• purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    23 days ago

    Don’t kid yourself about the materialist being more concise, though. We’ve seen leftist memes (like this one, actually).

    As MFC said, this is also completely failing to engage with the argument. Scientists and natural philosophers weren’t and aren’t proving anything about the fundamental correspondence between subjective and objective reality or metaphysics generally, they are quantifying data and creating systems for understanding how that data corresponds with other data, which is a much more productive thing to be doing but completely beside the point of the question.

    To be extra clear, I have no interest in defending idealists, but I do have an interest in attacks against them being correct. If you don’t want to engage with them, it’s better to just say that their philosophy is a complete waste of time and effort (which is true, even if this answer is not accepted by philosophy academics) rather than say things like this that just make you look silly and thereby undermine the perceived credibility of your broader position.

    Interestingly, Ayn Rand had a similar sort of attitude of deboonking idealists without seeming to even understand them. I still haven’t gotten around to reading Lenin’s position on this, but my impression is that it’s a little closer to a pragmatic argument about political action rather than much of an interest in metaphysics.

    • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      23 days ago

      It’s an extreme idealism to be fair, but it is a position that some actual idealists have, more specifically George Berkeley. It’s true that most modern idealists don’t go that far though.

      • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        23 days ago

        No, that’s not even the position of Berkley. Actually read the Three Dialogues (even just the first one), it’s not what he says and he’s pretty clear in demarcating the difference. I think Berkley’s philosophy is ultimately flimsy because his ontology requires God in order to “make sense,” but given that, what you are talking about is something that he very patronizingly but thoroughly explains is not his position very early on.

        • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          23 days ago

          I’ve listened to an audiobook of the First of the three dialogues, and so far it seems that Berkely’s theses is “the world exists only in the mind”, which I agree I conveyed badly here, but at the same time isn’t all that far off.

          He says that qualities we perceive things as, color, sound, taste, heat, size, shape, texture, etc, exists only in the mind, and that since it’s impossible to conceive of a substance without any quality matter must exist only in the mind. He then says that we only know of objects through ideas (memories, thoughts, etc) and that since our ideas and perceptions of objects are always changing while the “real” object itself is static, therefore “real” objects cannot exist outside our minds.

          That doesn’t seem that far from what I wrote as far as I can tell, and I have to say I didn’t notice anything in the text so far that was “clearly demarcating the difference”.

          I’ll continue listening to the rest later since it is pretty interesting and well written, but so far I don’t understand your point.

          • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            22 days ago

            and so far it seems that Berkely’s theses is “the world exists only in the mind”,

            Yes, he does basically say this.

            and that since it’s impossible to conceive of a substance without any quality matter must exist only in the mind

            If I remember right, “matter” in this scenario is treated as the materialist noumena, so what he’s saying is that matter does not exist and the world is its perceived qualities with no “substrate” underneath.

            and that since our ideas and perceptions of objects are always changing while the “real” object itself is static, therefore “real” objects cannot exist outside our minds.

            What he is saying here is that our perceptions of things are highly relativized (temperature is his strongest example, but you can make many others), and therefore must not directly correspond to a noumenal object’s features. It’s a reframing of Locke’s argument about “primary” and “secondary” qualities, arguing that in fact everything is a “secondary” quality, though he doesn’t mention Locke by name. Since our senses are the only way to “directly observe” matter and it turns out that they don’t do that, they are at best mediated through whatever process is relativizing them, we have no ability to directly observe matter. That’s not a rejection of science, to be clear (and you’ll notice that he was engaging with the science of sense perception as well as the phenomenology), he still recognizes the regularity with which the world behaves, his argument is strictly about metaphysics, not physics.

            I have to say I didn’t notice anything in the text so far that was “clearly demarcating the difference”.

            To my memory, Berkley isn’t concerned with our perceptions being “inaccurate,” that’s closer to a Descartes, he is saying that the notion of matter (something independent of minds) is unjustified because it requires positing something as the immediate foundation of everything at every level of observation that cannot be observed, and claims that things are their perceived qualities (and perhaps their stable relations with other things) with no need to involve the existence of an unconceived-of extra thing. They are not an illusion, they are what is real, short of God. He in fact argues that the position of the materialist is closer to saying that perceived things are illusions, because of their positing unconceived-of objects that our senses and minds cannot touch while we are given these shifting shadows “of them” (but not) in our senses, while he says that things generally really are what they look like with no secret extra thing underneath, and that this is the common sense position that reflects how most people relate to the world.

            The other part, and I suppose this was unfair because he gets into it in the subsequent dialogues but I do allude to it in my previous comment, is that he does discuss why there could still be the elements of constancy that we do observe in them (e.g. the moon not disappearing), which he connects to God and therefore is a much less interesting argument. Being charitable, I think this was partly him being a product of his time, because he was writing from a time when God was necessarily an assumption and the features he ascribes to God are basically what were already ascribed to God for many centuries (particularly omniscience). It probably didn’t help that he was a bishop . . .

            Anyway, there are obviously complaints that you could make about all of this, but my point wasn’t that Berkley was right, but merely that he was being misrepresented. I’m glad to hear that you’re going to keep investigating the subject on your own and look forward to any refutations you choose to make in the future based on those investigations.

  • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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    23 days ago

    I love this meme, however, i have scarcely ever seen idealists actually believe in what the top guy is saying. That philosophy is better called “sophism”.

    Also, when internet marxists say “materialism”, what they should really be saying is “historical materialism” and/or “political economy”. Sometimes nihilism also overlaps with what is called “materialism” (aka, the position that you don’t have to participate in/give credibility to religion, state, morals, property, etc).

    Honestly, it’s pretty easy to see through this stuff. Most people say “materialism” to launder Marxism through a “clean” or “cool” persona. A re-branding. As a bonus effect, when a non-marxist uses more than 10% of their brain and approaches a topic scientifically, we call them “materialists”. Ex - John Mearshimer, who I have seen people describe as a “materialist but on the side of empire”.

    • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      23 days ago

      I love this meme, however, i have scarcely ever seen idealists actually believe in what the top guy is saying. That philosophy is better called “sophism”.

      This is the position argued by idealist philosopher George Berkeley. Idealism regroup all the philosophies that assert or assume that the most fundamental aspect of reality is the mind and that matter is dependent on and created by the mind, ergo this is indeed idealism since saying that the world is an illusion of the mind is the same as saying that the mind creates the world.

      This is the extreme but logical conclusion you reach when you take idealism’s theses seriously, also called immaterialist idealism, if you take it one step further and conclude that by the same arguments other peoples are illusions too, you get solipsism (maybe you meant that but typed “sophism” instead?).

      Also, when internet marxists say “materialism”, what they should really be saying is “historical materialism” and/or “political economy”. Sometimes nihilism also overlaps with what is called “materialism” (aka, the position that you don’t have to participate in/give credibility to religion, state, morals, property, etc).

      The fact that peoples don’t use the word correctly has nothing to do with it’s actual definition, here I am talking about the philosophical position called materialist which assert that there exist a world outside our consciousness and independent from it.

      Nihilism overlap with vulgar materialism, an extreme version of materialism that assert that the mind isn’t real. This version of materialism is rejected by dialectical materialism.

      Honestly, it’s pretty easy to see through this stuff. Most people say “materialism” to launder Marxism through a “clean” or “cool” persona. A re-branding.

      Dialectical materialism has been at the base of Marxist theories since Marx himself (he’s the one who though of applying dialectics to materialism), so I’m not sure how this ca be a “re-branding”.

      As a bonus effect, when a non-marxist uses more than 10% of their brain and approaches a topic scientifically, we call them “materialists”. Ex - John Mearshimer, who I have seen people describe as a “materialist but on the side of empire”.

      We call them materialists because they are. Materialism isn’t exclusive to the left by any means, materialism is the position that assert the material reality of the world we live in. It is the default position of scientists, especially experimental scientists, when they are investigating the laws of nature (because searching for the laws of the material world would be meaningless if the material world is an illusion) whether they realize it or not, even when they try to re-frame their conclusions through an idealist perspective afterward like proponents of the Copenhagen interpretation of QM do.

      • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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        23 days ago

        This is the position argued by idealist philosopher George Berkeley.

        I remember lenin tearing apart this guy’s philosophy, but how are these specific idealist philosophers relevant to modern politics? Or modern economics? Or in a historical sense?

        And the real question is about what percentage of people believe that the world isn’t real.

        The fact that peoples don’t use the word correctly has nothing to do with it’s actual definition

        Hence why I specified “Internet marxists”. Even so, “actual definition” is an idealist approach. The actual way that words are used is very important to address.

        I’m not sure how this ca be a “re-branding”.

        Re-branding is the wrong word. I’ll concede this point.

        We call them materialists because they are.

        Has John Mearshimer ever talked about his theory of mind, or his theory of change? Or what he thinks about the solipsism? In what sense can he said to be a philosophical materialist? These aren’t rhetorical questions, I’m genuinely asking.

        • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          23 days ago

          This is the position argued by idealist philosopher George Berkeley.

          I remember lenin tearing apart this guy’s philosophy, but how are these specific idealist philosophers relevant to modern politics? Or modern economics? Or in a historical sense?

          And the real question is about what percentage of people believe that the world isn’t real.

          Berkeley is one of the most important idealist philosophers. Modern idealism is largely Berkeley’s idealism reformulated to sweep under the rug the whole “the entire world is an illusion and nothing is real” part of his philosophy. So despite the fact that modern idealism is largely derived from Berkeley’s, modern idealists don’t believe that the world is an illusion, or at least they won’t admit that they do.

          The fact that peoples don’t use the word correctly has nothing to do with it’s actual definition

          Hence why I specified “Internet marxists”. Even so, “actual definition” is an idealist approach. The actual way that words are used is very important to address.

          I agree. But the definition used in philosophy and communist theory is an actual way these words are used, and a particularly useful one at that.

          We call them materialists because they are.

          Has John Mearshimer ever talked about his theory of mind, or his theory of change? Or what he thinks about the solipsism? In what sense can he said to be a philosophical materialist? These aren’t rhetorical questions, I’m genuinely asking.

          I don’t know about John Mearshimer in particular, I’m not familiar with this name. But it’s perfectly possible that he is a materialist. You should ask the person you heard that from why they think he’s a materialist. My point was that materialists aren’t necessarily leftists and that the scientific method is materialist.

          • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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            23 days ago

            But the definition used in philosophy and communist theory is an actual way these words are used, and a particularly useful one at that.

            The word as it is used by communists basically refers to the position that ideas/ideological formations/ruling class actions are the driving force behind history and society.

            For instance, great man theory is often presented as a quintessential example of idealism. Whereas materialism is a naturalistic framework. This is something you have accepted.

            However, the unclear part is this. What is the logical connection between idealism of the Berkeley variety and idealistic schools of politics/economics?

            What is the relationship between scientific practice and materialism as such, vis a vis the position that “the world exists independently of the mind”.

            I will admit that philosophical materialism is a necessary premise of scientific practice, but this does not mean that the debate between philosophical materialism and philosophical idealism can be cleanly extrapolated to the struggles between metaphysics and scientific practice.

            My point was that materialists aren’t necessarily leftists and that the scientific method is materialist.

            The conclusions provided by scientific investigations in the realms of politics, society, economics, ecology, international relations and climatology almost conclusively support “leftist” politics. Or rather, the ruling order ignores the results from these fields whenever convenient, and anyone outside the ruling order is labeled as left-wing.

            • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.mlOP
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              23 days ago

              The word as it is used by communists basically refers to the position that ideas/ideological formations/ruling class actions are the driving force behind history and society.

              For instance, great man theory is often presented as a quintessential example of idealism. Whereas materialism is a naturalistic framework. This is something you have accepted.

              However, the unclear part is this. What is the logical connection between idealism of the Berkeley variety and idealistic schools of politics/economics?

              I’m still in the process of reading and learning about all this so I don’t have all the context yet. But from what I’ve read, it seems that the main appeal of Berkeley’s idealism to the capitalist class is that Berkeley conceived it specifically to counter materialism.

              Berkeley was a bishop, at the time he lived, scientific discoveries of a lot of important laws of nature were starting to let less and less phenomenons to which Catholics could attribute “the hand of god” as their cause. To counter this, Berkeley developed his idealism as a way to disprove the existence of the matter that science was studying.

              What is the relationship between scientific practice and materialism as such, vis a vis the position that “the world exists independently of the mind”.

              I will admit that philosophical materialism is a necessary premise of scientific practice, but this does not mean that the debate between philosophical materialism and philosophical idealism can be cleanly extrapolated to the struggles between metaphysics and scientific practice.

              Like I responded to someone else: Experimentation is science’s praxis. through many experiments we conclude that it is reasonable to assert that the material world exist outside our minds and independently from them.

              The consistency and repeatability of our science shows that whatever reality is, our science is able to describe it and often predict it to some extent. For a materialist that’s perfectly in line with what they believe, no problem. But an idealist who believe that reality depends on the mind would have to explain you can have any number of different minds perform an experiment and they will all find roughly the same thing no matter what the mind thinks of it, you can then either invoke an omnipotent all-knowing mind giving the same ideas to all other lesser minds so that they all experience roughly the same “reality” like Berkeley does, or if you don’t believe in god, you have to find an other explanation somehow.

              If you’re an idealist and believe that the world is dependent on the mind, i.e. you believe that things only “exist” when they’re being perceived by a mind, you have a problem: how does things that “stop existing” because no one was perceiving them start “existing” again when you perceive them again? And how do you perceive them again if they ceased existing? You can then either invoke an omniscient all-seeing observer perceiving everything at all times so that nothing ever really “stops existing” like Berkeley does, or if you don’t believe in god, you have to find an other explanation somehow. If you’re a materialist and believe that the world exists independently from the mind, you don’t have this problem, you don’t have to invoke any ad-hoc hypothesis to explain you can have measuring instruments take readings of things even when no one is perceiving either the thing or the instruments.

              This is not a proof, but I believe it is a strong case.

              The conclusions provided by scientific investigations in the realms of politics, society, economics, ecology, international relations and climatology almost conclusively support “leftist” politics. Or rather, the ruling order ignores the results from these fields whenever convenient, and anyone outside the ruling order is labeled as left-wing.

              Pretty much yeah, just look at the way transphobes are confidently incorrect about “the science”.

    • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      23 days ago

      That’s not what I wrote. I wrote “2000+ years of scholars successfully experimenting the functioning of the universe proves that the universe is real”, it’s that which validate materialism, not materialism which proves that.

          • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            23 days ago

            He’s not claiming that the universe isn’t real and independent of the sense, he’s saying that OP’s argument is garbage, which is true. If we’re going to be materialists, we need to actually approach arguments understanding opposing positions or at least not presume to understand when we’ve clearly not even read the introduction to the most basic works on the topic.

            • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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              23 days ago

              The world and it’s laws are knowable and can be disclosed through practice and experimentation, that is a basic principle of materialism. OP claims experiments do not prove things are real, that is a straight up rejection of materialism thought.

              What is real is rational, what is rational is real.

              • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                22 days ago

                Aside from what MFC responded with, which is also correct, what experimentation deals with is the correlation between phenomena. It has no bearing on noumena, nor does it purport to. Remember, a number of these idealists had serious involvement in the sciences, e.g. Kant was an astronomer in addition to everything else, and he wasn’t rejecting his own field, he was talking about issues that are separate from his field.

              • MF_COOM [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                23 days ago

                I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific process. Experimentation can’t prove things. That’s just not how it works. The very best a scientific investigation can do is provide evidence to support or not support a particular interpretation of the truth.

  • woodenghost [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    23 days ago

    That’s not materialism, that’s realism, maybe a bit like Roy Bahskars critical realism. And in this meme format it can even give the unintended impression of leaning towards scientism. Scientism can itself lean towards bourgeois idealism, if it sees science as neutral, static and apolitical or assumes the existence of a definitive and unchanging scientific method.

    Materialism is usually realist, but Marx justified his realist stance more with appeal to praxis than to science. Both is fine. Any marxist materialists would of course situate science in the social totality and affirm the many ways it is itself shaped by contradictions and class struggle.

    Many later marxists would also reject metaphysical proof of ontological realism. They’d take a weaker realist stance motivated by probability and practicality instead of absolute proof in order to apply materialism in praxis.

    • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      23 days ago

      That’s not materialism, that’s realism, maybe a bit like Roy Bahskars critical realism.

      It is materialism, realism is a type of materialism. It’s not one united thing, there are multiple competing currents of materialist philosophy. I recommend reading Elementary principles of philosophy (Georges Politzer) which explains what materialism and idealism are better than I could.

      And in this meme format it can even give the unintended impression of leaning towards scientism. Scientism can itself lean towards bourgeois idealism, if it sees science as neutral, static and apolitical or assumes the existence of a definitive and unchanging scientific method.

      That’s because scientism is idealist not materialist, an idealist philosophy can’t lean toward idealism since materialism and idealism are opposite and contradict each other. It sound like you are describing metaphysical idealism to be more specific.

      Materialism is usually realist, but Marx justified his realist stance more with appeal to praxis than to science.

      Materialism and realism are essentially the same thing as far as I’m aware. It’s the same thing with a different name. Liberal academia has confused everything by changing the names of things and almost never teaching about materialism (if you look in philosophy textbooks used in universities, they don’t really talk about materialism).

      Many later marxists would also reject metaphysical proof of ontological realism. They’d take a weaker realist stance motivated by probability and practicality instead of absolute proof in order to apply materialism in praxis. Both is fine. Any marxist materialists would of course situate science in the social totality and affirm the many ways it is itself shaped by contradictions and class struggle.

      I’d argue that experimentation is science’s praxis. This is what the assertion on the meme is based on. through many experiments we conclude that it is reasonable to assert that the material world exist outside our minds and independently from them. So I’m not disagreeing with you here.

      • woodenghost [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        23 days ago

        realism is a type of materialism

        I agree that there are many types of materialisms. It’s usually understood the other way around though. Realism is the position that there is a reality outside our minds. Any materialist philosophy holds, that this reality is fundamentally made out of matter. So every materialism is realism, but not every realism is a materialism. For example platonic realism has forms as the primary constituents of reality instead of matter. So there are different kinds of realism too and not all are materialist.

        scientism is idealist not materialist

        Yes, totally. Many people don’t get that, but I agree. I’m just saying some people might take the meme as an example of scientism, but I know that wasn’t intended. It’s not important anyway. I think the audience here gets it.

        through many experiments we conclude that it is reasonable to assert that the material world exist outside our minds and independently from them. So I’m not disagreeing with you here.

        Yeah, we’re on the same page 😊

        • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          23 days ago

          I agree that there are many types of materialisms. It’s usually understood the other way around though. Realism is the position that there is a reality outside our minds. Any materialist philosophy holds, that this reality is fundamentally made out of matter. So every materialism is realism, but not every realism is a materialism. For example platonic realism has forms as the primary constituents of reality instead of matter. So there are different kinds of realism too and not all are materialist.

          Fair point. But don’t Platonists think that the shapes we observe in the world are projections of or related in some way to ideal shapes that lives in the world of ideas? Wouldn’t that make them idealists? Or do Platonic realists believe something different? Or did I misunderstand the few things I heard about Platonists (I haven’t really studied their philosophy, I just occasionally heard some bits about it from peoples talking about math)?

          scientism is idealist not materialist

          Yes, totally. Many people don’t get that, but I agree. I’m just saying some people might take the meme as an example of scientism, but I know that wasn’t intended. It’s not important anyway. I think the audience here gets it.

          I didn’t think about that. Some peoples might indeed interpret it that way. But yeah, they’re not here, probably.

          through many experiments we conclude that it is reasonable to assert that the material world exist outside our minds and independently from them. So I’m not disagreeing with you here.

          Yeah, we’re on the same page 😊

          👍

          • woodenghost [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            23 days ago

            don’t Platonists think that the shapes we observe in the world are projections of or related in some way to ideal shapes that lives in the world of ideas

            Yes, exactly. It’s also called the world of forms, but the greek word is idea. But it has not the same meaning as idea in English. Platos ideas or forms are universals. They aren’t ideas in a human mind or any other mind. They just are.

            So there are two main categories of ontological idealism: subjective and objective (I had to look these terms up). The subjective one has the ideas in our human minds be all (we can say about) reality. Like in phenomenalism. Plato would reject that, because to him the forms were really existing outside our minds.

            The objective kind of idealism has ideas in some kind of non-human mind like God or Hegels universal Spirit. Plato didn’t have that. So neither definition fits.

            Some people would still describe him as idealist, but that’s anachronistic. What we now call idealism developed later. Personally, I think Plato himself was neither a materialist nor an idealist, but he was a realist. Later, neoplatonists and then Christian platonists started thinking of the forms as ideas in the mind of “the one” or of God. They were idealists and they relied heavily on Plato, so there is an affinity.

            We could talk about historical or political idealism and I’d have to admit, that Plato definitely thought good ideas would lead to good politics (he wanted a philosopher king). So he definitely was an idealist in that sense. About historical idealism I’m not quite sure, but probably at least somewhat.

            • ExotiqueMatter@lemmygrad.mlOP
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              23 days ago

              But wait, there was something between the shapes and the elements according to Plato, no? The tetrahedron represent fire, the tetrahedron air, the cube represent earth the icosahedron water and the dodecahedron represents aether. And the main concurrent theory opposed to atomism at the time was the 5 elements right? And so, did Plato believe the world was made of the 5 elements and the shapes were just representations or did he believe that the 5 elements themselves were “made of” these shapes?

              I’m gonna throw a guess here. Aren’t these non-materialist realist philosophies due to the fact that at the time realists philosophers didn’t agree on what the world was made of because of the limitations of the sciences of the time? Since we now know from modern science that, if there is a reality independent from the mind, that reality is made of matter, aren’t all modern realists necessarily materialists since science has eliminated the possibility of the world being made of anything that isn’t matter? If that’s the case, these alternative realist philosophies were artifact of our limited knowledge early on and modern realism is materialism. What do you think?

              • woodenghost [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                22 days ago

                Yes, though aether came later. Plato believed in four elements instead of atoms, but those too were just material “shadows” of the mathematical objects and less real then the forms behind them.

                I think it’s true, that science can influence philosophy. And also that modern materialism historically coincided with advances in science and engineering. So I agree, that there is a real connection here. But like you said, atomism already existed at ancient times. So it might be more complex to pinpoint the exact advantage modern science gave modern philosophers arguing for materialism. Marx argued about how projects like digging canals can fail for reasons outside our minds, so that’s an argument for realism inspired more by engineering than science.

                A historic materialist analysis would look at how a materialist worldview served to further the hegemony of the ruling class at the time of the industrial revolution. I’m sure people have already written on this topic.

                The modern standard model of physics is based on quantum field theory. While many physicists would probably describe themselves as philosophical materialists, the actual building blocks of reality in this model are fields. Exitations in these filds correspond to massless quantum objects, which can sometimes gain (rest-)mass by interacting with each other, which can give rise to matter. But the fields themselves are not necessarily what modernist philosophers would have thought of as material. Under different historical conditions, this cosmology could probably have been integrated in very different kinds of metaphysics, including materialist or non-materislist ones. So this is an example of how a scientific model doesn’t need to have a one to one correspondence to specific metaphysical worldviews like ontological materialism or ontological idealism.

                These metaphysical questions really are outside the scope of physics. Arguments about them can be made by philosophical discussion or based on praxis and class struggle and science can inform these debates but not decide them.

                All in all, I think that science as natural philosophy is just a part of broader philosophy and no easy path leads from scientific results to metaphysical theories. Ancient people were just as smart as we are. Many good philosophical theories, that we will never learn about have probably existed, but didn’t survive until our time. I can easily imagine, ancient dialectical materialists, whose work was just never written down. Or written down, but only copied once. Or only copied a dozen times over a few generations and then forgotten. We only get the stuff that was copied hundreds of times over thousands of years. What is copied is decided by the ruling class. The dominance of certain philosophical worldviews are more influenced by historical developments and class struggle then by science. But science influences technology which influence the means of production and thereby also philosophy.