Because they’re immaterial. In the united states, we all are raised with an inverted perception of freedom. Materialism, mass, is not free. Mass is subject to universal laws, such as physics and gravity. A huge boulder is not “free” to move about. A huge boulder requires massive amounts of energy to life or push around. Likewise, animal bodies are massive. A human body weighs an average of 170lb. That’s mass. Anything that is massive, is not free. It’s a slave, to its own constitution. It’s subject to law, not object to law.
Conversely, what is not massive, is seen as free. Gasses are free. Plasma and radiation are free. Light is free. Free particles. Free electrons. Dark matter, all free. The closer to nothingness the atheists and scientists get, the more western philosophers believe that these non existent things are “free”. Why? Because mass devoid of mass, a vacuum, nothingness, defies all physical laws. That’s the foundation of western, and European, sciences. Long ago, European physicists presumed materialism as an absolute truth, and converted this presumption and premise into natural law.
This is why we called it “natural science”. This used to be known as proper philosophy, or, philosophy proper.
Massive objects are not objects. They’re subjects. In western society, we all seem to be raised and educated with a backward version of Freedom. Let’s look at this from the opposite direction. Let’s do a 180 degree turn. Let’s look backward and call this forward.
In this thread, let’s conduct a thought experiment. Let’s review the ancient gnostics of yore, including spiritual gnosticism such as the early Catholic ideologies. What is free? Think about it. Not what is free, materially, but what is free immaterially? What is an “idea”? What is a “nothingness”? What is a spirit or soul, except, something other than a mass and a body?
We should consider inverting the subject-object dualism. Masses and bodies are not objects, nor objective things. Instead, let’s presume and assume they are subjective things, subjects object to law. Not objects subject to law.
Rununder: the subject/object differentiation is a very interesting one. Jung, a very abject follower of the gnostic science, related an interesting phenomenon, which came to him, early in his life. The idea which he verbalized was, that when sitting on a rock, for a brief period of time, he din't realize, if he was the man aware of sitting on the rock, or weather he was the rock aware of the man, sitting.
This is very significant, and it shows a pre-differentiational state between subject and object.
Where freedom comes into play where laws are applied. The laws of nature, you call them natural, are distinguished from laws pertaining to human behavior. This differentiation was made early on, and the use an undifferentiated use of law, to predicate to both types of effects, seem to beg the question here.
Now your argument for reversability is that subjects are acted upon by laws. Natural laws are not acted upon human beings in the same sense as they would on inanimate objects. Example of this, is measurable erosion that climate has on soil, terrain, rocks. This is measurable. The subject is literally closed, permutated. If rocks, etc, can be spoken as closed subjects, they may as well be called objects.
In psychology, object relations are definitions of inter subjective relations of reified (objectified) contents of self hood. The moment subjects are defined as object’s of thought, they are talked about as objects.
In this sense, any closed content of thought, is closed off from the subjective. It is only the unbounded thought without content, that qualifies for the term subjective.
The laws close the subject from absolute freedom by the positing, the closing of that freedom, irregardless of the content—
Materialism closed the subject from the definition of that content , by defining it as material. Material by necessity excluded from it that which was not defined as material.
Which became the immaterial. What was excluded as immaterial? The immateriality of ideas as free, is just as prone to closure, and hence not free. An closed idea, is in this way of thinking becomes an object of thought which is just as unfree as a materialistic view of a lack of freedom.
For these reasons,I think the distinction between object and subject in reference to laws and freedom, came to seem contrived, in perfect examples of being the result of language games. The games themselves obey nothing else but linguistic laws. These laws of usage, make us believe in intrinsic subjective/objective or real differentiation.
And I agree, we actually can turn the whole thing around to conform to the source of the point of view of the argument.
Smears: I think we are essentially are saying the same thing,you concise, me, the usual long winded way.
Materialism is a group for things we can experience and predict, either with our own senses or with machines.
I’m not sure if every materialist thinks things are explain-able through physics alone, but materialists tend to put allot of trust into parts of modernism.
There’s no way to compare explaining things which have mass, to things that don’t, using our current method of philosophy, language, and natural science. That’s probably why quantum physics is so problematic. There’s no language format to talk about massless objects. It’s completely irrational. The best we have, then, is spiritual language, loaded with religion and dogma.
We can simplify all of this down into three mutual concepts: objects, subjects, and laws. Humans use all three of these, together or separately, to navigate the world and form our consciousness. We can think of things as objects, subjects, or laws.
Right. I agree with you with the caveat that we can think of things also as ideas of those things. In other words, ideas or contents of thoughts can also be said to be things. Does this distinction make sense?
You may take issue with this, as I am internally debating it! And stii waiting for dialectical materialism's relevance in the big picture. It is a virtual war within. We cannot afford a real one. So me too waiting. If of no relevance your silence will not at all be adversely interpreted.
The problem of gnosticism is that it isolates ideas, and grounds them squarely and only inside the subjective realm. Ideas are extensions of subjects.
20th Century psychology revolutionized gnosticism, by deviating from the norm, and demonstrating that ideas extend from laws. There are laws to ideas, and ideas to laws.
However, I want to go way, way back, back to the ancients. Before gnosticism. Let’s go back to when ideas were objects, and objects are ideas. That is pre-gnosticism.
If we do this, then I think the postmodern idea of freedom can “improve” or “progress” to a new realization. There are other types of freedom, existentially.
Rununder, I think you’re got this thing you’re doing where you make a claim, then say that the counter claim is claiming to know something it can’t, then expecting them to change their minds because of your claim even though it’s probably, at it’s base epistemically the same.
Believe my view!
You’re just disagreeing because of x (dogma, fear, ignorance etc…)
You can’t really know your position, so take mine.
No, I’m just destroying beliefs and ideologies, for the sake of destruction, because it’s fun and passes time. I’m attacking gnosticism, and the premise that ideas only correspond to subjects.
Can a rock have an idea? Like obe mentioned, can an idea have a rock? That’s a more important statement, philosophically. Because at the very least, your perception needs to change, in order to apprehend the meaning of the language.
I dunno if that’s the standard view. And I don’t think that’s what begging the question means.
You’re talking about one instance of a bunch of people saying they know something. I’m talking about the idea that things can be known. All you have to do is define knowledge and we know how to do that right?
Not really, because different people define ideas in different ways, literally, metaphorically, figuratively, analogously, etc. There’s not one “correct” way to define anything. Then, after you accept the premise that definition is not constant, you have to approach knowledge as also not constant.
Definition is not constant. Knowledge is not constant. So you have no compass, or guide, to bridge the gap between definition and knowledge. Epistemology was one of our best attempts to know about knowledge. Then, psychology improved this. Now, neural science and cognitive science are also making gains and discoveries about how to connect human knowledge with things, such as communication and brain function.
But, the premise of gnosticism is still in place. Gnostics believed in an objective idea. They called this objective idea, God.
If you believe an objective idea is possible, then you are technically a gnostic. If not, then you are an agnostic. See? Most people in the united states, and philosophers I’ve come across, especially atheists, believe that ideas are only subjective. Therefore, most intellectuals in the united states are agnostic. This also affects the general social and political idea of American freedom.
Rununder: now this will be a stretch but bear with me. Because of the failure of gnosis, the subsequent rejection of Kant, we had a period of time, say, 100-150 years, where the whole ontology became unraveled, followed by a nihilism which improperly interpreted and unraveled everything in very violent ways.
Then comes a period post WWII, when there was a rapprochement with the Phenomenological bracketing of reductive content. This content was no longer an objective content. It was just content.
Here comes Kierkegaard placing aesthetics even over gnosis.
If the content of the aesthetically ideal is defeated, what can life imitate, interpret? This is the reality that an aesthetic life had as it’s ultimate goal, where hierarchies would fall into place, and values and goals would follow.
It is the nature of reality which has always been at stake, as representational, and not the other way around.
Generally, we can talk for ever about how society downtrods it’s members, and parties and groups take advantage of each other, and this having become systemic, discount objections relating to the war-like nature of man, ; all this would have been acceptable if in fact, the natural order could have been sustained. The humanism did in fact correlate with the ancien regime, may be brought up as objectionable, but humanism, as well as gnosticism, are not about to go away, as even marxism will not. Today we don’t need a Kant, but we do need insight, and not just of a psychological kind, otherwise these long forgotten ideas will again become an objective possibility.
Another mistake may be pointed out in arguing ex post facto, but doesen’t that reinforce Kant’s synthetic a priori, as if some contingencies are actually necessary.
Dude skepticism doesn’t mean we can’t define things. If your statement here is true then it’s not true. That’s a word game my man you gotta get past the language to the understanding. You’re being the thing you’re arguing against.
Yes, that’s right. Today gnosticism has passed on, still there, but not really acknowledged or used anymore. The united states and “western civilization” has moved toward agnosticism, away from gnosticism and aestheticism. This is why westerners are so into “science this, science that, science morality, science everything”. It’s a historical and philosophical phase. The rise of psychology, and the fall of Christianity and religion, seems to reflect these cultural values.
Let’s turn this topic back toward freedom, in the physical and political understanding of freedom. What is American “freedom”? What does it mean to be born into the “land of the free”, as opposed to any other country on Earth? Why are Americans free, or value freedom the most, and not other countries?
I know that, Smears. In fact, I think skepticism greatly assists and improves definitions. You don’t have to believe everything you say, in order for it to be meaningful, and especially not for other people to find what you say meaningful. Because contrarily, many times, other people will listen to what you say, take it as meaningful, and use your definitions without your permission.
Meaning trades between hands. What you may not consider meaningful, as your own definition, may become immediately useful for another person.