OK, sure. I just saw established and thought you meant something else.
Jung had archetypes as sort of primal predispositions, attitudes and patterns of interaction. Neuroscience has been finding that human brains arrive pre-wired with conserved below the neocortex circuits, inherited pattern-matching networks, and epigenetic ‘memoryish’ systems. We ain’t tabula rasa, but it’s not personal. (not yet at least)
Matter doesn’t mean anything. It sounds like it does, but it doesn’t. It can refer to particles in superposition, neutrinos in trillions flying through your body right now and touching nothing, virtual particles, stuff borrowed and then returned to nothing, fields, particles with no mass. It used to mean a kind of substance, like the kind that defines the monisms or the parts of the dualisms. But now it just means stuff science judges to be real.
Yes, but it’s also a meaningless presumption. What is that ruling out? It’s not ruling out anything. They’ve expanded the definition to include anything they find, no matter how outlandish and not at all like material.
Yeah, it’s been extensively documented, certainly enough to rule out the it being just coincidence and all that, misinterpretation, but it can’t be repeated like you can repeat a hadron collision or a chemical reaction.
It is structurally the case, but defies direct human manipulation.
Ah yes. Ok so different archetypes are compounds of drives, tendencies, with different hierarchies and priorities. Yes, this can be tied to neurology, I can see that.
I disagree, Newton still applies, and so do Einstein and Bohr and so. In my view these all deal with matter. I mean I understand matter, for example in terms of as e=mc squared, I can think with it, I can see this relation in my mind and this relation is, to me, matter.
Matter is a certain behavior. Mass is a form of acceleration. That is cool and specific and definitive.
The standard model made it a lot woozier, and I don’t hold to it, as it lacks the elegance that allows philosophic understanding. But basic EM-QM, just like Relativity is elegant and understandable and consistently reliable. That again to me, is matter.
But also when I take a hand of sand. Thats also matter. I mean, it means what it has always meant, even though in vast and minute scales it behaves wondrously.
In the sense of ‘this exists so it must in the hypothetical final analysis be made out of matter’, if I understand you…that is meaningless yes. Falsification is not a thing in that mindset. Anyway I think we’ve moved beyond that. All this just to point out the brain is only partially understood in terms of biology, and its relation to thought not at all.
Yes, they do. I didn’t say science was wrong, or physics. I am talking about the use of a substance term (matter or physical) when the traits of things that are considered that keeps changing, expanding and not requiring what it once did)
Which traits do you mean? Mostly the terms have been refined at the extremes, but not much has been contradicted, not in the terms of what was understood, anciently, as matter. Both Relativity and QM are quite intuitively compatible with the ancient concept.
The mind, which was not anciently understood as matter, defies strict materialism, but strict materialism is a novel concept and stands in the way of an understanding of matter. One materialist here went so far as to simply reject QM, in the face of complete proof, because it did not suit strict materialism. But the Greeks understood matter to be something less exact than pure truth, which turns out to be correct, even though the inexactitude is very exact.
Matter without mass. Matter without location. We have virtual particles also. Particles in superposition. Energy is matter or physical. Fields. Information is considered physical. Anything they find, will be called physical now. And if they can find it, then by their definition it is physical since it must have been detected, which means that some physical stuff was affected. Trillions of neutrinos are coursing through your body right now and there’s a 25% chance there will be one utterly unnoticable impact in your liftimes. A medieval theologian could then easily say ‘Oh, matter, the physical, it can be like that. Well, sure perhaps Angels are physical.’ I think there is habit involved, tradition. But also they want to set up a defensive wall against dualisms and religions, etc. So it looks like a substance claim, but it isn’t.
Not a chance. Whether you have Democritis’ atom type matter or Aristotles substantial form, they would be utterly baffled by the doublt slit experiments. In fact the trouble scientists had accepting those results points to the fact that it wasn’t acting at like they thought matter acted, fundamental stuff - in the older sense - doesn’t exist. An electron isn’t a tiny marble with inherent substance; it is a localized excitation of an underlying electron field spanning space Only incredibly accurate predictions over thousands of experiments broke the new ideas through. E=mC2 would also have been utterly confusing to them, this interchangeablity with energy. And then there’s the matter isn’t objects contained in space, no container contained, you have space and matter utterly intertwined in relativity theory.
The metaphyics isn’t the same at all. We can still use Newton, but he’s considered metaphysical wrong, just incredibly practical. He was a genius and he took classic (Greek) notions of what matter is and this was unbelievably fruitful. But it is nothing like how scientists think of matter now or the physical.
You’re making an argument that physicalism/materialism would reject. No problem for me, but it’s an odd rebuttal to my position on the terms physical/material. I don’t think anything in the Greek philosophers shows that they had the same ideas about matter that scientists now have. They may not have been physicalists, but then that makes them an odd defense of physicalism as a good label for current science. I do get what you’re saying matter wasn’t exact, there was some kind of looseness at least with some of them. But it would take, I think, a number of assumptions to show a link to any of the 20th century’s reframing of matter and many other things in physics. And nouman, nous, hyle, modern physics has accepted the kinds of hypotheses in those ideas.
They wouldn’t. Specially Aristotle, who studied under Plato, would have been an expert geometritian. He would have calmly walked through the math and then organized a popular science book burning.
Also, he would have asked the right questions. Like what exactly you have to do to detect the light as it passes and how doing it might affect the event. And it wouldn’t have taken him long to understand that, at small enough scales, it is impossible to look “indirectly.” Looking implies beaming something that beams back, but what can beam back from something smaller than anything you can beam at it?
Any way, didn’t mean to disturb, I’m sure your voodoo is very fun.
Oh, nice voodoo comment. Avoiding all that clown stuff. Anyway…
Sure, Aristotle could learn from the double slit experiments. He was brilliant. If you think that means the current conception of matter fit the conception of matter he had then - which was the sub-topic, not whatever political rage your infusing into what you think I am saying - then we disagree. I’m not taking some stand between the various interpretations of those experiments’ results, but unless you think exploding pigs in front of large double slits with a canvas behind it gets the same kinds of distribution results as the micro-experiment, I’m quite sure he would have been very surprised by the results. I would have a position on that. If you think the micro behaves like the macro double stil experiments would, ok, then I’d be taking a position. But, then, I doubt you have a different opinion. Believing the macro and the micro have different phenomena does not tie one to any voodoo. I’m sure Aristotle would integrate the new knowledge better than most people, but that has nothing to do with his conception of matter.
I like the appeal to Aristotle’s authority when he time travels to the future and you’ve now mind-read his hypothetical conclusions. That’s cool and not voodoo.
And the other post with the flat denial. That was great too. Nuff said, Socrates hath spoken.
Edit: Let’s look at Aristotle’s idea of matter and the modern positions:
Aristotle viewed matter as teleological. Modern science does not. Even Heisenberg, who though Aristotle provided a good metaphor for potential said they had to get rid of A’s teleology to actually understand matter.
Aristotle categorized matter in sensory binaries (like hot/cold). Modern science does not. It’s all measured/quantified.
Aristotle thought nature abhorred a vaccuum…and it turns out modern science has reversed its way back to him, though the mechanisms and reason why are very different.
Aristotle would have problems with matter transforming into energy. That’s too core a change, not merely a change of ‘form’.
Artistotle thought that when you divide things smaller and smaller they lose form. Modern science has found that it doesn’t lose form but has a different ‘architecture’ as you move from molecules to atoms to subatomic particles. Form doesn’t get lost. He also thought this process could go on forever. He might be vindicated one day, but general consensus is that there is a limit to divisibility. And we don’t arrive at a continuous medium.
Then we’ve got the four core sub-substances Earth Air Fire and Water and then Aether. Which is nothing like excitations of the base quantum fields.
Aristotle didn’t really have emergence with substance. Modern science does.
And then other Greek ideas of matter run into similar and different disagreements with modern physics conceptions of matter.
I don’t see how any of this contradicts either Plato’s, or Heraclitus’ thoughts on matter, at all. Neither those of Pythagoras, who figured the cosmos as best understood in terms of geometry. The three of them have very distinct ideas on matter but none of them contradict what we now… ‘know’. The systems we have now developed.
Take the Higgs field for example and how it is supposed to have begun generating mass when its symmetry was broken. I wont claim to fully understand the details at all but it’s a matter of geometry preceding mass. Plato would have shrugged and said yeah, wasn’t that what I just said? So we’re just talking about different Greeks.
Heraclitis and Plato had very opposed systems. They don’t fit each other. Earlier you said.
But the Greeks understood matter to be something less exact than pure truth, which turns out to be correct, even though the inexactitude is very exact.
I should have said then that they have many different positions. I don’t know exactly what you mean by the first part, but I don’t think a modern physicist would say it. There is the uncertainty principle, but then the math around that is incredible exact. It’s not fuzzy.
Plato thought matter was made up of rigid geometric shapes like cubes and tetrahedrons and 2 dimentional triangles. Modern physics does not find rigid geometric shapes, but shifting quantum fields. As far as Higgs, Plato meant physical symmetry, literal symmetry in physical shapes. The symmetry with Higg’s is abstract balance in mathematical equations. Perhaps he had what ends up being a good metaphorical intuition that he didn’t realize was metaphorical and not really a tight metaphor but his assertions do not match modern physics.
Heraclitis thought matter was at base literal fire. The same fire we experience in the macro.
Heraclitis thought it was all smooth flows. In modern physics matter shifts around in quantized ‘steps’ and quantized energy levels.
Heraclitis had logos as physical and moral. Is and ought were in matter together in a way modern physics does not have. Matter had justice in it. IOW matter would right wrongs. That just won’t fly in modern physics. It certainly hasn’t been measured or confirmed and isn’t in the models.
But Heraclitis is perhaps the closest. There are aspects of his poetic metaphysics that echo some qm, but it’s not the same conception of matter. And it’s not the same as the other Greeks.
As far as the less exact than pure truth, this might or might not match qm but only Plato thought physical matter was a shadowy, imperfect copy of the Forms. Unless you want to argue that the Forms he was referring to were subatomic particles - in a certain sense they are perfect - but that’s matter in modern science.
Best of men, I get the impression that you have not much read either of these philosophers first hand. Heraclitus writes in poetic fragments from which no such circumscribed ideas can be derived without taking liberties (and imposing illiberties) and Plato’s idea of Forms is a whole lot more subtle and interesting, and pertinent, than the solids, which he does indeed mention in two of the weaker texts. Of which there are many.
I cant escape the impression that the texts attributed to Plato aren’t all by the same author, as not only is the quality more radically different than what one finds generally in the opus of a single author, but the moral instinct varies drastically as well.
What I said earlier stands; in the stronger texts, geometry itself is seen as prior to substance, matter. This corresponds to modern cosmology.
Several dialogues do mention Heraclitus’ idea of change, and Socrates casually agrees with him, treating it as an obvious truth of the physical world.
I haven’t read Heraclitis for over 30 years. Plato I’ve dipped into more recently, but still a decade or more ago. But hey, no need to go ad hom.
Which holds for both of us.
Not really, though there are a lot of cosmologists and some may be closer to this. But generally, no they don’t view geometry as prior to substance.
For the physical world of appearances, yes. I mean, the physical is more or less an illusion to Plato and he has a kind of dualism with the real permanent world of forms. Heraclitis has a quite different ontology and is clearly monist, if an odd one.
I guess I’ll leave this here. I don’t think they fit with each other or modern conceptions of matter. You do. C’est la vie. (edit: and they’re not fitting with modern conceptions of matter does not mean I think they are wrong. Paradigmatic biases abound.)