Critical Realism and the Varieties of Materialism

Abstract

After some three decades during which scholarly discussion of materialism lapsed, a revival of interest is taking place. The social sciences and critical humanities have embraced “new materialisms” with their “new” ontologies and epistemologies, while within disciplinary philosophy debates between reductionist philosophy of mind and emergentists present sharply opposed versions of materialism. In theoretical biology, “biosemiotic realism” promotes an emergentist materialism focused on mindlike processes in nature as codetermined by physicalist and informational causalities, while nearly everywhere where scholarship intersects with political–economic issues, a resurgent interest in Marxist materialisms has begun recapitulating elements of the debate between “Western” and “orthodox” positions. To make sense of the welter of present discourse from a Marxist perspective, it is useful to compare the positions of these contemporary tendencies with those of critical realism and allied strong versions of Marxist materialism, such as that associated with the writings of Friedrich Engels.