Belz...
Fiend God
As brain processes, yes. But you already know this, so why ask the question ?
That doesn't make any sense. How can a belief in the non-existent be justified ?
I challenge you: your best alternate to materialism
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As brain processes, yes. But you already know this, so why ask the question ?
That doesn't make any sense. How can a belief in the non-existent be justified ?
Nonpareil
The Terrible Trivium
He said "about", not "in".
Belz...
Fiend God
I have a nagging suspicion that he's playing word games.
I thought my hippo example was good, but I'll offer some others.
Let us say I find a small bag of money. It's not richie-rich money, but it's significant. I should like to keep (and spend) the money, but I realize the rightful owner might step forward and claim it, leaving me with a substantial problem.
So, I put flyers out about finding the money, I put an ad in the paper, I inform the police about what I've found... ad nauseam. A few years go by and there is no response. As the time passes, my belief that there is no rightful owner for the money begins to grow. At some point, my belief in the non-existence of an owner (and remember, abandoned money also lacks an owner). Surely, by whatever exhaustive method I use, I eventually have a justified belief that there is no owner at all and I can keep the money?
Now, accepting that I have a justified belief in the non-existence of a rightful owner, I spend the money. Not only do I act on my belief, but the non-existent thing directly influences my actions. If an owner exists, I'm screwed. There are direct consequences of something that doesn't exist on me, and by extension, the world at large.
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Do you believe the FSM is non-existent?
Belz...
Fiend God
Again: what does this have to do with anything that I've said ? Beliefs are processes in the brain and as such they exist. The thing you believe in may not. What's your point ?
The question at hand was how the immaterial could ever affect the material, as if they were two different, mutually disconnected realms. So I was trying to show how the one might reach the other.
If beliefs are material things, then I'm proposing that beliefs can be about immaterial, non-existent things - and those beliefs can be both justified and have consequences. This offers a bridge between the immaterial (things that don't exist) and the material (my beliefs about those things).
Mathematicians struggle with the same thing:
Mathematical realism, like realism in general, holds that mathematical entities exist independently of the human mind. Thus humans do not invent mathematics, but rather discover it, and any other intelligent beings in the universe would presumably do the same. In this point of view, there is really one sort of mathematics that can be discovered; triangles, for example, are real entities, not the creations of the human mind.
Many working mathematicians have been mathematical realists; they see themselves as discoverers of naturally occurring objects. Examples include Paul Erdős and Kurt Gödel. Gödel believed in an objective mathematical reality that could be perceived in a manner analogous to sense perception. Certain principles (e.g., for any two objects, there is a collection of objects consisting of precisely those two objects) could be directly seen to be true, but the continuum hypothesis conjecture might prove undecidable just on the basis of such principles. Gödel suggested that quasi-empirical methodology could be used to provide sufficient evidence to be able to reasonably assume such a conjecture.
Within realism, there are distinctions depending on what sort of existence one takes mathematical entities to have, and how we know about them. Major forms of mathematical realism include Platonism and empiricism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics#Major_themes
If a triangle (or any mathematical entity) exists outside the mind, how does it exist? Do numbers exist in the material world? In what sense?
Excellent post. I was holding this card back to play later.
I tried to play it earlier, but there were no takers. Thanks for kind remarks!
Belz...
Fiend God
No it doesn't. The thing that does the affecting is physical, entirely.
Belz...
Fiend God
Yeah. It's a joker, and it's worthless in this game.
Nonpareil
The Terrible Trivium
Triangles are real entities. "Triangle" is a descriptor we give to a shape that fits a certain definition.
Mathematical realism does not hold that there is some mystic "true circle" that exists independently of all other matter. It's just the rather straightforward position that mathematics is constant.
Which it is, because mathematics is a description of the real world, which is constant.
Abstract representations are not a problem for materialism.
MRC_Hans
Penultimate Amazing
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Why to you use the word belief, there? Obviously, you know there is no hippo on your desk, and you can prove it. (You cannot prove a negative, but you CAN prove absence)
Hans
MRC_Hans
Penultimate Amazing
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Nonpareil already answered this nicely.
But to be very direct: A triangle exists as some triangular object or as the relative positions of three objects. Otherwise it doesn't exist. The matemathical rules for a triagle are simply invariant rules that have been found to apply to all triangles. Same with numbers, obviously.
Sure, it is interesting that sets of invariant rules exist and govern the universe. This might also be relevant in the other thread, about fine tuning.
In a universe without triangles, and nobody to know the rules, do the rules still exist?
Hans
punshhh
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They do affect the physical world though, such as the abstraction God. Any gods which exist out there may, or may not utilise abstraction to affect the world(via the human mind).
punshhh
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Minds have an interaction with the material world all the time.
This line of reasoning does not preclude other materials(other than the one we know) interacting with the (known) material world and appearing to be immaterial influences.
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Belz...
Fiend God
Yes, and minds are also material, so there is no contradiction.
Those materials would be material and physical. Again, no contradiction.
Nonpareil
The Terrible Trivium
I never said they didn't.
I already did.
Your "theorem" is that both physical and mental phenomena - which you claim are fundamentally different without any actual evidence to support that - have a root in a third, "true" reality. You present no evidence for this claim.
You then claim that mental phenomena have their root in "Consciousness", which is always capitalized because you have a Fixation with this type of thing, and that it is consciousness' "meta aspect" that you are concerned with, despite the fact that you've already claimed that mental phenomena have the same root as physical ones and are now adding a whole new level of abstraction.
At no point are any of your terms defined or is evidence given to support any of your claims, and what follows is a nonsensical stream of pseudomath that doesn't support your claims and is only relevant if they can be shown to be true, and is thus ignored (except in that we can safely assume it's wrong, because you are demonstrably bad at math, and the system you are expounding upon has never actually been defined).
Essentially, you try to invoke Take A Third Option when asked to choose between materialism and idealism. What you fail to realize is that this still leaves you with all the problems idealism has, plus a slew of your own.
And we're still waiting on evidence.
Belz...
Fiend God
Yes necessarily because it's the definition of the word.
There's that word salad again.
It's not "my logic". It's LOGIC. Something you seem totally unfamilliar with.
I'll say. It appears that it means whatever you want it to mean at that particular moment.