this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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Right now, I don't have any sources ready, and I know for certain that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on idealism explicitly excludes non-recent branches of idealist schools of thought.
There are at least two definitions of ontological idealism (and two corresponding ones for ontological materialism) that I have seen. One of which characterises idealist schools of thought as positing that (some) non-material things have some sort of primacy over material things (note that non-material things are not limited to thoughts). Another definition is broader and simply requires idealist schools of thought to posit that non-material things exist (while the corresponding definition for materialism requires those schools to posit that only material things exist).
Contrary to popular perception, idealism does not require you to believe in magic, including that we can psychically change matter. Simply, for example, subscribing to the idea that math does not depend on matter is idealist.
Also, while religious idealism (most prominently Christian idealism) does require you to believe in magic, it also doesn't require one to believe that it is thoughts that have any sort of primacy over matter.
I am also pretty sure that I'm not alone in considering relevant disagreements to be at least mostly linguistic in nature. I have heard that Wittgenstein said something to the same effect, but have not checked.
My position, based on Engels. You gotta add Dialectics: material things can combine in such ways that are not singularly traceable to the material basic components, but instead rely on emergent components when they interact. Consciousness as we understand it IS material but is not understood through vulgar materialism which says that it can be broken down into electric signals/chemicals to be understood entirely. This is the way. Dialectics of Nature.
Nothing "idealist" exists, but things not understood in their complete totality do, and emergence is real. But emergence is material, not Magic. Trying to make a definition of "materialism" which says human consciousness is simple cells, chemicals, and electric is a straw man of good materialist analyses. These definitions are all based in a non-dialectical framework and that's why they run into the same issues that Plekhanov ran into.
Are you insinuating that Wittgenstein's position of linguistic disagreements is applicable to differences of idealism and materialism?
Firstly, the word 'dialectic' doesn't mean anything specific outside of context. At most, it carries the meaning of 'something related to change', and can refer to anything from people having an argument to a framework with theses, antitheses and syntheses of things. Do you refer exclusively to the dialectic of nature?
Secondly, that claim is yet to be substantiated. Why does one 'gotta' 'add' any particular dialectics?
Taken at face value, you are claiming that idealist schools of thought do not exist.
If you mean that non-material things do not exist, then you subscribe to a linguistic framework that, among other things, makes engaging with math without compromising on your principles basically impossible, and also means that things like capitalism, social relations in general, numbers, functions, logic (none of which consist of matter) exist.
This seems rather silly. If defining terms is 'a straw man (of good materialist analyses)', then I'm sorry, but how do you expect to communicate what materialism and idealism are? If you actively refuse to explain what you mean by certain words that are not used in a colloquial manner, how do you expect other people to understand you? The same criticism I actually have of philosophers in general as well, as the entire field seems to be actively resistant to properly defining their terms and being understood with minimal ambiguity.
Also, a pet peeve of mine is how 'materialist analysis' is almost always better characterised as 'political-economical analysis' in socialist spaces. In particular, my basis for the claim is that such analysis can be done just fine within idealist frameworks, but also because it never actually draws any conclusions from materialism - rather, such analyses draw conclusions from understanding of economic base and superstructure, understanding of private property, understanding of classes.
What issues did Plekhanov run into?
As I have stated, I have not investigated the matter as of yet.
What have you read that made you come to these conclusions? It sounds like you read the encyclopedia entries for these ideas and that's your basis. Also pulling lots of 'debate-bro' tactics, which I don't appreciate and is influencing the way I'm trying this interaction
Defining materialism as 'nothing immaterial exists or has any impact on us as material beings' is fine and correct. But the way you discuss them takes that definition and applies it In a straw-man. 'nothing immaterial' doesn't mean that consciousness is simple electric and chemicals. That's my point. Complexity and emergence are still material and part of a materialist philosophy once the dislectic is accepted as the relation between and within material
I'm not replying to the rest. Not worth our time
i personally thought the most common form of idealism was summed up as this: "humans cannot perceive reality perfectly, they perceive things to their human limit and see appearances of things"
or, alternatively: "humans have experiences that trascend humanity itself and can't be fully understood by humans"
For Marx in particular, he saw any theory divorced from practical experience as a slipperly slope towards idealism - I'm still working through this argument myself, though, and I believe I misunderstood his point. I'm not very strong on my Young Hegelian critiques, truthfully
It is definitely not that. The points about imperfection of perception are not relevant to either of idealism and materialism themselves.
I have not encountered Marx saying so, but that would be silly, as idealism isn't some sort of a detachment from practice, and I would argue that there are no serious incompatibilities between idealism and Marxism (at the very least, nobody has managed to bring any of such to my attention, so far).
You want to pin down absolute definitions of idealism vs materialism, capitalism vs socialism, but the precise meanings of these words are not agreed by all thinkers if they are consciously defined at all. Many thinkers who are called idealist did not self-identify as such, same for capitalist economists.
These terms ought to be considered as post-hoc groupings of an eclectic set of philosophies, even contradictory ones. So what definition of idealism are you applying?
How can this be? Marx wrote a bunch of polemics against idealism. The German Ideology notably, but also the Gotha Critique, Theses on Feuerbach, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844). Are you defining Marxism as the school that emerged after Marx, or Marx himself?
I want rigour in this stuff, rather than operating on vibes.
Also, I am myself a mathematical Platonist, meaning that I am an ontological idealist myself, and, given how many other socialists both at least claim to subscribe to materialism (which, I would argue, is not always a true claim) and at least claim that Marxism and idealism have significant incompatibilities (which I have not managed to encounter so far), I'd rather resolve this lack of coherence. Either my understanding is incorrect, or a lot of other people are being incorrect. I am fine with the matter being resolved with me being proven incorrect, but so far people have not managed to bring up any relevant incompatibilities.
That does not mean that we should avoid defining terms or explain understandings of words. Furthermore, a person can be aware of multiple incompatible linguistic frameworks and try to understand something by attempting to apply each of them. In particular, I brought up the fact that I am aware of multiple definitions for the terms 'idealism' and 'materialism'.
If one refuses to explain what they mean by their words, then they should not expect to be understood, I would also argue.
I provided relevant explanations elsewhere in this tree of comments, but the one that I consider to be a 'better' understanding of the word 'idealism' is one that characterises idealist schools of thought as positing that non-material stuff (not necessarily mental non-material stuff) has primacy over material stuff.
Well, just because somebody says something doesn't mean that they are correct. This might seem unwarrantedly harsh, but we do know that Marxist thinkers (obviously, not just them, but only they are relevant here) did not always make tested claims. Some of those claims were tested after being put into works, and some are yet to be tested (like Lenin's anti-parliamentarism from, IIRC, State and Revolution).
IIRC, Marx tried to define idealist schools of thought as positing that mental stuff has some sort of primacy over matter. That definition is bad at least because, according to it, schools of thought like Platonism (and its offshoots) and most variations of religious idealism - famous examples of idealist schools of thought - are not idealist schools of thought, which is silly.
I do not currently have time to delve into those works, as I have thousands of pages of dense reading material to go through that are much more important for me right now.
So, if there are incompatibilities between idealism and Marxism (however you understand what Marxism is), I'm all ears.
I am making rather broad strokes here, but I'm pretty sure that what most people here would understand as Marxism doesn't actually have significant incompatibilities with idealism.
this is definitely controversial, you got that down
you're arguing for something extremely non-conventional among philosophers themselves - without sufficient arguments to make anyone believe you. That doesn't mean you're wrong, it just means people won't take you as seriously
one thing i would say, where you would likely agree, is that most people calling themselves Marxist are not well-versed enough to argue for their Marxist or Marx-influenced philosophy - if Lenin wasn't confident in his Marxism without starting to understand Hegel's Greater Logic... I think we all know what I'm implying here
What you're arguing for here sounds like something that requires several months of studying philosophers from their own works. You can go even further and argue something like Derrida, that maybe we've all been reading philosophers who misread their contemporaries who misread their contemporaries and so on and so forth.
This isn't something I myself am well-versed enough to do, so all I can do is wish you luck on this one
Empirical idealists are certainly not divorced from practice for example. Not that strict empiricism makes sense, but we do use practice is a criterion of truth.
Lenin admits that it’s true though lol. He just says practically it very strong appears and works that the real substance that is subjectively experienced can be interacted with very functionally with materialistic assumptions. From practice (scientific and political) we know that diamat is the most functional system if not necessarily perfect.