Materialism

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. Usually the view that everything, or everything in a certain sphere, is made of matter: only matter exists, and mind, spirit, etc. are either illusory (eliminative materialism) or (a commoner view) can be somehow reduced to matter (reductive materialism). A non-reductive and non-eliminative materialism may also be based on SUPERVENIENCE. The IDENTITY THEORY OF MIND is often called simply materialism, and along with ‘physicalism’ the term may apply to any theory saying that the mental is nothing over and above the physical. (Materialists may or may not also deny the independent reality of abstract things like universals.) In another sense, uncommon as a sense of the word in philosophy, materialism says mind, etc. are real enough but causally dependent on matter: a weak version would say that if there had been no matter there would be no mind; a stronger version would add that if matter were destroyed mind would vanish too. Also uncommon in philosophy is ‘materialist’ in the sense of ‘emphasizing material values (food and drink, etc.)’. Dialetical materialism, however, which applies Hegel’s DIALECTICAL process to a material rather than spiritual reality, does emphasize material values in that it makes economic considerations both the cause and the proper end of human, and especially social, action. See also REDUCTIONISM.

D.M.Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of Mind, Routledge, 1968, revised 1993. (Cf.

also his Universals and Scientific Realism, Cambridge UP, 1978, rejecting substantial universals but also extreme nominalism).

T.Horgan, ‘From supervenience to superdupervenience’, Mind, 1993. (See esp. §7 for kinds of materialism, with many references.)

A.Quinton, The Nature of Things, RKP, 1973. (Materialist standpoint.)

H.Robinson (ed.), Objections to Physicalism, Clarendon, 1993. (Specially written essays. See editor’s ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–3, for uses of ‘materialism’ and ‘physicalism’.)

D.-H.Ruben, Marxism and Materialism: A Study in Marxist Theory of Knowledge, Harvester, 1977, revised 1979. (Tries to mediate between Marxist and Anglo-Saxon philosophy. See Introduction for senses of ‘materialism’.) See also bibliography to IDENTITY THEORY OF MIND.

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