This is not evidence that ideas are not matter. Indeed, as always and inherently, it is the opposite. Because evidence is an idea. :) Really, people didn't only learn yesterday that the body determines the mind! All idealists know that. Plato was perfectly aware that when you drink alcohol or get a spear through your head, you think differently. But that didn't bother them, because the body and alcohol and spears are ideas. (Plato was actually an idealist in a different sense than that that I discuss below, but bear with me.)
^^^^^ CB: Another way to say some of this is that human mind or ideas are an emergent phenomenon of matter.
I'd say the Marxist-Leninist philosophical fundamental or definitional statements are for metaphysics or ontology from Engels " There is nothing but matter and its mode of existence is motion", and epistemology from Lenin " Materialism is the belief in the existence of objective reality. "
Marxist philosophy categorizes Plato as an objective idealist. Hegel too. Lenin's book is a critique of subjective idealism, Berkeley, Hume, and as Lenin argues, really, Kant, who is a " shamefaced materialist" in Engels phrase. Another term for it is agnostic. Kant is an agnostic i.e. doesn't know, thinks there are un_knowable_ things-in-themselves. (A lot of good belieiving there are things-in-themseleves or objective reality, if we can't know it !). There are deists and agnostics. Hegel's philosophy is actually written as a form of Christianity and belief in God or deism. Plato is a bit far back and different to categorize as a modern deist, I suspect. On the other hand, in another writing, Lenin ( in Russian !) refers to Hegel as arch-brilliant and borderline materialist ! Hegel's Christianity seems suspiciously a cover to deal with reactionary Prussian censors or something
Anyway, for Engels there is a significant identity of idealism and deism, and materialism and atheism So another definition of materialism is atheism.
All these definitions do not imply that ideas or human mind have no determinitive impact in human affairs , cultures, structures, economies ( see article by Sahlins that initiated this thread). I'd say, with the Bible that "In the beginning " of human society "was the Word". Not the beginning of the universe or earth, but the beginning of the human species was language, the Word, culture, tradition, custom, symbols , systems of ideas, kin systems.
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The brain is an object of experience. Electrical impulses in the brain are an object of experience. Artificial limbs are objects of experience. No one has ever seen a brain, an electrical impulse, or an artificial limb that is not an object of experience, nor can they, and there is no conceivable evidence that anything corresponds to them outside of experience, because any evidence you gain will, again, be an object of experience.
^^^^ CB: Agree. This is empiricism. Materialism is not synonymous with empiricism, but it doesn''t contradict it. Empiricism equated with materialism becomes positivist error. "Experiences" are had by individuals. This is a necessary step in the scientific or materialist epistemology, individual experience, but it is materialism only when individual experience is combined with social experience in particular, communications from others to the individual of their experiences. This is the aspect of social labor that is communication and combination of the experiences of maney.
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"Experience" is something that happens to a consciousness, that is, an idea. So, what you have done is correlate objects of experience, that is, ideas, saying, this thing I experience correlates to that thing I experience in such and such a way. To use an old example, you do not refute Berkeley by kicking a rock and saying, "I refute Berkeley thus!" Because you didn't kick a rock, you kicked an idea of a rock, or rather, rocks were ideas all along.
^^^^ CB: Materialism concerns a relationship between consciousness and objective reality, or that which you are referring to as experience. Materialism holds that both consciousness and objective reality are matter ( "There is nothing but matter...) and that there is matter outside of the matter of consciousness ( belief in the existence of objective reality). There is matter outside the matter of consciousness. Consciousness experiences something other than itself. There is matter other than the matter which is ideas.
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The entire pattern of correlation could be explained, if you wanted to do so, in a purely solipsistic manner. There is no difference to the dreamer between dream and reality. And Occam's razor says, to the dreamer, "your dream is real," because that is indeed the simplest explanation.
^^^^^ CB: I agree that dreams are the purest form of individual consciousness or consciousness only experiencing itself, or the self experiencing only itself, or solopsism. Dreaming in naturally occuring and necessary solopsism.
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These arguments are all really, really old. Thousands of years old.
^^^^^ CB: What's old is new again. 2000 years of Western philosophy.
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My opinion is that materialism and idealism are both wrong, being metaphysical positions, and metaphysics, as this Kant guy showed, is impossible. However, idealism is at least consistent, whereas materialism is balls-up nonsense from the inside-out. ^^^^^^^ CB: You got it backwards. Materialism, dialectical materialism or the materialism as I've defined it on this thread is consistent. Look over the above arguments again and I'm sure you'll agree (smile)
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Again, I am talking about metaphysical materialism here, not e.g. historical materialism. The truth or falsity of historical materialism does not hinge on the metaphysical nature of the universe, but on the relation between events, er, objects of experience.
^^^^^ CB: I don't use "metaphysical". Hegel critiqued metaphysics. There's also the term ontology. But anyway, there is nothing but matter (materialist ontology or "metaphysics" )and its mode of existence is motion ( dialectics, everything moves or changes, nothing stays the same forever, there is no God or Rock of Ages or eternally constant; dialectics defines atheism , too)
materialist dialectics ( See _Ludwig Feuerbach_ by Engels)