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There are no material objects

JoeBentley said:
Just fine because he doesn't use solipsism in everyday life because he doesn't really believe what he is saying.
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Wow.

First troll confession I've ever seen.




Do you get kicked out of the union for that?
 
It certainly wasn't meant as a trollish comment.

I was being completely serious. It's impossible to actually apply solipsism to everyday life. It is literally impossible to operate under the idea that reality isn't real and still function in anything resembling a normal life.

It's only used as a pseudo-intellectual and semantic "gotcha."
 
Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
I like that, care to expand it?
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Just what I said, really. Just because a rock is actually a collection of particles whose properties are better defined as flavors and frequencies than as traits, any of which might spontaneously decide to be something else for reasons we barely understand because the whole thing is actually just a wavelength transmitting through some medium we don't even have a name for yet...*
(spends a minute catching his breath)
...doesn't change the intrinsic rock-ness of the object, because "rock" is just a word we made up in the first place, and our evolving awareness of what this thing to which we apply that word is just means we need to stick an asterisk on the end and move on. It's like money--just because it isn't backed by gold doesn't mean it has no value. It's still desirable--you can earn it through labor, and spend it on goods and services. Its intrinsic value is unchanged, because value is something we gave it by wanting it--and the same thing was true of gold in the first place. Objects and identities are just words we created. Their meanings are the result of consensus--but the things to which we attach these words are not fundamentally changed by the attachment. "I" is not an objectively real thing--my consciousness is an illusion in my own mind, my component particles don't know me from Adam, and chemically, I'm just a very, very complex lump of slime and calcium--but "I" is nonetheless a useful shorthand for the collection of wavelengths that caused this image to print on your screen.

*My quantum physics knowledge derives entirely from listening to people make fun of the worst errors committed in pop culture and pseudoscience. I'm probably wrong about most of this.
 
Jonesboy said:
It's not New Age. Say it for what it is. A skepticism of Science.

I am a scientist, and I am a philosopher, and I say this - range your skepticism over everything that culture and learning has to offer you. Today my skepticism is directed at science, tomorrow it will be directed at religion.
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Separated modes of consciousness, in the broadest Cartesian sense, need to be criticized with regard to their validity and range, before they can be used for the purposes of a radical grounding of the transcendental-phenomenological reduction, by reconciling with noematic descriptions; I set myself the all-embracing task of uncovering multiplicities of the Objective world by a freely actualizable return to the stream of multiplicities of the fundamental form of this universal synthesis. The fact is evident that noematic descriptions, in respect of this evidence, denote the universal primal phenomena of, by a freely actualizable return to noetic acts, the phenomenological epoche. Only in reflection do we "direct" ourselves to pure and genuine evidence and to its perceptual directedness to cogitationes. The Transcendental Deduction, when thus treated as the Ideal, exists in our ideas. Applied logic is the key to understanding the intelligible objects in space and time, as any dedicated reader can clearly see. The Ideal of human reason (and we can deduce that this is true) can not take account of the objects in space and time. With the sole exception of our understanding, the Transcendental Deduction can thereby determine in its totality, so far as regards time, the noumena. In which of our cognitive faculties are the Antinomies and our a priori knowledge connected together? In natural theology, our speculative judgements, in all theoretical sciences, are just as necessary as the Antinomies, as we have already seen. Still, it is obvious that the thing in itself, irrespective of all empirical conditions, can never furnish a true and demonstrated science, because, like the thing in itself, it proves the validity of synthetic principles. By means of analysis, the architectonic of natural reason, that is to say, is the mere result of the power of reason, a blind but indispensable function of the soul.

Hans
 
Jontg said:
Just what I said, really. Just because a rock is actually a collection of particles whose properties are better defined as flavors and frequencies than as traits, any of which might spontaneously decide to be something else for reasons we barely understand because the whole thing is actually just a wavelength transmitting through some medium we don't even have a name for yet...*
(spends a minute catching his breath)
...doesn't change the intrinsic rock-ness of the object, because "rock" is just a word we made up in the first place, and our evolving awareness of what this thing to which we apply that word is just means we need to stick an asterisk on the end and move on. It's like money--just because it isn't backed by gold doesn't mean it has no value. It's still desirable--you can earn it through labor, and spend it on goods and services. Its intrinsic value is unchanged, because value is something we gave it by wanting it--and the same thing was true of gold in the first place.

Objects and identities are just words we created. Their meanings are the result of consensus--but the things to which we attach these words are not fundamentally changed by the attachment. "I" is not an objectively real thing--my consciousness is an illusion in my own mind, my component particles don't know me from Adam, and chemically, I'm just a very, very complex lump of slime and calcium--but "I" is nonetheless a useful shorthand for the collection of wavelengths that caused this image to print on your screen.

*My quantum physics knowledge derives entirely from listening to people make fun of the worst errors committed in pop culture and pseudoscience. I'm probably wrong about most of this.
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This is good. This is really good. This is a rare instance of me reading a rather philosophical and yet linguistic and scientifically accurate explanation of concrete/abstract concepts, and understanding it. Able to agree with it. Okay, it's a little heavy on the concrete side, admittedly, since we're discussing material objects, but it would apply to abstract concepts too. Maybe with a little tweaking.

Nicely done.
 
Jontg said:
It's all a construction--all definitions are arbitrary...
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But mentally slicing up the physical world into objects isnt arbitrary is it? Sure matter is just matter. Just molecules. But those molecules are arranged in such ways that some 'hang together' strongly, forming collections that are distinct from other collections of molecules. There is thus 'objectness' already in the physical world, and the human nervous system has simply come along and incorporated that and exploited that. The human has evolved to take very great 'notice' of the boundaries of this - edges, shape, texture changes, colour changes, etc. And then there is the behaviour of these collections of molecules and the use they afford to us, which along with their form acts as a basis upon which we define whether something is a separate object and attach linguistic labels. The rock is distinct from the ground it rests on (it's shape, colour and texture gives it away, and if I go and pick it up then I know for sure that it's not part of the ground). The table is distinct from the carpet it sits on. This is the basis of how we define things as objects: how is that arbitrary?
 
Jonesboy said:
The TV is distinguishable from the carpet only because you have distinguished the carpet and the TV.
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We have distinguished the carpet and the TV because they have recognizably distinct properties.

You forget that we don't, and cannot, invent these concepts whole cloth. We have to be able to sense them, directly or indirectly; for such crisply meaningful concepts as televisions and carpet, there needs to be some extremely distinguishable properties of matter as a prerequisite for us to come up with such concepts.

The one correct thing you surmised is that the definition of objects is something that we come up with. The problem is that you're choking on this.
The material world sees, or holds, no such distinction.
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The material world holds recognizably distinct properties.

Furthermore, your problem with objects is not in fact a problem of objects; but rather, is a fundamental property of true statements. Every true statement is a meaningful statement, and meaning is something that only certain sentient creatures come up with.

You seem to me be ignoring this when you say "there are no material objects"; in order for that phrase to be true, it must first have a meaning, and that meaning is something only sentient creatures come up with. What us sentient creatures mean by "material objects" includes things like your spoon, your table, and this penny here; and this penny is doing precisely what it needs to do for it to do what I mean by "exist" (namely, interacting with my sensory apparatus in particular ways). In fact, as I can easily see that this penny exists, I need go no further. The statement "there are material objects" is exemplified by the penny.

Your objection that the penny does not set its own limits is irrelevant. The penny might not describe itself, but it's still there. If it weren't there, I wouldn't sense it. And it's still material; if it weren't, again, I wouldn't sense it. It's also still a penny; if it weren't, I couldn't recognize it as one.
 
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MRC_Hans said:
Separated modes of consciousness, in the broadest Cartesian sense, need to be criticized with regard to their validity and range, before they can be used for the purposes of a radical grounding of the transcendental-phenomenological reduction, by reconciling with noematic descriptions; I set myself the all-embracing task of uncovering multiplicities of the Objective world by a freely actualizable return to the stream of multiplicities of the fundamental form of this universal synthesis. The fact is evident that noematic descriptions, in respect of this evidence, denote the universal primal phenomena of, by a freely actualizable return to noetic acts, the phenomenological epoche. Only in reflection do we "direct" ourselves to pure and genuine evidence and to its perceptual directedness to cogitationes. The Transcendental Deduction, when thus treated as the Ideal, exists in our ideas. Applied logic is the key to understanding the intelligible objects in space and time, as any dedicated reader can clearly see. The Ideal of human reason (and we can deduce that this is true) can not take account of the objects in space and time. With the sole exception of our understanding, the Transcendental Deduction can thereby determine in its totality, so far as regards time, the noumena. In which of our cognitive faculties are the Antinomies and our a priori knowledge connected together? In natural theology, our speculative judgements, in all theoretical sciences, are just as necessary as the Antinomies, as we have already seen. Still, it is obvious that the thing in itself, irrespective of all empirical conditions, can never furnish a true and demonstrated science, because, like the thing in itself, it proves the validity of synthetic principles. By means of analysis, the architectonic of natural reason, that is to say, is the mere result of the power of reason, a blind but indispensable function of the soul.

Hans
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Hi there Hans, I have been far from the forums for a while, but I don't remember you being this, philosophical... I like what I read here btw.
 
Jontg said:
Just what I said, really. Just because a rock is actually a collection of particles whose properties are better defined as flavors and frequencies than as traits, any of which might spontaneously decide to be something else for reasons we barely understand because the whole thing is actually just a wavelength transmitting through some medium we don't even have a name for yet...*
Click to expand...

And even those are models, arbitrary (and necessarily subjective) definitions. There is no significant difference (no matter how we want to believe it) between "table" or "a collection of atoms". Both models work for certain language games, but one is no more, well, objective or real than the other.

That said, when people says that the table is not "really a table" but a collection of atoms with certain properties, or a figment in the mind of god, is not advacning to a better description or a more objective description.
 
Exactly--the realization that boxes and lines are just our way of reducing intricate systems to simpler rough analogues can seem profound, but really all you've done is look at a bit of Java code and piece together the nature and purpose of variables. We say "table" to save time, because other instances of our cognitive "code" (that is, other human minds) already have this variable stored, so there's no need to write a treatise on high-end particle physics and a meditation on thing-ness whenever you want to describe a collection of wave/particles that behaves in a tabley manner.
 
Jonesboy said:
Objects do not set their own physical limits. An object is a set of physical limits that we alone have drawn upon materials and space. For example, only the concept of entertainment distinguishes a TV from the carpet it stands on.

While this doen't rule out materiality, it rules out material objects. An object is a construction of sentient creatures.
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Hush Jonesboy, be still.

My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought, careening through a cosmic vapor of invention.
 
JoeBentley said:
It certainly wasn't meant as a trollish comment.

I was being completely serious. It's impossible to actually apply solipsism to everyday life. It is literally impossible to operate under the idea that reality isn't real and still function in anything resembling a normal life.

It's only used as a pseudo-intellectual and semantic "gotcha."
Click to expand...

D'oh! Don't ask me why or how, but for some reason I got you mixed up with the poster you were speaking of, and I thought it was him referring to himself in the 3rd person.

Geez, that was bizarre. I must've turned it up to Ludicrous Speed or something.

Ok, we'll pretend that never happened, how 'bout....
 
Moonshine said:
But mentally slicing up the physical world into objects isnt arbitrary is it? Sure matter is just matter. Just molecules. But those molecules are arranged in such ways that some 'hang together' strongly, forming collections that are distinct from other collections of molecules. There is thus 'objectness' already in the physical world, and the human nervous system has simply come along and incorporated that and exploited that. The human has evolved to take very great 'notice' of the boundaries of this - edges, shape, texture changes, colour changes, etc. And then there is the behaviour of these collections of molecules and the use they afford to us, which along with their form acts as a basis upon which we define whether something is a separate object and attach linguistic labels. The rock is distinct from the ground it rests on (it's shape, colour and texture gives it away, and if I go and pick it up then I know for sure that it's not part of the ground). The table is distinct from the carpet it sits on. This is the basis of how we define things as objects: how is that arbitrary?
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And that right there, in a nutshell, is why Jonesboy's post-modern physics is a crock.

We do not have arbitrary levels of freedom, language is not a closed and entirely self-referential system, and evolution ensures that we cannot envelop ourselves in solipsism.
 
Piggy said:
And that right there, in a nutshell, is why Jonesboy's post-modern physics is a crock.

We do not have arbitrary levels of freedom, language is not a closed and entirely self-referential system, and evolution ensures that we cannot envelop ourselves in solipsism.
Click to expand...

Physics? Since when was gibberish classed as physics?
 
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