What is the correct definition for “materialism”.
Not the “The philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter, and is considered a form of physicalism. Fundamentally, all things are composed of material ……..”
The definition where people are obsessed with lables .
Thanks
3 Answers
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Synonyms For Materialism
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1 the belief that money and possessions are more important than art, religion, moral beliefs etc – used in order to show disapproval:
“It is a reaction to a world full of shallow materialism”.
2 the belief that only physical things really exist
http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/materialism
Meaning 1:
A desire for wealth and material possessions with little interest in ethical or spiritual matters
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Synonyms:
materialism; philistinism
Hypernyms (“materialism” is a kind of…):
desire (something that is desired)
Meaning 2:
(philosophy) the philosophical theory that matter is the only reality
Classified under:
Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents
Synonyms:
physicalism; materialism
Hypernyms (“materialism” is a kind of…):
philosophical doctrine; philosophical theory (a doctrine accepted by adherents to a philosophy)
Domain category:
philosophy (the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of “materialism”):
dialectical materialism (the materialistic philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels)
http://www.audioenglish.net/dictionary/materialism…
Philosophy Dictionary: materialism
In philosophy, the view that the world is entirely composed of matter. Philosophers now tend to prefer the term physicalism, since physics has shown that matter itself resolves into forces and energy, and is just one amongst other physically respectable denizens of the universe. Materialism in this philosophical sense has a history stretching back to Greek atomism, and emerges in the modern period in Hobbes’s Leviathan, and the works of La Mettrie. It is opposed to mind-body dualism, and bears uneasy relations to realism about universals and other abstract entitites.
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