I find it quite interesting that you think this is some sort of death knell for materialism, while the explicitly materialist experts on the subject seem to have no issue with it.
Now, I wonder why that might be.
Explicitly materialist experts? Wow…I didn’t know there were such people. Why don’t you give us a few names Nonpareil. Who, exactly, are these ‘explicitly materialist experts’.
Yes, there does appear to be a single substrate. You can tell, because physics works.
Correction…YOU can tell. Besides my theoretical physicist buddy I’ve a family member who’s a physics prof. at Cambridge. I can unconditionally guarantee that he would find your conclusion absolutely ludicrous.
…but I am being premature. Perhaps you are a genius and know something about physics that a physics professor at Cambridge does not know. So…explain it to us Nonpareil…how, exactly, is it possible to conclude that the entirety of reality is of some singular nature merely based on the (apparent) functionality of a subcategory of an epistemology we call science? I’m sure my relative will be very interested to discover how his professional activities explicitly implicate the fabric of time and space.
I have already been over this multiple times. Why is it that none of the anti-materialist responders in this thread seem capable of actually reading the posts they claim to be responding to?
The universe behaves as though it is real, external, and monist. We designate this monist substance "matter", and thus have materialism. That is all that is required. Unless you can demonstrate some means by which either the universe does not behave in a such a way, anything else is worthless.
…ahhh…the old “I’ve been over this a million times before” argument. Translation: “As usual I said way more than I should and I can’t back it up but I can pretend that I’ve explained everything before and maybe he’ll go away.”
You said you could prove that materialism is accurate. So prove it…don’t wave your hands about like an epileptic on an ant hill.
To say that experimental physics produced nothing is to say that nothing of modern society exists at all.
…except I didn’t say experimental physics had produced nothing.
The "we don't know everything, therefore..." argument gets so tedious.
Do you know how a car functions? (maybe you do but lots of people don't)
Nonetheless, cars function.
So far, the world is observable and we can map many of its functions objectively and repeatably. That is what materialism is about, and it works.
…but we aren’t talking about cars. We are talking about you. You, personally, and what you do…or do not, know about what you are. Whether you call it ‘scientific’ knowledge or ‘emotional’ knowledge or some other variety of knowledge, it is knowledge about you. You may very well not need to know how a car works in order to drive one…but it would be blatantly stupid to say the same thing about you.
I think he is neither insane nor has some great insight. He either heard it somewhere, or he is unusually reflective for his age.
Hans
…or he knows something about ‘what it means to be a human being’ that you don’t know. Meaning…there are things about ‘you’ that you could know…but that you do not know. Is that a possibility?
It appears that the universe is composed of energy, energy and matter and the same. They are not different in nature, just words used.
The universe most certainly does not appear to be composed of ‘energy / matter’. That just begs the question doesn’t it. ‘As it appears’ to who…or what? A two year old, a theoretical physicist, a deaf blind mute, a rock star, a dementia patient?
As I pointed out above, the more explicitly physicists examine what you folks so desperately refer to as ‘matter’…the more they discover that there is no such thing.
To begin with, Nonpareils assertion that there is ‘a single substrate’ (matter) is experimentally supported by a grand total of absolutely nothing. What is supported experimentally (…what ‘appears’ to be there) are a range of particles and their various properties (what kind of ‘thing’ is a 'property' at that level?)…all of which disappear into some impenetrable nothingness that, according to certain theories and experiments, exists as some manner of ‘information’.
So…if it ‘appears’ as if that which exists at the most basic known levels is ‘information’… (as opposed to ‘matter’) does that change anything. Not really…except that idealism becomes more likely as a metaphysical paradigm.
