So you’re saying that duality and union are mutually dependent, rather than mutually exclusive states of being? I think that’s a good point.
btw … what is this reality you are talking about in your…
Non-material is not material. I’m not sure how “substance” has anything to do with it. Is there a meaningful and useful definition of substance, such that we could decide whether matter (or mind) is or is not substantial?
I’m unaware of any scientist ever having discovered “substance”.
I really don’t know. What could it mean? That’s my point.
I suppose everything hinges on there being a ‘reality’ first, then we can begin to look into the ‘substantial’ parts of it and how they apply.
talking about reality as a thing apart from our experience of it is pointless, since if we are talking about it, our experience of it is implied - reality IS what we experience - if that’s not a truism then it ought to be.
i agree with anon that there is nothing meaningful left to talk about once you’ve divorced a thing of its properties
You have to experience continually to establish a strong relationship with the knowledge you have of and about the objects and facets of reality. Apart from the knowledge there are no questions to arise about reality.
There is a meaningful and useful definition of substance when scientists discuss the laws of nature. But that is the substance of mindless matter. Mindful matter on the other hand is extremely more opaque.
To wit:
A mind can think of murdering someone. And then the mind and the body in concert can do it. But what is the substance of that?
Or a mind can listen to music and feel sublime. What is the substance of that?
Or a mind in the midst of dementia can think and feel all sorts of bizarre things. What is the substance of that?
And is there an ontological and teleological Substance behind all of it. And if there is would not this exchange be merely another inherent manifestation of it? And if it is would not human autonomy itself be but the illusion of free will.
How can we will something freely if everything ultimately is just an intrinsic manifestation of Substance.
So the body needs a mystical substance called mind to act? But how does the mind decide to think about murdering someone? And how does it decide to decide that?
A person can think of murdering someone. Then that person can carry it out or not. “Mind” and “body” are just different ways of describing different aspects of that person.
Freely of what?
No, I’m not saying the mind is “mystical”, I am saying it is profoundly mysterious. Or, rather, even the most sophisticated brain scientists do not fully understand how mindless matter can evolve into mindful matter. And that, I believe, is what mind is. I am not a dualist or a believer in God or deism or pantheism.
And it is not mind per se that thinks about murdering someone. It is, instead, a particular mind. And to understand why a particular mind would do so you have to understand it as the mind of a particular dasein. In other words, the mind of a particular man or women who, through the course of living their life came to conclude this was necessary. This is a profoundly existential inquiry in other words.
And if there is a Substance that underlies all material relationships and mind is purely matter, how can this be compatible with free will? How can the Will be both a component of Substance and freely propel it in turn?
“The mind is purely matter” is not a necessary consequence of materialism. There are many things that are not matter in a material world.
Freely of what?
How would it not be the consequence of materialism? What things are not matter—energy? time? space?..noumenal reality?..a transcendental reality? God?
Not really clear what you are suggesting.
Nor am I clear what you expect of me when you ask, “Freely of what?”
Again:
…if there is a Substance that underlies all material relationships and mind is purely matter, how can this be compatible with free will? How can the Will be both a component of Substance and freely propel it in turn?
Insurance. Compound interest. Curiosity. None of these things are material, but none of them describe transcendental realities. They are examples of abstractions, relations, dispositions - not things.
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I don’t think I can clarify it much besides just asking again. What is free will free of? I know more or less what will is. How is free will (in the sense in which you are using it in your question) different from unfree will?
iambiguous wrote:
[i]How would it not be the consequence of materialism? What things are not matter—energy? time? space?..noumenal reality?..a transcendental reality? God?
Not really clear what you are suggesting.[/i]
Yes but they are meaningless in the absense of the material minds and bodies of those who invent them.
It is free of determinism. It exist in a way that is not the existence of rock or a mountain or a lake.
Unless, of course, it is. Which would make it just a different kind of matter [a more complex and sophisticated matter] evolving out of the big bang and into…what exactly?
All concepts are meaningless without people to conceive them. I don’t see how that’s any different to a chair or a brick.
Into what it is, if that’s what it is, I suppose. Is there unfree will, come to that?
If everything is substance, and substance is necessarily causal, free will can’t exist in its determinism-free sense, to answer
That seems a logical conclusion. I get the impression from the question’s phrasing that that’s not a satisfactory answer to you?
But some are more meaningless than are others. Among other things, they are less substantive. And this is not something a brick or a chair has to contend with.
iambiguous wrote:
[Free will] is free of determinism. It exist in a way that is not the existence of rock or a mountain or a lake.
Unless, of course, it is. Which would make it just a different kind of matter [a more complex and sophisticated matter] evolving out of the big bang and into…what exactly?
But what is it until we can determine what it can only be? And we can only determine that to the extent we can situate it rationally [ontologically?] in the very nature of existence itself.
Yes, but that’s where the mystery that is mind comes in. It would seem that the big bang was mindless. And yet out of this came heavier and heavier elements interacting in time and space until one day mindless matter evolved into matter capable of consciousness. And then self-consciouness. And then self-consciousness capable of asking both “how?” and “why?”
And that’s where we are still at today.
iambiguous asked:
How can we will something freely if everything ultimately is just an intrinsic manifestation of Substance?
As but one infinitesimally tiny mind thinking about things among 6,300,000,000 additional minds inhabiting a tiny planet in a tiny solar system in a hum drum galaxy floating amidst hundreds of billions additional galaxies in what may well be a infinite number of parallel universes, it sort of just goes with the terriotory.
I disagree. Concepts are concepts, “brick” doesn’t have more meaning than “curiosity” simply because it’s a concrete noun.
It is what it already is, if it’s anything. It’s surely a matter for empirical investigation, though, if you believe it evolved from mindless matter.
The exasperation some might feel regarding discussions like this is that they don’t point to anything more substantive than the meaning of the words used in the concepts. I prefer “cognitive units” that are a little more substantial.
Concepts are formed in the minds of men and women who have brains inside bodies that evolved out of matter that did not have either bodies or brains.
i]Where is substance here? Is the substance of my mind/brain/body and the substance of your’s subsumed in Substance itself?
Who really knows?