[...]
>To begin with, by "worldview" I mean a conceptual framework by which one
>seeks to understand all of reality and through which one interprets
>his/her experiences. One's worldview consists of his thoughts about
>metaphysics (the nature of reality), ethics (how we should live) and
>epistemology (the nature and extent of our knowledge). Every worldview
>is founded upon presuppositions or ultimate beliefs which themselves are
>incapable of being proven by scientific methodology. Of course, not
>everyone has consciously reflected on their worldview or philosophy of
>life, but everyone has one nevertheless.
>
>By materialism, I have in mind philosophical materialism (also known as
>naturalism) which is the belief that matter and material processes are
>the sum total of existence. There is nothing outside the material
>system which is responsible for the system's existence (i.e.
>supernatural). Rather, the system is autonomous and self-existent and
>operates according to the principle of cause and effect.
>
Yes, I think some definition of terms is in order. I was a little
surprised at the beginning of this thread to see an almost
automatic association between atheism and materialism as if
an atheist were somehow compelled to be a materialist. I was
also of the opinion that materialism was defunct anyway, killed
by modern science. This all depends on how one defines the
terms. I think a lot of your conclusions definitely hold for
materialism but that you err in equating materialism with
naturalism.
Last night I was reading a little book called <Physics and
Philosophy> by Sir James Jeans which contained the following
description of materialism:
=============================================
... Men now began to ask what it [nature] was and
how it functioned. In time it came to be interpretted
as a vast machine--a network of cogs, shafts and
thrust-bars, each of which could only transmit the
motion it received from other parts of the mechanism
and then wait for a new impulse to arrive.
This brought a beautiful simplicity into inanimate
nature, but it also threatened to bring a most
unwelcome simplicity into human life. For out of this
view of nature there grew a philosophy of materialism,
with Hobbes as its principal exponent and advocate. Its
central doctrines were that the whole world could be
constructed out of matter and motion; matter was the
only reality; events of every kind were simply the motion
of matter; man was only an animal with a material body,
his thoughts and emotions alike resulting from mechanical
motions of the atoms of his body.
If, then, the world of atoms worked with the inevitability
of a machine, the whole race of men seemed to be reduced
to cogs in the machine; they could not initiate but only
transmit. Exhorting a man to be moral or useful was like
exhorting a clock to keep good time; even if it had a mind,
its hands would not move as its mind wished, but as the
already fixed arrangement of its weight and pendulum directed.
We could not choose our paths for ourselves; these were already
chosen for us by the arrangement of the atoms in our bodies,
and the imagined freedom of our wills was illusory.
-- J. H. Jeans <Physics and Philosophy>, Dover, 1981. (1943)
================end=========================================
It seems to me that this description coincides pretty well with
yours. It also seems that the various conclusions that you have
derived are correct with materialism defined in this way. For
example, there seems little point for a materialist to speak of
moral obligations. The argument that materialism cannot be
falsified seems erroneous though since, according to my understanding,
the view is no longer scientificaly tenable.
So, perhaps some of the "controversy" in this thread arises from
terminology. Russell has stated that he's a materialist, but I
kind of doubt that this is what he means by materialism. Also,
materialism and naturalism are clearly not one and the same. One
can hold the view that nature is all there is without assuming
that all natural phenomena are mechanistic/deterministic.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
The Ohio State University
"Quantum physicist and Jungian analyst, when dropped from
a great height, fall at the same rate of speed, their
descent unaffected by speech or creed" -- David Berlinski