Materialism

'Materialism' has both a formal Philosophical meaning and a common usage. On the one hand, it is the doctrine that all reality is composed of Matter only, where Matter can be approximately understood as anything possessing mass and volume. It implicitly rejects the independent existence of purportedly 'immaterial' items such as Spirit, Mind, Soul, etc., meaning not so much that they do not exist, but that they are actually themselves some mode of Matter. For example, 'Mind' means nothing more than 'brain' and/or 'brain functions', according to Materialism. In contrast, in common usage, 'materialistic' is a derogatory reference to the pursuit of exclusively physical goods--pleasure, money, possessions, etc. Thus, there is an overlap between the two meanings: according to formal Materialism, everything is physical, so whatever is pursued must be physical. However, the derogatory usage implies a disinterest in e. g. intellectual, spiritual, or aesthetic goods, which the formal doctrine does not. Rather, formal Materialism simply insists that those goods are as Material as money, cars, etc. So, to whatever extent the derogatory usage is a formal critique of Materialism, from, say, the perspective of Immaterialism, it is an underinformed one.