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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 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).
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, we’re on the same page 😊
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)?
I didn’t think about that. Some peoples might indeed interpret it that way. But yeah, they’re not here, probably.
👍
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.
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?
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.