Blackwell Reference Online

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The term “materialism” has two main philosophical meanings. First, it refers to the belief that matter is all that exists, so that ideas and concepts are illusory. This outlook is often known today as “eliminative materialism.” Second, it can also designate the belief that ideas are determined by the material circumstances in which they arise and develop. In one sense, the former kind of materialism is a more extreme version of the latter, but there is also an important sense in which the two types of materialism are mutually exclusive, for the former admits the objective existence of ideas, while the latter denies that ideas have any real existence at all. Materialism is the oldest species of Western philosophy. It is the first position that the Greeks arrived at when they began to consider their situation in conceptual terms. It looks, to the untutored eye, as if matter is all that exists. Such a reaction to experience shows a failure, or an unwillingness, to distinguish between appearance and essence. Primitive materialism assumes that the way things appear is the way they really are. Once it is accepted that everything that exists shares the single characteristic of being material, the natural next step is to identify an arche , a single element within all matter, which would provide it with a definitive characteristic and a unifying principle. Thus in the early Ionian school ... log in or subscribe to read full text