RE: Short essay on dualism, idealism, & materialism as concerns Q: What is a table?
February 26, 2017 at 2:20 am
(This post was last modified: February 26, 2017 at 2:21 am by bennyboy.)
(February 26, 2017 at 12:19 am)Mudhammam Wrote: Well, I need a lot of help on the physics but in layman terms it seems to all boil down to a plenum of "gravitational forces" acting on bodies variously constitutedIt seems to me that any material "stuff," however rarefied, must supervene on some framework-- that is, the framework which allows for the existence of material: space and time, at the least, and some mechanism for imposing rules on interactions among forces. This framework cannot itself be called material, for to be material, it must in turn be supervenient on some framework which allows for its existence.
It seems to me this at the very minimum is the requirement for something being called material: that it exists. And to be said to exist, it has to be locatable in time and space (or at least its effects or properties must be so).
Seeing, then, that material must supervene on a framework which is itself immaterial, then "matter" turns out to be a sub-class: the expression of properties such that they me be brought into relation with each other independent of a subjective observer. BUT that doesn't mean they are more than a composite of ideas supervening on ideas-- it means only that the ideas are not a product of the human self, i.e. of solipsistic genius.