ABSTRACT

Materialism, of the kind accepted by many philosophers and scientists, is a general view about what actually exists. Put bluntly, the view is just this: Everything that actually exists is material, or physical. This general view originated with western philosophy itself, among the pre-Socratic philosophers in ancient Greece. Many philosophers and scientists now use the terms “material” and “physical” interchangeably; we shall follow suit. (Likewise, we shall use “materialism” and “physicalism” interchangeably.) Understood as a general position about what exists, materialism is an ontological, or a metaphysical, view. Characterized thus, it is not just an epistemological view about how we know, or just a semantic view about the meaning of terms. What, however, is the exact meaning of “material,” or “physical”? In the absence of an answer to this question, materialism will be an obscure ontological view. It will then be difficult, if not impossible, to confirm or to disconfirm materialism.