Materialism Flashcards
Who is associated with materialism? What time period did he live in? What was the context of this time period?
Thomas Hobbes
England in the 17th century
Hobbes’s time was a time of great unrest in England.
The breakdown of feudalism had led to a large increase in the number of “masterless men.” – many young men in an area that is urbanizing but do not have employment who are now unrestrained and unhappy – results in an explosion of social movements (most of which did not last very long)
What was a movement of the middle class that promoted a new kind of self, one that exerted a very high degree of self-control?
Puritanism
What did Hobbes write about life without a strong central state? Why?
life without a strong central state was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, he was writing from personal experience.
The English Revolution broke out in the years before Hobbes wrote his book - it was a very brutal time with a lot of death
Was Hobbes a Christian or an atheist?
Hobbes, despite his strict materialism, talked extensively about the Christian God.
This was prudent in his time, as atheism could be severely punished.
Many people were killed for their religious beliefs at the time (Catholics vs. Protestants) and atheists by everyone else
Hobbes was probably an atheist but never admitted it.
What did Hobbes believe was God’s role in the universe and in people’s lives? What did this perspective come to be called at a later point?
He did believe that God seldom interferes in earthly affairs.
This is an idea that became popular around Hobbes’s time: That the universe was clockwork (i.e. it ran by itself based on things like physical laws, and the role of God was largely to set this whole assemblage in motion).
This particular point of view came to be called deism at a later point.
What were Hobbes’ scientific beliefs?
Though Hobbes was not himself a scientist, he was a popularizer of the new science.
He was a firm believer of the view that everything can be explained by the properties of small, moving particles of matter interacting with each other.
He was influenced by Galileo, etc., and was interested in science (first of the perspectives we are studying to promote scientific belief)
Hobbes’s materialism extended to human beings in what way?
he believed all human psychological phenomena were due to the motions of particles in the brain (and heart, but we can forgive him that, given the time he lived).
Hobbes was an epiphenomenalist - what does that mean?
This means that he acknowledged that human beings have conscious experiences, but he denied that these experiences have any causal impact.
For example, he believed that actions are preceded by sequences of thoughts, and that the last thought in the sequence (which is often closely related to the subsequent action) is interpreted as the person’s will.
Did not believe that thoughts cause anything to happen - although a thought can proceed an action, it is only a part of a sequence of events and does not result in the action (seems not intuitive but this is still what physiological psychologists/neuroscientists believe today and there is data to support it)
In today’s world, who would be most in agreement with Hobbes’ ideas about psychological phenomena?
Many cognitive neuroscientists today would still agree with everything except the part about the heart.
What was Hobbes’ epistemology?
Hobbes had a pluralist epistemology
He believed that scientific empiricism was a very valuable tool for finding about the world.
He also found a place for introspection and Biblical exegesis in his quest for knowledge.
Biblical exegesis - critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture.
Whose deductive method was Hobbes impressed with? What is it?
He was very impressed by Euclid’s deductive method.
Euclid - deductive method - basic logical thinking about geometry (most of this had already been discovered in Plato’s time and he was also impressed by this)
Hobbes was aware that this method cannot be used for everything (there are not concrete answers for everything that can be deduced this way) - therefore, he also believed in scientific empiricism
Was Hobbes a nominalist or a realist? What does this mean? What other person have we studied that had opposite ideas?
Hobbes was also a nominalist.
That is, he believed that names for categories of objects (e.g. “chair”, “horse”) were just a convenience for labeling groups of similar objects, and that there was no essence or Platonic form tying each whole category together.
Nominalism (vs. realism) – the nature of collective nouns
Plato was a realist – this was the dominant way of thinking for many centuries (there is an essence of something that shares a name, eg., horses are essentially horsey)
Hobbes was nominalist – these names are just conveniences - there is no essence to a thing, just some features in common (matter that has been put together/assembled similarly)
Hobbes was an associationist - what does this mean? How does this relate to free will/determinism?
This means that he felt the way ideas follow each other when people think is due not to the conscious exertion of will, but rather to linkages between ideas in people’s memory.
He thought that these linkages were generally forged by the co-occurrence of events in individuals’ lived experiences.
Because he rigorously believed in cause and effect (and decried superstition), he thought the concept of free will was an absurdity.
What did Hobbes believe was similar between humans and animals? What was the main difference between humans and animals?
Though Hobbes did not believe humans have an immaterial soul, and also thought that animals learn associations in much the same way as humans, he still thought there are important differences between animals and humans.
These differences centre around language.
What did Hobbes believe language enabled humans to do? Who later made a similar point?
Language not only makes elaborate communication possible, it also allows people to make mental notes, which greatly facilitates thinking.
Language:
-enables communication of subtle information
-can be used as a tool for thinking – e.g., counting (a memorized list of numbers)
Vygotsky – also talked about language as a set of cognitive tools
