I could be incorrect, but I was under the impression that a materialists holds the position that all phenomena is attributal to or an agency of material, in which case, things which someone else might consider immaterial (e.g. Consciousness or thought), are wholly explained in terms of having or being of substance. It is essentially the position that only materiality exists (or maybe more accurately “that which exists can only be explained in terms of or through materiality”). I think Gib is interested in someone who holds this position to prove it.
So, I’d rephrase the challenge. Instead of proving the nonexistence of immateriality, prove that only materiality exists, or prove why phenomena should only be defined or understood as having some material existence.
Not really. Try: objectively out there. Or: independent of me (but that would make me non-existent). How would you define “existence” in the everyday hum-drum layman’s way of understanding it?
“Material” to me means made of matter (no very controversial, I know), and is a subset of “physicality” by which I mean taking a position and/or volume in space (which could include space itself).
I’ve never found it exceptionally difficult to imagine forms of existence by which things don’t take positions or volume in space yet have a there-ness to them. The Mosaic God who claims to permeate (or is) all of existence in the phrase “I am that I am”–everywhere and nowhere at once–to have this sort of existence. Also, abstract principles and truths, moral right and wrong, are sometimes thought to be, by Platonist, by moral objectivists, really “out there” without taking up positions or volume in space. So I don’t think I’m alone in being able to conceptualize these kinds of things (though believing in them is another matter).
That might be one way to approach it, though I’m not too keen on redefining terms.
To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I remember why I started this thread. There’s a reason I called it a zombie thread. If it had a grave stone, it would read: Mon Jun 22, 2009 to Mon Jul 26, 2010. That was 5 frickin’ years ago!
I think I only wanted to taunt and tease the materialists, posing a challenge which they knew they couldn’t meet yet would be dying to try.
The reason why I ask about definitions is because we're in a tricky spot right now. Since the first materialists, science has had to admit to the existence of all kinds of immaterial things- forces and energies and waves, and perhaps laws and numbers and so on. The physicality of today is nothing at all like that of a couple centuries past that thought the universe was just itty bitty indestructible pebbles and the spaces between them. These days, really the only thing the materialist is denying the existence of is 'religious-type stuff'.
BTW, from an epistemological perspective, you are absolutely right about the burden of proof- it’s on the one with the desire to convince somebody of something, clearly.
Yeah, it’s a shifting target. The materialists can’t lose that way. If somehow dualism was proven to be right, they would say “well, that mind stuff is subsumed by the term ‘material’ so materialism still holds.”
Even to the layman, existence is that which has affect. And physical existence is that which is affecting. All things that have affect, have a degree of inertia (“mass”) even though in the case of light or radiant energy, Science prefers to call it “momentum”.
So the material question is just one of what you want to call “material” and thus “immaterial”?
If it is something that has no affect upon anything whatsoever, it doesn’t exist because rationally it is immaterial to existence. Why would you think it material? Being material is being relevant. Being immaterial is being irrelevant (much like most of our threads).
Then the problem becomes identifying the causes of things- theists will say that God has all kinds of effects on the world, atheists will say those effects are all accounted for in other ways.
But you aren’t asking for precisely which things exist. You are asking if immaterial things exist. Or are you presuming that “God”, the proposed all-powerful being is immaterial?
It seems you’re saying that anything that exists, by definition, physically exists. Which is exactly what Ucci was saying, is it not?
Does consciousness affect things? If so (discounting the 21-grams pseudoscience/myth ), what is its mass/momentum? If not, why not?
I think that the definition you present is problematic insofar as “things that have affect” can, in any robust language, be systems, arrangements, abstractions, agreements, rather than physical things. It’s perfectly valid talking at the level of physics - but if one insists on doing that, one is surely begging the question whether everything is physical.
I don’t think if you asked a layman, he’d say that. Maybe you mean to say that the layman’s experience of existence can be interpreted (by you) as that which has affect.
My thoughts on this get complicated, and I’m too sick right now to get into it. Suffice it to say this is a customized definition of “material” that may contrast with the one I conveyed to Ucci above. According to my definition above, the material may conceivably have affects on things which would not be considered material (and visa-versa), which is different from saying the latter exist (though I think they do). Hopefully, I’ll feel better tomorrow and try to get into this some more.
Gib is asking if immaterial things exist. I'm expressing skepticism at the distinction; I believe 'immaterial' means little more than 'something a materialist wants to deny the existence of'. There is nothing one can specify about God's nature that makes it clear why a materialist should want to deny His existence while admitting to the existence of human consciousness, nuclear forces, and so on. God is very different from those, but not in a way that requires dualism of one who considers a universe full of particles, waves, rays, numbers and so on to be monistic.
I don't know what the word is for what I think- I'm not a monist or a dualist, I'm more inclined to think that if we must break things down into simple substances, there are probably dozens of them.
The simple dualism method that has been used at least since Plato is that there are two realms of existence, associated, but separated; the realm of physical existence (“mortal”) and the realm of conceptual existence (“abstract ideas”, “divine entities”, “perfect forms”, “souls”).
The physical existence contains all physical effects and the conceptual realm contains all non-changing “ideal” concepts, such as a perfectly round circle or perfect square, neither of which can ever exist in the physical realm. And neither realm “exists” or has any affect upon the other. The mind imagines the conceptual even though the mind itself is a physical function, the functioning of the neural network. But the mind cannot change anything concerning the conceptual realm. The mind affects its body when it imagines what might be in the conceptual realm (the “non-material realm”).
A process, such as thinking, is definitely physical. But the abstract concept of the process, void of a particular instance, is merely conceptual. It is the difference between “an apple” (indefinite article) and “that apple” (definite article). Categories are conceptual yet often filled with the physical.
Consciousness is similar in that it is a nominative property and can refer to either the abstract concept of any consciousness, or it might be referring to a particular instance of consciousness. In the former case, consciousness is strictly a conceptual entity, but in the later case, it has a physical representation and thus is a physical existence at that moment. A tree only physically exists for as long as it is in the shape of a tree, but the concept of a tree, even of that one tree at that one moment, is eternal and can never change (fortunately such concepts don’t take up much space … until the NSA decides to build a computer to remember them forever).
But realize that these are just ontological choices. It is not a matter of what is true, but rather how you choose to structure truth.
Actually constructs, concepts and such consist of phisical processes which involve the nerveous system. The various movements of neurons, are of material effect. That is why the saying, ‘give weight to Your thoughts’ Between the thought as process,
(physical) and the thought as idea, there exists an inseparable connection. Because of this connection, ideas have weight. An idea cannot be thought
without the biochemical interaction with the
neurons.The weight is actually between the neorons, the dendrites which connect them. The connection between the dendrites and neorons can be compared to the difference between the idea of concept as substance, with that of an idea as an idea. The later leads to an absolute regress, without content, a pure hermeanutic of pure form. The idea of an idea besides, is proximally limited by it’s negation, the non-idea, which is pre consciousness. When You say 'I have no idea, You come to a pre reflexive pure apprehension. Therefore immaterial does exist but only as the content of pure apprehension.
Why attribute more reality or existence to the physical substance when the concept is experienced as well. Both the physical and the conceptual are experienced by me, and thus both have an effect upon me. Sounds like you are talking about two perspectives on one thing. Both the physical existence of something and it’s shared concept or ideation are representations of each other, the same existence, and you could never prove to me that you could have one without the other.
A physical perfect square can never exist. Physical reality does not allow for objects with infinitely perfect corners. But the concept of such a perfect square can be defined by the mind and thus “conceived”, yet impossible to exist physically. When one attempts to imagine a perfect square, he can only imagine it to the limited of his visualization resolution. He can never imagine the required infinitely small and perfect corners, simply because he can never imagine infinity.
As he imagines what he accepts as “perfect enough”, that thought affects his physiology and thus that thought exists. But his thought is not really of the perfect square, and never can be. Thus the perfect square can be said to “exist in the realm of the divine” or the “conceptual realm or perfect entities”. And the attempt to imagine or think of that perfect entity will have affects. But the entity itself never affected anything. The mind chose to attempt to think about such a thing. And even though the mind invented it, the mind cannot complete its imagining of it.
Similarly, one can choose to think of a building with 10,000 rooms in it. But can the human mind actually visualize it accurately? Certainly not a normal person. But the concept of it remains defined and again, can be said to “exist in the conceptual realm”.
It is the effort to imagine that is affecting things, not the things themselves. The same is true throughout many religious concerns and psychological concerns such as delusions and illusions. The mind’s attempt to imagine is the affecter, not the actual concept itself. The only physical existence relating to thoughts of things is the physical pattern of the energy flow in the mind as it makes its attempt to think. That thought process physically exists, but looks nothing at all like the concept being thought about. A physical square does not appear in the brain when the mind thinks of a square, perfectly or not.
We choose to speak of perfect entities that can never be physically represented, because it is useful for us to do that. We choose to categorize them as “existing in the realm of concepts”. It is an ontological choice. We could equally say that they never existed at all, only the imperfect thoughts of them. But that is less useful.
The number Pi is another example. It is defined. But it can never be visualized or completely known except as a name of a ratio. But that is enough to make it very useful throughout engineering.
I’m not sure I fully understand why a perfect square would require an “infinitely small corner”, nor why one couldn’t exist in our physical reality. I understand a perfect square to be represented by a polygon with four ninety degree angles, which we are perfectly capable of constructing two-dimensionally with a writing utensil, a medium, and a compass.
Nonetheless, let’s play with your example. You say a “…perfect square can never exist [physically]…” and go on to say, “When one attempts to imagine a perfect square, he can only imagine it to the limited of his visualization resolution. He can never imagine the required infinitely small and perfect corners, simply because he can never imagine…”. Again, not really sure what “limited of his visualization resolution” is truly referring to, but I interpret your overall point to imply that though we can consider and define a perfect square, we would never truly experience it, neither as an imagination/visualization or as a physical entity. I think you actually prove my point here.
Second, in your example, the conception and definitions of the perfect square are fallible, as the definition being used contains concepts that could never be truly conceived for lack of their reality, only approximated (e.g. infinity is defined as incalculable, so though we can “define” it nominally, it could never be experienced, which is what you are saying). The key to why this can’t be experienced is that the concept or definition is an approximation. These approximations or abstractions are the foundation of all of our experience.
What we call the physical world is experienced, abstracted, filtered and approximated naturally by our sense mechanisms. The impressions yield a perspective on that which is being experienced. My experience, what happens to me, is a representation. A poke in the belly, is experienced as a representation of some thing. The idea of infinity, is experienced as a representation of some thing.
Thoughts, ideations, concepts, words, definitions, likewise are approximated representations of those already abstracted impressions. We can idealize and consider and play in the realm of thought, come up with things that appear at first understanding to appear to have no relationship to what we experience as the physical world, but a little inspection reveals that all of these “things” are referencing, and if you move down the chain of reference, they all originate from an immediate experience.
When I say “Both the physical existence of something and it’s shared concept or ideation are representations of each other, the same existence…”, I’m literally and ontologically referring to concepts and physical entities being equally relevant representations of the same thing or substance. Yes, they are experienced differently, but they are both experienced, and as such, both subject to abstractedness.
The problem we have as philosophers and experiencing entities in general is that we take the physical reality as more real because it has a substantiality to it that can be corroborated. What we most often fail to pay attention to is that our inner worlds are just as substantial and impactful, just perceptually more subtle.
), what is its mass/momentum? If not, why not?