Materialism has been the subject of extensive and rich controversies since Robert Boyle introduced the term for the first time in the 17th century. But what is materialism and what can it offer today? The term is usually defined as the worldview according to which everything real is material. Nevertheless, there is no philosophical consensus about whether the meaning of matter can be enlarged beyond the physical. As a consequence, materialism is often defined in stark exclusive and (...) reductionist terms: whatever exists is either physical or ontologically reducible to it. This conception, if consistent, mutilates reality, excluding the ontological significance of political, economic, sociocultural, anthropological and psychological realities. Starting from a new history of materialism, the present book focuses on the central ontological and epistemological debates aroused by today’s leading materialist approaches, including some little known to an anglophone readership. The key concepts of matter, system, emergence, space and time, life, mind, and software are checked over and updated. Controversial issues such as the nature of mathematics and the place of reductionism are also discussed from different materialist approaches. As a result, materialism emerges as a powerful, indispensable scientifically-supported worldview with a surprising wealth of nuances and possibilities. (shrink)

Consciousness has an important role in ethics: when a being consciously experiences the frustration or satisfaction of its interests, those interests deserve higher moral priority than those of a behaviourally similar but non-conscious being. I consider the relationship between this ethical role and an a posteriori (or ‘type-B’) materialist solution to the mind-body problem. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, if type-B materialism is correct, then the reference of the concept Phenomenal Consciousness is radically indeterminate between a (...) neuronal-level property that is distinctive to mammals and a high-level functional property that is much more widely shared. This would leave many non-mammalian animals (such as birds, fish, insects and octopuses) with indeterminate moral status. There are ways to manage this radical moral indeterminacy, but all of these ways lead to profoundly troubling consequences. (shrink)

Higher animals need to identify and track material objects because they depend on interactions with them for nutrition, reproduction, and social interaction. This paper investigates the perception of material objects. It argues, first, that material objects are tagged, in all five external senses, as bearers of the features detected by them. This happens through a perceptual process, here entitled Generalized Completion, which creates the appearance of objects that have properties that transcend the activation of sensory receptors. The paper shows, secondly, (...) that material objects are privileged subjects for perceived motion and interaction. That is, they are perceived as subjects for these properties while their parts seem to be subjects only derivatively. Material objects are the only perceptual subjects that are both multisensory and privileged. (shrink)

I present a condensed exposé of systemic materialism, a synthesis of materialism and systemism originally proposed by Mario Bunge. Matter is identified with mutability of propertied particulars, and a concrete or material system is defined as an object with composition, structure, mechanism, and environment. I review different aspects of this ontology, and discuss some of its implications for epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. I also try to identify some problems of this view and offer some ways to overcome the (...) difficulties. I conclude that systemic materialism is a promising philosophical project still in the making. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the role of materiality in human cognition. We address issues such as the ways in which brain functions may change in response to interactions with material forms, the attributes of material forms that may cause change in brain functions, and the spans of time required for brain functions to reorganize when interacting with material forms. We then contrast thinking through materiality with thinking about it. We discuss these in terms of their evolutionary significance and history (...) as attested by stone tools and writing, material forms whose interaction endowed our lineage with conceptual thought and meta-awareness of conceptual domains. (shrink)

Materialism, as a philosophical outlook, has undergone several evolutionary transformations from classical metaphysical materialism to the more dynamic and socially-conscious dialectical materialism proposed by Marx. In this short essay, I propose the concept of Neutrosophic Materialism, which extends and refines dialectical materialism. Neutrosophic Materialism offers a broader, more nuanced framework for understanding the material conditions, social forces, and ideas in shaping human history and social reality.

John D. Norton is responsible for a number of influential views in contemporary philosophy of science. This paper will discuss two of them. The material theory of induction claims that inductive arguments are ultimately justified by their material features, not their formal features. Thus, while a deductive argument can be valid irrespective of the content of the propositions that make up the argument, an inductive argument about, say, apples, will be justified (or not) depending on facts about apples. The argument (...) view of thought experiments claims that thought experiments are arguments, and that they function epistemically however arguments do. These two views have generated a great deal of discussion, although there hasn’t been much written about their combination. I argue that despite some interesting harmonies, there is a serious tension between them. I consider several options for easing this tension, before suggesting a set of changes to the argument view that I take to be consistent with Norton’s fundamental philosophical commitments, and which retain what seems intuitively correct about the argument view. These changes require that we move away from a unitary epistemology of thought experiments and towards a more pluralist position. (shrink)

Eliminative materialism claims mind-independent matter is fundamental while experience is derivative or illusory. This paper demonstrates this position is baseless: its distinguishing claim lacks evidential foundation. Both eliminativism and Experiential Empiricism succeed by tracking experiential patterns that predict future experience. The eliminativist adds that these patterns correspond to mind-independent material reality, but this claim goes beyond all possible evidence, cannot be verified even in principle, and contributes nothing to explanation or prediction. Through information theory and the Magic Window thought (...) experiment, pure logic shows the externalist claim has no epistemic ground. All work is done by experiential pattern-tracking while the metaphysical claim floats without support. (shrink)

In this paper we present a new metaphysical theory of material objects. On our theory, objects are bundles of property instances, where those properties give the nature or essence of that object. We call the theory essential bundle theory. Property possession is not analysed as bundle-membership, as in traditional bundle theories, since accidental properties are not included in the object’s bundle. We have a different story to tell about accidental property possession. This move reaps many benefits. Essential bundle theory delivers (...) a simple theory of the essential properties of material objects; an explanation of how object coincidence can arise; an actual-world ground for modal differences between coincident objects; a simple story about intrinsic properties; and a plausible account of certain ubiquitous cases of causal overdetermination. (shrink)

The rise of ChatGPT affords a fundamental transformation of the dynamics in human-technology interaction, as Large Language Model (LLM) applications increasingly emulate our social habits in digital communication. This poses a challenge to Don Ihde’s explicit focus on material technics and their affordances: ChatGPT did not introduce new material technics. Rather, it is a new digital app that runs on the same physical devices we have used for years. This paper undertakes a re-evaluation of some postphenomenological concepts, introducing the notion (...) of quasi-materiality to better understand the role that user interfaces (UIs) play in affording different stabilities in technological mediation. We propose the term “active User Interface” (aUI) to denote the specifics of how ChatGPT makes use of LLMs within its UI design to afford seamless, intuitive conversations with a quasi-other in what Ihde termed “alterity relations”. Drawing inspiration from Peter-Paul Verbeek’s work on the intelligification of our material world through (AI) technologies, our analysis leads to the formulation of a novel stability afforded through aUIs: “machinic embodiment stability”. This concept sheds light on how ChatGPT’s aUI integrates with our established habits of digitally mediated social communication. As the use of LLMs is expected to become increasingly prevalent, this provides a new perspective on the current evolution of the technological landscape. (shrink)

John Norton says that philosophers have been led astray for thousands of years by their attempt to treat induction formally. He is correct that such an attempt has caused no end of trouble, but he is wrong about the history. There is a rich tradition of non-formal induction. In fact, material theories of induction prevailed all through antiquity and from the Renaissance to the mid-1800s. Recovering these past systems would not only fill lacunae in Norton’s own theory but would highlight (...) areas where Norton has not freed himself from the straightjacket of formal induction as much as he might think. This essay begins that recovery. (shrink)

Human cognition is extended and enacted. Drawing the boundaries of cognition to include the resources and attributes of the body and materiality allows an examination of how these components interact with the brain as a system, especially over cultural and evolutionary spans of time. Literacy and numeracy provide examples of multigenerational, incremental change in both psychological functioning and material forms. Though we think materiality, its central role in human cognition is often unappreciated, for reasons that include conceptual distribution over multiple (...) material forms, the unconscious transparency of cognitive activity in general, and the different temporalities of metaplastic change in neurons and cultural forms. (shrink)

Materialism is nearly universally assumed by cognitive scientists. Intuitively, materialism says that a person’s mental states are nothing over and above his or her material states, while dualism denies this. Philosophers have introduced concepts (e.g., realization, supervenience) to assist in formulating the theses of materialism and dualism with more precision, and distinguished among importantly different versions of each view (e.g., eliminative materialism, substance dualism, emergentism). They have also clarified the logic of arguments that use empirical findings (...) to support materialism. Finally, they have devised various objections to materialism, objections that therefore serve also as arguments for dualism. These objections typically center around two features of mental states that materialism has had trouble in accommodating. The first feature is intentionality, the property of representing, or being about, objects, properties, and states of affairs external to the mental states. The second feature is phenomenal consciousness, the property possessed by many mental states of there being something it is like for the subject of the mental state to be in that mental state. (shrink)

Material culture and technoculture not only provide openings to study culture, but raise questions about contemporary materialism and technology more generally as well. Material culture tells a story, though usually not the whole story. The meanings of things are various, and finding out what they are requires a variety of approaches, from simply asking people what their things mean or observing how they use or don’t use them, to backtracking their history, or contextualizing them in broader cultural context. The (...) transition from hunter-gatherer life to that of agriculturally-based civilization some twelve thousand or so years ago was a great watershed of consciousness, not only radically altering the relation to the living environment, but also producing the origins of materialism. One of civilization’s dubious distinctions was to introduce poverty as well as property and wealth. Consumption is clearly a driving force on the globe today, powering economies, promising identities, providing a cornucopia of commodities. Technoculture is at its center, both in material devices and in the ideas they communicate about how what one has affects what one is and can be. The problem of materialism is not whether to have materials for living, but in allowing them to become goals in themselves. (shrink)

It is well-known that racism is encoded into the social practices and institutions of medicine. Less well-known is that racism is encoded into the material artifacts of medicine. We argue that many medical devices are not merely biased, but materialize oppression. An oppressive device exhibits a harmful bias that reflects and perpetuates unjust power relations. Using pulse oximeters and spirometers as case studies, we show how medical devices can materialize oppression along various axes of social difference, including race, gender, class, (...) and ability. Our account uses political philosophy and cognitive science to give a theoretical basis for understanding materialized oppression, explaining how artifacts encode and carry oppressive ideas from the past to the present and future. Oppressive medical devices present a moral aggregation problem. To remedy this problem, we suggest redundantly layered solutions that are coordinated to disrupt reciprocal causal connections between the attitudes, practices, and artifacts of oppressive systems. (shrink)

Materialism claims to be the scientific worldview. Yet it rests on an unprovable assumption: that a mind-independent material reality exists and causes our experiences. Every piece of evidence for this claim comes through experience itself, making the justification circular. Materialism therefore carries an impossible burden of proof that it can never meet by its own standards. This makes materialism not science but an undeclared religion. In contrast, Experiential Empiricism (EE) removes the metaphysical assumption and grounds knowledge directly (...) in experiential patterns. This paper contrasts the two approaches, showing why materialism is structurally faith-based while EE is structurally empirical. (shrink)

In the field of ethics of LLMs, agency is a highly contested topic: Can LLMs perform agency? The current discourse on the agency of LLMs is heavily shaped by a traditional, properties-based, individualistic, and anthropocentric approach. In contrast, I propose a relational and network-based approach to agency, drawing on Actor-Network Theory and New Materialism, which is open to non-human agency and a plurality of agencies. Building on this relational, non-anthropocentric per- spective, I also introduce a material perspective that has (...) been largely overlooked in the LLM discourse. While LLMs are often thought of as immaterial, I develop a framework that distinguishes various dimensions of their materiality. I refer both to their material production and conditions, as well as how they concretely materialize in our devices and the materializing effects they have on us and our bodies. This perspective highlights the connection of LLMs with culture and material practices, cultural and social values: they are part of us, our culture, our time, politics, and our society. It also shifts the focus from human users as individual agents and opens up a view of the hidden network of multiple agents – human workers, big tech actors, environmental and technological non-human agents, and more – while drawing attention to the diversity and specificities of agencies. This shift transforms the questions currently posed in the ethics of LLMs and opens up new avenues for ethical inquiry. (shrink)

Full-bodied materialism is a rarity in British philosophy. In fact, notable British materialists before recent times seem to number only two: Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century, and Joseph Priestley in the eighteenth. Their materialisms were attempts to construct a scientific ontology, but there the similarity ends, since they had very different ideas of the nature of science. Hobbes took science to be the study of motion, using Galilean geometric method; Priestley worked with a Newtonian methodology and conceived of (...) matter as spheres of force centred on point particles. (shrink)

Hylomorphism is a metaphysical theory that accounts for the unity of the material parts of composite objects by appeal to a structure or ‘form’ characterizing those parts. I argue that hylomorphism is not merely a plausible or appealing solution to problems of material composition, but a position entailed by any coherent metaphysics of ordinary material objects. In fact, not only does hylomorphism have Aristotelian defenders, but it has had independent lives in both East and West. -/- I review three contemporary (...) hylomorphic theories appeal to ‘structure’ to explain the unity of material objects. Each, however, accepts a controversial principle: that substances can have other substances as proper parts. Such a principle is implausible and severely threatens the coherence of the theory. -/- I begin by showing that Thomas Aquinas’ account of form, which does not accept that substances can have other substances as parts, gives us a more coherent version of hylomorphism. Then I argue Zhu Xi, a Song dynasty Confucian thinker, developed a non-Aristotelian hylomorphism. Unlike Aristotelians, Zhu Xi’s metaphysics was formed in opposition to Buddhist versions of skepticism and gives us reasons to think that anyone who holds a view of objects stronger than Buddhists is committed to forms. In conclusion, I show directly, by appeal to some of those same considerations from Zhu Xi, why it is that all those who believe there are unified material objects will appeal to something like a substantial form. The traditional hylomorphic picture of material composition, then, remains a plausible framework for contemporary metaphysicians – and for good reason. (shrink)

After a brief history of Brentano's thesis of intentionality, it is argued that intentionality presents a serious problem for materialism. First, it is shown that, if no general materialist analysis (or reduction) of intentionality is possible, then intentional phenomena would have in common at least one nonphysical property, namely, their intentionality. A general analysis of intentionality is then suggested. Finally, it is argued that any satisfactory general analysis of intentionality must share with this analysis a feature which entails the (...) existence of a nonphysical "level of organization". (shrink)

Common everyday materials such as textiles, foodstuffs, soil or skin can have complex, mutable and varied appearances. Under typical viewing conditions, most observers can visually recognize materials effortlessly, and determine many of their properties without touching them. Visual material perception raises many fascinating questions for vision researchers, neuroscientists and philosophers, yet has received little attention compared to the perception of color or shape. Here we discuss some of the challenges that material perception raises and argue that further philosophical thought should (...) be directed to how we see materials. (shrink)

Humans leverage material forms for unique cognitive purposes: We recruit and incorporate them into our cognitive system, exploit them to accumulate and distribute cognitive effort, and use them to recreate phenotypic change in new individuals and generations. These purposes are exemplified by writing, a relatively recent tool that has become highly adept at eliciting specific psychological and behavioral responses in its users, capability it achieved by changing in ways that facilitated, accumulated, and distributed incremental behavioral and psychological change between individuals (...) and generations. Writing is described here as a self-organizing system whose design features reflect points of maximal usefulness that emerged under sustained collective use of the tool. Such self-organization may hold insights applicable to human cognitive evolution and tool use more generally. Accordingly, this article examines the emergence of the ability to leverage material forms for cognitive purposes, using the tool-using behaviors and lithic technologies of ancestral species and contemporary non-human primates as proxies for matters like collective use, generational sustainment, and the non-teleological emergence of design features. (shrink)

Late twentieth-century physicalism—here understood, broadly, as a comprehensive view about the nature of contingent reality, rather than, narrowly, as a view about the relation of the mental to the physical—is widely regarded as the descendant of the materialist hypotheses familiar from the history of philosophy both ancient and modern. This chapter contends that contemporary physicalism differs significantly from historical hypotheses of materialism, significantly enough that the prospects for physicalism cannot be inferred from those for materialism. The chapter brings (...) out these differences by identifying the two main challenges faced by philosophers who want to revive the materialist hypotheses of earlier centuries, and then indicating the author’s possibly idiosyncratic view of how these challenges are best overcome. The first challenge is to formulate physicalism adequately, so that it is interesting but neither obviously true nor obviously false; the second challenge is to specify what would count as empirical evidence for an adequately-formulated hypothesis of physicalism. The chapter’s survey of responses to these two challenges constitutes an opinionated history of central aspects of the past fifty (or so) years of philosophical reflection on physicalism. (shrink)

This paper offers an argument in favour of a Lewisian version of concretism that maintains both the principle of material inheritance (according to which, if all the parts of an object x are material, then x is material) and the materiality-modality link (that is, the principle that, for every x, if x is material, then x is possible).

(1) Materialists hold that every real, concrete phenomenon in the universe is a wholly physical phenomenon. (2) Consciousness ('what-it's-likeness', etc.) is the most certainly existing real, concrete phenomenon there is. It follows that (3) all serious materialists must grant that consciousness is a wholly physical phenomenon. ‘How can consciousness possibly be physical, given what we know about the physical?’ To ask this question is already to have gone wrong. We have no good reason (as Priestley, Eddington, Russell and others observe) (...) to think that we know anything about the physical that gives us any reason to find any problem in the idea that consciousness is wholly physical. (shrink)

Templates travel because they offer a tractable format that can be used for model-building in a variety of domains. It is often because of this quality that a particular template is chosen. But one cannot assume that there are always templates ready to model a new phenomenon, and moreover, templates have also been designed at some point. A critical aspect of this designing process is the choice of the mathematical objects with which one hopes to capture this phenomenon. This means (...) that one has to assess which of the properties of different kinds of mathematical objects and which combinations of them are most appropriate. The selection of these objects is based on whether their properties enable the model to perform its function. This selection of mathematical objects is similar to the selection of materials in mechanical design. (shrink)

This study, framed by the "Dialectic of Contradiction," investigates the capacity of Human-Artificial Intelligence (Human-AI) collaboration, utilizing a four-stage methodology (Human Structuring, AI Expansion, Revision, and Validation), to generate a coherent synthesis of complex conceptual domains—specifically, the link between cosmic evolution, biological evolution, and the meaning of life. The experiment successfully demonstrated that the AI, acting as a "Material Intelligence," can convert conceptual tension into argumentative coherence by integrating the human-supplied insight of "Coherence Gain," thereby unifying the domains into a (...) logically chained narrative that resists the criterion of falsification (incoherence), supporting the premise that this structured collaboration is a new operational ontology for generating complex and valid knowledge. (shrink)

This paper defines a precise sense in which the material conditional analysis (MCA) is a successful heuristic for deductive reasoning with a suppositional conditional, interpreted by means of trivalent semantics. Both accounts generate the same theorems and valid deductive inferences in a large fragment of the conditional language. However, the suppositional analysis gives a more attractive treatment of conditional negation and the probability of conditionals. Therefore, this paper inverts Williamson's claim that suppositional reasoning is a heuristic for valid reasoning with (...) conditionals (on his account, given by MCA). Similarly, the logic C2 of Stalnaker's possible-world semantics for conditionals is interpreted as approximating probability-preserving inference with suppositional conditionals. (shrink)

How are we to understand situations where science fails on its own terms? Scientists have blamed perverse incentives for systematic epistemic failures like non-replicability and publication bias, but the exact relationship remains an open question. Let’s assume they are right to blame the (social) system. This paper presents a novel framework for understanding how features of the social organization of science are implicated in collective epistemic failures: the material theory of values in science (MTV). This project is inspired by and (...) follows in the tradition of feminist philosophers of science who have called attention to the need for explanations of systemic, specifically antifeminist, biases in science and for embodied models of scientists as epistemic agents. In the first part, I discuss the replication crisis as involving a particular type of collective action problem: a no-win standoff. The next part introduces the MTV and the explanation it supplies for this phenomenon. In the third section, the MTV is compared to several alternative explanatory strategies, including from the contemporary literature values in science and social epistemology, specifically agent-based computational models. I argue for why my approach is preferable and describe an important revision it entails for the general Mertonian sociological picture invoked in discussions of incentives in science. By way of conclusion, I summarize the philosophical task of the MTV, which is to take seriously the sociological and material conditions constituting scientists’ epistemic agency. (shrink)

Early modern debates about the nature of matter interacted with debates about whether matter could think. In particular, some philosophers (e.g., Cudworth and Leibniz) objected to materialism about the human mind on the grounds that matter is passive, thinking things are active, and one cannot make an active thing out of passive material. This paper begins by looking at two seventeenth-century materialist views (Hobbes’s, and one suggested but not endorsed by Locke) before considering that objection (which I call here (...) the Activity Argument). In discussion, I note that several philosophers of the time believed that matter was active. That view opens up a possible response to the Activity Argument. The paper concludes by looking at the views of two materialists of the time who also believed that matter was active, Toland and Cavendish. (shrink)

This is a book about numbers– what they are as concepts and how and why they originate–as viewed through the material devices used to represent and manipulate them. Fingers, tallies, tokens, and written notations, invented in both ancestral and contemporary societies, explain what numbers are, why they are the way they are, and how we get them. Cognitive archaeologist Karenleigh A. Overmann is the first to explore how material devices contribute to numerical thinking, initially by helping us to visualize and (...) manipulate the perceptual experience of quantity that we share with other species. She explores how and why numbers are conceptualized and then elaborated, as well as the central role that material objects play in both processes. Overmann’s volume thus offers a view of numerical cognition that is based on an alternative set of assumptions about numbers, their material component, and the nature of the human mind and thinking. Karim Zahidi (“Radicalizing numerical cognition,” Synthese, 2021, p. 530) called this reconstruction, as presented in journal articles, a “naturalistically plausible account of the emergence of the modern natural number concept," while César Dos Santos ("Review of: 'The Materiality of Numbers'," Qeios, 2023, p. 1) called it "a 'Copernican Revolution' in the way we understand the relationship between numbers and the material devices we use to record and manipulate them." . (shrink)

Orthodox neural materialists think mental states are neural events or orthodox material properties of neutral events. Orthodox material properties are defining properties of the “physical”. A “defining property” of the physical is a type of property that provides a necessary condition for something’s being correctly termed “physical”. In this paper I give an argument against orthodox neural materialism. If successful, the argument would show at least some properties of some mental states are not orthodox material properties of neural events. (...) Opposing philosophical orthodoxy, I show there are no posteriori identities -- identities that cannot be known of a priori. (shrink)

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity poses a serious philosophical problem. On the one hand, it seems to imply that there is exactly one divine being; on the other hand, it seems to imply that there are three. There is another well-known philosophical problem that presents us with a similar sort of tension: the problem of material constitution. We argue in this paper that a relatively neglected solution to the problem of material constitution can be developed into a novel solution (...) to the problem of the Trinity. (shrink)

This is an essay for undergraduates. I set out the statue/clay problem and Tibbles/Tib in rich detail. I also present, with less detail, some other puzzles about material composition.

While it is a point of agreement in contemporary republican political theory that property ownership is closely connected to freedom as non-domination, surprisingly little work has been done to elucidate the nature of this connection or the constraints on property regimes that might be required as a result. In this paper, I provide a systematic model of the boundaries within which republican property systems must sit and explore some of the wider implications that thinking of property in these terms may (...) have for republicans. The boundaries I focus on relate to the distribution of property and the application of types of property claims over particular kinds of goods. I develop this model from those elements of non-domination most directly related to the operation of a property regime: (a) economic independence, (b) limiting material inequalities, and (c) the promotion of common goods. The limits that emerge from this analysis support intuitive judgments that animate much republican discussion of property distribution. My account diverges from much orthodox republican theory, though, in challenging the primacy of private property rights in the realization of economic independence. The value of property on republican terms can be realized without private ownership of the means of production. (shrink)

The consensus is that musical works and other ‘multiple’ artworks are abstract objects of some sort. According to the standard objections to musical materialism, multiple artworks cannot be identified with any concrete manifestation since concrete manifestations are many, and one thing cannot be identical to many. Multiple artworks are particularly good, while particular concrete manifestations are particularly bad, at surviving the destruction of particular concrete manifestations. Finally, multiple artworks cannot be identified with a particular sum of concrete manifestations since (...) sums and works differ modally. This paper aims to show that by appealing to recent work on the metaphysics of material objects, musical materialists avoid the standard objections. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the philosophical side of Karl Marx's thought as well as some of the major debates about it in the secondary literature. It first examines Marx's early writings, focusing, in particular, on his views on religion, the limitations of political emancipation and the dehumanizing conditions of work under capitalism. Marx and Engels considered the theory of history to be one of Marx's most important theoretical achievements. In an autobiographical note Marx described it as the “guiding thread of his (...) studies,” and in a speech delivered at Marx's graveside Engels compared Marx's discovery of “the law of development of human history” with Darwin's discovery of the law of nature. The chapter examines Marx's materialist theory of history, the view that history is characterized by the development of productive power to free people from material scarcity. It also examines the problematic area of Marx's ethics. (shrink)

This is a short (1,000 word) introduction to Hobbes's materialism, covering (briefly) such issues as what the relevant notion of materialism is, Hobbes's debate with Descartes, and what Hobbes's arguments for materialism were.

What is the relationship between mental states and items of material culture, like notebooks, maps or lists? The extended mind thesis offers an influential and controversial answer to this question. According to ExM, items of material culture can form part of the material basis for our mental states. Although ExM offers a radical view of the location of mental states, it fits comfortably with a traditional, representationalist account of the nature of those states. I argue that proponents of ExM would (...) do better to adopt a fictionalist approach to mental states. In so doing, I suggest, they could retain the important insights underlying the extended mind thesis, while avoiding its more problematic consequences. (shrink)

This study formulates the basic premises of materialism, which has largely lost its visibility despite being one of the fundamental philosophical approaches that have been effective in the development of modern scientific practice and the construction of philosophy of science, in an alternative way, and aims to develop a new materialist interpretation of it that is non-reductive, pluralistic and open to the use of more than one scientific discipline. This interpretation, expressed with the term relational materialism, first addresses (...) matter with the concept of signifier and foregrounds the concept of beable as the general philosophical category of matter. Secondly, it formulates the category of beable within the irreducible integrity of the categories of relationality, nonstaticity, and finitude; and positions knownability in terms of its correspondence to these general onto-epistemological categories. Thirdly, it clarifies the conditions of existence and knownability of particular entities under general categories based on specially corresponding onto-epistemological categories (interactability, structurability, contextuality, transformability, scale-dependency, actuality, contingency). In this respect, this study offers a pluralistic philosophical framework within which different methodological positions and scientific disciplines can be formulated and criticized based on combinations of different particular categories under general categories. In the conclusion of this article, the meaning and potential of relational materialism for the development of scientific research programs are evaluated. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate in the philosophical literature whether the conditionals that are central to deliberation are subjunctive or indicative conditionals and, if the latter, what semantics of the indicative conditional is compatible with the role that conditionals play in deliberation. We propose a possible-world semantics where conditionals of the form “if I take action _a_ the outcome will be _x_” are interpreted as material conditionals. The proposed framework is illustrated with familiar examples and both qualitative and probabilistic beliefs (...) are considered. Issues such as common-cause cases and ‘Egan-style’ cases are discussed. (shrink)

Despite the central presence of materialism in the history of philosophy, there is no universal consensus on the meaning of the word “matter” nor of the doctrine of philosophical materialism. Dictionaries of philosophy often identify this philosophy with its most reductionist and even eliminative versions, in line with Robert Boyle’s seventeenth century coinage of the term. But when we take the concept back in time to Greek philosophers and forward onto our own times, we recognize more inclusive forms (...) of materialism as well as complex interplays with non-materialist thought about the place of matter in reality, including Christian philosophy and German idealism. We define philosophical materialism in its most general way both positively (the identification of reality with matter understood as changeability and plurality) and negatively (the negation of disembodied living beings and hypostatized ideas). This inclusive approach to philosophical materialism offers a new light to illuminate a critical history of the concept of matter and materialism from Ancient Greece to the present that is also attentive to scientific developments. By following the most important connections and discontinuities among theoretical frameworks on the idea of matter, we present a general thread that offers a rich and plural, but highly cohesive, field of investigation. Finally, we propose building on rich non-reductionist materialist philosophies, such as Mario Bunge’s systemic materialism and Gustavo Bueno’s discontinuous materialism, to elaborate powerful theoretical alternatives to both physicalism and spiritualism. (shrink)

The paper examines Posterior Analytics II 11, 94a20-36 and makes three points. (1) The confusing formula ‘given what things, is it necessary for this to be’ [τίνων ὄντων ἀνάγκη τοῦτ᾿ εἶναι] at a21-22 introduces material cause, not syllogistic necessity. (2) When biological material necessitation is the only causal factor, Aristotle is reluctant to formalize it in syllogistic terms, and this helps to explain why, in II 11, he turns to geometry in order to illustrate a kind of material cause that (...) can be expressed as the middle term of an explanatory syllogism. (3) If geometrical proof is viewed as a complex construction built on simpler constructions, it can in effect be described as a case of purely material constitution. (shrink)

An annotated bibliography of important works on material constitution.

An extensive literature about pictorial representation discusses what is involved when a two-dimensional image represents some specific object or type of object. A smaller literature addresses parallel issues in sculptural representation. But little has been said about the role played by the sculptural material itself in determining the meanings of the sculptural work. Appealing to Nelson Goodman and Catherine Elgin’s discussions of literal and metaphorical exemplification, I argue that the material of which a sculpture is constituted plays key roles in (...) what is represented and how it is represented, in part because we have bodily and emotional responses to the real possibilities the sculptural material creates for us. I discuss examples of contemporary artworks by Melvin Edwards, Kara Walker, Willie Cole, Marc Quinn, Ai Weiwei, Janine Antoni, El Anatsui, Zoe Leonard, and others. (shrink)

What are numbers, and where do they come from? A novel answer to these timeless questions is proposed by cognitive archaeologist Karenleigh A. Overmann, based on her groundbreaking study of material devices used for counting in the Ancient Near East—fingers, tallies, tokens, and numerical notations—as interpreted through the latest neuropsychological insights into human numeracy and literacy. The result, a unique synthesis of interdisciplinary data, outlines how number concepts would have been realized in a pristine original condition to develop into one (...) of the ancient world’s greatest mathematical traditions, a foundation for mathematical thinking today. In this view, numbers are abstract from their inception and materially bound at their most elaborated. The research updates historical work on Neolithic tokens and interpretations of Mesopotamian numbers, challenging several longstanding assumptions about numbers in the process. The insights generated are also applied to the role of materiality in human cognition more generally, including how concepts become distributed across and independent of the material forms used for their representation and manipulation; how societies comprised of average individuals use material structures to create elaborated systems of numeracy and literacy; and the differences between thinking through and thinking about materiality. (shrink)

This paper discusses the materialist views of Margaret Cavendish, focusing on the relationships between her views and those of two of her contemporaries, Thomas Hobbes and Henry More. It argues for two main claims. First, Cavendish's views sit, often rather neatly, between those of Hobbes and More. She agreed with Hobbes on some issues and More on others, while carving out a distinctive alternative view. Secondly, the exchange between Hobbes, More, and Cavendish illustrates a more general puzzle about just what (...) divided materialists from their opponents. Seemingly straightforward disagreements about whether incorporeal substances exist turn out to be more complex ones in which the nature of those things is disputed at the same time as their existence. (shrink)

Liao and Carbonell argue that medical devices are often not merely biased, but rather materialize oppression through the perpetuation of oppression into the present and future (Liao and Carbonell 2...

In 1999 Dean Zimmerman proposed a "falling elevator model" for a bodily resurrection consistent with materialism. Recently, he has defended the model against objections, and a slightly different version has been defended by Timothy O’Connor and Jonathan Jacobs. This article considers both sets of responses, and finds them at best partially successful; a new objection, not previously discussed, is also introduced. It is concluded that the prospects for the falling-elevator model, in either version, are not bright.

Are materially constituted entities, such as statues and glasses of liquid, something more than their material constituents? The puzzle that frames this paper stems from conflicting answers to this question. At the core of the paper is a distinctive way of thinking about material constitution that posits two concepts of constitution, compositional and ampliative constitution, with the bulk of the discussion devoted to developing distinct analyses for these concepts. Distinguishing these concepts solves our initial puzzle and enriches the space of (...) possibilities for constitution views. (shrink)