The New Materialism PDF
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THE NEW MATERIALISM THE NEW MATERIALISM by JAMES K. FEIBLEMAN TULANE UNIVERSITY MARTIN US NI]HOFF I THE HAGUE I 1970 ISBN-13: 978-90-247-0047-9 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-3165-3 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-3165-3 © I970 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands All rights reserved, including the right to translate 01' to refrroduce this book 01' parts thereot in any to'Ym TABLE OF CONTENTS PART ONE: INTRODUCTION AND METHOD I. The Subjective Digression 3 II. A Synthetic Method for the Study of Empirical Ontology 20 PART TWO: NATURE III. Formal Materialism: The New Version 39 IV. Full Concreteness and the Re-materialization of Matter 55 V. A Material Theory of Reference 66 VI. How Abstract Things Survive 84 PART THREE: HUMAN NATURE VII. Artifactualism 95 VIII. The Ambivalence of Aggression and the Moralization of Man 112 IX. Human Nature and Institutions 123 X. Cultural Conditioning 134 PART FOUR: THE LIMITS OF NATURE Xl. Spirit as a Property of Matter 149 XII. A Religion for the New Materialism 160 XIII. God 175 References 185 Index 187 FOREWORD A wholly new theory of matter has been advanced in the last half century by modern physics, but there has been no new theory of ma terialism to match it. The occurrence of a revolution of such magni tude in science will have to be understood as calling for a corresponding one in philosophy. The present work is an attempt to make a start in that direction. Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to the Editors of the fol lowing journals for permission to reprint articles which first appeared in their pages: to Darshana for "Human Nature and Institutions"; to Diogenes for "Full Concreteness and the Re-Materialization of Matter"; to Perspectives in Biology and Medicine for "The Ambiva lence of Aggression and the Moralization of Man"; to Philosophy and Phenomenological Research for "Formal Materialism Reconfirmed" (which appears here revised and extended as "Formal Materialism: The New Version"), and for "Artifactualism: The Origin of Man and His Tools"; to Philosophy Today for "How Abstract Objects Survive"; to Religious Studies for "A Religion for the New Materialism"; and to Tulane Studies in PhilosoPhy for "A Material Theory of Reference." PART ONE INTRODUCTION AND METHOD CHAPTER I THE SUBJECTIVE DIGRESSION Every philosophy endeavors to be as comprehensive as possible, and when philosophers speak they do so for the whole world. But their critics have long ago recognized that, although they usually have something to say, what is genuine is something less than they have supposed. So long as philosophies are limited, rival claimants may both speak for the truth; and this is no less the case when one truth is nar rower than another. Briefly, the prevailing Greek view of man, which we can think of as a kind of realist dispensation, was a view taken from the outside, and man himself a figure in a natural landscape. The modern scien tific view of man is consistent with this Greek view. But European philosophy from its start took a different turn. Most of the European philosophers sought to look at man from the inside, as a figure quite distinct from his background and not an integral part of it. I call this European view "the subjective digression" because it occurs after the Greeks and despite modern science. It will be the intention of this study, first, to account for the subjective digression; secondly, to show what aspects of reality the philosophers who have been responsible for it are defending; and, finally, to advance the claims of the revised realist dispensation which has the advantage given it not only by experimental science but also by the disclosure of the philosophers of the subjective digression. I Man is part of the world from which he emerged and to which he must return. There is a sense in which he can be said never to have left it. In the brief period during which he stands out in low relief against the backgroundoftherest of nature, he can be understood only by means of a prior understanding of the background of nature. Thus some 4 INTRODUCTION AND METHOD understanding of the world is a prerequisite for an understanding of man. The Greeks knew very well that man is a natural animal, and no less so because it is native to him to be rational. They thought that every part of man, including reason, has its counterpart in the world. There fore to understand man it is necessary first to understand the world in which he lives. Thus Greek philosophy was from the days of the Pre Socratics to its flourishing with Democritus, Plato and Aristotle, essentially realistic and objective. In the tiny Greek world of Athens the individual, his society and his philosophy were so perfectly welded that in the name of anyone it was not found necessary to repudiate the others. The individual did not exist despite his society but because of it, and his philosophy could be a social philosophy without sacrificing what was peculiarly his. But this situation soon took a change for the worse. The perfection of the polis broke up, and with it the security which the individual found in his state. He fell back then upon subjective philosophies, in an effort to maintain himself in an alien world. Stoicism and Epicureanism, scepticism and solipsism, were the philosophical devices by which the individual shored up his weaknesses and the agonies produced by his alienation. But the subjective digression reverses this order. It assumes that an understanding of man is prerequisite for an understanding of the world, since the world is to be understood only as an extension of man's knowledge. The beginnings of the subjective digression were fore shadowed when Greek philosophy was taken over by the scholastics. The religious interests were in man, God, and the relations between them, and it was never understood that the relations between them were me diated by the material world. Hence the interest in the material world, which had been maintained so sedulously by the Greeks, lagged, and the importance of man in relation to God rose accordingly. Despite the knowledge of human frailty and the acute sense of sin, it was a very flattering view of man. The subjective digression was fully developed by Descartes who substituted mind and matter for form and matter. The shift from Aristotle's form to Descartes' mind appeared innocent enough at the time. But it set the philosophers off to develop their own brand of empiricism; they were content to study the effects of the object on the knowing subject, the human end of experience. Scientific empiri cism is objective, the scientist is concerned with the object through THE SUBJECTIVE DIGRESSION 5 his design of experiments and through his subsequent calculations. But the philosopher tends to read science, as indeed everything else, subjectively. After Descartes philosophy was seldom free from SUbjectivity. Various forms of it were tried and adopted, usually in terms of some one subjective faculty. The Continental rationalists Spinoza and Leibniz followed Descartes' lead in endeavoring to secure reliable knowledge by means of reasoning. The British empiricists Locke, Berkeley and Hume operated with the senses as the basis, usually (though not exclusively) the visual sense. British empiricism is in the main philosophical empiricism. It is not the same as scientific empiricism, by which no doubt it was inspired. The most dramatic contrast is perhaps the one furnished by the existence of experimental science. Both philosophers and scientists have used the term "empiricism" and many philosophers in the Euro pean tradition have held themselves to be empiricists, practicing a method very much like that of science. A little examination, how ever, will prove that this is very far from being the case. For experi ence is a two-ended process, with the subject at one end and the object at the other. The scientist employs his method in order to learn as much as he can about the object. It is the material object and the con ditions disclosing the regularities of behavior of the material object which constitute the aim of the scientist's researches. The philosopher, on the other hand, employs his method in order to learn as much as he can about the subject. Not what experience discloses about the nature of the object but what it discloses about the nature of the sub ject, is what interests him. He is concerned to study his own reactions to experience rather than what is disclosed by his experience. Both, it is true, employ experience, but between them there is literally all of the difference in the world. For even when the scientist is interested in the subject, even when man himself becomes the object of scientific research, he is treated by the scientists as an object, to be investigated in accordance with the orthodox procedures established by the scientific method. Introspection is a tool in the hands of the philosopher, instrumental experimentation is the tool employed by the working scientist. The knowledge gained in these two contrasting ways could be expected to be, as indeed it proves, sharply different. The discovery of biological evolution by Darwin and its later de velopment by others served to reinforce the Greek view, for it showed the mechanism by which man emerged from his biological background 6 INTRODUCTION AND METHOD of lower species, themselves a more ancient product of still lower organisms, until now we know that life itself could have begun as a product of non-living physical and chemical processes. According to modern biology man survives because of his ability to adapt to his environment, and it is clear that he remains dependent upon many natural developments, beginning with solar energies and involving green plants as well as animal organisms. Everything in science con spires to underscore the objective development of man as a complex material object standing out in low relief from the rest of material nature. Those modern thinkers who understand very well the place of man in nature are devoted to the theory and practice of science. The realist school: philosophers such as Peirce, N. Hartmann, and Whitehead, and including among many others the American critical realists, as well as Laird, Frege and Meinong, are in agreement with the scientists. But most other philosophers are content to find new ways to extend the subjective digression; as for instance existentialism, and the analy sis of ordinary language. The English practitioners of the philosophy of ordinary language, those who like Austin and Ryle have followed the later Wittgenstein, are content to make up a technical discipline from the close analy sis of the meanings imbedded in colloquial speech. This takes them away from science and from contemporary progress, and leaves them with the preserved feelings of those who in the past formed the language with its conventional meanings. The subjectivity of the dead is thus the subject matter of the living, who keep this link with the external world despite the fact that it remains a precarious one. Philosophers have nevertheless allowed themselves to be crowded out of the external world by the successes of experimental science, and on the European mainland they have responded by trying to make up for it with an intensive analysis of their own subjective states (just in case they should be able to argue that these are typical). They have accepted the alienation in a way which is almost patho logical, and think they have allayed its damage through its very recognition. Anguish and nausea have become the terms of reference of those who in this way reassure themselves of the reality of their own being. But in a world of rapidly increasing human population and scientific knowledge, preoccupation with the self is supererogatory and has earned philosophy worse than a bad name, indeed almost total neglect.
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