 18 January 2008
• Kim, J. (1994)Multiple Realization and the Metaphysics of Reduction,Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,Vol. 52.
• La Mettrie, La Mettrie, Julien Offray de(1748).L'Homme Machine(Man a Machine)
• Lange, Friedrich A. (1925)The History of Materialism.New York, Harcourt, Brace, & Co.
• Moser, Paul K.; Trout, J. D. (1995).Contemporary Materialism: A Reader.Psychology Press.ISBN978-0-415-10863-8.Retrieved19 December2012.
• Priest, Stephen (1991),Theories of the Mind,London:Penguin Books,ISBN0-14-013069-1AlternativeISBN978-0-14-013069-0
• Schopenhauer, Arthur (1969).The World as Will and Representation.New York, Dover Publications, Inc.
• Seidner, Stanley S. (10 June 2009)."A Trojan Horse: Logotherapeutic Transcendence and its Secular Implications for Theology".Mater Dei Institute
• Turner, MS (5 January 2007). "Quarks and the Cosmos".Science.315(5808): 59–61.Bibcode:2007Sci...315...59T.doi:10.1126/science.1136276.PMID17204637.S2CID30977763.
• Vitzthum, Richard C. (1995)Materialism: An Affirmative History and Definition.Amherst, New York, Prometheus Books.

External links

• "Materialism".Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 17 (11th ed.). 1911.
• Stanford Encyclopedia:
  • Physicalism
  • Eliminative Materialism
• Philosophical Materialism (by Richard C. Vitzthum)from infidels.org
• Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind on Materialismfrom theUniversity of Waterloo
• A new theory of ideomaterialism being a synthesis of idealism and materialism