materialists: convince me that immaterial things don't exist

Yes, but it always seemed as if the positivists were missing something all along the way, and they only introduced another duplicity in the mind/brain debate, as to whether, connections apart from the synapses, as an effect of, rather than as the effect of…The point is it’s relativism to argue either from one or the other point of view. To argue that synaptic neural activity has a materiality, is one way to legitimize it, but then the problem of correlation comes in with the phenomenology of preception. How does language develop, within the logico-mathematical matrix, and if there is some substance to the neurological process, there ought to be a counterbalance, in the effector/effected , because ‘thought’ is both: a process (neurologial) and an idea, as in the case of numbers.

 At this point Russel's reduction ad absurdum shifts the focus toward the relationship if any between them.  This is where the ground of mathematics becomes primary , trying to navigate a course between the logic of language, and the phenomenology of preception. 

Here the study is beyond trying to see some linkage between definitions of the immateriality of mathematically abstracted concepts, since that will beg the question. It is not certain, but probable, that immaterial things may exist, within certain boundaries.

Take them by the feet , and twirl them around, to make them dizzy, that will disorient the little buggers.

It’s not a question of testing its existence, it’s about disproving it.

By projecting an essence onto it–universals like love, quantities, God, sadness–are all encapsulated in the mind as abstract objects because it attributes essences to these things. Essences are what make things into object–by bestowing identities onto them–it is this and not that.

Yes, if you’re a question begging materialist. But I think of materiality as the representation. With materialism, you have to reduce everything to matter. But if you’re not a materialist, the reduction can work in other directions. Matter, for me, is reduced, first and foremost, to sensory experience, and more generally is a representation of other mental experiences. This is not to say matter isn’t real–I’m not an eliminativist–but that it is not non-mental and that the mental aspect of matter is more fundamental than its material aspect.

Yes, but I don’t require any kind of exotic definition for “immaterial” in order for it to possibly exist.

Not exactly. But if you’ve got a recipe in mind, I’d be more than happy to kill a few gnomes for you.

Hey, obe, what do you think of the theory of materiality as representation of experience?

Gib,I think it includes all types of material: conceptual and objective, phenomenological. It is the basis of reduction toward it’s sensibility, it’s visuality. This is why it’s content is applied toward the aesthetic. I googled this. Since it’s genesis is the experience, in totality, it’s mea ing is imbued by way of the source of it, as it is materially effected by…It’s application being a visually effected artifact, like in fine arts. This relationship is not based in the positivist sense of what representation ‘means’ but what it exressses, via imagery. There is no mathematical criteria attached to this form of content. Here the materiality is defined as visually interpretative. The effect is the meaning, as purly a visually re-presentative content.

Name one objective thing that does not rely on agreement.
You really need to think this through.
I asked you what “objective” means to you simply because you used it in a definition (borrowed). You clearly have not thought through the implications of “exist” in any meaningful way. ANd you have a naive view of objectivity.
Basically this means that the question you pose at the top of the thread is meaningless.

Extension in space can even include stupidity, as a adjective it describes the workings of a person’s brain. It also includes all emotional states in the same way; hormones, and neurones.

Neither of those definitions really say anything useful. They just exchange one word for another, although the “extension in space” bit is a little bit additive, although hardly defensible.

Anger exists yet has no “extension in space” associated with it.

My own version of the definition of “existence”: Existence Meaningfully Defined.

Oh, geez, that’s challenging… um, the speed of light: 300,000,000 m/s. The agreement among the scientific community about this is not what makes it so.

Sure, if we’re question begging.

Let me explain something to you, Lev. This reductio ad absurdum of yours is the oldest trick in the book, and only philosopher newbies think it’s clever. You demand a definition for a concept or a term, a person offers one, then you demand definitions for the terms making up the definition, the person offers those to you. You continue this line of inquiry until you leave the person speechless for lack of ability to continually come up with more and detailed definitions, and then you say “Ha! You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.”

You see, Lev, this is a common philosophical mistake that so many amateurs make and the solution is simple: fundamentality != baselessness. Take a man color blind from birth. Try explaining to him what “red” means. Assuming that a lack of color vision from birth means he will be unable to visualize or even comprehend what red is, how would you explain it to him. Indeed, how do you explain it to someone who knows what red is and sees it every day? But does your lack of words entail a lack of understanding of what red really is? That’s absurd. Of course you know what red is. It’s just that your understanding is fundamental–it doesn’t break down into simpler concepts and terms. But a fundamental understanding is not the same thing as a baseless (and therefore false) understanding–it serves as its own basis.

To expect one to perpetually dish up definition after more basic definition is an exercise in futility–no one can do that–for you will eventually come up against terms and concepts which are simply fundamental and aren’t given to further dissection and analysis. But the trick you play hinges on this fact and confuses the fundamentality of terms and concepts for baselessness. You know full well it’s only a matter of time before you force one to confront those fundamental concepts and terms. But if you follow this to its logical conclusion, you come to the absurd notion that since all of our definitions come down to fundamental terms and concepts eventually, none of us ever know what we’re talking about… ever.

This is why I don’t really have a problem relying on common sense definitions or definitions I find in a dictionary or on Google. They’re good enough. Should I feel compelled to give lengthy forethought to every word I use in every utterance I make before feeling justified in making those utterance? Should I have thought about how I plan to define “feeling”, “justified”, “in”, “making”, “those”, and “utterance” before I wrote the last sentence? I had perfectly clear understandings of what those terms meant as I uttered them because they served as their own basis without my having to do a thoroughgoing analysis of what precisely I mean by them. They came with their own fundamental meaning (some of which I could have broken down if I wanted to, but I didn’t have to). This is what makes communication work. This is why no one in this thread but you have any trouble using and understanding the words “immaterial”, “exist”, “objective”, or any other word.

If one comes into a conversation with no position of their own to advance, then spending an eternity nit-picking the definitions used by somebody else’s position is a perfectly viable tactic- if one is taking a tactically-minded approach to a conversation like this for some strange reason.

If numbers exist as structures in the brain, then they can only exist in one brain. The five in your brain is different than the one in mind. If they are related to what they refer to, then they must refer to something other than our brains. This isn’t that complicated.

  But those aren't the examples I gave. You made up new ones because you were in the mood for a strawman. "Water is aqua" goes away if you kill all the French speakers because it is fundamentally a statement about French speakers.  "Paris is in France" doesn't go away if you kill everybody- those buildings would still be in that place.  Besides, you're missing my point;  "My thumb hurts" is only true by virtue of a set of circumstances that begins and ends with me. Same with "Raisins are gross".  That's why they lose meaning if I die.  "Paris is in France" is a thought in my head just like "My thumb hurts" is, but it's truth is not contingent on me. If I die, Paris is still in France, 5x5 is still 25, but my thumb does not still hurt.  Why?  Because those latter two statements gain their truth from something other than my thinking them. 

That simply isn't the case. I think you're confusing languages with ciphers.   We could not all simply decide that 5+6=12, unless we used the term '12' to mean '11' or some other such substitution.  The terms are not the same as the reality they express.   

Not if notions are physically extended structures, as you said at the beginning of your post. Re-read what I said about the Ace of Spades that you didn’t understand. If the Ace of Spades is nothing but a physically extended structure, we can’t both have it in our pockets, you being over there, and I over here.

Actually that’s pretty much the definition of subjectivity, and the very opposite of objectivity. I could understand a person saying “Objectivity doesn’t exist”, but I can’t understand a person saying something as odd as the above.

I suppose, but the same could be said of my quote. Exposing his tactic is a tactic for justifying why his won’t convince me that immaterial things don’t exist or that I rigged the challenge unfairly from the outset because of poorly thought out definitions.

Of course. My point wasn’t that everybody doesn’t use tactics (when tactically minded, as you both now are). My point was that the acceptable tactics for somebody trying to attack one position while defending another are much different than somebody who has nothing to defend.

Gib; i answered Your inquiery above about thed
representation of experience, and further made a comparison of Fix’s comments on the paraphrase You quoted. If these are still,of relevance to the seeming unresolve of the basis of mathematics, we may
continue in this vein. Further, mathematics, since the positivists have gone through a successive development of displacing the logical basis of
mathematics, including that of the logical basis of
language. There is a paper on this i could produce in kind, however it’s lengthy. Numbers are symbols which are irreducible because of set theory having no
concrete relationships to objects, either out there,
(material) or in here, (subjective) Wouldn’t it be fair at this pont to settle to an interpretation which describes what is going on as variable and
probabilistic, in regard to whether
materiality/immateriality has ceased to become based on logical principles of the excluded middle, namely either it is material or immaterial? And such
is not fixed in meaning theory of language, nor in the
brain/mind distinction, as such distinctions led Russell into a regress. To be specific, we can have a material concept, the object it’s self, the
representation, and the immaterial sans the abstracted one. (Your words) To use math, as somehow different qua abstraction is to make artificial distinctions between the old Lockian
categories of primary and secondary characteristics.

With the logical basis of math suspect and irresolute, this argument becomes prone to revert to the very
positivism which was the genesis of the digression.

I just read St. James in another forum stating the quantum mechanics, based on uncertainty is a myth. Well put, but it puts uncertainty on the topical level,
while the structure of math below it, becomes eqally suspect. Just a thought, and again , if this is beyond the intent of the forum please disregard.

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m = a length of space agreed upon.
s = a portion of time agreed upon
The measurement of Light achieved by agreement of science, and based on science’s interests.
Are you a moron?

And yet you squirm and fidget, yet you have not yet managed to qualify your question.
If this is the oldest trick in the book, then you ought to be able to expose it for the trick it is.
And yet you have singularly failed.
You have demonstrated yourself to be incapable of establishing what you mean by implying that “immaterial things” exist.
I have agreed that “ideas” exist. Ideas like stupidity, which rely on a material component; a structure in the brain. In other word you would not be as stupid as you appear if you lost your brain; you’d be dead.
But stupid or not, you have not offered any thing that suggests that “ghosts” are anything more than ideas.
But I can only assume that you suggest that they have some kind of independent reality, but have failed to establish how.
So over to you.
Now you can unpick my pathetic trick by simply saying what you mean.

And by agreeing on the definitions of m and s, did they invent space and time? Your argument is like the following:

Our agreement to call this object a “banana”:

caused bananas to come into existence.

Suppose the scientific community decided to define a “meter” as half the distance actually denoted by what we refer to as a “meter”. Suppose they also decided to define a “second” as twice the time actually denoted by what we refer to as a “second”. Call these m’ and s’.

The speed of light would be 1,200,000,000 m’/s’, but that just is 3,000,000 m/s. We’re just using different units, not changing the speed of light.

But I have been saying what I mean. You asked for my definition of “immaterial”. I gave it to you. You asked for my definition of “exist”. I gave it to you. You asked for my definition of “objective”. I even gave you that. You’ve disagreed with my definitions, but unless you really don’t understand them, you should be able to take on the challenge within the parameters of my definitions whether you agree with them or not.

At this point, Lev, I’m compelled to say the problem isn’t with me, it’s with you. You’re saying that my meaning is unclear to you despite my best efforts to explain it, but that says more about you and your ability to understand than it does me and my ability to say something meaningful. It’s like you stepped up to a challenge and then asked the challenger to train you, the challenger graciously obliges, finds that you’re too handicapped to learn, and throws his arms in the air only to listen to you whine about how unfair it is that he made the challenge too difficult.

Either come at me from a different angle or admit that you can’t meet the challenge.

obe,

I’m going to get back to this later today.

Not at all. What the uncertainty in QM boils down to is the fact that QM moves science from the realm of verification to the realm of interpretation. Because we cannot know what particles are doing when we’re not measuring them, the deepest questions we want answered turn out to be beyond the realm of science and inescapably a matter of interpretation only.

The logical basis of math has been in dispute since the positivists. It was not the positivists who tried to displace it, but in consequence to the development of Quantum, logic has been interpreted as insufficient basis for math. I will refer You now to my sources:

Value of Knowledge Reference ; value and quantity-
'The Foundation of Mathematics; marxists.org

The paper describes the role of math from Frege to
Einstein and beyond, and points to the inadequate
foundation logic plays in the service of math.
I get Your point, Gib, and my point is, that logic has
not kept pace with differencial, situational
perspectives in science. Therefore the conclusion is
that it is not an anti-thesis which is proposied to the traditional view, only the idea that probable scenarios encompass the idea that the in and out of it, is

relativistic, and the materiality or, the immateriality of things MAY exist depending on interpretation.

So neither view is absolute(ly) true, and that is the confusion of holding the rightness of either of them.

The argument is reductive, depending on the question of whether logic is treated conventionally absolute or not.

Therefore, if situational viewpoints predominate, the focus will shift toward a phenomenology, but if a conventional starting point is pursued, then the argument will always retun to meaning, and the logic oflanguage. This argument can not be won, and hence the resulting obvious misunderstandigs, which come out in the language.

I’ve already won - you just don’t know it.

Try a little bit of Kant and get back to me sometime.