Editing Materialism (section)

==Overview==

[[File:Nebulosa de Eta Carinae o NGC 3372.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Star]]s and a [[nebula]].]]
Materialism belongs to the class of [[monist]] [[ontology]], and is thus different from ontological theories based on [[Dualism (philosophy of mind)|dualism]] or [[pluralism (philosophy)|pluralism]]. For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism is in contrast to [[idealism]], [[neutral monism]], and [[spiritualism (philosophy)|spiritualism]]. It can also contrast with [[phenomenalism]], [[vitalism]], and [[dual-aspect monism]]. Its materiality can, in some ways, be linked to the concept of [[determinism]], as espoused by [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] thinkers.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Idoko |first=Barnabas Obiora |date=2023-12-14 |title=A CRITICAL EPOCHAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHICAL MATERIALISM |url=https://journals.ezenwaohaetorc.org/index.php/TIJAH/article/view/2649 |journal=Trinitarian: International Journal of Arts and Humanities |language=en |volume=2 |issue=1}}</ref>

Despite the multiplicity of named schools, philosophy ultimately confronts a single binary: materialism versus idealism.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Edwards |editor-first=Paul |title=The Encyclopedia of Philosophy |year=1972 |publisher=Macmillan |location=New York |isbn=0028949501}}; {{cite book |last=Priest |first=Stephen |title=Theories of the Mind |year=1991 |publisher=Penguin |location=London |isbn=0140130691}}; {{cite book |last=Novack |first=George |title=The Origins of Materialism |year=1979 |publisher=Pathfinder Press |location=New York |isbn=0873480228}}</ref> Uncompromising materialism—today often called physicalism—holds that the universe is nothing but matter‑energy in motion; every phenomenon, from stellar fusion to human thought, is exhaustively explicable as organised interactions of physical entities.<ref>{{cite book |last=Priest |first=Stephen |title=Theories of the Mind |year=1991 |publisher=Penguin |location=London |isbn=0140130691}}</ref> Matter is self‑moving and self‑organising, so it is scientifically superfluous to posit immaterial substances or disembodied minds. On this view, consciousness is a higher‑order property of certain complex material systems, not an ontological primitive. Idealism, by contrast, reverses the causal arrow: it elevates mind, spirit or abstract Forms to constitutive reality and demotes the material world to a mere appearance—a position that historically provided philosophical cover for religion and other supernatural doctrines.<ref name="Novack 1979">{{cite book |last=Novack |first=George |title=The Origins of Materialism |year=1979 |publisher=Pathfinder Press |location=New York |isbn=0873480228}}</ref>

Although the Western canon was long dominated by explicit idealists—owing to church patronage, university control, and periodic censorship—materialist undercurrents never disappeared. Thinkers including the pre‑Socratic atomists and [[Lucretius]], [[Baruch Spinoza]] and the French ''philosophes'', [[Karl Marx]], [[Friedrich Engels]], and 20th‑century analytical naturalists advanced naturalistic explanations of mind and society even when such views risked condemnation or suppression.<ref name="Novack 1979"/> Contemporary debate subdivides materialism into identity theory, functional and non‑reductive physicalism, eliminative materialism, and other variants, but all share the thesis that whatever exists is ultimately physical.<ref>{{cite web |title=Eliminative Materialism |website=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/ |access-date=2025-04-17}}</ref>

Modern philosophical materialists extend the definition of other scientifically observable entities such as [[energy]], [[force]]s, and the [[spacetime continuum]]; some philosophers, such as [[Mary Midgley]], suggest that the concept of "matter" is elusive and poorly defined.<ref>[[Mary Midgley]] ''The Myths We Live By''.</ref>

During the 19th century, Marx and Engels broadened materialism into a ''[[materialist conception of history]]'' centred on concrete human activity—above all labour—and on the institutions that such activity creates, reproduces, or abolishes. Drawing on both ancient atomism and the modern materialism of their day, they forged what was later called '''Marxist materialism''', eliminating residual idealist elements and unifying the results into a single, consistently materialist worldview (see [[#Modern philosophy|Modern philosophy]]).<ref>Marx, Karl. 1873. "[https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm Afterword to the Second German Edition]," ''[[Capital (Marx)|Capital]]'', vol.&nbsp;1. Transcribed by H.&nbsp;Kuhls.</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Marx |first=Karl |title=Afterword to the Second German Edition |work=Capital, vol.&nbsp;1 |year=1873 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm}}</ref> Marx’s materialism long predated his encounter with [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|G. W. F. Hegel]]. While still a student, Marx filled seven ''Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy'' (1839), analysing Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius from an avowedly materialist standpoint.<ref>{{cite web |title=Marx's Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy (1839) |website=Marxists Internet Archive |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1839/notebook/index.htm |access-date=2025-04-17}}</ref> His 1841 doctoral dissertation, ''The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature'', likewise defends the ancient atomists against teleological speculation and affirms contingency in nature.<ref>{{cite web |title=Doctoral Dissertation of Karl Marx (1841) |website=Marxists Internet Archive |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1841/dr-theses/index.htm |access-date=2025-04-17}}</ref> These texts show Marx already rejecting metaphysical dualism a decade before ''[[Das Kapital|Capital]]''.

Marx's subsequent ''[[Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right]]'' (1843–44) therefore did not convert an idealist into a materialist; rather, the work borrows small aspects of Hegel’s idealist dialectic, grounds it in material world, and rejects it very explicitly.<ref>{{cite web |title=Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843) |website=Marxists Internet Archive |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm |access-date=2025-04-17}}</ref> Engels, arriving independently at a similar position, joined Marx in fusing Greek atomism, Enlightenment science, and a demystified dialectic into what later became known as '''Marxist materialism''', a consistently materialist worldview that treats historical development as the product of human labour under definite social relations.<ref>{{cite web |title=Marx and Engels on Philosophy: Early Materialism |website=Marxists Internet Archive |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/philosophy/index.htm |access-date=2025-04-17}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=The Foundations of Marx's Materialist Epistemology |journal=Studies in Marxism |year=2024 |doi=10.1007/978-3-031-74338-2_1 |url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-74338-2_1 |access-date=2025-04-17|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

=== Non-reductive materialism ===
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Materialism is often associated with [[Reduction (philosophy)|reductionism]], according to which the objects or phenomena individuated at one level of description, if they are genuine, must be explicable in terms of the objects or phenomena at some other level of description—typically, at a more reduced level.

''Non-reductive materialism'' explicitly rejects this notion, taking the material constitution of all particulars to be consistent with the existence of real objects, properties or phenomena not explicable in the terms canonically used for the basic material constituents. [[Jerry Fodor]] held this view, according to which empirical laws and explanations in "special sciences" like psychology or geology are invisible from the perspective of basic physics.<ref>Fodor, Jerry A. 1981. ''RePresentations: Philosophical Essays on the Foundations of Cognitive Science''. Massachusetts: The MIT Press. {{ISBN|9780262060790}}. ([http://mitp-content-server.mit.edu:18180/books/content/sectbyfn?collid=books_pres_0&id=5895&fn=9780262560276_sch_0001.pdf Excerpt of Ch. 1]).</ref>