Marx's venture into ancient materialist philosophy is definitely
speculative rather than empirical, and is a fascinating exercise into the
underlying motives of philosophical systems, but otherwise is totally
useless in any natural-scientific sense. As for the ancient Greek and
Roman materialists: their materialism is not empirical in that there's
nothing specific about the material world that their systems allow them to
test. I'm not sure what the boundaries are between metaphysical and
scientific theories, but the case could be made that ancient materialism is
somewhere at the boundary--perhaps primitive scientific theory remarkable
for its time. The question could be adjudicated by looking at how bound up
in metaphysical categories these ancient materialist systems are. Do they
define the nature of substance, accident, essence, etc.; deduce their
systems from a priori principles based on categories, not entities? The
workings of atoms and void may not be thought out experimentally and
empirically, but the postulated entities and their interactions are
reasonable hypotheses. My recollection of the subject matter is not good,
but it seems to me the metaphysical folderol is at a minimum.
At 02:41 PM 11/29/2006 -0500, Charles Brown wrote:
"To be human, in other words, is both to be natural, possessing immediate,
material being, and to break away from such material determination in the
act of free, self-conscious determination."
My way of saying this is that humans are both natural and "supernatural"
beings. By "supernatural" I don't mean a mystical religious idea, but rather
just that much of the history of human culture involves humans making
discoveries and inventions that allow humans to do things that they cannot
do with their natural bodies. It puts them "above" nature, and above their
natures. Really, this is looking at "freedom is the mastery of necessity"
from a different angle. So, as we accumulate knowledge/science that allows
us to master various aspects of the natural world , overcome limitations
placed on us by nature, we are freed to do things that we want to, that are
"self-consciously determined" rather than naturally determined. We can plan
and carryout our plans, rather than be determined by outside natural forces
or "inside" natural forces.
The question that occurred to me about Democritus and Epicurus the last time
Marx's thesis came up on "these lists" is weren't their ideas about the atom
speculative and not empirically/experimentally based ? So, these
"materialists" or naturalists were _speculative_, not empirical
materialists. Maybe that just teaches me something about the definition of
"materialist/naturalist". Or maybe rather than "empiricist" I mean
"realist". Are they materialist realists, but speculative rather than
empirical ?
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