Materialism is a form ofphilosophical monism inmetaphysics, according to whichmatter is the fundamentalsubstance innature, and all things, includingmental states andconsciousness, are results ofmaterial interactions. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are caused by physical processes, such as theneurochemistry of thehuman brain andnervous system, without which they cannot exist. Materialism directly contrasts with monisticidealism, according to which consciousness is the fundamental substance of nature.
Materialism is closely related tophysicalism—the view that all that exists is ultimately physical. Philosophical physicalism has evolved from materialism with the theories of the physical sciences to incorporate forms of physicality in addition to ordinary matter (e.g.spacetime,physical energies andforces, andexotic matter). Thus, some prefer the termphysicalism tomaterialism, while others use them as synonyms. Materialism is also related tonaturalism—the position that onlynatural laws and forces operate in theuniverse.
Discoveries of neural correlates between consciousness and the brain are taken as empirical support for materialism, but somephilosophers of mind find that association fallacious or consider it compatible with non-materialist ideas.[1][2] Alternative philosophies opposed or alternative to materialism or physicalism include idealism,pluralism,dualism,panpsychism, and other forms ofmonism.
Epicureanism is a philosophy of materialism fromclassical antiquity that was a major forerunner ofmodern science. Classical atomism predatesEpicurus: fifth‑century BCE thinkersLeucippus andDemocritus explained all change as the collisions of indivisible atoms moving in the void.[3] Epicureanism refined this materialist picture. Epicurus held that everything—including mind—consists solely of atoms moving in the void; to explain how parallel falling atoms could ever meet, he postulated theclinamen, an extremely slight lateral deviation that initiates collisions without invoking supernatural causes and that need not imply genuine indeterminism.[4][5]
Despite the multiplicity of named schools, philosophy ultimately confronts a single binary: materialism versus idealism.[9] 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.[10] 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.[11]
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,Lucretius,Baruch Spinoza,Karl Marx,Friedrich Engels, and 20th‑century analytical naturalists advanced naturalistic explanations of mind and society even when such views risked condemnation or suppression.[11] 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.[12]
Modern philosophical materialists extend the definition of other scientifically observable entities such asenergy,forces, and thespacetime continuum; some philosophers, such asMary Midgley, suggest that the concept of "matter" is elusive and poorly defined.[13]
During the 19th century, Marx and Engels broadened materialism into amaterialist 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 calledMarxist materialism, eliminating residual idealist elements and unifying the results into a single, consistently materialist worldview (seeModern philosophy).[14][15] Marx’s materialism long predated his encounter withG. W. F. Hegel. While still a student, Marx filled sevenNotebooks on Epicurean Philosophy (1839), analysing Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius from an avowedly materialist standpoint.[16] 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.[17] These texts show Marx already rejecting metaphysical dualism a decade beforeCapital.
Marx's subsequentCritique 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.[18] 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.[19][20]
Materialism is often associated withreductionism, 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.[21]
Inancient Indian philosophy, materialism developed around 600 BC with the works ofAjita Kesakambali,Payasi,Kanada and the proponents of theCārvāka school of philosophy. Kanada became one of the early proponents ofatomism. TheNyaya–Vaisesika school (c. 600–100 BC) developed one of the earliest forms of atomism (although their proofs of God and their positing that consciousness was not material precludes labelling them as materialists).Buddhist atomism and theJaina school continued the atomic tradition.[22]
Ancient Greekatomists likeLeucippus,Democritus andEpicurus prefigure later materialists. The Latin poemDe Rerum Natura byLucretius (99 – c. 55 BC) reflects themechanistic philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus. According to this view, all that exists is matter and void, and all phenomena result from different motions and conglomerations of base material particles calledatoms (literally "indivisibles").De Rerum Natura provides mechanistic explanations for phenomena such as erosion, evaporation, wind, and sound. Famous principles like "nothing can touch body but body" first appeared in Lucretius's work. Democritus and Epicurus did not espouse a monist ontology, instead espousing the ontological separation of matter and space (i.e. that space is "another kind" of being).[citation needed]
Wang Chong (27 – c. 100 AD) was a Chinese thinker of the earlyCommon Era said to be a materialist.[23] Later Indian materialistJayaraashi Bhatta (6th century) in his workTattvopaplavasimha (The Upsetting of All Principles) refuted theNyāya Sūtraepistemology. The materialisticCārvāka philosophy appears to have died out some time after 1400; whenMadhavacharya compiledSarva-darśana-samgraha (A Digest of All Philosophies) in the 14th century, he had no Cārvāka (or Lokāyata) text to quote from or refer to.[24]
The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.
— Friedrich Engels,Socialism: Scientific and Utopian (1880)
A morenaturalist-oriented materialist school of thought that developed in the mid-19th century wasGerman materialism, which includedLudwig Büchner (1824–1899), the Dutch-bornJacob Moleschott (1822–1893), andCarl Vogt (1817–1895),[34][35] even though they had different views on core issues such as the evolution and the origins of life.[36]
Scientific materialism is often synonymous with, and has typically been described as, areductive materialism. In the early 21st century,Paul andPatricia Churchland[38][39] advocated a radically contrasting position (at least in regard to certain hypotheses):eliminative materialism. Eliminative materialism holds that some mental phenomena simply do not exist at all, and that talk of such phenomena reflects a spurious "folk psychology" andintrospection illusion. A materialist of this variety might believe that a concept like "belief" has no basis in fact (e.g. the way folk science speaks of demon-caused illnesses).
With reductive materialism at one end of a continuum (our theories willreduce to facts) and eliminative materialism at the other (certain theories will need to beeliminated in light of new facts),revisionary materialism is somewhere in the middle.[37]
In contrast,Christian List argues that the existence of first-person perspectives, i.e.,one existing as oneself and not as someone else, refutes physicalism. List argues that since first-personal facts cannot supervene on physical facts, this refutes not only physicalism, but also most forms of dualism that have purely third-personal metaphysics.[40]
Contemporarycontinental philosopherGilles Deleuze has attempted to rework and strengthen classical materialist ideas.[41] Contemporary theorists such asManuel DeLanda, working with this reinvigorated materialism, have come to be classified asnew materialists.[42]New materialism has become its own subfield, with courses on it at major universities, as well as numerous conferences, edited collections and monographs devoted to it.
Jane Bennett's 2010 bookVibrant Matter has been particularly instrumental in bringing theories of monist ontology andvitalism back into a critical theoretical fold dominated bypoststructuralist theories of language and discourse.[43] Scholars such asMel Y. Chen and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson have critiqued this body of new materialist literature for neglecting to consider the materiality of race and gender in particular.[44][45]
Métis scholarZoe Todd, as well asMohawk (Bear Clan, Six Nations) andAnishinaabe scholar Vanessa Watts,[46] query the colonial orientation of the race for a "new" materialism.[47] Watts in particular describes the tendency to regard matter as a subject of feminist or philosophical care as a tendency too invested in the reanimation of aEurocentric tradition of inquiry at the expense of an Indigenous ethic of responsibility.[48] Other scholars, such as Helene Vosters, echo their concerns and have questioned whether there is anything particularly "new" about "new materialism", as Indigenous and otheranimist ontologies have attested to what might be called the "vibrancy of matter" for centuries.[49] Others, such asThomas Nail, have critiqued "vitalist" versions of new materialism for depoliticizing "flat ontology" and being ahistorical.[50][51]
The nature and definition ofmatter—like other key concepts in science and philosophy—have occasioned much debate:[53]
Is there a single kind of matter (hyle) that everything is made of, or are there multiple kinds?
Is matter a continuous substance capable of expressing multiple forms (hylomorphism)[54] or a number of discrete, unchanging constituents (atomism)?[55]
One challenge to the conventional concept of matter as tangible "stuff" came with the rise offield physics in the 19th century.Relativity shows that matter and energy (including the spatially distributed energy of fields) are interchangeable. This enables the ontological view that energy isprima materia and matter is one of its forms. In contrast, theStandard Model of particle physics usesquantum field theory to describe all interactions. On this view it could be said that fields areprima materia and the energy is a property of the field.[57][citation needed]
According to the dominant cosmological model, theLambda-CDM model, less than 5% of the universe's energy density is made up of the "matter" the Standard Model describes, and most of the universe is composed ofdark matter anddark energy, with little agreement among scientists about what these are made of.[58]
With the advent of quantum physics, some scientists believed the concept of matter had merely changed, while others believed the conventional position could no longer be maintained.Werner Heisenberg said: "The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible...atoms are not things."[59]
The concept of matter has changed in response to new scientific discoveries. Thus materialism has no definite content independent of the particular theory of matter on which it is based. According toNoam Chomsky, anyproperty can be considered material, if one defines matter such that it has that property.[60]
George Stack distinguishes between materialism and physicalism:
In the twentieth century, physicalism has emerged out of positivism. Physicalism restricts meaningful statements to physical bodies or processes that are verifiable or in principle verifiable. It is an empirical hypothesis that is subject to revision and, hence, lacks the dogmatic stance of classical materialism.Herbert Feigl defended physicalism in the United States and consistently held that mental states are brain states and that mental terms have the same referent as physical terms. The twentieth century has witnessed many materialist theories of the mental, and much debate surrounding them.[63]
But not all conceptions of physicalism are tied to verificationist theories of meaning or direct realist accounts of perception. Rather, physicalists believe that no "element of reality" is missing from the mathematical formalism of our best description of the world. "Materialist" physicalists also believe that the formalism describes fields of insentience. In other words, the intrinsic nature of the physical is non-experiential.[citation needed]
Rudolf Peierls, a physicist who played a major role in theManhattan Project, rejected materialism: "The premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being... including knowledge and consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing."[64]
Erwin Schrödinger said, "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."[65]
Werner Heisenberg wrote: "Theontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible... Atoms are not things."[66]
Then came our Quantum theory, which totally transformed our image of matter. The old assumption that the microscopic world of atoms was simply a scaled-down version of the everyday world had to be abandoned. Newton's deterministic machine was replaced by a shadowy and paradoxical conjunction of waves and particles, governed by the laws of chance, rather than the rigid rules of causality. An extension of the quantum theory goes beyond even this; it paints a picture in which solid matter dissolves away, to be replaced by weird excitations and vibrations of invisible field energy.Quantum physics undermines materialism because it reveals that matter has far less "substance" than we might believe. But another development goes even further by demolishing Newton's image of matter as inert lumps. This development is the theory of chaos, which has recently gained widespread attention.
— Paul Davies and John Gribbin,The Matter Myth, Chapter 1: "The Death of Materialism"
The objections of Davies and Gribbin are shared by proponents ofdigital physics, who view information rather than matter as fundamental. The physicist and proponent of digital physicsJohn Archibald Wheeler wrote, "all matter and all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe."[70] Some founders of quantum theory, such asMax Planck, shared their objections. He wrote:
As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.
— Max Planck,Das Wesen der Materie (1944)
James Jeans concurred with Planck, saying, "The Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter."[71]
Arguments foridealism, such as those ofHegel andBerkeley, often take the form of an argument against materialism; indeed, Berkeley's idealism was calledimmaterialism. Now, matter can be argued to be redundant, as inbundle theory, and mind-independent properties can, in turn, be reduced to subjectivepercepts. Berkeley gives an example of the latter by pointing out that it is impossible to gather direct evidence of matter, as there is no direct experience of matter; all that is experienced is perception, whether internal or external. As such, matter's existence can only be inferred from the apparent (perceived) stability of perceptions; it finds absolutely no evidence in direct experience.[81]
If matter and energy are seen as necessary to explain the physical world, but incapable of explaining mind,dualism results.Emergence,holism andprocess philosophy seek to ameliorate the perceived shortcomings of traditional (especiallymechanistic) materialism without abandoning materialism entirely.[citation needed]
Some critics object to materialism as part of an overly skeptical, narrow orreductivist approach to theorizing, rather than to the ontological claim that matter is the only substance.Particle physicist and AnglicantheologianJohn Polkinghorne objects to what he callspromissory materialism—claims that materialistic science will eventually succeed in explaining phenomena it has not so far been able to explain.[82] Polkinghorne prefers "dual-aspect monism" to materialism.[83]
Some scientific materialists have been criticized for failing to provide clear definitions of matter, leaving the termmaterialism without any definite meaning.Noam Chomsky states that since the concept of matter may be affected by new scientific discoveries, as has happened in the past, scientific materialists are being dogmatic in assuming the opposite.[60]
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^Nicholas Churchich,Marxism and Alienation, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990, p. 57: "Although Marx has rejected Feuerbach's abstract materialism," Lenin says that Feuerbach's views "are consistently materialist," implying that Feuerbach's conception of causality is entirely in line with dialectical materialism."
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^Axel Honneth,Hans Joas,Social Action and Human Nature, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 18.
^Nicholas Churchich,Marxism and Alienation, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990, p. 57: "Although Marx has rejected Feuerbach's abstract materialism," Lenin says that Feuerbach's views "are consistently materialist," implying that Feuerbach's conception of causality is entirely in line with dialectical materialism."
^Chadwick, Owen. 1990.The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press.p. 165: "During the 1850s German...scientists conducted a controversy known...as the materialistic controversy. It was specially associated with the names of Vogt, Moleschott and Büchner."p. 173: "Frenchmen were surprised to see Büchner and Vogt.... [T]he French were surprised at German materialism."
^Andreas W. Daum,Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert: Bürgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Öffentlichkeit, 1848–1914. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998, pp. 210, 293–99.
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^"General Scientific and Popular Papers." InCollected Papers, Vol. 4. Vienna:Austrian Academy of Sciences. Braunschweig/Wiesbaden: Vieweg & Sohn. p. 334.
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^Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Archived 6 February 2007 at theWayback Machine: "Kant argues that we can determine that there has been a change in the objects of our perception, not merely a change in our perceptions themselves, only by conceiving of what we perceive as successive states of enduring substances (see Substance)."
^Kant, Immanuel. "The refutation of idealism." pp. 345–52 inCritique of Pure Reason (1st ed.), edited byN. K. Smith. B274, p. 245:"All determination of time presupposes something permanent in perception. This permanent cannot, however, be something in me…"
^Baker, L. 1987.Saving Belief. Princeton: Princeton University Press
^Reppert, V. 1992. "Eliminative Materialism, Cognitive Suicide, and Begging the Question."Metaphilosophy 23:378–92.
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