cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/17821633
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That’s a very interesting question, but unfortunately one I don’t have much input on myself. I’ve always understood materialism as a belief that everything can be, in theory, explained by science (or in the somewhat-related Epicurean understanding that everything is comprised of atoms). As such, its counterpart would be something along the lines of spiritualism rather than idealism. I’m certain that my understanding of materialism must be a specific definition of perhaps a different concept entirely than that which you’ve brought up. I don’t have a great deal of formal knowledge of sociology or psychology. Likewise, I’ve studied a fair bit of political philosophy but nothing that I can think of which touches on this specific topic. Nonetheless, you’ve piqued my interest and I expect I’ll be heading down a rabbit hole tonight.
Well, please do share what you find!
You are on the right track w/ idealism vs materialism in psychology, at least.
The question there arose from the brain: how do you rectify the mind/soul with the brain/body? Dualism apparently fails (the idea that there is a separate mind from the brain) which leaves only some form of monism. A sort of hybrid materialism-idealism seems to make the most sense, where consciousness is a property of the universe, like time or space, and different entities have differing consciousnesses. In that sort of a philosophy, when talking about the brain of a person you are equally talking about the experience that person is having, just in different terms.
I suspect that in sociology that would be some sort of unified anarcho-marxism, if such a thing exists. The atomic theory of society seems to be the thing where they are working on unifying language. If society is fully atomized, asking whether a new society arises due to free choice or resource demands is like asking whether rivers rise due to rain or sewer overflow, if that makes sense?
That’s all very interesting and something I will definitely be looking up. While I have little knowledge of psychology myself, I do find it fascinating - especially stuff like this that touches on the idea of consciousness. While I’m a believer in approaching everything scientifically, I hold some explicitly non-scientific theistic beliefs that are at odds with this approach (and which I admit essentially amount to hoping there’s more than we’re capable of understanding ourselves). That brings to mind some of what you said there regarding that sort of dichotomy (as I’m understanding it) of physical biology vs the workings of the mind.
This part is still definitely confusing me though:
Is the idea here essentially a question of whether social progress (for better or worse) is essentially pre-determined by geography in some fatalistic way?
I’ll definitely be digging into this a bit over the coming days and may ask my wife her thoughts on the psychological side of what you said earlier. She’s a former psych nurse, so while not at all a psychologist at least has more background in this stuff than I do.
I think there’s a way to follow people on Lemmy (?) so I’ll see if I can do that to keep in touch with you via private messages. Or, I recently got around to setting up a mastodon account. If you happen to use that, feel free to link up with me that way so we can keep in touch (if you’d like). I’m at @[email protected]