The materialist view is perhaps best understood in its opposition to the doctrines of immaterial substance applied to the mind historically, famously by René Descartes. However, by itself materialism says nothing about how material substance should be characterized. In practice, it is frequently assimilated to one variety of physicalism or another. COUNT 2
QSN1 Was René Descartes an idealist or a materialist? ANS1 materialist QSN2 Materialism does not define what? ANS2 how material substance should be characterized.