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3 MODERN SCHOOLS
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The word Materialism has been used in
modern times to refer to a family of metaphysical theories (i.e.,
theories on the nature of reality) that can
best be defined by saying that a theory tends to be called Materialism if it is
felt sufficiently to resemble a paradigmatic theory that will here be called
mechanical Materialism. This section covers the various types of Materialism and
the ways by which they are distinguished and traces the history of Materialism
from the Greeks and Romans to modern and contemporary Materialisms. (see also mechanism) |
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Mechanical Materialism is the theory
that the world consists entirely of hard, massy material objects, which, though
perhaps imperceptibly small, are otherwise like such things as stones. (A slight
modification is to allow the void--or empty space--to exist also in its own
right.) These objects interact in the sort of way that stones do: by impact and
possibly also by gravitational attraction. The theory denies that immaterial or
apparently immaterial things (such as minds)
exist or else explains them away as being material things or motions of material
things. (see also consciousness
, matter) |
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In modern physics
(if interpreted realistically), however, matter is conceived as made up of such
things as electrons, protons, and mesons, which are very unlike the hard, massy,
stonelike particles of mechanical Materialism. In it the distinction between
matter and energy has also broken down. It is therefore natural to extend the
word Materialist beyond the above paradigm case (of mechanical Materialism) to
cover anyone who bases his theory on whatever it is that physics asserts
ultimately to exist. This sort may be called physicalistic
Materialism. Such a Materialist allows the concept of material thing to
be extended so as to include all of the elementary particles
and other things that are postulated in fundamental physical theory--perhaps
even continuous fields and points of space-time. Inasmuch as some cosmologists
even try to define the elementary particles themselves in terms of the curvature
of space-time, there is no reason why a philosophy based on such a geometricized
cosmology should not be counted as Materialist, provided that it does not give
an independent existence to nonphysical things such as minds. (see also science,
philosophy of) |
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Another sort of departure from the
paradigm leads in the direction of what might be called a deistic Materialism.
In this view it would be allowed that, although there is a spiritual Creator of
the universe, he does not interfere with the created universe, which is itself
describable in terms of mechanical or physicalist Materialism. (see also Deism) |
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Still another departure from the
paradigm is the theory that holds that everything is composed of material
particles (or physical entities generally) but also holds that there are special
laws applying to complexes of physical entities, such as living cells or brains,
that are not reducible to the laws that apply to the fundamental physical
entities. (To avoid inconsistency, such a theory may have to allow that the
ordinary laws of physics do not wholly apply within such complex entities.) Such
a theory, which could be called "emergent Materialism," can shade off,
however, into theories that one would not wish to call Materialist, such as
hylozoism, which ascribes vital characteristics to all matter, and panpsychism,
which attributes a mindlike character to all constituents of material things. |
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Another common relaxation of the
paradigm is that which allows as compatible with Materialism such a theory as epiphenomenalism,
according to which sensations and thoughts do
exist in addition to material processes but are nonetheless wholly dependent on
material processes and without causal efficacy of their own. They are related to
material things somewhat in the way that a man's shadow is related to the man. A
similar departure from the paradigm is a form of what might be called
"double-aspect Materialism," according to which in inner experience
men are acquainted with nonphysical properties
of material processes, though these properties are not causally effective. A
form of double-aspect theory in which these properties were allowed to be
causally effective would be a species of emergent Materialism. (see also sense-datum) |
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Of course, more than one of these
qualifications might be made at the same time: thus a person might wish to speak
of "physicalist deistic epiphenomenalist Materialism." If no other
qualifications are intended, it is convenient to use the word extreme and to
speak, for example, of "extreme physicalist Materialism"--which is
probably the type most discussed among professional philosophers in
English-speaking countries. |
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In the wider world, however, the word
Materialism most commonly brings to mind dialectical
Materialism, which is the orthodox philosophy of Communist countries. This is most importantly a theory of how
changes arise in human history, though a general metaphysical theory lies in the
background. Dialectical Materialists contrast their view with what they call
"vulgar" Materialism; and it does, indeed, appear that their theory is
not an extreme Materialism, whether mechanical or physicalist. They seem to hold
merely that mental processes are dependent on or have evolved from material
ones. Though they might be akin to emergent Materialists, it is hard to be sure;
their assertion that something new emerges at higher levels of organization
might refer only to such things as that a wireless receiver is different from a
mere heap of the same components. And if so, even an extreme physicalistic
Materialist could acquiesce in this view. The distinctive features of
dialectical Materialism would, thus, seem to lie as much in its being
dialectical as in its being Materialist. Its dialectical side may be epitomized
in three laws: (1) that of the transformation of quality into quantity, (2) that
of the interpenetration of opposites, and (3) that of the negation of the
negation. Nondialectical philosophers find it hard, however, to interpret these
laws in a way that does not make them into either platitudes or falsehoods. (see
also Marxism,
history, philosophy of) |
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Perhaps because of the historical determinism
implicit in dialectical Materialism, and perhaps because of memories of the
mechanical Materialist theories of the 18th and 19th centuries, when physics was
deterministic, it is popularly supposed that Materialism and determinism must go
together. This is not so. As indicated below, even some ancient Materialists
were indeterminists, and a modern physicalist
Materialism must be indeterministic because of the indeterminism that is built
into modern physics. Modern physics does imply, however, that macroscopic bodies
behave in a way that is effectively deterministic, and, because even a single
neuron (nerve fibre) is a macroscopic object by quantum mechanical standards, a
physicalistic Materialist may still regard the human brain as coming near to
being a mechanism that behaves in a deterministic way. |
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A rather different way of classifying
Materialist theories, which to some extent cuts across the classifications
already made, emerges when the theories are divided according to the way in
which a Materialist accounts for minds. A central-state Materialist identifies
mental processes with processes in the brain. An analytical behaviourist,
on the other hand, argues that, in talking about the mind, one is not talking
about an actual entity, whether the brain or an immaterial soul, but, rather,
one is somehow talking about the way in which people would behave in various
circumstances. According to the analytical behaviourist, there is no more of a
problem for the Materialist in having to identify mind with something material
than there is in identifying such an abstraction as the average plumber with
some concrete entity. Analytical behaviourism differs from psychological
behaviourism, which is merely a methodological program to base theories on
behavioral evidence and to eschew introspective
reports. The analytical behaviourist usually has a not too plausible theory of
introspective reports according to which they are what are sometimes called
"avowals": roughly, he contends that to say "I have a pain"
is to engage in a verbal surrogate for a wince. Epistemic Materialism is a
theory that can be developed either in the direction of central-state
Materialism or in that of analytical behaviourism and that rests on the
contention that the only statements that are intersubjectively testable are
either observation reports about macroscopic physical objects or statements that
imply such observation reports (or are otherwise logically related to them). |
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Before leaving this survey of the family
of Materialistic theories, a quite different sense of the word Materialism
should be noted in which it denotes not a metaphysical theory but an ethical
attitude. A person is a Materialist in this sense if he is interested mainly in
sensuous pleasures and bodily comforts and hence in the material possessions
that bring these about. A man might be a Materialist in this ethical and
pejorative sense without being a metaphysical Materialist, and conversely. An
extreme physicalistic Materialist, for example, might prefer a Beethoven record
to a comfortable mattress for his bed; and a person who believes in immaterial
spirits might opt for the mattress. (see also ethics) |
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Though Thales
of Miletus (c. 580 BC) and some
of the other Pre-Socratic philosophers have some
claims to being regarded as Materialists, the Materialist tradition in Western
philosophy really begins with Leucippus and Democritus,
Greek philosophers who were born in the 5th century BC. Leucippus is known only through his influence on Democritus.
According to Democritus, the world consists of nothing but atoms (indivisible
chunks of matter) in empty space (which he seems to have thought of as an entity
in its own right). These atoms can be imperceptibly small, and they interact
either by impact or by hooking together, depending on their shapes. The great
beauty of atomism was its ability to explain the
changes in things as due to changes in the configurations of unchanging atoms.
The view may be contrasted with that of the earlier philosopher Anaxagoras
(c. 480 BC), who thought that when, for example, the bread that a
person eats is transformed into human flesh, this must occur because bread
itself already contains hidden within itself the characteristics of flesh.
Democritus thought that the soul consists of
smooth, round atoms and that perceptions consist of motions caused in the soul
atoms by the atoms in the perceived thing (see above Atomism ). |
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Because Epicurus'
philosophy was expounded in a lengthy poem by Lucretius,
a Roman philosopher of the 1st century BC, Epicurus (died 270 BC) was easily the
most influential Greek Materialist. He differed from Democritus in that he
postulated an absolute up-down direction in space, so that all atoms fall in
roughly parallel paths. To explain their impacts with one another, he then held
that the atoms are subject to chance swerves--a doctrine that was also used to
explain free will. Epicurus' Materialism therefore differed from that of
Democritus in being an indeterministic one. Epicurus' philosophy contained an
important ethical part, which was a sort of enlightened egoistic hedonism (see
above Epicureanism
). His ethics, however, were not Materialistic in the pejorative sense of
the word. (see also Epicureanism, Roman
Republic and Empire) |
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Materialism languished throughout the
medieval period, but the Epicurean tradition was revived in the first half of
the 17th century in the atomistic Materialism of the French Catholic priest Pierre
Gassendi. In putting forward his system as a hypothesis to explain the
facts of experience, Gassendi showed that he understood the method
characteristic of modern science, and he may well have helped to pave the way
for corpuscular hypotheses in physics. Gassendi was not thoroughgoing in his
Materialism inasmuch as he accepted on faith the Christian doctrine that men
have immortal souls. His contemporary, the English philosopher Thomas
Hobbes, also propounded an atomistic Materialism and was a pioneer in
trying to work out a mechanistic and physiological psychology. Holding that
sensations are corporeal motions in the brain, Hobbes skirted, rather than
solved, the philosophical problems about consciousness that had been raised by
another contemporary, the great French philosopher René
Descartes. Descartes's philosophy was dualistic, making a complete split
between mind and matter. In his theory of the physical world, however, and
especially in his doctrine that animals are automata, Descartes's own system had
a mechanistic side to it that was taken up by 18th-century Materialists, such as
Julien de La Mettrie, the French physician whose
appropriately titled L'Homme machine (1747;
Man a Machine,
1750) applied Descartes's view about animals to man
himself. Denis Diderot, an 18th-century French
Encyclopaedist, supported a broadly Materialist outlook by considerations drawn
from physiology, embryology, and the study of heredity; and his friend Paul,
baron d'Holbach, published his Système
de la nature (1770), which expounded a deterministic type of Materialism in
the light of evidence from contemporary science, reducing everything to matter
and to the energy inherent in matter. He also propounded a hedonistic ethics as
well as an uncompromising atheism, which provoked a reply even from the Deist
Voltaire. (see also Cartesianism,
mind-body dualism, mechanism) |
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The 18th-century French Materialists had
been reacting against orthodox Christianity. In the early part of the 19th
century, however, certain writers in Germany--usually with a biological or
medical background--reacted against a different orthodoxy, the Hegelian and
Neo-Hegelian tradition in philosophy, which had become entrenched in German
universities. Among these were Ludwig Büchner
and Karl Vogt. The latter is notorious for his assertion that the brain secretes
thought just as the liver secretes bile. This metaphor of secretion, previously
used by P.-J.-G. Cabanis, a late 18th-century
French Materialist, is seldom taken seriously, because to most philosophers it
does not make sense to think of thought as a stuff.
The Hobbesian view, also espoused by Büchner, that thought is a motion
in the brain is usually viewed as a more promising one. (see also Hegelianism) |
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The synthesis of urea (the chief
nitrogenous end product of protein metabolism), discovered in 1828, broke down
the discontinuity between the organic and the inorganic in chemistry,
which had been a mainstay of nonmaterialistic biology.
Materialist ways of thinking were later strengthened enormously by the Darwinian
theory of evolution, which not only showed the
continuity between man and other living things right back to the simplest
organisms but also showed how the apparent evidences of design in natural
history could be explained on a purely causal basis. There still seemed to be a
gap, however, between the living and the nonliving, though E.H.
Haeckel, a 19th-century German zoologist, thought that certain simple
organisms could have been generated from inorganic matter and, indeed, that a
certain simple sea creature may well be in process of generation in this way
even now. Though Haeckel was wrong, 20th-century biologists have proposed much
more sophisticated and more plausible theories of the evolution of life from
inorganic matter. Haeckel and his contemporary, the British zoologist T.H.
Huxley, did much to popularize philosophical accounts of the world that
were consonant with the scientific thought of their time, but neither could be
regarded as an extreme Materialist. |
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Perhaps because recent developments in
biochemistry and in physiological psychology have greatly increased the
plausibility of Materialism, there has lately been a resurgence of interest in
the philosophical defense of central-state Materialism. Central-state
Materialists have proposed their theories partly because of dissatisfaction with
the analytical behaviourism of the Oxford philosopher Gilbert
Ryle. Ryle himself is reluctant to call himself a Materialist, partly
because of a dislike of all "isms" and partly because he thinks that
the notion of matter has meaning only by contrast with that of mind, which he
thinks to be an illegitimate sort of contrast. Nevertheless, it would seem that
analytical behaviourism could be used to support a physicalist Materialism that
would go on to explain human behaviour by means of neural mechanisms. (Ryle
himself is suspicious of mechanistic accounts of biology and psychology.)
Analytical behaviourism has been felt to be unsatisfactory, however, chiefly
because of its account of introspective reports as avowals (see above Types
distinguished by their account of mind ),
which most philosophers have found to be unconvincing. |
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Philosophers have distinguished two
forms of central-state Materialism, namely, the translation form and the
disappearance form. The translation form is the view that mentalistic discourse
can be translated into discourse that is neutral between physicalism and
dualism, so that the truth of a man's introspective reports is compatible with
the objects of these reports being physical processes. The disappearance form is
the view that such a translation cannot be done and that this fact, however,
does not refute physicalism but shows only that man's ordinary introspective
reports are contaminated by false theories. |
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Among the philosophers who have
advocated the translation form is the U.S. philosopher Herbert
Feigl, earlier a member of the Vienna Circle, who, in an influential
monograph (see Bibliography:
Materialism ), did the most to get
contemporary philosophers to treat central-state Materialism as a serious
philosophical theory. Against the objection that, for example, "visual
sensation" does not mean "process
in the visual cortex," advocates of the translation form point out that
"the morning star" does not mean the same as "the evening
star," and yet the morning star as a matter of fact is the evening star. The objection confuses meaning and reference. Against the objection that a purely physical
process (a dance of electrons, protons, and so on) cannot have the sensory
quality of greenness that is observed in a visual experience of seeing grass,
say, they reply that to talk of the sensory experience of something looking
green (or having a green mental image) is not to talk of anything that is
literally green, but is simply to report that some internal process is of the
sort that normally goes with seeing something, such as a lawn, which really is
green. Though an immaterialist might say that the sort of process in question is
a spiritual process, the Materialist can equally claim that it is a material
process in the brain. The analysis of the introspective report is neutral
between these two contentions; the Materialist, however, opts for his contention
on various grounds. The British Materialist U.T. Place does so on the ground of
normal scientific methodology; and the Australian Materialist J.J.C.
Smart does so with a metaphysical application of the principle (called
"Ockham's razor") that entities should not be multiplied beyond
necessity. A physicalistic Materialist has, of course, an obligation to go on to
give a suitable account of such apparently nonphysicalist qualities as the
greenness of grass. At one time Smart analyzed colours in terms of the
discriminatory behaviour of human beings. Another Australian Materialist, D.M.
Armstrong, holds, on the other hand, that colours are as a matter of fact
properties of objects, such properties being of the sort describable in the
theoretical terms of physics. Feigl, in turn, is to some extent (and rather
reluctantly) a double-aspect theorist. He qualifies the position taken by the
other translation theorists, conceding that the translations do leave something
out, viz., the immediately introspectable properties of "raw feels,"
such as that of hearing the tone of middle C. He holds, however, that such
properties are irrelevant to causal explanations of phenomena. The translation
form of central-state Materialism thus has some affinities with the earlier
epistemic Materialism of the Positivist philosophers Rudolf
Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, Germans who
settled in the United States. Thus Carnap has suggested that mental predicates
be treated as applying to material entities: for example, "Carnap sees
green" could be taken as meaning "the body Carnap is in the state of
green-seeing," the state of green-seeing being a purely physical state that
explains the behavioral facts that led one to ascribe the predicate "sees
green" to Carnap in the first place. David K. Lewis, a United States
philosopher of science and language, has developed a translation form of
central-state Materialism on the basis of a theory regarding the definition of
theoretical terms in science. According to this theory, entities such as
electrons, protons, and neutrons are defined in terms of the causal roles that
they play in relation to observational phenomena--e.g.,
phenomena in cloud chambers--but the method of definition is able to do
justice to the causal and other interrelations between the theoretical entities
themselves. Lewis applies this account to commonsense psychology. Since mental
entities, such as pains, are defined in commonsense psychology in terms of their
causal roles (in relation to observable behaviour) and since there is empirical
reason to ascribe the same causal roles to brain processes, Lewis identifies
mental events, processes, and states with brain events, processes, and states.
(see also sense-datum) |
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The disappearance form of central-state
Materialism is the sort of theory held by P.K. Feyerabend, a U.S. philosopher,
who denies that the Materialist can give a neutral analysis of introspective
reports. In Feyerabend's view, commonsense introspective reports are irreducibly
immaterialist in content. He argues, however, that this admission does not show
the untenability of Materialism. Ordinary mentalistic discourse, he holds, is
comparable to the medieval discourse about epileptics as being "possessed
by the devil." If one now "identified" demon possession with a
certain medical condition of the brain, this would really be an assertion that
there is no such thing as a demon-possessed state: the medieval way of looking
at the matter is thus rejected. It is in this sort of way that Feyerabend wants
to "identify" the mind with the brain: he simply rejects the ordinary
mentalistic conceptual scheme and so feels no obligation to show its
compatibility with Materialism. |
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The influential American philosophers W.V.
Quine and Wilfrid Sellars also hold theories that could be regarded as
disappearance forms of physicalistic Materialism, though there is a Kantian
twist to Sellars' philosophy that makes it hard to classify. Sellars holds that
mentalistic concepts cannot be eliminated from man's commonsense picture of the
world, which he calls "the manifest image." In a way reminiscent of
Kant he holds that, although the manifest image is inescapable, it does not give
metaphysical truth about the world as it really is in itself. This truth is
given, instead, by "the scientific image"--i.e.,
by theoretical science, which is physicalist. In the case of Quine, there is
a certain Platonism in that he believes in the
objective reality of nonspatiotemporal entities, viz., those that are the
subject matter of pure mathematics. Because he holds that the reason for
believing mathematics is that it is needed as part of physical theory, his
reasons for believing in numbers and the like are not in principle different
from those for believing in electrons; thus Quine's Platonism does not really
compromise his physicalism. |
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The Austrian philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein, who lived to the mid-20th century and was professor of
philosophy at Cambridge University, has sometimes been interpreted as a behaviourist,
though his insistence that an inner process stands in need of outward criteria
could possibly be interpreted as a sort of epistemic and central-state
Materialism. Nevertheless, to count Wittgenstein as a Materialist would be to
take considerable liberties with him; for, while displaying at times a certain
mystical attitude, he also held very strongly that the business of a philosopher
is not to put forward any metaphysical theory but to clear up conceptual
confusions--to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle. |
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This historical survey has been
concerned with Materialism in Western philosophy. On the whole, Materialism is
contrary to the spirit of both Indian and traditional Chinese philosophy, though
the Carvaka school of Materialists flourished from the 6th century
BC until medieval times in India. Mention should also be made of the strong
naturalistic tendency in Theravada Buddhism, as also in certain schools
of Chinese philosophy that exalt ch'i ("ether"
or "material force") above principle and mind. |
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The main attraction of Materialism today
is the way in which it fits in with a unified picture of science--a picture that
has become very plausible. Thus, chemistry is reducible to physics inasmuch as
there is a quantum-mechanical theory of the chemical bond. Biology is mainly an
application of physics and chemistry to the structures described in natural
history (including the natural history that one can explore through powerful
microscopes). Increasingly, biological explanations resemble explanations in
engineering, in which material structures are described and then the laws of
physics and chemistry are used to explain the behaviour of these structures. (In
the biological case, of course, these structures are often dynamic in the sense
that their molecules are continually being replaced.) Through the influence of
neurophysiology and also cybernetics (the science of information and control,
which can be applied also to artificial automata), scientific psychology is also
fitting well into the same mechanistic scheme. The recalcitrant residue appears
in the phenomena of consciousness. Here mental events seem, indeed, to be
correlated with physical events; but, if the mental events are not the very same
as the physical events, one is left with apparently ultimate (or irreducible)
physical-mental laws that do not fit happily into unified science, and one is
thus faced with a situation unlike that of the rest of science. Looking at
science generally, one expects ultimate laws
to relate simple entities, such as fundamental particles. A physical-mental law,
however, would have to refer to something very complex--a brain process
involving perhaps millions of neurons, with each neuron being itself an almost
fantastically complex entity. There would be a multitude of physical-mental
laws, which would look like excrescences on the face of science. Because they
would not fit into the network of scientific laws, Herbert
Feigl has called them "nomological danglers." To get rid of
these danglers is one of the chief attractions of Materialism. Of course, an
immaterialist might assert that mental entities exist and also that there are no
physical-mental laws. But it might be hard for him to reconcile this position
with the empirical evidence; and in any case he would be faced with the problem
of how to distinguish the free exercise of such anomalous physical-mental
interaction from mere chance behaviour. (see also intelligence) |
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The development of computers and other
devices to take over much of the more routine sort of human behaviour has led to
attempts on the part of scientists and technologists, such as the American M.L.
Minsky, to develop real artificial intelligence. So far, the success that these
scientists hoped for has not been achieved. An American linguistic theorist, Noam
Chomsky, has argued on the basis of his theories of generative grammar
that the brain is quite unlike any already-understood type of mechanism. Indeed,
any physicalistic Materialist must certainly concede that there are very deep
problems about the brain, which apparently can no longer be thought of as a
bundle of conditioned reflex mechanisms or the like, as it often has seemed to
be to many psychologists. The physicalist can stress, however, that the
investigator's ignorance need not lead him to assume that he will never be able
to find an explanation of intelligence and of linguistic abilities in terms
consonant with his present notion of a physical mechanism. (There is also the
possibility that physical laws not yet discovered might be needed to explain the
workings of the brain. So long as these turned outto be basic laws of physics,
such discoveries would not imply a shift to emergentist Materialism.) |
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Some philosophers, such as the Oxford
philosopher J.R. Lucas, have tried to produce
positive arguments against a mechanistic theory of mind by employing certain
discoveries in mathematical logic, especially Gödel's theorem, which
implies that no axiomatic theory could possibly capture all arithmetical truths.
In general, philosophers have not found such attempts to extract an
antimaterialist philosophy from mathematical logic to be convincing.
Nevertheless, the problems of mechanizing intelligence, including the
mathematical abilities of human beings, do pose unsolved problems that the
Materialist is obliged to take seriously. (see also Gödel's
first incompleteness theorem, mind, brain) |
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Perhaps the most common challenge to
Materialism comes from philosophers who hold that it cannot do justice to the
concept of intentionality, which Franz Brentano,
a pre-World War I German philosopher, made the distinguishing mark between the
mental and the nonmental. (A related objection is that Materialism cannot do
justice to the distinction between behaviour and mere bodily movements.)
Brentano held that mental events and states somehow point toward objects beyond
themselves (or have a "content"). Many contemporary philosophers agree
with Brentano that purely physical entities cannot have this property. If it is
said, for example, that punched holes on the tape of a computer can refer beyond
themselves in the way that thoughts do, then it is commonly replied that, in
themselves, the holes on the tape have no reference or content--for this belongs
only to the thoughts in the mind of a person who reads the tape. The Materialist
reply may be to argue, however, that there is a fundamental unclarity in the
very notion of intentionality (this is roughly Quine's position) or else to
argue that purely physical systems can, after all, possess intentionality. |
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The alleged spiritualistic and other
phenomena reported in psychical research are sometimes adduced against
Materialism. The Materialist, however, can well afford to postpone discussion of
these phenomena until such time as they are accepted by the general scientific
community, which on the whole still remains skeptical of them. (see also parapsychological
phenomenon) |
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At present, there are reputable
philosophers who accept Materialism, and there are also reputable philosophers
who either reject it as false or hold that it is not the business of a
philosopher to propound any sort of metaphysical system. Perhaps Materialists
are still in a minority; but at any rate there is much less tendency than there
was a generation ago for this type of theory to be thought philosophically
naive. (J.J.C.S.) |
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