The "ultimate substance"

[Piggy]

Wise words. It is refreshing to see that someone understands. Sure, I might be pushing it to hard by stating that some materialists are "naives", that doesn't get me friends, but it is true.

To make things more clear. My issue with the word "matter" is that, historically, it has been changed to fit the new data. It was solid, used to be clearly localized in space, used to have this final constituents (atoms), used to be different from energy (heck there was no useful concept for energy for a long time)... and so on.

Parting shot:

I think you need to follow Gould's advice here and distinguish between advancements which expand our understanding of a theory and those which replace it with a new theory.

A classic example of the latter is the discovery of oxygen, which replaced phlogiston theory. The 2 were incompatible. When oxygen theory was proven, phlogiston theory was dead.

Nothing like that has happened with matter. There have been many hypotheses about the nature of matter over the ages, and as we've been able to probe deeper and deeper, we've discovered properties we could never have imagined.

But these properties of the microscopic componenets of matter (and matter's relationship with energy) have not contradicted or overturned what was known about matter at the macroscopic level.

Matter is one of the former cases, in which our understanding has been increased. These discoveries have not contradicted the theory that the universe is material, but rather have cemented it firmly in place.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Wise words. It is refreshing to see that someone understands. Sure, I might be pushing it to hard by stating that some materialists are "naives", that doesn't get me friends, but it is true.

To make things more clear. My issue with the word "matter" is that, historically, it has been changed to fit the new data. It was solid, used to be clearly localized in space, used to have this final constituents (atoms), used to be different from energy (heck there was no useful concept for energy for a long time)... and so on.

No, the problem is that you are calling people naive because our current language is (1) inadequate and (2) changing. There is no role for calling anyone inadequate if you adopt Rorty's scheme. the old connotations are dying. No one thinks billiard balls when they use the word 'matter' around here.

There is nothing inadequate about Piggy, Pixy, Robin, Lupus, Volatile, etc. (I hope I didn't leave anyone out and I am not trying to imply that you might be inadequate if I did).

You put people's backs against the wall by the way you started this discussion.

If you want to avoid controversy such as this, it might be better to begin with something along the lines of "isn't it interesting how our way of using the word 'matter' has changed", but you probably won't get much discussion out of that.

 

[Apathia]

the old connotations are dying. No one thinks billiard balls when they use the word 'matter' around here.

More like footballs, soccer balls, and other balls to be kicked. LOL

Seriously, the original question back in the Platonic days of Western thought was "What is the permenant, unchanging substance everything is made of?"
A couple of hundred years ago, one of the answers was Matter. That's Classical Materialism.

Medieval Philosophy contrasted "Substance" and "Accident." Substance was what a thing was supposed to be of itself. Accident was how it's experienced by observers. This also was a part of Classical Materialism. Matter is what is there independent of appearance.

And of course we brought to Matter, and still do, our sensory metaphors based on this narrow niche of reality we experience and how we do so.

But is there a permenant, unchanging substance? Has science found it?
It's getting increasingly more dubious that there is. Science is now more concerned with process and our metaphorical models have become almost surreal.

But the old debates continue with one saying everything is made of Mind, another, everything is made of Matter. and yet another, everthing is made of God, and each bringing often unconscious anthropcentric assumptions to the argument.

So, when are we going to surrender our hubris?

Science is moving on without it in explicating the behavior of reality, and not looking back in anxiety over metaphysical and ontological questions we can't answer.
It has no concern over a "Substance" behind the appreances. When it says we are made of atoms, it's not speaking metaphysically but describing the components of experience. The behavior and process of what we experience is what Science concerns itself with. Beyond experience is of no concern.
Science won't decide for you if what is beyond/behind our experiential world is like mind, like material stuff, or like Zeus. It's method works independently of the ontology a given scientist may prefer. Science, when it's method is followed purely, doesn't give a hoot about these ontological questions. And it balks at someone claiming it can decide our metaphysical hubris.

Science might be able to say something on the edge of the metaphysical question. For Science, reality is merely what we experience. And it invites us to stop there. It does so because as our experiance of this expeiential reality has grown, we've found it less friendly to our simplistic anthropocentric ontologies. Idealism and Materialism are having to redo themselves.

In my opinion Science certainly has no quarrell with the Buddhist perpective that there is no permenant, unchanging Substance.

Some of us here are still thinking Science is going to show us the exit to Plato's Cave, out where the "real" world is. It deals with the real world we are already in: the world of experience.

I apologise for the Philosophy 101. It's just for posters who missed or forgot it was a part of the process.

 

[Piggy]

There is nothing inadequate about Piggy

You may change your mind when the calendar comes out.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Apathia,

Great post.



Piggy,

Um, I'm, um, not sure I want to see that calendar.

So, if we ever do beers, Michael Stipe is going to be there, right? Everybody in Athens knows him right? Is he as unintelligible in person?

 

[Piggy]

So, if we ever do beers, Michael Stipe is going to be there, right? Everybody in Athens knows him right? Is he as unintelligible in person?

Back when I was running around the scene as a teen, you used to see him from time to time. My older friends and my friends' brothers were all part of that music scene, too, back then, so it wasn't unusual to run into him. Now it's very rare to see him in town. If you do, chances are none of the college crowd even recognizes the little guy with the hood pulled down over his eyes.

Last couple of times I saw him were outside the 40-Watt half in drag one night, and later playing with my buddy's dog -- he used to see this girl who lived behind their house, and he loved that chow. He's extremely shy, and I think in certain ways he prefers the company of animals.

But yeah, he can be every bit as unintelligible in person. Some of the guys who played with them said at times he'd just get introspective and stop. And he was a notorious mumbler.

But from what I understand he managed to push through a lot of that at some point (I think about the time Monster came out) and learned to live with celebrity. Pretty amazing considering just how shy he was and how famous he is now.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

But the old debates continue with one saying everything is made of Mind, another, everything is made of Matter. and yet another, everthing is made of God, and each bringing often unconscious anthropcentric assumptions to the argument.

Science is moving on without it in explicating the behavior of reality, and not looking back in anxiety over metaphysical and ontological questions we can't answer.

Apathia! a superb post, thanks. I would have put everything on bolds, but this excerpts suffice IMO to illustrate what I think is more relevant for the thread.