Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who holds or advocates any form of metaphysical materialism.
  • noun One who is absorbed by material interests; one who takes a low, material view of life.
  • Of or pertaining to materialism; materialistic.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who denies the existence of spiritual substances or agents, and maintains that spiritual phenomena, so called, are the result of some peculiar organization of matter. A believer in philosophical materialism.
  • noun One who holds to the existence of matter, as distinguished from the idealist, who denies it.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Someone who is materialistic, concerned only with material possessions.
  • noun A follower or proponent of philosophical materialism.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun someone who thinks that nothing exists but physical matter
  • noun someone with great regard for material possessions

Etymologies

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Examples

  • First of all, I resent the "hard-headed" modifier to the term materialist, not so subtly suggesting that there is something wrong with materialism (in the sense of a naturalistic philosophy, not in that of Madonna's "Material Girl").

    Rationally Speaking 2009

  • As someone who was raised Catholic (schools all the way, folks: elementary, high school, and college), and who later converted to Judaism, and now is an atheist (although I strongly prefer the term materialist), what is most fundamentally annoying about Catholicism is that they feel their singular and exclusive view of How The Universe Is ought to be respected.

    Planet Atheism 2008

  • If you think about it, you might agree that a materialist is a lot less materialistic than he thinks he is.

    Against Darwinism 2009

  • If you think about it, you might agree that a materialist is a lot less materialistic than he thinks he is.

    Against Darwinism 2009

  • The oligarchs believed their ethics, in spite of the fact that biology and evolution gave them the lie; and, because of their faith, for three centuries they were able to hold back the mighty tide of human progress -- a spectacle, profound, tremendous, puzzling to the metaphysical moralist, and one that to the materialist is the cause of many doubts and reconsiderations.

    Chapter 21: The Roaring Abysmal Beast 2010

  • But he never argues that what he calls a materialist view of scripture disproves God.

    More on Robert Wright's The Evolution of God William Harryman 2009

  • Taking what she calls a materialist position, she argues that if gender cannot be defined in terms of intrinsic or psychological characteristics common to members of a particular gender, it can nonetheless be defined

    Intersections Between Analytic and Continental Feminism Warnke, Georgia 2008

  • But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle.

    The Dangers of Architectural Positivism 2009

  • That was the point of my post with regards to Galen Strawson (who denies free will in any meaningful sense, but at the same time also upends the cart that is materialism in the Dennett/Churchland/etc sense) and the rest, who all come close to each other one what the universe is 'really' made of, while at the same time they call it materialist, not-materialist but monist, or out and out dualist.

    Against Darwinism 2009

  • That was the point of my post with regards to Galen Strawson (who denies free will in any meaningful sense, but at the same time also upends the cart that is materialism in the Dennett/Churchland/etc sense) and the rest, who all come close to each other one what the universe is 'really' made of, while at the same time they call it materialist, not-materialist but monist, or out and out dualist.

    Against Darwinism 2009

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