Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 16:07:44 -0500 (EST)
From: Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca>
Subject: BHA: the materialisms


Hi all,

Marsh wrote, citing Mervyn:

>> 3. Ontological materialism - asserts the unilateral dependence of social
>> upon biological being, and of biological on physical being, and the
>> emergence of the former in each case from the latter. I'd say Roy's now
>> an ontological idealist, who substitutes 'spiritual' for 'physical'.
>
>This sounds like reductionism to me. Can't one be a ontological materialist
>and simply hold that social, biological, and physical being objectively
>exist and cannot be reduced to ideas or spirit?

I wouldn't have thought that "dependence" implies "reduces to," necessarily.
I read it as describing the relationship of emergence in reverse.  The part
that I be careful about is the dependence of "biological" on "physical
being."  That that might be where the reductionist, or physicalist, sense is
seeping in.  So Mervyn did you formulate it that way because in your view
there is something about the concept of "biological being" that is
ontologically ambiguous with respect to materiality?

Warmly,
Ruth 



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