Of Holes and A-Holes

[Mothonis]

Chad hasn't responded guess he knows he messed up badly

seriously I have lost respect for you.

I'm just providing space for people to weight in and carefully consider the most thoughtful responses to the question. It's a much more interesting problem than it appears to be on first blush.

Its not a good example at all and quite frankly iam shocked that someone who is smarter than alot people here used such a bad argument.

A hole is just a description nothing more

[downbeatplumb]

I say that holes are a good example of something that both exists and is immaterial.

A hole is the description of a gap in something. It is not a thing in it's own right.

A hole is known with respect to something material but is not itself material. It is possible to know about something that is indeed immaterial through observation of something that is material. As such a hole is defined by what surrounds it, but the hole itself is not the same as the surrounding material.

A hole is an attribute of the material not a separate thing as you are somewhat mystifyingly claiming. In order to have a hole in something you need that thing.

The main concern I have with bringing this up is to show that someone can deduce the existence of immaterial things from material things. Likewise people can deduce the existence of material objects from personal experience which is not a material thing. Thus people can go back and forth trying to define material things, like brains, and immaterial things, like minds, in terms of the other without reaching any conclusion as to which is primary. They thus remain forever stuck in paradox. (No matter, never mind) The simpler solution is to accept both materiality and immateriality are part of one larger reality that is a hypostatic union of both.

Not this again.

Holes, and similar things like gaps and tears, do not depend on specific substances for their existence. This property allows people to say things like, this hole in the metal is the same size as that hole in this paper. If you insist that holes do not properly exist, then you simultaneously and tacit deny the existence of other forms, like triangles, and categories, like unity and extension.

You are really trying to try and shoehorn in the possibility of non-material things being in some sense real and not just handy descriptions of things. You have yet again failed to make any headway in this.

I am making my hand into a hole shape with my thumb and first two fingers now I am making a pumping motion. What does this mean?

[LostLocke]

It's a much more interesting problem than it appears to be on first blush.

Ummm, no, it isn't an interesting problem. Because it isn't a problem to begin with.

[Madness20]

"Holes" are never trully empty, so it can't be described as an immaterial existence, in fact an empty hole can't exist according to physics.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I ask this genuinely and not at all Socratically- Wouldn't the same methods used to identify an entity as separate from its surroundings be the same to describe a hole?

Thank you for the particularly thoughtful post. Clearly people know objects by the attributes they, the objects, manifest. Keep in mind that materiality is also a property that knowing subjects, eg. you and I, can attribute to real objects.

While reflecting of the various posts, I noticed that most respondents mistakenly (I believe) give matter a different ontological status than form, as if matter were somehow alienable from form. As for me, I do not claim, as some have charged, that forms, like holes, occur apart from matter but do maintain that form in-itself is immaterial. Likewise I would not claim that matter can occur independent from form, but I do say that matter in-itself is formless. I think reflecting on the apparent immaterial nature of things like holes highlights the fact that form has the same ontological status as matter. In effect, people can know about both by abstracting them from real objects.

[fr0d0]

This is a deep hole

[bennyboy]

If you think in terms of 3D distribution of particles in space, then really it's all holes, isn't it? 99.999999999% empty space, and we are still pretty confident that everything we interact with is solid. Seems wrong, that.

[Exian]

So...

Matter = material

Form = immaterial

Matter cannot be without form, although it is formless. Form cannot be without matter, although it is "matter-less".

Is that a correct reflection of the position you hold, Chad?

[Neo-Scholastic]

So...

Matter = material

Form = immaterial

Matter cannot be without form, although it is formless. Form cannot be without matter, although it is "matter-less".

Is that a correct reflection of the position you hold, Chad?

Something like that. It's a generally Aristotelian conception of Reality. I call the first Primal Matter, that principle whose only attribute is being. The second I call the Ideal Form, the informing principle that serves as the basis of all particular forms.

[vorlon13]

Every time I look at this thread, I hear Spock gravely intoning:

A hole in space.