“means many different things in different contexts. One person might say that their friend is too “materialistic”, a Marxist might describe themselves as a dialectical “materialist”, and a physicist might describe themselves as subscribing to a materialist conception of the universe—meanwhile, another physicist might subscribe to a materialist methodology in their scientific work, but not subscribe to it otherwise. Each use of this word means something rather different in each case. And it seems to me that often, even well-educated people confuse two (or more) of these meanings, often rendering conversations in science, philosophy, and politics much more opaque than they need be. Today, I’d like to do something about that.

“I’ve outlined four different meanings to materialist above; we can dispense with the first one pretty quickly. In everyday English, when we describe a person as materialistic, we are describing their personality, goals, and values, and are often also making a moral judgment about them. In this usage, being materialistic means that someone values material goods very highly (and normally, it is implied, too highly). So, if someone likes Lamborghinis, caviar, and multi-acre mansions, we would likely describe them as materialistic—and we might go further, and suggest that such things are not actually worth our time, attention, and effort (though, of course, there will be disagreement on that latter judgment). Certainly, some people know they are materialistic, and don’t see that as a problem at all:

Continue reading on Substack: https://phenomenologyeastandwest.substack.com/p/materialism-vs-materialism-part-1