Materialist Roll Call...

Almost all of the posts I have read here in the Philosophy and Religion forums come from people who are spiritualists or dualists. Are physicalists/materialists an endangered species here?

 

Appears so.


Then again we Hippies tend to view materialism as a product of Capitalism (the Nemisis of peace and love).

So what's your view on it?

Blessings

Sebbi

 

I think he means materialist as in...believing that everything stems from some ultimate physical matter. If something is hot, it just means molecules are vibrating more rapidly; color of light is just the frequency of the wavelength of photon; all sensations and emotions are just chemical reactions in the brain, etc.

Or did you mean something else infinity? Feel free to elaborate on your viewpoint. I'm interested in hearing it.

 

Ah I see. Right now it makes sense.

I'm not sure what I think of materialism. I think if you're a physicist then fair enough but if you're a biologist then you're more likely to believe in ideologism.

I have always been very good at finding ways of reconciling two opposing philosophies and that is very simple, they don't neccesarily have to make logical sense together. I am both a materialist and a spiritualist.

I believe that the material universe can exist completely independantly of anything else, it's just that the other bits make it a whole lot more beautiful.

Blessings

Sebbi

 

Yet it is Karl Marx who is often thought of as the originator of 'historical materialism' in philosophy/sociology.
Then again, Marx was arguably a product of capitalism himself.

 

it's really hard to tell, but i guess i'm leaning toward a materialistic viewpoint right now

 

Scientific Pantheists could be included as materialists, and so could people who follow Gurdjieff's Fourth Way...and so could Jainists (possibly the worlds oldest religion), if I am not mistaken.

 

I don't know where you're info on Gurdjieff comes from, but it is clear enough to anyone who has read either 'Beelzebub's Tales' , 'Meetings with Remarkable Men' or the works of either Ouspensky or Bennett that Gurdjieff was certainly not a materialist.
For one thing, he told Ouspensky that he would teach people 'how to become Christians'. But In Beelzebub's Tales, the whole universe is quite obviously created by 'Our common Father Endlessness'. Ie God.
Also, Gurdjieff is extremely critical of modern scientific theories. 'Wise-acring' I believe is the term he uses.
And further - in Beelzebub's tales, the general planetary disaster is traced back to the actions of certain 'higher beings' who were forced, due to their own lack of foresight to install in human beings the famous 'organ kunderbuffer', the 'crystalized consequences' of which represent all the disfunction and difficulties of the human race.

 

Jains (not jainists) are not materialists at all, they the exact opposite, nondualists, practioners of the same vedanta philosophy that drives hinduism and buddhism also.

 

humandraydel:

sebbi:

sebbi, materialists belive that the physical world is all there is. so depending on what your definition of spiritualism is, i don't know that it's possible to be both.
having said that, i believe that spirituality is the embracement of beauty. it's just that most people believe that spirituality includes non-materialistic things such as karma, god, feng shui, etc. thus, i define myself as a spiritual atheist, something that im sure would normally be refuted.

sebbi, i intended to refute your claim that you could be both materialist and spiritualist, but having just admitted to be a 'spiritual atheist' im not sure i can without being hypocritical!

peace out.

 

Why don't we start we phenomenalist role call too?

Here.

Anyone else?

 

is that not the same as materialism?

 

Not quite.


As far as I know, the first phenomenalist was Locke, who said that substance is something he "knows not what." So why can't we know what substance, or matter, is? Well, substance is the thing in which all qualities inhere. So, then substance has to be qualitiless. An atom, for example, is not substance in that it is not an atom in the way Democritus used the term. Everyone knows now that atoms, in fact, are divisible. Some phenomenalists will argue that things like atoms, force, etc. are just abstractions. But I think its downright ignorant to ignore the findings of natural scientists. The atom may not be the smallest possible particle, but its not an abstraction. At the very least, its a representation, and representations can still correspond with the state of affairs. But the bottom line, I think, is that we will never be able to find out exactly what substance is because it lacks qualities, so it can never be perceived by the senses.

 

by what do you mean by "substance"? i can't quite pick it up from your context. do you mean 'the thing that makes up all other matter', or 'the thing that is contained inside all matter'?

 

To say that substance is matter is slightly inaccurate, since substance isn't necessarily material. It could be, for example, psychical as Berkeley or Hegel would argue. To say that substance is contained in matter is also inaccurate because, to materialists, matter is substance. To anyone else, that statement would be false, to a materialist, it's just redundant.

After thinking about it for a bit, the best way I can define substance is as follows: "Substance is a thing that, if it were not there, none of the qualities of every-day objects, such as tables and chairs, would be there, either.

It's an obvious statement really, something like, "if the table didn't have substance, it wouldn't be here, and neither would it be hard, brown, or anything else usually associated with tables." But it tells us a few important things about substance: 1) Substance is a thing, not a quality. 2) Substance is the cause of all qualities. 3) Substance is the thing in which all qualities inhere.

 

So you're saying the table is merely an idea and the substance is all that there is, an illusion of product?

 

Absolutely not, although idealism is one way you can go. It's the way Berkeley went, but it just so happens to be the wrong way. Philosophers have dug themselves into a deep pit with metaphysics. It's a mess. It's not analytic, it's not verifiable, and it's not falsifiable. Metaphysics doesn't deal with anything that's knowable. The principles of metaphysics should be re-examined, one by one, to see if they are transferrable or not to physics, the theories of which are verifiable and falsifiable. Those metaphysical priciples that do not meet the standards of verifiability or falsifiability or common sense should be thrown out. I'm writing a paper on it right now.

 

so you're saying that the precise definition of what 'substance' is, depends on your ideology? so:
to a materialist, substance is matter;
to a spiritualist, substance is beyond matter;
to a religious person, substance is god; etc.

but essentially, substance is what makes up everything else. something that, if it didnt exist, neither would anything else.

this what you're saying?

 

Yeah, pretty much.

 

the sine quo non of the universe.