Re: Materialism
Reply #3 - June 24, 2011, 10:44 PM
I think the first problem with materialism is that nobody has any idea what matter really is. It is difficult to have a worldview based on a substance that nobody can define.
For instance, alot of materialists like to say that matter is whatever physics says matter is. However, the physical understanding of what matter is, is always changing. After all, it used to be assumed that matter is solid bits of mass that have no internal reality but are meaninglessly drifting through space being pulled and pushed around by other solid bits of mass.
However, we now know that this Newtonian understanding of matter is false. There are physical particles (such as neutrinos) that can pass through all other matter without disturbing it. There are physical particles (such as photons) that have no mass.
This of course, then raises the question, if the understanding of matter can change to incorporate masslessness and ability to pass through walls, if it can also incorporate quantum entanglement, the ability for particles to be in two places at once and so on, then why should we stop there and say that is true materialism? Why can't matter, tomorrow, be found to incorporate thoughts and feelings too (just as an example)? It makes no sense to call oneself a materialist because it is trying to take on a metaphysical position (and all worldviews are metaphysical) by means of self-admitted inadequate knowledge.
Other materialists, knowing this problem, perhaps can then take a different viewpoint, and instead say that materialism is the worldview that only matter exists but not on our current understanding of matter but on whatever a final physics will tell us. This is a difficult position to uphold because it seems unscientific to think that one day physics will be completed - after all, every physical theory has to be falsifiable and continually tested, there is no such thing as completion and secondly, because it seems as if there is this unhealthy faith in scientists 1000 years from now (or whenever) knowing the truth. That is a leap of faith as big as any.
This is just one problem with materialism. There are others too.
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
Topic: Materialism