Tradition

Materialism

Overview

In philosophy and metaphysics, materialism is a form of monism holding that matter is the fundamental substance of nature, so that all things, including mind and consciousness, arise from material interactions and depend on physical processes, including those of the human brain and nervous system. It contrasts with monistic idealism, which treats consciousness as fundamental, and is related to naturalism, the view that only natural laws and forces operate in the universe, and to physicalism, the view that all that exists is ultimately physical. Physicalism extends materialism by including forms of physicality beyond ordinary matter (e.g. spacetime, energy, forces, exotic matter), and some use the terms interchangeably.

Alternative or opposing views to materialism or physicalism include idealism, pluralism, dualism, solipsism, panpsychism, and other forms of monism.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Materialism is discussed.

Matter is not a product of mind, but mind itself is only the highest product of matter. This is, of course, pure materialism. When he reached this point Feuerbach came to a standstill. He cannot overcome ordinary philosophical prejudice, prejudice not against the thing, but against the name materialism.
Friedrich Engels, Feuerbach
Uses the term “materialism” and “materialist”. The author is linked to this idea in the knowledge graph.
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Any argument which is apparently furnished to either hypothesis, is neutralized by as good an argument furnished to the other. The Materialist, seeing it to be a necessary deduction from the law of correlation, that what exists in consciousness under the form of feeling, is transformable into an equivalent of mechanical motion, and by consequence into equivalents of all the other forces which matter exhibits; may…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
Uses the term “materialist” and “materialistic”.
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And even if Nature, as a whole, must still be said to move in recurrent cycles, these cycles assume infinitely larger dimensions. In both aspects, modern materialism is essentially dialectic, and no longer requires the assistance of that sort of philosophy which, queen-like, pretended to rule the remaining mob of sciences. As soon as each special science is bound to make clear its position in the great totality of…
Friedrich Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
Uses the term “materialism”. The author is linked to this idea in the knowledge graph.
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Thus materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly. All that is objective, extended, active—that is to say, all that is material—is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
Uses the term “materialism”.
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As I said of Berkeley's matter, the soul is good or 'true' for just SO MUCH, but no more. The mention of material substance naturally suggests the doctrine of 'materialism,' but philosophical materialism is not necessarily knit up with belief in 'matter,' as a metaphysical principle. One may deny matter in that sense, as strongly as Berkeley did, one may be a phenomenalist like Huxley, and yet one may still be a…
William James, Pragmatism
Uses the term “materialism” and “materialist”.
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The point to be made for the purposes of the present discussion is that a philosophy of nature as organic must start at the opposite end to that requisite for a materialistic philosophy. The materialistic starting point is from independently existing substances, matter and mind. The matter suffers modifications of its external relations of locomotion, and the mind suffers modifications of its contemplated objects…
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
Uses the term “materialist” and “materialistic”.
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The first of these opinions, that of materialistic psychology, can be passed over rapidly. It is contradicted by all the phenomena of consciousness that we have up till now discussed. It is contradicted by the fact of consciousness itself, which cannot possibly be derived from any physical qualities of material molecules or atoms. The indisputable affirmation, that there exist no processes of consciousness that are…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, An Introduction to Psychology Translated from the Second German Edition
Uses the term “materialist” and “materialistic”.
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This doctrine when systematically carried out produces what has been latterly termed Materialism. Materialism of this stamp looks upon matter, _quâ_ matter, as the genuine objective world. But with matter we are at once introduced to an abstraction, which as such cannot be perceived: and it may be maintained that there is no matter, because, as it exists, it is always something definite and concrete.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
Uses the term “materialism”.
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