Materialism vs. Materialism, Part 1: Getting Ahold of the Matter

Anthropology, Ontology, and Methodology

Materialism is one of those words that means many different things in different contexts. One person might say that their friend is too “materialistic”, a Marxist might describe themselves as a dialectical “materialist”, and a physicist might describe themselves as subscribing to a materialist conception of the universe—meanwhile, another physicist might subscribe to a materialist methodology in their scientific work, but not subscribe to it otherwise. Each use of this word means something rather different in each case. And it seems to me that often, even well-educated people confuse two (or more) of these meanings, often rendering conversations in science, philosophy, and politics much more opaque than they need be. Today, I’d like to do something about that.

I’ve outlined four different meanings to materialist above; we can dispense with the first one pretty quickly. In everyday English, when we describe a person as materialistic, we are describing their personality, goals, and values, and are often also making a moral judgment about them. In this usage, being materialistic means that someone values material goods very highly (and normally, it is implied, too highly). So, if someone likes Lamborghinis, caviar, and multi-acre mansions, we would likely describe them as materialistic—and we might go further, and suggest that such things are not actually worth our time, attention, and effort (though, of course, there will be disagreement on that latter judgment). Certainly, some people know they are materialistic, and don’t see that as a problem at all:

Now, for anyone interested in ethics, and especially in spiritually-informed ethics, this kind of materialism is worthy of attention and reflection. Jesus and Siddhartha Gautama both, for example, warned that being materialistic was the best way to set yourself on a very bad path. In any event, I will let you make your own judgments about whether such a lifestyle is worth your time. Below, we will discuss the other three meanings of materialism, because it is those three that, I think, are often conflated and confused.

I think the most common understanding of “materialism” (once we set the above meaning aside) is what I would call ontological or metaphysical materialism. This is the view that only matter actually exists, that reality is composed entirely of matter. Now, this view comes in many shades and gradations, and is closely linked to other terms, especially “physicalism” and “naturalism”—however, though such terms are sometimes used interchangeably, they are not necessarily synonymous. (For example, someone who subscribes to naturalism may simply want to oppose the idea of the supernatural, but they might think that the category “natural” includes some non-material things.)

Undoubtedly, the most common form of materialism is “reductive materialism”, which is the most stringent and unambiguous version of the position. On the reductionist materialist account, everything that exists can be completely explained by reference to its parts, and its parts will either be fundamental material entities, or will be themselves be complex entities that will, upon further analysis, resolve into fundamental material entities.

Now, precisely what those fundamental material entities are has been the subject of many centuries/millennia of discussion, debate, and experimentation. For a while, the assumption was that there were some very tiny things called “atoms” which themselves could not be broken into parts (atom comes from the Greek for “indivisible”). Those of you who completed high school science classes will note, though, that in English today, the things we refer to as “atoms”, such as oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen, are very much not indivisible. At a certain point in the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists did think that these were indeed true atoms: elemental realities which simply existed, could not be broken down, and which comprised everything we know.

This view quickly fell apart, as these supposed atoms were found to be comprised of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Even the first two of these more basic entities could then be decomposed into more fundamental entities with the development of quantum mechanics: protons and neutrons, for example, are composed of various kinds of quarks and also receive some properties from other entities, such as various bosons. (There is much more to it than this, but such a discussion is beyond my paygrade on this subject.) Electrons are not; they are “basic” or fundamental at the quantum level of analysis. However, it also turns out that they can be understood just as easily as waves, or probability fields, as they can be as particles. In short, the very science that seemed to undergird the idea of materialism has yielded a view in which it is waves and fields that are fundamental, rather than particles—a materialism without matter, so to speak. And indeed, there are very good reasons for not treating these waves and fields as fundamental either. (But that is a topic for another, future, post.)

But as a very brief, rough and ready description of ontological or metaphysical materialism, I think the above covers its reasonably well: materialism means everything is material. Pretty straightforward.

Or is it? The modern genesis of materialism was the development of the “mechanistic philosophy”, beginning (very roughly speaking) with René Descartes and Francis Bacon.¹ But Descartes, rather famously, was a dualist, not a materialist: he insisted that mind could not be reduced to matter. Nevertheless, he did believe that, when it came to considering the physical universe, we could essential bracket mind off, and treat the observable, physical universe as a mechanism made entirely of matter. So the seeds for a more thorough-going materialism were definitely present in his thought.

But Descartes’s original dualist approach makes it clear that one could adopt a materialist methodology in certain areas of research without committing to a materialist ontology or metaphysics, as a theory to explain what is real. Consider: when a coach is planning the best tactics in a soccer (or football, if you insist on being difficult) game, they can (and should) ignore everything except the 22 players, the field, the rules, and the referees. Nothing outside of these considerations is relevant to what decisions the coach should make in the game. But of course, this doesn’t mean that they stop believing that the world outside of the soccer field (or pitch, if you continue to insist on being difficult) exists. They bracket the majority of reality simply to focus on the task at hand.

Likewise, a physicist, chemist, or biologist could ignore everything not material when they craft an experiment, so that they can focus on the specific question they are trying to answer. But this does not mean that they have to actually believe that only the material exists or is real.

This mode of materialism, methodological materialism, is a kind of limited epistemological framework, rather than a full-blown ontology or metaphysics. And it turns out not only that scientists can do their work adopting such a materialist method, but without adopting the materialist ontology, but that indeed many do.² Indeed, some have argued that ontological materialism resulted by a slow elision from methodological materialism in the 17th century to the ontological variety by the late 19th.³ And indeed, it seems to me, very often, when people argue for ontological materialism, they essentially make an argument for methodological materialism, and then just assume that if methodological materialism is true, then the ontological version must be as well. But this conclusion simply doesn’t follow from the premise.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that ontological materialism is obviously false, but rather than it would need to be defended on its owe merits. My own view is that such arguments fail, but as indicated above, I won’t address that in this post (though I do plan to in the future).

In any event, we still have (at least) one more meaning of materialism to inquire about. Anyone who spends any amount of time hanging out with Marxists will no doubt know how keen they are on describing themselves as “dialectical materialists”. And, indeed, it seems to me that most (though certainly not all!) Marxists are committed to ontological (or metaphysical) materialism. Furthermore, I think many of them assume that if dialectical materialism is true, then ontological materialism necessarily is as well. But I don’t think that follows. But to see why, we need to understand what dialectical materialism even is.

And we will take up exactly that question in Part 2, next week.

Materialism vs. Materialism, Part 2: What Matters for Marx

1. I am leaving ancient modes of materialism, such as some of the pre-Socrates and Epicureanism, to the side for the time being.

2. One well-known example is the geneticist Francis Collins.

3. The history of this development is one of the principal themes of Some New World by Peter Harrison. (I’m pretty sure I came across this book on someone else’s Substack—but I can’t remember who!)