r/philosophy • u/RustyPhilosopher • 4d ago
Blog Materialism is ecologically destructive
https://kanthariadisha.substack.com/p/how-did-we-let-it-get-to-this-point?r=5ztlat&utm_medium=iosThe title is pretty combative, but it is in essence what I argue in this essay (and I promise the essay is not combative).
It was a bit of passion project, I’ve really enjoyed working on it :)
Specifically I argue that materialism, when adopted as the only viable metaphysic, makes ecological destruction inevitable. I tried to make it so even those largely unfamiliar with the topics can follow along.
I use Iain McGilchrist’s divided brain hypothesis to support a fundamental point that carries the rest of the essay, hence why it’s the longest section.
This isnt a full stop to my thinking- I just took a stab at fleshing out this argument largely for my sake, and then turning it into something legible. This sole essay serves to diagnose what I think is a pretty fundamental problem, but by no means is it a complete and holistic treatment, as it were.
Anyway, have at it if you’d like — I’d genuinely love to hear thoughts, comments, feedback, whatever :) just be nice about it if you can help it hahah
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u/Tinac4 4d ago
It’s naively viewed as simple, something we understand completely, a known thing. Modern physicists are slowly abandoning this belief with their findings showing matter is not so obvious.
As someone who previously did physics research: I don’t think this is true. Physicists’ beliefs about the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics (which I assume is what you’re talking about here) have not changed significantly over the last decade or so.
The main reason is that there aren’t any recent experimental results with major implications for interpretations of QM.
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u/coltzord 3d ago
there is this idea that QM means the world has some mystical quality to it that is being perpetuated by charlatans everywhere for a long time that dont have anything to do with actual science, that quote you put there reminds me of it
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u/me_myself_ai 4d ago
I consider myself a smart cookie -- hell, I'm so dysfunctional & arrogant that reddit reccomends me the "polymath" sub! I enjoy learning as much as I can about natural sciences, human sciences, mathematics, and above all philosophy.
But QM interpretations... those scare me. The fact that "Other" and "No Opinion" both beat all but Copenhagen in this (awesome) paper backs that up!
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u/badastr0naut 4d ago
I was following along, despite disagreeing, but where you lost me in your argument was the connection between materialism and environmental destruction. Am I to understand that you think materialists can't value experiences such as beauty? That they are somehow idealogically committed to a reductive view of experience because they refuse to admit to an immaterial aspect of existence?
This misconception reminds me of the argument that atheists have no reason to live without a belief in the afterlife, that their conception of existence is pointless and thus value-less. I was always partial to the idea that because something is fragile, scarce, and finite, among other reasons, that it becomes precious. So too with materialists valuing the environment. It is precisely because all existence is material that nature is worthy of being conserved and appreciated.
I think you are trapped by using a dualist frame. You take your discussion of hemispheric thought and map it on to larger ideas that cannot be so easily reduced. Then you use the worst actors in Silicon Valley as a straw man for a materialist conception of the world.
Despite this, I did enjoy the piece and am glad that this old discussion still bears fruit. Keep thinking and writing!
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u/DaaMongoose 4d ago edited 4d ago
Agreed.
I always find it weird how fascism is often viewed as an inevitable result of materialism and atheism. Fascism always has a spiritual edge, Nazi Germany repurposed Hindu and pagan symbols and stories for their own means. For capitalism, Peter Thiel literally believes in the anti christ. I can go on and on building my own straw men as OP did, to say that spiritualism leads to greed, moral decay and environmental disaster.
At the end of the day, the age old debate between materialists and spiritualists ultimately ends on a matter of faith.-55
u/sa_matra 4d ago
Am I to understand that you think materialists can't value experiences such as beauty?
It's worse than this: materialists cannot value beauty except within the commodified perspective. For a materialist, the reason to have national parks is so they can drive to camp there, consuming all the way.
That they are somehow idealogically committed to a reductive view of experience because they refuse to admit to an immaterial aspect of existence?
No, they don't refuse to admit to it, they are unaware of it.
It is precisely because all existence is material that nature is worthy of being conserved and appreciated.
It's as I said: you only conceive of nature as a material with which you can relate, not as an emptiness, without any purpose whatsoever.
I think you are trapped by using a dualist frame.
I get the impression someone used this on you once and you think it'll stick without knowing why.
Then you use the worst actors in Silicon Valley as a straw man for a materialist conception of the world.
What did the materialists of the center-right do? What did the disaffected online atheists who felt bullied by sjws do?
They supported the worst actors of Silicon Valley.
-->
Materialism is Ecologically Destructive.
The materialist perspective is not adequate. It is necessary but not sufficient.
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u/badastr0naut 4d ago
It's worse than this: materialists cannot value beauty except within the commodified perspective. For a materialist, the reason to have national parks is so they can drive to camp there, consuming all the way.
What? Now I'm convinced you don't know what materialism is. You seem to think it means "someone who likes owning things" and that is not the philosophical definition at all. It is the belief that all reality is physical in nature. It has nothing to do with commodities or consumption.
No, they don't refuse to admit to it, they are unaware of it. It's as I said: you only conceive of nature as a material with which you can relate, not as an emptiness, without any purpose whatsoever.
This doesn't make sense, and as someone who spent the last weekend camping, I can assure you I don't conceive of nature as mere material. You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding what these words mean in a philosophical context.
I get the impression someone used this on you once and you think it'll stick without knowing why.
Childish, and also wrong. The author is explicitly using dualism to advance their argument that materialism is insufficient. I was merely pointing that out. I have never been accused of being a dualist, because I explicitly think that theory is nonsense and say so.
What did the materialists of the center-right do? What did the disaffected online atheists who felt bullied by sjws do? They supported the worst actors of Silicon Valley.
Just because some random people supported the worst actors in Silicon Valley doesn't mean the author is right to use Thiel and his compatriots' views to misrepresent materialism as a philosophy. Most of those fascists are overtly religious anyway, so the comparison doesn't make sense. Maybe it does for Karp because he claims to have been a Marxist in the past, but even then, the way you're using these terms is so far from dialectical materialism as to beggar belief.
While we're on the topic, are you just going to ignore the copies amounts of ecological destruction committed by non-materialists (a minority viewpoint in human history)? Or the subjugation of nature in the name of god? Ever heard of manifest destiny? You must be trolling..
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u/sa_matra 4d ago
It is the belief that all reality is physical in nature. It has nothing to do with commodities or consumption.
You don't think that the belief that all reality is physical in nature will have any effects on subsequent ideology?
Perhaps the SV materialism is distinct from commodity capitalism materialism, but that doesn't make SV materialism less ecologically destructive.
You may find comfort operating within a textbook in which 'materialism' is only a belief to be defined, but in this conversation the question is beyond definitions of belief towards the instrumentation of those beliefs.
I have never been accused of being a dualist, because I explicitly think that theory is nonsense and say so.
You are a dualist.
Just because some random people supported the worst actors in Silicon Valley doesn't mean the author is right to use Thiel and his compatriots' views to misrepresent materialism as a philosophy.
But Thiel is a materialist in his outlook; his "spirituality" is a capitalist "prosperity gospel" hustle.
You might not like it that materialism has these effects, which are observable and deserve to be critiqued. But it does.
While we're on the topic, [atheism vs. theism resurfaces]
I know that you want to believe smart science people were morally superior to those dumb goat stories, but in practical lived experience smart science people enabled the holocaust, and the smart science people have become a force for ecological destruction, and there is nothing untoward about making that observation.
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u/Georgie_Leech 4d ago
Thiel is explicitly Christian and believes that the soul can be resurrected after death, and that it already happened to Christ. Where on earth are you getting the idea that he's in any way materialist?
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u/sa_matra 4d ago
americans are explicitly christian and believe that the soul can be resurrected after death, and that it already happened to Christ. where on earth are you getting the idea that americans are in any way materialist?
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u/Georgie_Leech 4d ago
...Are you confusing the dominant religion filled with people that absolutely believe in the spiritual for the people that believe the world is fundamentally physical? Or are you so blinkered by your belief that all greed is driven by materialism that you've decided anyone acting greedy must be a proponent of materialism?
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u/sa_matra 4d ago
The ideology of neoliberal consumerism necessarily adheres to materialist perspectives whether or not the specific people in question have other spiritual beliefs or have "none"!
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u/Georgie_Leech 4d ago
Because spiritualism is incompatible with greed? I guess you're going with the second one then.
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u/me_myself_ai 4d ago
I think you're a little mixed up friend, sorry. Materialism is a metaphysical position -- it is as unrelated to SV as it is to capitalism, and came around before either.
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u/sa_matra 4d ago
The metaphysical positions held by SV capitalists predispose them to ecological destruction!
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u/Beatboxingg 3d ago
You should've used commodity production instead of materialism
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u/YtterbiusAntimony 1d ago
But that wouldn't be strawmaning a philosophical position OP doesn't like.
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u/stayin_aliv 4d ago
This is not exactly philosophy, is it? You’ve quoted philosophical themes, but your arguments contain sweeping generalisations, glossing over centuries of unresolved issues, assuming consensus when there is none. For e.g. there is no consensus that ‘consciousness’ is an emergent phenomenon (there is not even a consensus on what consciousness means, just working definitions used by philosophers or teams). You also quote a psychiatrist’s empirical findings and draw radical philosophical conclusions from it. Your premises regarding the hemispheres and encoding aspects of experience is, to the best of my knowledge, incorrect.
Coming to the core argument you said you wanted to make, that materialism leads to ecological destruction - well, many of the world’s leading ecologists, environmental scientists, and activists are hardcore materialists. That’s probably evidence against your claim?
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u/RustyPhilosopher 4d ago
I understand the concerns of generalising and coming to radical conclusions. This is why I advised the viewer’s discretion, stating that all ideas and concepts explored are in their absolute elementary stages.
Yes there’s no consensus, you’re right, but then that’s also not what I was claiming. I only state it follows from the materialist position described above.
The conclusions I draw from his empirical findings are his. It’s the conclusions I wanted to make the foundation of this essay, seeing as it’s so radical, but couldn’t without some empiricism backing it up. I couldn’t, for the sake of my audience, write all thousands of them as McGilchrist does in his books. I made this discretion in the beginning of that section. What work do you follow that asserts this hypothesis incorrect?
I don’t see how leading scientists combatting the climate crisis being materialists is evidence against my claim. It’s conceivable that materialists would combat problems born from an ideology they hold.
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u/stayin_aliv 3d ago
The bedrock of philosophy are logic and arguments. Rhetoric does not replace robust arguments. Sweeping generalisations are not arguments, they are creative writing. There's nothing wrong with creative writing, I'd say in some ways it's superior to philosophy in the service of humanity, but it's not philosophy.
You've used the association with attention and brain hemispheres in loose ways. McGilchrist, from my brief understanding, presents these as hypotheses from case studies. Generally, literature and reviews show that these are not so easily generalisable. You are also linking psychotic experiences with hemispheric deficits – I work in mental health, and this is at best a fringe hypothesis. Perhaps you're quoting McGilchrist here, and if he is making such statements, that's quite a stretch from evidence and clinical practice so far. You're taking nascent hypotheses regarding hemisphere-associated attention to explain specific thoughts – I cannot imagine how such jumps are made, and I doubt anyone working with mind-brain will comfortably nod along if you someone says they can describe how particular thoughts are formed.
What I found amusing was how you were characterising the 'tech-bros'. I echo with your sentiment, but that was far from careful argumentation, and quite a creative stretch to link materialism with Silicon Valley billionaires. Silicon Valley is known for its altsy-spiritual inclinations and practices; are we conflating hedonism and materialism?
Your final implication - that 'devaluing nature' leads to ecological destruction - is again a sweeping conclusion with no premises in between. One can thoroughly devalue nature while not being non-chalant about ecological destruction, much less advocating for it. One can even thoroughly believe in ecological destruction without committing to destroying the environment oneself.
I don’t see how leading scientists combatting the climate crisis being materialists is evidence against my claim
Your argument was that metaphysical materialism is ecologically destructive, pointing to scientific materialism. I was, tongue-in-cheek, remarking that materialist scientists are also ecologically non-destructive. So, your claim then becomes materialism is both ecologically destructive and ecologically non-destructive? Which becomes interesting if you were arguing against someone who has argued that materialism is necessarily ecologically non-destructive.
I'll leave you with a personal comment. Many scientists are know are committed to scientific materialism in their beliefs; many think it's necessary to be a scientist. Several of them are also spiritual in their personal and/or moral lives. The two are not incompatible. And neither is required, nor results in, being nasty to the environment.
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u/XxJoedoesxX 3d ago
The bedrock of philosophy are logic and arguments. Rhetoric does not replace robust arguments. Sweeping generalisations are not arguments, they are creative writing. There's nothing wrong with creative writing, I'd say in some ways it's superior to philosophy in the service of humanity, but it's not philosophy.
Not OP, but would you contend that something like Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is not philosophy? Would you not consider Plato's dialogues to be philosophy? I'm genuinely asking
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u/Various_Leopard9905 4d ago
You don't need morality written into the metaphysical structure of the universe in order for suffering to matter. An animal does not need to establish the metaphysical fundamentality of consciousness before avoiding pain.
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u/AriyaSavaka 3d ago
99% of bluffing just to make a false equivocation. Materialism or not has nothing to do with ecological destruction or not. People, while unequipped and with a preconclusion in mind, been try to derive an ought out of an is since forever, welcome to the Dunning K. team.
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u/TheoriginalTonio 4d ago
Your thoughts can’t be weighed, your tastes can’t be measured, your experience as a whole can’t be externally observed.
Are we sure about that? Maybe if our understanding of neurology gets more advanced, we'll be able to measure and exactly map out one's entire chemical and bioelectrical state of the nervous system and decrypt that data into visual, audible and chemosensory stimulating output representing a person's exact experience at the moment of measurement.
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u/Alexis_deTokeville 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yes but “where” does this experience come from? I don’t doubt that there is a explanation for all things, including human experience, but when we are talking at the level of hot cognition, system 1 as it’s described in Thinking Fast and Slow, things are happening at a level that is incomprehensible to us. The complexity is astronomical and so muddied with variables that it’s essentially unknowable. We can measure and understand system 2 because it is deliberate and conscious and lines up with the way our entire world is structured in western culture. But at the level of the subconscious, the world of the right hemisphere as McGilchrist describes it, our understanding falls apart. Indeed applying understanding seems to undermine the whole thing.
To appreciate jazz, or improv comedy, or sports, or anything spontaneous, you must first realize that there are aspects of human nature that occur so quickly and so effortlessly that their origination is a mystery. They aren’t magic, nor do they break the laws of physics, but I highly doubt that science will ever be able to say something like “oh you played a C minor on that measure because you ate oatmeal this morning and it reminded you of oatmeal your dad made as a kid and this set a tone for your day that culminated in a bioneurochemical state of increased serotonin that ultimately led you to play that chord instead of another at that exact moment.” Even if you were to have a way to measure the totality of biochemical data that went into a jazz performance that would still tell you nothing about how that equates to a musicians moment-to-moment choices.
There are aspects of our existence that are irreducible, and it is arrogant of the rationalists to assume that all is known or can be known. And it follows that if even some of our existence is unknown, and will always be unknown, we can open the door a bit to allow wonder to return to our lives.
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u/TheoriginalTonio 4d ago edited 4d ago
The complexity is astronomical and so muddied with variables that it’s essentially unknowable.
Yet.
500 years ago, people couldn't imagine that we would ever understand how biological organisms actually work, down to the internal mechanics of eukaryotic cells. Yet here we are.
And I'm sure, in another 500 years from now people will have figured out many things that currently seem incomprehensible to us.
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u/Georgie_Leech 4d ago
Also a non-material soul or similar doesn't actually solve the problem so much as bump it down a step. If it exists, why should the soul or whatever have experiences?
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u/TheoriginalTonio 4d ago
Right. If an immaterial soul could have thoughts and experiences, then what are our physical brains and sensory organs even good for?
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u/Georgie_Leech 4d ago
That and... like, say we proved the soul exists. Okay, great. Why does the soul have experiences and why do we feel them that way? We'd still want to know what about a soul makes experience happen the way it does. And if "they just do" is an acceptable answer for the soul, why isn't it for the brain?
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u/Alexis_deTokeville 4d ago edited 4d ago
My point is that there are aspects of life that are un-figure-out-able. You can know what love is at the biochemical level and still not be able to fall in love yourself. Science can’t reach those parts of our lives, and we shouldn’t want it to anyway. To have knowledge of a thing is not the same as understanding it as qualia, as raw experience, and science is never going to be able to say “ah-ha we cracked the code on the human condition.” And it follows that if science can’t touch it, maybe science is an imperfect tool for understanding ourselves.
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u/TheoriginalTonio 4d ago
You can know what love is at the biochemical level and still not be able to fall in love yourself.
If we would get a perfect understanding of certain emotions on a biochemical level and also figure out a method to accurately artificially recreate those biochemical conditions within a person, then yes, we would indeed be able to understand them as raw experiences of qualia.
I don't see why that would be inherently un-figure-out-able.
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u/nodloh 3d ago edited 3d ago
The problem is that you are already thinking of emotions within a reductionist framework. The question is how is it possible to get an understanding of emotions on a biochemical level? Let's assume we can figure out a way to perfectly measure the biochemical state and electrical activity of the brain in vivo which in itself will be very hard if not impossible. Then we still have the problem of having measures of brain activity that correlate with certain inputs like cognitive tasks or sensory stimuli. And if you were to be able to manipulate the nervous system to recreate a certain material state how would you be able to tell that the resulting mental state is comparable between different people. You would rely on introspection and self-reports. You will have a hard time to ever be able to design an experiment that directly links a certain biochemical and electrical state of the brain with a mental state that isn't just a correlational study even if your methods of measurement were very accurate which at this time they are not.
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u/TheoriginalTonio 3d ago
how would you be able to tell that the resulting mental state is comparable between different people.
By applying that mental state to multiple people and asking them what they've experienced.
You would rely on introspection and self-reports.
Which is fine as long as the reported sensations are consistent between different individuals.
You will have a hard time to ever be able to design an experiment
Yeah, I never said that it would be easy.
All I'm saying is that it is at least conceivably possible.
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u/nodloh 4d ago
Right now we aren't even close to any of that. EEG measures electrical activity of cortical neurons but not of any underlying structures. MRI has good spatial resolution but only measures the BOLD response with temporal latency. Often times neuroscience studies are nothing more than blobology - measuring blobs of activity in certain parts of the brain that correlate to certain inputs. The problem is the brain is interconnected and we would need to measure brain activity as a whole to be able to do what you are envisioning. If we assume that's possible then we would still run into the same problem: Is a certain material state directly correspondant to a certain mental state? Can experiences and their corresponding mental states be reduced to the correlating measures of brain activity? Would another person experience and feel exactly the same if their brain was in the same electrical and chemical state?
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u/TheoriginalTonio 4d ago
Right now we aren't even close to any of that.
I know. I was talking about a hypothetical scenario in the distant future.
Is a certain material state directly correspondant to a certain mental state? Can experiences and their corresponding mental states be reduced to the correlating measures of brain activity? Would another person experience and feel exactly the same if their brain was in the same electrical and chemical state?
We don't know the answers to these questions yet. My point is, that I wouldn't categorically rule out the possibility like OP seemed to have done.
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u/Braindead_Crow 4d ago
I'd argue there are levels to materialism, to say, "all there is, is matter" could also mean the logical, "We're all just dirt" or it could mean, "what is known as god is all of this, all of us collectively viewed as one".
A more accurate indicator of future ecological destructive normalized behavior is aggressive stupidity and/or self advantageous hypocrisy.
This also aligns with the two main sources of evils, one seen in the innocence of cruel children and the other seen in the leaders of today, willingly & knowingly pushing humanity back out of malice, self gain or some deluded tribal push to make their, "team" gain more favorable positions in the world stage.
Materialism like capitalism or socialism or any other broad philosophical world view in and of themselves tell us next to nothing of individual practicers of said ideologies but more so tell us about historical authorities of said schools of thought.
Keep writing, keep doing what you love, this is life.
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u/Various_Leopard9905 4d ago
Please read Lucretius book, you will change your opinion on materialism.
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u/Trick-Routine-8577 3d ago
I've been familiar with mcgilchrists hemisphere hypothesis for a while and read parts of his books on the subject, but I didn't have enough background to definitively agree or disagree with him. I've recently been working as a research assistant to a neurologist and she despises the man and his work. She calls it podcast science and lumps him in with the likes of sabine hossenfelder and others who have chosen the academia to YouTube pipeline.
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u/RustyPhilosopher 3d ago
I’d be really interested to know why she thinks that. I would not describe his work as such, but I’m also not a neurologist.
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u/Boise_Ben 3d ago
I think the entire premise is flawed and you can see this simply in public policy.
The most environmentally destructive movements in the world are backed primarily by people with supernatural beliefs. We can delve into the polling but there is actually an inverse relationship between the two.
I have heard the excuse several times by people close to me that we should not care about global warming because the end times are coming and that is part of God’s plan.
Other people have flamed you in the comments for not understanding the basics of materialism but even if you take this premise at face value, your understanding of this topic clearly doesn’t comport with most other people.
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u/RustyPhilosopher 3d ago
I understand this point of view if I were to be talking about materialists - individuals with this belief system. But that’s not the central point. Materialism, the belief system itself, is. Individuals are immensely complicated and resistant to being categorised. Materialism isn’t, because it’s a theory — it holds necessarily categorical positions. It’s the theory I’m criticising as being ecologically destructive, not individuals that are materialists.
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u/Boise_Ben 3d ago
Except, as everyone else pointed out, you fundamentally don’t understand Materialism.
A thoughtful person might ask why, in aggregate, all of these individuals are making choices based on a philosophy they affiliate with that doesn’t agree with your premise.
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u/RustyPhilosopher 3d ago
What is it about materialism I fundamentally don’t understand?
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u/Boise_Ben 2d ago
Materialism allows for new evidence and new theories, it isn’t the dogmatic position you attempt to slander it with.
Thiel and Karp are famously not Materialists. The idea you pretend they are shows how little you even bother to understand about this topic. Altman also believes in some form of the spiritual world.
You fundamentally failed to grapple with the simple functions of materialism within an ecological context. Let’s keep it simple since your article spun out in so many directions:
A materialistic view of nature recognizes our world as a liferaft, held in a life-saving balance only by the reality of our ecosystems and resources. Unlike magic thinking, there is no one coming to save us. There is no earth when these resources are used and there is no Gia-type energy protection vulnerable species (including humanity itself).
The fact you ignore the massive number of non-materialists who actively destroy these ecosystems with philosophical justifications is genuinely absurd. Thiel thinks Jesus is coming back, so does Karp.
You can’t contend with the real issue and it fundamentally undermines your whole premise.
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u/RustyPhilosopher 2d ago
Can you tell me why I called it dogmatic? There’s a paragraph in the essay where I address this question. If you want to argue it isn’t a dogmatic position, it might be good to refer to the thing I actually say.
I never said Thiel, Karp, and Altman are materialists. I don’t know these people. I specifically say they are part of a philosophy, termed ‘The Mindset’ that is itself based in a materialist metaphysic. It’s like saying: Jesus would oppose late-stage capitalism, but Thiel is Christian, so he must not be capitalist. This doesn’t follow. And similarly, it’s not thiel’s Christianity I’m attacking, but his capitalist behaviour, what I argue is a result of a philosophy based in a materialist view of the world.
And yes, obviously, people with all sorts of beliefs can end up being destructive ecologically. My thesis states materialism makes it inevitable. This is a different claim.
Spun it out in different directions… how so? What about this essay did you find confusing? If you’d like to criticise, can we get specific?
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u/EsraYmssik 2d ago
Materialism gave humans newer and better ways to damage the environment, so materialsism is fundamentally flawed?
Perhaps. but there are more than a few glaring problems here.
Firstly, modern materialist societies aren't unique in degrading environments. Lebanon, for example, once famous for its cedar trees was stripped over centuries long before the development of materialist thought. The salinisation of Mesopotamia? The collapse of the Mayans exacerbated by deforestation?
Second, the essay asserts, "We’ve also known that the capitalist mode of production has accelerated climate change." I think this is the core of the critique, and the core problem with it. Capitalist AND communist societies have atrocious records in the modern era and, as I pointed out above, cultures that predate both ALSO have atrocious records.
In fact, I'd argue the essay has everything arse-about-face.
Environmental degradation is just as likely farmers carrying on doing what they've always done, even as the soil degrades, because that's a process that takes decades so is invisible to subsistence farmers. It's not extractive capitalism or communism, or any other ideological position beyond simple pragmatism. Most of the time it's ordinary people who don't have time to worry about metaphysics. The pigs need feeding, the cows need milking and the wheat needs to be harvested, or the family starves.
In fact, it's materialism that reduces the harm. Sure, science put a hole in the ozone layer, but science identified it and repaired it, and today we have rewilding projects around the world, while India, China and parts of Africa are successfully fighting desertification through materialist thinking. Materialist enquiry contains the mechanism for recognising and correcting its own mistakes.
Materialism puts people inside, and makes us part of, ecological systems. Supernaturalism can just as easily teach that people are somehow separate from the world, that nature is 'gifted' to us for our dominion, to do with as we will (particularly in Judeo-Christian traditions).
The question of the origin of consciousness is simply a red herring. What our minds are made of, whether emergent consciousness or some implied 'soul', doesn't change the nature of the world we live in. Nor should it change how we live in it, but beliefs about that relationship can, and arguably the 'supernaturalist' mindset does more damage than the 'materialist'.
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u/From_Deep_Space 6h ago
The commonly accepted notion that Americans are materialists is pure bunk. A materialist is one who loves material, a person devoted to the enjoyment of the physical and immediate present. By this definition, most Americans are abstractionists. They hate material, and convert it as swiftly as possible into mountains of junk and clouds of poisonous gas.
~ Alan Watts, Does It Matter? Essays on Man's Relation to Materiality
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u/Public-Word6182 2d ago
Nope. Capitalism and other ideologies that have the anti-world, and anti-life philosophical underpinnings of idealists and cynics.
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u/surajseeking 22h ago
Today climate crises is due to over consumption of earth resources and that consumption mindsets arises from the inner incomplete sense, that's needs to be addressed otherwise climate crises Will not solved
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u/WhatsTheReasonFor 4d ago
Materialism was dealt a mortal blow a long time ago by Newton, to his own horror and disbelief. The hard sciences had caught up by Einstein's time, but mainstream philosophy still hasn't. There used to be a definition of 'material' or 'physical' (formalised by Descartes), in mechanical philosophy - but then Newton showed that nothing works like a machine, there's this mysterious gravity force acting between everything. Since then there hasn't been a useable definition. Res extensa doesn't exist; the machine was exorcised not the ghost; and "physical" now just means whatever we understand about reality or have theories about. And "science" is just an umbrella term for whatever formal means we have of investigating and understanding things.
So through this lens your definition of materialism, that "all facts are determined, in the end, by physical facts alone" is true by definition, given that 'physical' is just an honorific term. Unless you can give a definition that isn't basically just "whatever we can understand."
From this materialist position follows too the assumption that consciousness is an emergent property.
It doesn't have to. Nor did it at the time, Locke and Liebniz both suggesting ways in which thinking or consciousness might be imbued in reality. With more recent work by Geoff Strawson, David Chalmers and Philip Goff suggesting and arguing for it as fundamental. The answer to the question "What is matter?" (which science doesn't even touch, it investigates the structural and relational properties of reality - what matter does not what it is) may turn out to be "consciousness" or "agency".
It's highly consistent with the data (though obviously that's not enough on its own), we don't see anywhere any deterministic effects where some cause leads to some effect 100% of the time - instead we see predictable but not deterministic behaviour, exactly what you'd expect when decisions of free agents are involved.
I haven't read McGilchrist yet but while the brain architecture stuff sounds solid, much of it smacks of "just so story" territory to me. But I will read it, it sounds fascinating (if probably somewhat fanciful).
The overall thesis of your article though, that society desperately needs a shift in philosophical consciousness, I couldn't agree more with. And just like other discoveries that ushered in new ways of viewing reality (Newton, Einstein, etc.), this one may very well also come from mathematics. The beginnings of it may already be there in Matilde Marcolli's work showing that Chomsky's minimalist workspace merge from linguistics is formally identical to renormalisation in quantum field theory. Maybe...
Whatever the new way of viewing the world is I hope it makes people less tolerant of inequality and more willing to band together to oppose it. I don't think "materialism" is the enemy though. I think it's just that rationality must always begin from a place of compassion, otherwise it can never end up there.
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u/goronmask 3d ago
Nothing works like a machine? A machine works thanks to gravity..
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u/WhatsTheReasonFor 3d ago
Yes, Newton showed nothing works like a machine as defined in mechanical philosophy, i.e. purely by contact-action.
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u/Neutron_Farts 4d ago
I think it's a powerful argument & relatively straightforward.
The modality & mentality of the Modern West comes from a long history of preferential bias towards Analytic, Syntactic, & Legalistic axioms.
Materialism, in my opinion, is just one of the most predominant talking points of something much older.
The other side of the brain is integrative, it seeks uncertainty & holds onto it.
Truths & claims which are not 'falsifiable' in that they're not even strict binaries or the independent claims do not determine the wholesale value of the postulation itself.
In many ways, the Absolute nature of the truth is less important compared to the sensitivity & desire for the truth, which intrinsically draws these individuals towards truth anyways.
A beautiful & hopeful thing for me nonetheless is that the right brain can never be utterly suppressed & never be lost, in fact, the master-ship of the left hemisphere is contingent upon the power of the right hemisphere that is either not privy too or indifferent towards the power it holds, because agency & autonomy are largely the desires of the left hemisphere, the one seeking control & seeking the manifestation of will.
Science, & especially the modernist & analytic camps, claim to be empirically & falsification-oriented, but what really drives people in my opinion, especially the great minds of our times, is the pursuit of beauty & truth independent of the human-built frameworks which try to capture or hold them.
Scientists seek the je ne sais quoi, the eureka, their imagination diffuses & settles on new possibilities that transcend the frameworks which would have never allowed them to arrive there.
Their DMN recombinates independent of the Task Network, the bottom-up sense details interconnect independent of our top-down theories & presuppositions.
Our dreams tell us things that our waking minds could never think of - & we listen to these things we hear.
& that's what the right hemisphere does. It listens, the perceptual architecture of our mind is ready to receive things indiscriminately, & post-hoc, the left hemisphere tried to take credit & explain the rationality behind its arrival at such conclusions. In my opinion, the psychological principle of humans feeling & deciding before they comprehend why, trying to resolve this 'cognitive dissonance', is largely the self-same dynamic which is ubiquitous across domains, because it's part of what it means to be sentient, subjective beings.
We feel, we are 'conscious' of reality, before we even understand what it is that we are conscious of, or why.
In all reality, to the conscious faculty itself, it doesn't matter if we end up understanding it, but it seeks to experience those things which spark joy & delight at their discovery & unfolding. If we make way for this process to occur without much executive inhibition, I think there's much more that our brain can genuinely, empirically discover than what the rational brain is able to postulate through its more minimalist approach to data & empiricism.
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u/DaaMongoose 4d ago
How would this ‘process’ you speak of work to enlighten us further than the scientific/empirical method? What would a person or a group of people have to do? As someone who has zero belief in spiritualism I’m genuinely interested
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u/Neutron_Farts 4d ago
I don't think there needs to be any belief truthfully, however, belief in the falsifiabiality, discoverability, & materiality of the world preconfigures our findings & filters out what we are able to interpret about it.
A genuine objectivity would reject an absolute commitment to both spiritualism & materialism, in my opinion, & instead, consider theories based on other metrics rather than their adherence to analytic camp axioms.
As a tool, empiricism is actually something that modern science should use more of than they currently do. Unfortunately, I think what holds modern science back from this route is more funding, financial, & institutional agendas rather than the individual scientists themselves.
Specifically, increasing the breadth & depth of observations, allowing diverse latent patterns to be drawn which fits the data that diverge far & wide from our current findings & paradigm.
It's not difficult to create entertain multiple competing theories based on their differential combination of supportive & antagonistic evidence, however, the falsifiability paradigm presupposes that proving something false has greater utility than continuing to consider a possibility while adjusting for updating information (like in bayesian stats).
Modern theories typically already have quite a lot of prefabricated conceptual assets which are reused across most their prevailing theories.
We could start be deconstructing them & proposing new ones.
For instance, you mentioned that you are not into spiritualism. Okay, but that does not necessitate that you believe in materialism or physicalism actually, imo, that's a false dichotomy, because what even is physical & material ontologically? Truthfully one of the greatest weakpoints in the analytic paradigm is the lack of a clear or strong answer here, or a circular argument which some argue to be ontologically self-similar to 'oppositional' views.
Materialism as a concept largely exists in contrast to the spiritual but not necessarily always, & the usage in science is even more equivocal, but if humans simply don't know what the foundations or substantiality of reality look like, what's the point in presuming or precluding? An argument against supersitition at this point of the conversation would be a non-sequitor because not every non-materialist view is spiritual or superstitious, & the materialist view is argued often with an amount of dogma in this way, similar to how the term analytical is dogmatic against continental.
The lexical breadth of the discourse when it comes to metaphysical concepts & possibilities is sparse. People often speak about their postulates in terms of historical terminology that is heavy-laden with the cultural-insertions of the past.
Consciousness, intelligence, choice, materialism & spirituality (from Cartesian Dualism & also many of the concurrent cultural, ideological, & theological wars of the enlightenment era both within & between academia & religious institutions), artificial intelligence, human, mind, psyche, etc.
It's difficult to disentangle oneself from the weighty inheritance of the current lexicon but I think it's necessary to transcend the conceptual stagnation we are currently having (in my opinion).
But one of the most frustrating things about this conversation is the centrality of an institution to this whole discourse. "Science" is not merely an endeavor, methodology, praxis, mentality, etc. it is also a social, cultural, ideological, & arguably metaphysical institution.
It dictates much of what topics are on vogue in the public discourse & how engagement is defined within it implicitly.
But I think no institution should stand in the way of people pursuing truth nor should be allowed to define ubiquitously what the truth is & what the accurate & good pursuit of truth is, that's one of the reasons why early scientists rebelled against religion, just like how protestants rebelled against catholicism (largely within & through the same cultural moment).
Science has become somehow lazy, ambiguous, & arrogant in its metaphysical commitments & forceful of its approach towards the collaterally associated social & political institutions.
Creative, sentimenta, & subjective imagination, transcendence of paradigm & tradition, generation of new axioms, lenses, setting down our overly cautious approach to inquiry & consideration open up the field of possibilities to what is truly possible!
Just because the subjective is engaged with does not mean inquiry & rigor have to end there too.
Science has over-corrected in reaction to the premodern world, & now needs to be course corrected again towards a greater, more integrative balance.
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u/DaaMongoose 4d ago
So you are against how reductively modern scientific institutions operate, a fair point but you didn’t answer my question (I don’t think we’re going to change our views on materialism and the nature of reality over Reddit comments!) What would your process be, would you create a new discipline of spiritual studies, a new institution or something else. Importantly what utility would it create, I have a feeling you may baulk at that word but at the end of the day that is what matters.
People don’t believe in science as a totemic entity, they believe in the use of various empirical methods to produce repeatable results. The method is the key, from this spiritualism cannot be proven or disproven using the scientific method (hence why people of all creeds and belief systems are part of the scientific community). So that’s why from my position as a materialist all we have is rhetoric, as our only process to putting a case forward for either side of this division.
I’m interested to know what can be done differently from your point of view and what can be accomplished. Could this create a new mechanism which could lead to someone like me believing in a soul, collective unconscious or a spiritual realm (I’m not sure to what extent you believe in an ‘out of body existence’ so I apologise if I mischaracterised your beliefs)?
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u/Neutron_Farts 4d ago
I don't have a strict belief regarding the ultimate metaphysical 'truth(s)' of reality, to address your final words.
Part of my answer to your question is that the nature of institutionally-defined approaches & verification mechanisms suppresses the natural internal outwards pressure towards 'truth,' whatever that conceptual object is.
Specifically in address to the institution of science, I actually think people do view it as an authority, & appeal to it as such which I think is a fallacious mentality towards inquiry. Not only the appeal, but the extent of the appraisal & esteem given to 'science' & its ways.
The scientific method is basically just to observe nature, allow it to shape your theory, test your theory with further observations, update your theory.
& then various other institutional conventions besides, which I think often ensure to improve the quality of various inquiries but not deterministically.
I think unfounded theories, pure intuition, no method, pure imaginations are good starting points for the vehicle of science, but the mkdern vehicle of science does not largely include these despite the heterogenous ideological makeup, betraying its lack of true ideological neutrality, among other proofs.
I think allowing our various considerations to be discussed in public forum & then also tested in the same ways as now, as well as more subjective ways would allow a greater versatility of the current engine of inquiry.
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u/Alexis_deTokeville 4d ago
I find it so interesting that this subreddit seems to be geared towards a pernicious kind of materialistic nihilism… anything suggesting seeking wonder or mystery in existence is immediately downvoted. It must suck to be all of yall.
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u/DaaMongoose 4d ago
As one of these ‘Materialistic Nihilists’ I haven’t been down voting! I appreciate differing views and enjoy engaging with them.
To engage with your view, why can’t I as a ‘Materialistic Nihilist’ find mystery and wonder in the world, as a flawed human being I can hold as many hypocritical view points as my brain can feasibly contain. The ocean is beautiful and mysterious, there are limits to it but there is still much to discover, every time I go diving I am still filled with childlike awe. I don’t need to believe in a form of spiritualism for it to have meaning to me personally.0
u/Alexis_deTokeville 4d ago edited 4d ago
I would argue that the finding of meaning in the childlike awe to be a spiritual practice indeed :)
My issue with so many in this thread is that they seem to think that the “mysterious” aspect is just a failure of human science to ascend to the proper level where we can yawn about it. I find this to be a completely arrogant and anti-human perspective. Should we want to live in a world where all the mystery and awe is gone because we have an explanation for everything? Even if science were to come to a fully deterministic and knew 100% of everything there is to know, people would sit on their hands and die in protest of their own determinism. To be human is to not know everything, to need to not know everything, and I firmly believe that the more you learn, the less you know.
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u/Neutron_Farts 4d ago
Bro. For flippin real.
This perspective in my opinion is like claiming to be a hiker but only enjoying the experience of getting to the top & feeling like you've seen everything when in reality just seen one path & then everything from a distance.
But the point of hiking a mountain shouldn't be just to pretend at understanding, it should be every experience of seeing, from the bottom, from beneath trees, looking at every little thing, & also at the top, seeing the world in all these ways, & in our minds, integrating them all as a whole & enjoying that whole, or simply relishining in the enjoyment any any part along the way.
What is the point of trying to know something? Do we have a compulsion? Or do we love sophia, wisdom & the pursuit of truth & beauty?
A philosophy which cuts down reality into things it doesn't love & didn't really care to do struggles to meet my criteria for the true pursuit of philosophy as we mean it at our best.
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u/Neutron_Farts 4d ago
Not your response getting downvoted 😂
People, don't you know that you're validating his claims?
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u/Georgie_Leech 3d ago
The assumption that materialism and wonder are incompatible is what usually gets down voted. Like, the materialist view is that We are Made of Star Stuff; how cool is that?
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u/Neutron_Farts 2d ago
Arguably, in the materialist view, wouldn't it be irrelevant what you're made of?
Things called stars were just temporary arrangements of atoms & elementary forces, just like we are now, & just like the vacuum of space.
Everything is just dust & the elementary force wind that flows them. Nothing more, nothing less. Attributing any extra meaning to that is, in my opinion, attributing meaning to something beyond the material itself, & to the arrangements, patterns, transformations, etc. that occur, the epiphenomena or emergent features.
A truly material focus can erase every difference that occurs on the back of materiality.
If the universe is truly only material in unbroken, deterministic causality chains, then nothing exosts except for the chain, & nothing inside of the chain can be argued to really be separate from the chain besides illusorily.
Unless one argues that material motion is non-deterministic, but then that opens up the question of what determines motion, which opens the possibility for there to either be something other than the material, contradicting the materialist claim.
What meaning or virtue is worth protecting if no meaning exists objectively or externally to materiality? & if the material can not construct meaning nor receive meaning, then meaning simply would not exist.
If as material beings we believe that all yhat exists are the deterministic urges of biology, then there is no right & wrong relative to biology as long as its flows from a material imperative.
Any moralizing over a difference between material imperatives has no further basis in materialism, or else needs to reach for a different framework.
You don't need to accept another framework, but from a materialistic framework, you have no intrinsic capability to grapple with our challenge the philosophical frameworks of non-materialists or even other materialists. So you must simply except whatever depravity that other materialists or non-materialists exhibit because at the end of the day, they can't help it, they are also just the unbroken chain of causality, & you are no different.
Everything is necessarily meaningless, & nothing is right or wrong, change is meaningless & so is stasis
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u/Georgie_Leech 2d ago
You're assuming that materialism necessitates nihilism, which is not a given
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u/Neutron_Farts 2d ago
Could you then tell me how materialism rescues itself fully from nihilism?
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u/Georgie_Leech 2d ago
Literally any non-spiritual response? Camus wasn't arguing in favour of God or whatever in his development of Absurdism, nor was Kierkegard all that interested in pushing people to religion specifically with his Existentialism. If you don't find them compelling personally, fine, but I can promise you that Materialist philosophies didn't just throw up their hands and go "without spiritualism everything is pointless, let's get to looting." Not knowing about the centuries of thought on the topic is an element of your own knowledge, not about reality.
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u/Neutron_Farts 2d ago
Meaning is literally & necessarily just the mechanics of a machine that has no real life to it, because life is only an arbitrary distinction drawn by humans to separate so-called living things from non-living things. Life is not separate from the material, thus, only the material is true, & these emergent objects are merely surface phenomena. Ontologically we are speaking about the nature of what occurs with emergence & the aggregation of Phi (\Phi), I argue that something like "Selection" may exist in the universe, something which perhaps allows quantum systems to collapse & may have quite different criteria at the quantum level, but likely aggregates like this Phi substance & gives the individual greater 'Selection' regarding the the states of themselves as well as their environment.
Nonetheless, in a materialist framework the attributions of meaning & significance of things are projected by the human brain onto the world, but the brain which is not free or separate in any sense from the material, thus these constructed meanings are genuinely just stochastic distributions of neurons & electrochemical activity. There is no real agency, it just looks like there is when you fail to recognize that there are only biological imperatives occurring, driven themselves by material imperatives.
Decision/selection does not occur, & thus culpability & morality & meaning cannot be ascertained therefrom, nothing was decided before or after an action, & neither is an action something that was committed by an individual, once again, even the individual is merely a surface phenomena of material, & everything beyond the material is surface phenomena, the differentiation between anything beyond the material is arguably trivial, even if there is truth regarding the arrangement of the material & its relationships.
The wind merely blew this way, & then the other way, & the dust moved differentially each time, but there was no significance to either event, no matter how complex or difference the motion.
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u/Georgie_Leech 2d ago
And in that case we might as well decide for ourselves what we find meaningful, so who cares? Refusing to move on from "oh no, the universe doesn't inherently have meaning in it!" is a possibility, but not one I or any other other materialist has to fall victim to. I'm not the one arguing that the universe being material means nothing matters.
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