Materialism and Immaterialism

I wonder: Who is being addressed since I was advised I'm on Ignore?


However, wouldn't it be seemly & appropriate for a thread starter to provide his/her/its own working definitions rather than inviting others to do so, so he/her/it may offer nothing but critiques?
 
Seriously, should I close the thread again? Share your mutual dislike elsewhere.
 
I'm just pointing out that nine pages' worth of posts have gone by, and we're no closer to hammegk offering an explanation of his nonstandard terminology than we were at the beginning.
 
I'd request that you leave it open. I'll henceforth ignore the jibes, here.

ma·te·ri·al·ism n.
Philosophy. The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
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Immaterialism: the only reality is non-physical.


phys·i·cal adj.

1. Of or relating to the body as distinguished from the mind or spirit.
2. Of or relating to material things: our physical environment.
3. Of or relating to matter and energy or the sciences dealing with them, especially physics.
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Note 3. may be begging the question of what is "mind". And we are now in Wittgenstein territory.
 
hammegk,

I am pleased to see you offering a definition of materialism. This is outstanding. Perhaps now you will explain how this definition supports your earlier assertion that "materialist = 100% certain god cannot exist".
 
Or establish what characteristics actually distinguish physical and non-physical realities.

I predict it will take at least another nine threads to get more content out of the discussion.
 
Wrath, if you keep making remarks like that, I'll remove them. Eventually, I may have to disable your access to the CT forum. Right now, the only person causing problems in this thread is you.
 
hammegk said:

Hmm. I'd say awareness (energeticness, perhaps?) is the prerequisite that allows thinking -- at a human level given the proper perceived-physical structure. I don't think "chemicals" experience anything antropomorphically, although suggest on an individual molecule basis they may well react, or not react, given a specific stimulus.

Quite true and just a trick of the semantics I suggested, they are not trump in any way.
It can probably be a given that for the 'experience' to occur there ought to be an underlying framework for the experience to occur. And quite correctly the chemicals (I assume there are these chemicals and a brain and that they appear to behave under sertain rules) in 'my brain' are not having the experience of awareness that I know of. I can only try to define the things i percieve.
From the observable, it would appear that there is a process going on that is associated with awareness. Then it becomes a matter of the observational label applied to the 'observable' event. And by defintition it can not be know except as the 'meme' or passage of information from one presumed exitant to another presumed exitant.
There is a boundary of knowledge that can not be crossed. This is the 'irreducable' where experience can only be had as a personal experience that is not able to be discussed except for the limited associations of language.

I also don't agree that sensory perception & reaction is the "self"in any case. The "self" is involved in participating, but is apparently fully capable of intervening and overriding responses and actions. A mechanism that would allow such interaction -- you know, if it effects or affects ... -- is at least possible to conceive of for an idealist/immaterialist.
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There would have to be some agreed upon reason to suggest that there is part of the 'self' that is inherently intangible and beyond the processes that are confabulated with the self.
The same rules about proving the ontology of the world also apply to the ontology of the self.

My contention would be that the self is merely a 'semantic' concept. And that in the discussion of 'what is awareness' or 'what is life' there are goinf to be 'that which might be observed'. So while I can agree that there is a common perception of the self as a phenomenal perspective, I feel that there is good reason to inlcude perception as 'someting confused with self'.

The implicatons of the post must wait for time and pondering how to determine if energy can make a choice, a mechanism that would allow such an interaction is quite concievable for the materialist. If it is made of mind, fine or if it is made of energy.mind or energy.matter is not something I have to discuss as a materialist, fortunatley I can hide in "It sure looks that way." confident that I too can take refuge in the oirreducable.
 
Has anyone adressed my question about why the fossil record and other sciences, like astronomy, seem to show a material existence long before thought was present (on Earth anyway).

How does the immaterialist view explain this? If thought is the primary existence, why does it seem to create an apparent reality that existed before thought?
 
ceptimus said:
Has anyone adressed my question about why the fossil record and other sciences, like astronomy, seem to show a material existence long before thought was present (on Earth anyway).

How does the immaterialist view explain this? If thought is the primary existence, why does it seem to create an apparent reality that existed before thought?
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It doesn't seem to do this. How can anything about the world suggest that something can be meaningfully said to exist in abstraction from thought?
 
Pyrrho said:
Wrath, if you keep making remarks like that, I'll remove them. Eventually, I may have to disable your access to the CT forum. Right now, the only person causing problems in this thread is you.
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They don't violate any of the posted forum rules. I am quite sure that you're more than willing to impose your personal preferences on the forum, but such behavior is not appropriate for a moderator.
 
Interesting Ian said:


It doesn't seem to do this. How can anything about the world suggest that something can be meaningfully said to exist in abstraction from thought?
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No doubt my comments will provoke an insulting response from II but, whenever I have been asleep and look out on the garden, the grass has grown, as have the trees and shrubs. So far as I can tell, these organisms appear to exist in a meaningful fashion.

It could be that I am incorrect, naive and particularly dense in thinking that grass, trees and shrubs exist independently from thought, but I cannot help thinking that it is unlikely.

Regards,

AC
 
asthmatic camel said:


No doubt my comments will provoke an insulting response from II
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Hey! Tosser! :D

but, whenever I have been asleep and look out on the garden, the grass has grown, as have the trees and shrubs. So far as I can tell, these organisms appear to exist in a meaningful fashion.

It could be that I am incorrect, naive and particularly dense in thinking that grass, trees and shrubs exist independently from thought, but I cannot help thinking that it is unlikely.

Regards,

AC
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Or think about when you hold an object and then release it. Does it make any difference whether I have my eyes closed or not as to whether it will fall and make the appropriate noise on impact? Does this not prove the existence of matter?? ;)
 
Interesting Ian,

Seriously, I read most of your posts and attempt to understand them so far as my intellect allows.

Despite my lack of philosophical studies, I find your views to be at best questionable and, at worst, absurd. (Given that you are for real)

So, sod off Tosser ;O)
 
[modu]I realize that you are just kidding, Interesting Ian and asthmatic camel, and that's fine. But in the future, please do it without name calling. Even in jest.[/modu]
 
apoger said:
I am pleased to see you offering a definition of materialism. This is outstanding. Perhaps now you will explain how this definition supports your earlier assertion that "materialist = 100% certain god cannot exist".
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From the definition itself

"ma·te·ri·al·ism n.
Philosophy. The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena."

leaves 0% room for anything else to exist. I admit that perhaps some material/physical definition of "god" is possible, but I haven't seen one that makes sense. I.e. Should "god" exist, no physical definition seems possible. How can a materialist accept any possibility of such existence other than as some irrelevant form (no effect or affect) of non-interactive dualism, or by becoming an idealist.

Should a non-immaterialist be able to point to any results that imply an existent -- other than will? energy? -- that actually is physical and material rather than a gossamer essence winking in & out of existence, I'd rethink my position.

Note again the "Wittgenstein shuffle" as physics names something matter, and something energy --matter the reason we don't walk through walls but in essence "energy" -- which physics admits to having no understanding of other than as field equations.

Will? Interesting that materialism attempts to subsume it while denying it exists.
 
hammegk said:

Will? Interesting that materialism attempts to subsume it while denying it exists.
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Actually, didn't your definition of materialism state that will does exist and that it is explainable in terms of physical phenomena?
 
leaves 0% room for anything else to exist.
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Yes, but it makes no statement about the existence of god, physical or otherwise.


I admit that perhaps some material/physical definition of "god" is possible, but I haven't seen one that makes sense.
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See? Right there you submit that there may be a material definition of god. Thus the assertion that "materialist = 100% certain god cannot exist" is invalid.

As for material definitions that "make sense", I haven't seen one either. But by that standard I haven't seen a definition of god that makes sense from any source.


Will? Interesting that materialism attempts to subsume it while denying it exists.
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I see absolutely nothing in the definition of materialism that notes anything about denying "will". Indeed the definition you just offered includes it as something that can be explained in terms of physical phenomena. So how did you arrive at the odd conclusion above?
 
Upchurch said:
[modu]I realize that you are just kidding, Interesting Ian and asthmatic camel, and that's fine. But in the future, please do it without name calling. Even in jest.[/modu]
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My apologies, Upchurch. I didn't intend to offend anyone.

Yours considering himself spanked,

AC
 
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