Talk:Materialism

There is a classic difference between rationalism and empiricism. Materialism seems to be a refinement of rationalism, throwing out the ridiculousness of "true objects" by substituting generic "matter" instead, with a goal of representing an inflexible reality external to individual minds, in a way more plausible than classical rationalism. In this article it says "materialism stands in sharp contrast to idealism". When one goes to read about idealism, Plato is listed there as proposing "an idealist theory as a solution to the problem of universals", referring of course to Platonic Realism. If materialism is a refinement of rationalism to the extent it postures a rigid external reality, this article is contradictory by saying materialism contrasts idealism. It is also contradictory with the following phrase "Materialism has frequently been understood to designate an entire scientific, rationalistic world view".

In the idealism article it says "Confusingly, because this idea asserts that these mental entities are real, it is also called Platonic realism".

No, this is not confusing at all. Science is empirical. Since empiricism has taken over contemporarily, rationalism, or the idea that there is supreme authority, supreme truth, and of course supreme people to tell us what these are, has tried very hard to catch up.

Articles such as this on materialism serve only to muddy the water philosophically, by not properly representing the historical contrast between rationalism and empiricism. McDivitt Oct 03 2006

Add information on "mechanistic materialism"? --Daniel C. Boyer

There are links to both eliminative materialism and eliminativist materialism from this page -- are they the same thing, or subtly different? Should these two linked pages be merged? -- Karada 12:02, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I can't make sense of "Eliminativist materialism". Sounds just nonsense to me. See discussion there. So I'd say: suppress that link. --FvdP 20:18, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

In what way does the Marxist sense of "Materialism" fit in here? I mean the idea that the material conditions is what shapes history and forms the ideas. Which is opposite to idealism which says that it is the ideas that shape history. BL 09:54, Jan 21, 2004 (UTC)

==Materialism in Society== Often seen as mankind wanting material goods which are often seen as the trappings of wealth. We want cars and to have them replaced at whim with faster and more recent models, for example. Most developed nations want to enjoy the recent developments in science and technology. As the speed of development grows people's waste and rejection of older technology leads to huge problems in waste management and diminishing finite natural resources.

To me, this is irrelevant -- we're talking about the philosophical sense of materialism here. In addition, this is badly written and POV. --Adam Conover 22:45, Mar 27, 2004 (UTC)

It's not irrelevant. I came to the Materialism page specifically to find out how the popular definition (of 'materialism' as a culture of greed), which appears to be only peripherally related to the philosophical one, came to be so popularly understood. What person originated 'materialism' in the sense of greed?

Meaning of this sentence?

The text says:

In this view, subjective thoughts and speech affect the historical process only via practice.

It is not at all clear to me what this sentence is intended to convey. Surely it doesn't mean that by practicing one's speech skills one will influence historical process, but that would be the superficial explanation. Does it just mean that thought influence history only if one talks about it? That would be a very strange thing to say. It would imply that a military strategist would have to give speeches rather than give orders in order to have an impact on whether battles would be won or lost. P0M 23:33, 16 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

evolutionary materialism

I looked in vain in Materialism for any mention of materialism as applied to evolution. Am I missing something, or is someone deliberately trying to censor Wikipedia? I refer to the redirect from evolutionary materialism which user:JoshuaSchneider made.

Granted that most scientists are materialists, and many philosophers besides. But does this mean that it goes without saying that "evolution" is "unguided"? Eli Weisel and his 38 scientist friends seem to think it requires saying, especially in light of the U.S. creation-evolution controversy.

So I think Wikipedia needs a separate evolutionary materialism article, until Materialism gets a section which describes it just as well as a sidebar article. Uncle Ed 18:09, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As shown on the Talk:Evolutionary materialism page, this is all just original research. It doesn't belong in Wikipedia. User:Ed Poor needs to do competent research before spouting in Wikipedia articles. --Joshuaschroeder 18:39, 22 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Since I can't seem to convince Ed Poor, and it seems to me that redirecting here might not be the most appropriate avenue, I have reinstated the article and asked for an AfD vote. --Joshuaschroeder 18:32, 23 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Matter and Energy, Space and Time

With respect to "the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter", it might be a good idea to indicate that matter here is not meant in the sense of "In physics, matter is everything that is constituted of elementary fermions." (Matter). Light, for instance, is not Matter in this sense, but it is certainly material in the philosophical sense.

Pmurray bigpond.com 06:08, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

changed opening sentence

I changed the opening sentence because philosophers actually seperately believe in/debate the existence of other, different types of "things" including sets, properties (i.e. universals), events, propositions, time, and space.

Materialism does not reject the existence of those other types of things, it rejects the dualist notion that there are both material and non-material substances.

This addresses the point above ("energy, space, and time") about other types of things existing.

I also think this page needs a lot of work, as it doesn't even mention many of materialism's contemporary advocates. Perhaps this page should be merged with the mind-body problem page?

Reverted. You did not read the intro carefully. Materialist say that all other "things" are derivative of matter. Besides, what is "substance" anyway? `'mikka (t) 00:04, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Energy?

The first paragraph says "... the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter...". I'm not very familiar with the philisophy, so what about energy? That can't be said to exist? Bubba73 (talk), 22:13, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Whoops, never mind. Later in the article it says "... extends to all scientifically observable entities such as energy, ..." Bubba73 (talk), 22:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Biased and narrow view of materialism

It is simply wrong to flatly equate materialism with physicalism at the outset.

The remarks about Marx are totally inaccurate.

Materialism also includes, of course, dialectical materialism, but also the emergent materialism of Roy Wood Sellars.

For fear of persecution among other reasons, American philosophers have shied away from "materialism", preferring the less threatening term "naturalism". This was admitted by Marvin Farber, who used both terms to describe his position. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nancy Nickies (talk • contribs) 18:23, 17 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Monist ideology?

I would argue that the current scientific worldview admits the existence of two quite diferent things: space/time and matter/energy. This dualism suffers from the usual problem of any dualism: if reality is made of two inconmesurable things, how do they interact at all? Resolving this dualism is a very active program in fundamental science (Theories of everything, reality as "holographic", string theory etc).

Perhaps we need to make clear that when this article speaks of matter, it is using the word in a philosophical sense rather than a scientific sense.

Marx and Engels never used the term Dialectical Materialism. That was Stalin. You might want to change that.

Referencing the views

Although a number of books are cited there is little or no referencing of the statements made here. The whole thing needs to be tightened up consideably. NBeale 14:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Puzzling claims

'Parapsychologist Imants Baruss 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 [4], but remains entrenched in academia apparently for largely political reasons"[5]'

Given that materialism and physicalism are almost synonymous, it is puzzling to hear that materialism is incorrect in general for physical phenomena.

'The scientist and philsopher 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[6]".

Again, a how can the evolutionary study of cognition end up contradicting materialism? Surely evolution is biology , and living organisms are material? The paper seems to require the reader to adopt Randrup's ontology in order to make sense of his evidence.

Surely clearer arguments from better-known figures can be found1Z 23:12, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]