Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A metaphysical doctrine denying the existence of matter.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The doctrine that immaterial substances or spiritual beings exist or are possible.
  • noun The doctrine that there is no material world, but that all things exist only in the mind; idealism.

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

  • noun The doctrine that immaterial substances or spiritual being exist, or are possible.
  • noun (Philos.) The doctrine that external bodies may be reduced to mind and ideas in a mind; any doctrine opposed to materialism or phenomenalism, esp. a system that maintains the immateriality of the soul; idealism; esp., Bishop Berkeley's theory of idealism.

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

  • noun philosophy The metaphysical denial of the existence of the material world

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

immaterial +‎ -ism

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Examples

  • Ferrier, Fraser and Seth all deny that Berkeley's immaterialism amounts to mentalism, but it became common to distinguish between “subjective Idealism” and

    Ted Marcel Inhoff 2009

  • While Newtonian matter-theory was depicted as a rival to Leibnizian immaterialism in the mid-18th century, in for example the Institutions de Physique of Mme du Chatelet, Newton was no ordinary corpuscularian or mechanical philosopher, and Kant did not have to contend with that now old-fashioned ontology.

    Kant and Leibniz Wilson, Catherine 2008

  • Furthermore, it is precisely the teaching of immaterialism, not materialism, which would raise the possibility of the Board being sued.

    Odds and Ends from Kansas - The Panda's Thumb 2007

  • His reform of metaphysics suggests that he might be more appropriately described as a weak anti-realist rather than as an idealist, since his commitment to idealism is not a commitment to immaterialism, but to the claim that there is no epistemically unmediated access to reality.

    Robin George Collingwood D'Oro, Giuseppina 2006

  • In between these two extremes are the two moderate views that I have described as moderate materialism and moderate immaterialism.

    The Angels and Us Mortimer J. Adler 1982

  • In contrast to such extreme immaterialism, their view is that the action of the brain and nervous system is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for understanding and thinking.

    The Angels and Us Mortimer J. Adler 1982

  • The first is that the Cartesian view completes the picture by being the extreme immaterialism that lies at the other end of the line from the extreme materialism that totally identifies mental with physical processes.

    The Angels and Us Mortimer J. Adler 1982

  • But the same method may lead, as in the case of Berkeley, to immaterialism, falsely called idealism.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 08, June 1858 Various

  • She has tried spiritually and harmoniously to convert him to immaterialism, but

    Sunny Slopes Ethel Hueston

  • Berkeley, although his professed aim was merely "to remove the mist and veil of words" which hindered the clear vision of the truth, passed from empirical immaterialism to a system of Platonic mysticism based on the metaphysical principle of causality.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 10: Mass Music-Newman 1840-1916 1913

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