What can science prove?

[Caecilian]

The above statement is fair enough. But, fot the sake of converstion, what could an immaterial thing actually be? Any ideas?

Personally, I have no idea what an immaterial thing might be. Sounds like nonsense imo.

You could perhaps say a thought! But even a thought is material, for without a brain, and the energy associated with a brain, there would be no thoughts?

The mainstream position in philosophy of mind is that mental phenomena (thoughts, feelings etc) are high-level descriptions of aggregations of lower-level physical phenomena. This is captured by the idea of supervenience. If mental phenomena supervene on a physical (presumably neurological) substrate, then that means that there can be no change in the mental phenomena without a change in the substrate. In other words, you can't have a thought without there being a change in your nervous system. Whether it is possible (even in theory) to reduce the mental to the physical is a matter of heated debate.

Uhhh, I do see how it is possible for one to believe that there maybe no material in the outside world. But logic will tell you that without a material world, could I really be having these thoughts?

If nothing exists, then what am I and what is everything else I am thinking about?

Well, idealist monism, the view that there is only thought, and that the material world is in some sense an illusion, strikes me as a coherent position. Its just wildly implausible. And in any case, I don't know what it would mean to deny the existence of physical reality, which is surely the bedrock of our experience of being.

Could it be possible that my sub-conscious dosen't relaise there is an outside World or material things!

I'm not at all convinced by the whole idea of 'the subconscious'. There are many mental/ psychological processes that occur below the threshold of consciousness, some of which are at least potentially conscious (you can make yourself aware of them). But they don't form some sort of entity, as you find in Freud.

[ib.me.ub]

Fair enough. All makes sense. But....

But they don't form some sort of entity, as you find in Freud

Is this also a matter of debate?

Back to the original question.

Anything not comprised of matter / energy.

Can you giva an example of what you are talking about!

[fr0d0]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv5BYEOQYLo

[Tiberius]

Anything not comprised of matter / energy.

Can you giva an example of what you are talking about!

Spirits, Gods, other-worldly realms, etc. Whatever you can think of that isn't made of matter or energy...

[Caecilian]

But they don't form some sort of entity, as you find in Freud

Is this also a matter of debate?

It depends on which circles you move in. Since the 'Cognitive Revolution' of the 1950s, Anglo-American Philosophy of Mind/ Cognitive Science has drawn its empirical evidence from experimental Psychology and from Neuroscience. Thats because these disciplines are scientific- they run replicable experiments and construct models based on the results of replicable experiments.

By contrast, the 'evidence' of the Psychoanalytic school (Freud, Jung, Adler and their successors) consists of analyst-patient interactions. These are much more ambiguous, not replicable and very prone to being influenced by the theoretical preconceptions of the analyst.

Unfortunately for Psychoanalysis, the sort of picture that emerges from Cog Psy and the Neurosciences bears very little resemblance to Freud. Thus the psychoanalytic ontology of 'ego', 'super-ego', 'id', 'the unconscious' etc has zero respectability in contemporary Cog Sci.

OTOH there are still plenty of Freudians around. Perhaps ironically, Freud has had a major impact on Continental Philosophy, Lit Crit and other disciplines where scientificity isn't so much of an issue. I say 'ironically' because Freud himself conceived of Psychoanalysis as a type of science.

[ib.me.ub]

I really dislike this type of conversation. Perhaps because I never liked reading, still don't!

Just to keep it short.

@Adrian: Personally, I can't think of anything that isn't actually material!

@Caecilian: So it is a matter of debate!

[Tiberius]

@ib.me.ub

I gave you a list of examples...

[leo-rcc]

I really dislike this type of conversation. Perhaps because I never liked reading, still don't!

You should read some of Calilasseia's posts.

[ib.me.ub]

@Adrian: That can be proven to actually exist.

[Violet]

@ib.me.ub

I gave you a list of examples...

How are they (spirits, gods, etc) supposed to exist without energy? :S