“历史唯物主义”何以是一种“唯物主义”——一种基于随附式物理主义的解答

In What Sense Can “Historical Materialism” Be Identified as a Species of “Materialism”?——A Tentative Answer from the Perspective of Supervenience Physicalism

历史唯物主义的核心命意,通常被理解为通过对于人类经济活动的描述而解释人类历史发展的动力学机制。但从哲学角度看,这种学说的"唯物主义"身份的确还需要更为深入的辩护,因为掺杂有人类意识的经济活动实在难以被视为"纯粹物质"的。而将历史唯物主义继续保留在唯物主义大家庭中的一个办法,就是用"随附式物理主义"的框架对其加以重述与补充,并承认上层建筑(如宗教意识)可以在绕过经济基础的前提下直接得到最基本的物理事件(如生态学事件或者神经科学事件)的本体论支持。在这种新框架中,历史唯物主义既能更为方便地吸纳自然科学研究的最新成果以武装自身,亦能更好地保持自己和二元论或双面相论之间的思想距离。

The central thesis of ＂historical materialism＂ has long been construed as an attempt to account for the dynamics of the human society in term of economic activities. However, it is still unclear why the label of ＂materialism＂ can be legitimately attached to ＂historical materialism＂, given that economic activities apparently involve human consciousness. One way for keeping this name for historical materialism is to reconstruct the whole theory in a broader framework of ＂supervenience physicalism＂, according to which the human ideology is directly supervenient on some fundamental physical events, say, those described by ecology, neuro-science or fundamental physics, without necessarily involving a mediating role played by economic activities. This reconstruction not only facilitates historical materialists to accommodate the most updated findings in natural science, but also provides powerful conceptual tools for keeping historical materialism iteself from varieties of dualism or dual-aspect theory.