Careful, talk like that around here and a bunch of Marxist ghost hunters will tell you that you don't understand what Marx meant by materialism, that he totally meant you could believe in ghosts and magic unicorns and telepathy, just not be one of those idealists! And then they'll say you're just a reddit atheist for claiming otherwise.
materialism literally is not about no spiritual stuff existing though. like it’s literally just not what the term means. your parody of the person saying what you think is a dumb characterization of it is more accurate
like we’re talking about people believing behavior is affected by reality vs behavior is affected by ideals, those are different from any specific thing existing or not existing or needing or not needing proof. Like if we found out general relativity was fake and people had the ability to shoot fireballs out of their hands using glorb schlorbs as fuel, materialism would still be a relevant concept
You are right that lots of those things shouldn’t be believed in because most of them are unfalsifiable, but that’s not the same as it being non-materialist
That is in fact (part of) what it means in every Marxist text I’ve come across so far, for example Georges Politzer’s Elementary Principles of Philosophy.
that’s kinda weird though. because there are plenty of “immaterial” (actually probably material in weird ways) things that provably exist in material reality. like radiation is fucking weird and nobody even knows what’s going on with consciousness. Weird shit can still exist in a material world, it’s just material weird shit. So “ghosts” could exist but they’d probably be part of a natural law or phenomenon of material reality we just don’t understand yet. I mean they almost definitely don’t because there’s like no falsifiable proof or evidence, I just mean as a general principle for weird shit in general
That's the key - air, radiation, gravity, all the "invisible" parts of the universe are material. They have material effects that are distinguishable from them not having an effect. Putting gold foil in front of a radiation source will prove radiation's realness as the particles punch holes in the foil.
One of the key claims of ESP is that it doesn't act in a material way, instead being some weird vibe that nothing can detect except our brains, which are special because reasons. Electrons, neutrinos, even time travelling tachyons are actual, physical objects that exist and can be detected, electromagnetism and gravity will pull objects towards them, but ESP is based on the idea of there being something that doesn't interact with any other part of the universe, but somehow still grants us awareness of other parts of the universe.
I was talking about, “materialism literally is not about no spiritual stuff existing.” Dialectical materialism, among other things, literally is about no spiritual stuff existing. The Chinese Communist Party to this day is atheist, and while it tolerates religions, its position is that their destiny is to wither away.
Materialism means we believe in a world that exists independent of our observations. This external world is in dialogue with people. There is not some kind of third thing that's not in the world, not in the people, and fundamentally unobservable/unknowable, like God or souls or woo in general. (See Engels on agnosticism in Socialism Scientific & Utopian.) Either these things are real material phenomena, in which case we can use science to analyze ghosts or whatever, or they're not. There is room in a materialist worldview for like, cryptids, but most "parapsychology" is stuff that requires discarding huge chunks of knowledge. For instance premonitions violate causality. If you give that up, what's left to be materialist about?
For instance premonitions violate causality. If you give that up, what's left to be materialist about?
A lot. The definition you gave for materialism isn’t incompatible with brainfuck basically incomprehensible weird shit, it just has to be technically observable and predictable. Humans aren’t perfect measuring instruments and often what we make isn’t perfect either, so the existence of systems and shit we might be able to eventually measure but seem completely supernatural to us now is totally possible.
What does it mean to "believe" in something you can't observe or understand? There's a sort of frontier where you make observations, form and test theories, and grow to understand the observations. We agree that crank theories, without evidence and unable to prove anything, are indistinguishable from the supernatural. So what good does it do us to consider them? We should explore things within the frontier - does infrasound cause ghost sightings? if so, does that summon ghosts or change the brain? - on a materialist basis, like some of the fringe scientists are trying to do. Invisible teapots that humans will be able to see in 3000 years should be dismissed as idealism.
I agree with you pretty much, I’m just being pedantic. Idk there’s some stuff that’s just Weird that I’ve experienced, and I love Weird shit, but if there is something unexplainable going on I don’t think it’s likely for it to be whatever invisible teapot we came up with. Just because Weird shit is real doesn’t mean it’s ghosts and insisting that ghosts or anything else specific are real is probably idealism.
Careful, talk like that around here and a bunch of Marxist ghost hunters will tell you that you don't understand what Marx meant by materialism, that he totally meant you could believe in ghosts and magic unicorns and telepathy, just not be one of those idealists! And then they'll say you're just a reddit atheist for claiming otherwise.
Marx wrote about vampires. You’re telling me Dracula is a myth?
are they in the room with us?
indeed they are, and they're full of cringe.
materialism literally is not about no spiritual stuff existing though. like it’s literally just not what the term means. your parody of the person saying what you think is a dumb characterization of it is more accurate
like we’re talking about people believing behavior is affected by reality vs behavior is affected by ideals, those are different from any specific thing existing or not existing or needing or not needing proof. Like if we found out general relativity was fake and people had the ability to shoot fireballs out of their hands using glorb schlorbs as fuel, materialism would still be a relevant concept
You are right that lots of those things shouldn’t be believed in because most of them are unfalsifiable, but that’s not the same as it being non-materialist
That is in fact (part of) what it means in every Marxist text I’ve come across so far, for example Georges Politzer’s Elementary Principles of Philosophy.
that’s kinda weird though. because there are plenty of “immaterial” (actually probably material in weird ways) things that provably exist in material reality. like radiation is fucking weird and nobody even knows what’s going on with consciousness. Weird shit can still exist in a material world, it’s just material weird shit. So “ghosts” could exist but they’d probably be part of a natural law or phenomenon of material reality we just don’t understand yet. I mean they almost definitely don’t because there’s like no falsifiable proof or evidence, I just mean as a general principle for weird shit in general
That's the key - air, radiation, gravity, all the "invisible" parts of the universe are material. They have material effects that are distinguishable from them not having an effect. Putting gold foil in front of a radiation source will prove radiation's realness as the particles punch holes in the foil.
One of the key claims of ESP is that it doesn't act in a material way, instead being some weird vibe that nothing can detect except our brains, which are special because reasons. Electrons, neutrinos, even time travelling tachyons are actual, physical objects that exist and can be detected, electromagnetism and gravity will pull objects towards them, but ESP is based on the idea of there being something that doesn't interact with any other part of the universe, but somehow still grants us awareness of other parts of the universe.
I was talking about, “materialism literally is not about no spiritual stuff existing.” Dialectical materialism, among other things, literally is about no spiritual stuff existing. The Chinese Communist Party to this day is atheist, and while it tolerates religions, its position is that their destiny is to wither away.
Materialism means we believe in a world that exists independent of our observations. This external world is in dialogue with people. There is not some kind of third thing that's not in the world, not in the people, and fundamentally unobservable/unknowable, like God or souls or woo in general. (See Engels on agnosticism in Socialism Scientific & Utopian.) Either these things are real material phenomena, in which case we can use science to analyze ghosts or whatever, or they're not. There is room in a materialist worldview for like, cryptids, but most "parapsychology" is stuff that requires discarding huge chunks of knowledge. For instance premonitions violate causality. If you give that up, what's left to be materialist about?
A lot. The definition you gave for materialism isn’t incompatible with brainfuck basically incomprehensible weird shit, it just has to be technically observable and predictable. Humans aren’t perfect measuring instruments and often what we make isn’t perfect either, so the existence of systems and shit we might be able to eventually measure but seem completely supernatural to us now is totally possible.
What does it mean to "believe" in something you can't observe or understand? There's a sort of frontier where you make observations, form and test theories, and grow to understand the observations. We agree that crank theories, without evidence and unable to prove anything, are indistinguishable from the supernatural. So what good does it do us to consider them? We should explore things within the frontier - does infrasound cause ghost sightings? if so, does that summon ghosts or change the brain? - on a materialist basis, like some of the fringe scientists are trying to do. Invisible teapots that humans will be able to see in 3000 years should be dismissed as idealism.
I agree with you pretty much, I’m just being pedantic. Idk there’s some stuff that’s just Weird that I’ve experienced, and I love Weird shit, but if there is something unexplainable going on I don’t think it’s likely for it to be whatever invisible teapot we came up with. Just because Weird shit is real doesn’t mean it’s ghosts and insisting that ghosts or anything else specific are real is probably idealism.