Materialism
Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions of material things. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are caused by physical processes, such as the neurochemistry of the human brain and nervous system, without which they cannot exist. Materialism directly contrasts with idealism, according to which consciousness is the fundamental substance of nature.
Materialism is closely related to physicalism—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 energies and forces, and exotic matter). Thus, some prefer the term physicalism to materialism, while others use the terms as if they were synonymous.
Materialism is supported by modern science, specifically
Overview
Materialism belongs to the class of
Despite the large number of philosophical schools and their nuances,[1][2][3] all philosophies are said to fall into one of two primary categories, defined in contrast to each other: idealism and materialism.[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.[3]
The materialist view is perhaps best understood in its opposition to the doctrines of immaterial substance applied to the mind historically by René Descartes; 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.
Modern philosophical materialists extend the definition of other scientifically observable entities such as
During the 19th century,
Non-reductive materialism
Materialism is often associated with
Non-reductive materialism explicitly 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 Fodor held this view, according to which empirical laws and explanations in "special sciences" like psychology or geology are invisible from the perspective of basic physics.[6]
Neuroscience
Neuroscience, the scientific study of the nervous system and its relationship to behavior and cognition, has made significant progress in understanding the origin of consciousness and mental processes. Neuroscience supports the materialist view as it shows how consciousness and mental processes are correlated with neural activity in the brain. Neuroscience has identified neural correlates of consciousness (NCC), patterns of brain activity closely associated with subjective experiences.[7][8] Studies using techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and magnetoencephalography (MEG) have identified specific brain regions and networks that are active during conscious experiences, such as the prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, and thalamus.[9][10]
Observations of people with brain lesions or neurological disorders provide further evidence for the origin of mental processes in the brain. Damage to specific brain regions has been shown to lead to corresponding deficits in cognitive function, perception, memory, emotion, and consciousness. For example, damage to the occipital lobe can result in blindness, while damage to the amygdala can affect emotional processing. Neuroscience has elucidated the intricate networks of neurons and synapses that underlie complex cognitive processes and behaviors. Through techniques such as neuroimaging and optogenetics, researchers can observe and locate activity patterns of neural circuits involved in various mental processes.
The effects of drugs and medications on consciousness and mental states provide further evidence for the role of neurochemistry in affecting cognitive functions. Psychoactive substances act on neurotransmitter systems in the brain, altering patterns of neural activity and producing changes in consciousness, perception, mood, and behavior.
History
Early history
Before Common Era
Materialism developed, possibly independently, in several geographically separated regions of Eurasia during what Karl Jaspers termed the Axial Age (c. 800–200 BC).
In
Early Common Era
In early 12th-century
Modern philosophy
In
Feuerbach's variety of materialism heavily influenced Karl Marx,[17] who in the late 19th century elaborated the concept of historical materialism—the basis for what Marx and Friedrich Engels outlined as scientific 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 his
A more naturalist-oriented materialist school of thought that developed in the mid-19th century was German materialism, which included Ludwig Büchner (1824–1899), the Dutch-born Jacob Moleschott (1822–1893), and Carl Vogt (1817–1895),[19][20] even though they had different views on core issues such as the evolution and the origins of life.[21]
Contemporary history
Analytic philosophy
Contemporary
Scientific materialism is often synonymous with, and has typically been described as, a
With reductive materialism at one end of a continuum (our theories will reduce to facts) and eliminative materialism at the other (certain theories will need to be eliminated in light of new facts),
Continental philosophy
Contemporary
Métis scholar Zoe Todd, as well as Mohawk (Bear Clan, Six Nations) and Anishinaabe scholar Vanessa Watts,[30] query the colonial orientation of the race for a "new" materialism.[31] 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 a Eurocentric tradition of inquiry at the expense of an Indigenous ethic of responsibility.[32] Other scholars, such as Helene Vosters, echo their concerns and have questioned whether there is anything particularly "new" about "new materialism", as Indigenous and other animist ontologies have attested to what might be called the "vibrancy of matter" for centuries.[33] Others, such as Thomas Nail, have critiqued "vitalist" versions of new materialism for depoliticizing "flat ontology" and being ahistorical.[34][35]
Defining "matter"
The nature and definition of matter—like other key concepts in science and philosophy—have occasioned much debate:[37]
- 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)[38] or a number of discrete, unchanging constituents (atomism)?[39]
- Does matter have intrinsic properties (substance theory)[40] or lack them (prima materia)?
One challenge to the conventional concept of matter as tangible "stuff" came with the rise of
According to the dominant cosmological model, the Lambda-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 of dark matter and dark energy, with little agreement among scientists about what these are made of.[42]
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 Heisenberg said: "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."[43]
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 to Noam Chomsky, any property can be considered material, if one defines matter such that it has that property.[44]
The philosophical materialist Gustavo Bueno uses a more precise term than matter, the stroma.[45]
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 Feigl defended 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.[46]
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.[citation needed]
Religious and spiritual views
Christianity
Hinduism and Transcendental Club
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Most
Criticism and alternatives
From contemporary physicists
Rudolf Peierls, a physicist who played a major role in the Manhattan 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."[48]
Erwin Schrödinger said, "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."[49]
Werner Heisenberg wrote: "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."[50]
Quantum mechanics
Some 20th-century physicists (e.g., Eugene Wigner[51] and Henry Stapp),[52] and some modern physicists and science writers (e.g., Stephen Barr,[53] Paul Davies, and John Gribbin) have argued that materialism is flawed due to certain recent findings in physics, such as quantum mechanics and chaos 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 of digital physics, who view information rather than matter as fundamental. The physicist and proponent of digital physics John Archibald Wheeler wrote, "all matter and all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe."[54] Some founders of quantum theory, such as Max 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 Jeans concurred 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."[55]
Philosophical objections
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant argued against materialism in defending his transcendental idealism (as well as offering arguments against subjective idealism and mind–body dualism).[56][57] But Kant argues that change and time require an enduring substrate.[58][59]
During the 20th century, several other philosophers also offered specific criticisms related to the fundamental concepts underlying scientific materialism. Among them was the Australian scholar
Varieties of idealism
Arguments for
If matter and energy are seen as necessary to explain the physical world, but incapable of explaining mind,
Materialism as methodology
Some critics object to materialism as part of an overly skeptical, narrow or
Some scientific materialists have been criticized for failing to provide clear definitions of matter, leaving the term materialism without any definite meaning. Noam Chomsky states 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.[44]
See also
- Aleatory materialism
- Antimaterialism beliefs:
- 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 of Middle 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.[2][3]
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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.
- ISBN 9780416746006
- Flanagan, Owen J. (1991). Science of the Mind 2e. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-56056-6. Retrieved 19 December 2012.
- 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. ISBN 978-0-415-10863-8. Retrieved 19 December 2012.
- Priest, Stephen (1991), Theories of the Mind, London: ISBN 978-0-14-013069-0
- 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. S2CID 30977763.
- Vitzthum, Richard C. (1995) Materialism: An Affirmative History and Definition. Amherst, New York, Prometheus Books.
External links
- Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (11th ed.). 1911. .
- Stanford Encyclopedia:
- Philosophical Materialism (by Richard C. Vitzthum) from infidels.org
- Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind on Materialism from the University of Waterloo
- A new theory of ideomaterialism being a synthesis of idealism and materialism