Materialism

This concept directly contrasts with idealism, where mind and consciousness are first-order realities to which matter is subject and material interactions are secondary. Materialism typically contrasts with dualism, phenomenalism, idealism, vitalism and dual-aspect monism. For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism, neutral monism and spiritualism.

In contrast to materialism, idealism asserts the primacy of consciousness as the origin and prerequisite of material phenomena.

Materialism is a form of philosophical monism that holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. Materialism belongs to the class of monist ontology.

=Latter-day Saint theology also expresses a form of Christian monism via materialism and eternalism, claiming that creation was ex materia (as opposed to ex nihilo in conventional Christianity), as expressed by Parley Pratt and echoed in view by Latter-day Saint prophet Joseph Smith, making no distinction between the spiritual and the material, these being not just similarly eternal, but ultimately two manifestations of the same reality or substance.

During the nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels extended the concept of materialism to elaborate a materialist conception of history centered on the roughly empirical world of human activity (practice, including labor) and the institutions created, reproduced or destroyed by that activity (see materialist conception of history).

Historical materialism, also known as the materialist conception of history, is a methodology used by some communist and Marxist historiographers that focuses on human societies and their development through history, arguing that history is the result of material conditions rather than ideas.

Materialism typically contrasts with dualism, phenomenalism, idealism, vitalism and dual-aspect monism.

In Greek philosophy, the Milesian school proposed natural explanations deduced from materialism and mechanism.

For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism, neutral monism and spiritualism.

This includes philosophies that postulate a personal God, the immortality of the soul, or the immortality of the intellect or will, as well as any systems of thought that assume a universal mind or cosmic forces lying beyond the reach of purely materialistic interpretations.

In ancient Indian philosophy, materialism developed around 600 BC with the works of Ajita Kesakambali, Payasi, Kanada and the proponents of the Cārvāka school of philosophy.

Charvaka (चार्वाक; IAST: Cārvāka), also known as Lokāyata, is an ancient school of Indian materialism.

Materialism belongs to the class of monist ontology.

They also developed dialectical materialism, through taking Hegelian dialectics, stripping them of their idealist aspects and fusing them with materialism (see Modern philosophy).

Dialectical materialism, a theory or set of theories produced mainly by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, adapted the Hegelian dialectic into arguments regarding traditional materialism.

This concept directly contrasts with idealism, where mind and consciousness are first-order realities to which matter is subject and material interactions are secondary. Materialism is a form of philosophical monism that holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions.

Dualism holds that the mind exists independently of the brain; materialism holds that mental phenomena are identical to neuronal phenomena; and idealism holds that only mental phenomena exist.

The Latin poem De Rerum Natura by Lucretius (99 – c. 55 BC) reflects the mechanistic philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus.

The older doctrine, here called universal mechanism, is the ancient philosophies closely linked with materialism and reductionism, especially that of the atomists and to a large extent, stoic physics.

In ancient Indian philosophy, materialism developed around 600 BC with the works of Ajita Kesakambali, Payasi, Kanada and the proponents of the Cārvāka school of philosophy.

He is considered to be the first known proponent of Indian materialism, and forerunner to the Charvaka school.

In ancient Indian philosophy, materialism developed around 600 BC with the works of Ajita Kesakambali, Payasi, Kanada and the proponents of the Cārvāka school of philosophy.

Payasi was a Cārvāka (materialist) philosopher in ancient India and was possibly a contemporary of Buddha.

They also developed dialectical materialism, through taking Hegelian dialectics, stripping them of their idealist aspects and fusing them with materialism (see Modern philosophy).

In contrast to the conventional Hegelian dialectic of the day, which emphasized the idealist observation that human experience is dependent on the mind's perceptions, Marx developed Marxist dialectics, which emphasized the materialist view that the world of the concrete shapes socioeconomic interactions and that those in turn determine sociopolitical reality.

During the nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels extended the concept of materialism to elaborate a materialist conception of history centered on the roughly empirical world of human activity (practice, including labor) and the institutions created, reproduced or destroyed by that activity (see materialist conception of history).

This work contains Marx's criticism of materialism (for being contemplative), idealism (for reducing practice to theory) overall, criticising philosophy for putting abstract reality above the physical world.

Wang Chong (27 – c. 100 AD) was a Chinese thinker of the early Common Era said to be a materialist.

He developed a rational, secular, naturalistic and mechanistic account of the world and of human beings and gave a materialistic explanation of the origin of the universe.

Its materiality can, in some ways, be linked to the concept of determinism, as espoused by Enlightenment thinkers.

Some determinists argue that materialism does not present a complete understanding of the universe, because while it can describe determinate interactions among material things, it ignores the minds or souls of conscious beings.

There followed the materialist and atheist abbé Jean Meslier (1664–1729) and the works of the French materialists: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, the German-French Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789), Denis Diderot (1713–1784) and other French Enlightenment thinkers.

Jean Meslier (also Mellier; 15 June 1664 – 17 June 1729) was a French Catholic priest (abbé) who was discovered, upon his death, to have written a book-length philosophical essay promoting atheism and materialism.

Later Indian materialist Jayaraashi Bhatta (6th century) in his work Tattvopaplavasimha ("The upsetting of all principles") refuted the Nyaya Sutra epistemology.

Its original 1940 edition attributed it to the materialist Charvaka school, but scholarly opinion on this point remains divided.

In England, John "Walking" Stewart (1747–1822) insisted on seeing matter as endowed with a moral dimension, which had a major impact on the philosophical poetry of William Wordsworth (1770–1850).

Stewart developed a unique system of materialistic pantheism.

Kanada became one of the early proponents of atomism. Ancient Greek atomists like Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus prefigure later materialists.

427 – c. 347 BCE), if he had been familiar with the atomism of Democritus, would have objected to its mechanistic materialism.

Ancient Greek atomists like Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus prefigure later materialists.

Both were thoroughly materialist, believing everything to be the result of natural laws.

In late modern philosophy, German atheist anthropologist Ludwig Feuerbach would signal a new turn in materialism through his book The Essence of Christianity (1841), which presented a humanist account of religion as the outward projection of man's inward nature.

An associate of Left Hegelian circles, Feuerbach advocated atheism and anthropological materialism Many of his philosophical writings offered a critical analysis of religion.

There followed the materialist and atheist abbé Jean Meslier (1664–1729) and the works of the French materialists: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, the German-French Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789), Denis Diderot (1713–1784) and other French Enlightenment thinkers.

Although there are important differences between them, all of them were materialists who believed that the world was made up of a single substance, matter, the motions and properties of which could be used to explain all phenomena.

Ancient Greek atomists like Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus prefigure later materialists.

Also like Democritus, Epicurus was a materialist who taught that the only things that exist are atoms and void.

Jerry Fodor argues this view, according to which empirical laws and explanations in "special sciences" like psychology or geology are invisible from the perspective of basic physics.

During the 1960s, various philosophers such as Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, and Fodor tried to resolve the puzzle of developing a way to preserve the explanatory efficacy of mental causation and so-called "folk psychology" while adhering to a materialist vision of the world which did not violate the "generality of physics".