My argument against materialism

annnnoid said:
…a withering insult from dafydd.

Dictionary….picture.….me…..smug.

It is truly regrettable that ‘ignore’ only works when I’m signed-in. As I said to tsig….you only confirm your irrelevance with every post.
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If we're all irrelevant then why bother? I'd think a person of your intellectual stature would be writing a book explaining the Universe and our place in it not casting pearls before potential bacon.
 
tsig said:
If we're all irrelevant then why bother? I'd think a person of your intellectual stature would be writing a book explaining the Universe and our place in it not casting pearls before potential bacon.
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What is a genius like that doing at an obscure internet site?
 
Dancing David said:
Fair enough, different defintion, I just find it easier to think of it as wave forms and energy all the time.
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Yes - this was just my attempt to explain to punshh that energy isn't 'made of stuff', IOW you can't have a row of test-tubes containing all the different kinds of energy, any more than you can look at it under a microscope to see what it's made of.

As H.H.Munro once said "A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation". I guess it depends on the inaccuracy ;)
 
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Dancing David said:
Fair enough, different defintion, I just find it easier to think of it[ETA: underlined] as wave forms and energy all the time.
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How about gravitational potential energy?

ETA: Sorry, I might be confused about what you're saying because of my lack of understanding of the basis of your confusion. If by "it" you mean energy, the question stands. If by "it" you mean matter, I've no quarrel.
 
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dlorde said:
I probably wasn't clear - what I meant was that matter is a form of energy, but energy isn't matter, like ice is a form of water, but water isn't ice.
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Thankyou for confirming my point.

Energy is a "phase"/"condition"/"state" of matter.

Matter is a form of energy

matter is a form of phase/state/condition/ of itself.

energy is that force exercised on itself.

Thats nearly as good as my quote at the bottom of dlorde's post about the two ends of an infinitely long rod. The only difference is that I composed that sentence in order to point out the absurdity of the concept of such a rod.
 
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Dancing David said:
Fair enough, different defintion, I just find it easier to think of it as wave forms and energy all the time.
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Yes, I agree.
My point to pixy was that science cannot tell us what energy is. If we want any kind a grasp on the "mysteries" of existence like this we have to look elsewhere.

Some of these posters could do with a 'whack' every now and then, might keep them on their toes. Fortunately I never felt the 'whack' myself, although I sneekily wish I had:D
 
devnull said:
So, what was the point again?

When will someone please clearly state this "case against materialism"???
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My point fell through the gaps of what materialism does and doesn't concern itself with.

So now I'm just curious if any materialist can tell me what energy is?
Its kind of important because this entire edifice of existence is composed entirely of energy.

Oh and another question come to think of it;

If all is energy waves, by what "force" are these waves arranged into the myriad "physical" forms that make up our world?

The answer is not also energy, I hope.
 
annnnoid said:
Y’know Halfcentaur…I’ll consider that. Because…as Mr. Fincher said “you’re not in control”…so, who knows???? Maybe you didn’t even write it. Like, how do you know you did? And would you even know, if you didn’t?

As for being smug….

…dude…I just finished a twenty odd page challenge to point out the massive mistake of someone’s ‘smugness’

Smug Scientism run amok.
-I post a list of every word that describes any experience any human being could ever have (and quite clearly describe it as exactly that)
-Dude says we can and have detected every single one of them (like fMRI stuff)
-Twenty odd pages later…..after dealing with multiple interventions by hostile skeptics
..and one suspension
…turns out the ‘truth’ (as in ‘non-smug-position), as explained by Professor Rees., Director of the Cognitive Science Department of University College London
…he says ‘we can handle reasonably straightforward cases in limited ways because of limited interpretive abilities and the all but infinite number of possible cognitive states’
-..so, from "everything" we end up at "limited cases"
-twenty pages later….smug-be-gone….

There’s a song up here in Canada. Kind of famous. A one-hit-wonder kind of thing. The title of it went “what’s going on”?

Simple question. Kinda weird that no one knows the answer. Sounds like a big question though. Is it ‘smug’ to ask it? Personally, I think it’s ‘smug’ to presume you’ve answered it.
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First off, you're not smug for asking this question, and it's a misrepresentation of my point to assume I claimed you were smug for asking it. If you're really unable to detect the smug tone with which you address everyone here, you'd have to be a victim of some sort of autism or you just don't think about how you act to other people. Your tone is what is smug, your dismissal of the responses we give is done so with smug language. If you think I am calling you smug for asking these questions, than your suffering some sort of persecution disorder, or you're just really mistaken. Please, do not think I'm calling you smug for anything but the tone and context of your responses.

Now, you're confusing a lot of things it seems. Me explaining human behavior and emotional experience has nothing to do with "what's going on", when you're talking the the sum of all things in the universe and reality.

This seems, again, caught up in your need to see human beings as more than just a simian mammalian biped that evolved on a small mostly liquid water covered planet on the corner of an average spiral galaxy. Of course, all things that make up the sum parts of the universe are involved with the universe, to get technical, but not in the way you seem to want to present it.

When I was a teenager doing LSD every day one summer, I too suddenly decided to phrase the question of life, meaning, and all that into the summation, "What's happening?" My colleague at the time laughed, sharing the meaning with me. And we proceeded to babble on about "what's happening" for a while, the profoundness of it all not escaping.

This has nothing to do with humanity though. We're not special, anymore than a hill or a tornado or an ant or tree is special in that sense of specialness. We're a component of the universe, a collection of materials that has assembled itself into us for now, much as a tornado is just wind ( I love the Sopranos).

You make a mistake I believe in thinking our emotional aesthetic appreciation and depth of feeling is connected with some hidden truths that could lead us to understand "what's going on".

Now, whether or not my believing you're mistaken is true or not, you are mistaken in thinking I am in any way claiming I know what is happening just because I can recognize human behavior as being just behavior, and not some kind of universal constant of meaning and importance.
 
As for Shakespeare and poetry and art actually being anything more than aesthetic constructs, you're just mistaking a map for the actual land it's describing again. You're sitting here trying to argue to us that the map actually exists in the context of a real place you go to, if you only look at it from the correct point of view. But a map is not a real place, it's ink on paper. It's nothing but a symbolic representation of a place. And you're only convincing yourself that you can explore the map and visit the map because of an emotional attachment to the idea.

It wouldn't be so bad, if you weren't so smug about it.
 
Halfcentaur said:
As for Shakespeare and poetry and art actually being anything more than aesthetic constructs, you're just mistaking a map for the actual land it's describing again. You're sitting here trying to argue to us that the map actually exists in the context of a real place you go to, if you only look at it from the correct point of view. But a map is not a real place, it's ink on paper. It's nothing but a symbolic representation of a place. And you're only convincing yourself that you can explore the map and visit the map because of an emotional attachment to the idea.

It wouldn't be so bad, if you weren't so smug about it.
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I suspect you may have bitten off a little more than you can chew here.

I will let annnnoid spell it out rather than wading in.
 
punshhh said:
I suspect you may have bitten off a little more than you can chew here.

I will let annnnoid spell it out rather than wading in.
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You're just allocating an intangible importance to art, for the sake of itself. I am in no way dismissing the pleasure and meaning I or anyone else derives from artistic creation by describing it logically. I myself am an artist, it's my passion, and I'm a slave to it. But I'm not going to be pretentious about it. It's not magic, it doesn't transcend the definition of animal behavior. Just because you can spend a life time exploring and appreciating these things, doesn't mean they transcend the material world.
 
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punshhh said:
Yes, I agree.
My point to pixy was that science cannot tell us what energy is.
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Yes, that was your point. You were wrong when you first claimed that. You're still wrong.

If we want any kind a grasp on the "mysteries" of existence like this we have to look elsewhere.
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What mystery?

Some of these posters could do with a 'whack' every now and then, might keep them on their toes. Fortunately I never felt the 'whack' myself, although I sneekily wish I had
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You haven't been paying attention, have you?
 
punshhh said:
My point fell through the gaps of what materialism does and doesn't concern itself with.
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What gaps?

So now I'm just curious if any materialist can tell me what energy is?
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We have. But here it is again anyway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy

Its kind of important because this entire edifice of existence is composed entirely of energy.
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In a sense, yes.

Oh and another question come to think of it;

If all is energy waves, by what "force" are these waves arranged into the myriad "physical" forms that make up our world?

The answer is not also energy, I hope.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_model
 
One needs to learn to reconcile with the idea that life is just as important and just as able to be appreciated in a world free of these psychological scams as it able to be while obscured and hidden in the context of spiritualism and mysticism and religion.

The only difference is, you're going to have to do without being somehow personally acknowledged by the alpha male construct you mistake as God/The Universe/The Omega Prime Mover/The Mother for being favored or special.

It's not even really an issue of arrogance and self importance, it's more rooted in the emotional desire and behavior most of all to desire security and protection and well being. What better answer is there but to seek these things from the most powerful thing that exists in all creation? Or the greatest secret in all the universe?

It's not really an issue of growing up and putting childish things behind you. This is a case of something we mistake as only existing in children that actually continues into adulthood in a more sophisticated form. It's in fact very adult behavior. But it's primitive adult behavior, a remnant of superstition.
 
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punshhh said:
My point fell through the gaps of what materialism does and doesn't concern itself with.
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For example Materialism does not concern itself with making stuff up to fill the gaps in science.

For that we have to look elsewhere.
 
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punshhh said:
My point to pixy was that science cannot tell us what energy is. If we want any kind a grasp on the "mysteries" of existence like this we have to look elsewhere.
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And suppose you had an answer - you would have "energy is X"

Then you only have a further question - "what is X?"

Suppose you have an answer "X is X-1"

Again you have a further question "What is X-1?"

Suppose you have an answer "X-1 is X-2"

Again you have a further question "What is X-2?"

Are you proposing an infinite regress of is's?

Or at some point do you just have to say "it is what it is"?
 
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