Atheism feels shunned...

[Purple Rabbit]

Your dislike of the immaterial seems laden with your disprove of the supernatural, but the existence of the immaterial I am speaking of is a plain fact of life: fantasy, abstract concepts, mathematics it all is there.

Where? Give me one reason to believe, give me any evidence that these concepts don't only exist entirely in our own heads. Give me one reason to believe that any of this exists and isn't made of phyiscal matter, is immaterial. I maintain that it's just undetected. I know of no reason or evidence to believe that any of this has to be immaterial, not made of matter, non-physical in that sense. Like I said if you are simply defining 'mental' as 'non-physical' you get what you wish in a single step.

I'm just arguing that I know of no evidence or reason to believe whatsoever - that thought, that any of the examples you listed above, etc - aren't made up of physical matter, aren't material. I know they aren't detected as physical at least yet. But they'd have to be detected as non-physical somehow to believe they aren't physical. They just aren't detected as physical yet as far as I'm concerned. There is evidence for the physical but not the non-physical so far, and the fact that thought hasn't been found to be physical doesn't in any way mean it isn't or that it's not made of physical matter! How the hell would it prove that?.

Is it so hard to listen to the arguments?

1. I haven't argued that it necessarily is not made of the physical. Only that there exist things that are unexplained by physical properties. Calling these things physical therefore is a leap of faith on your part. You claim what you are unable to sustain with evidence and that is a severe case of what you so often blame our theist friends here.

2. You should distinguish between the material and the physical. Not everything in our physical model of the world is matter: fields are not matter, space is not matter, time is not matter, some forms of energy are not matter. That's why the term 'materialism' hasn't been around for some time in the philosophical discussion. It has been replaced by 'physcalism'. Have you really read up on the subject?

3. Here's one reason: mathematical concepts are perceived via first-person experience, are sustained throughout many brains (~it supervenes many brains), and do not arise out of physical properties in the current scientific framework.

4. Immaterial is not synonymous with supernatural. The existence of the immaterial is not a plea for the supernatural and we shouldn't refrain from being clear on this out of some fear that it opens the door for theists and the like to obtain a foothold with belief in the supernatural. Immaterial just means 'not material', so if we can't explain something from physical properties it is fair to call it immaterial. It does not necessarily mean that it will always be unexplainable from physical properties. Maybe we one day can show how abstract concepts like 'freedom' or 'mathematics' arise from physical properties. Claiming this now with a 'proof' from the negative is vastly overplaying your hand, premature and very unscientific. Get this into your head: the current scientific model of our reality cannot explain the immaterial concepts we perceive on a daily basis by first-person experience.

5. First-person experience is detectable for every living human being and every physical detection device depends on it! That it is not detectable with physical devices (how to measure mathematics?) is not an indication that it does not exist! It is an indication that the physical properties we build our devices for, don't add up to a measuring device that can measure abstract concepts like these.

6. I am not saying that abstract concepts, the perceivable immaterrial, is totally independent of the material. Obviously to perceive these concepts as human beings one needs a brain. There are no reliable accounts of dead people being able to perceive first-person experience at all. Or brainless people, although some have argued somewhat premturely that some of us who walk around with concepts alien to ours are brainless. And there is a vast and growing field of neurological research that shows that the brain houses all kinds of functionalities involved. So my philosophical stance is that of a physicalist: to be able to perceive abstract concepts like mathematics, a brain with all sorts of functions apparantly is needed. The thing is that I am not claiming, is to have bridged the gap between third-person account on brain functionality and first-person experience, where you do. Where you position this as an unwanted shortcoming of physicalism in need for some camouflage by a proof from the negative, I see it as a very interesting challenge for contemporary science.

7. As explained in the above I do not assert that the immaterial I am speaking about is necessarily not made up from the material, as you seem to suggest. Mine is a non-reductive physicalistic viewpoint. Do you know what that means? I explicitly ask this because you keep on suggesting that I am asserting such a thing. Please take note of the fact that I am defending a physicalistic viewpoint.

But I am not advocating the supernatural. I am not ascribing special powers over the physical to the immaterial, and I am not saying that it is indepent of the physical.

Ok, good.

I am saying that these things exist and that as of yet it is impossible to reduce them to physical properties.

And I'm fine with that too.

I am saying that there is another level of existence that supervenes the physical that for now is unexplained by the physical properties known to man.

How did you make that jump there? What evidence have you God that 'unexplained by physical properties known to man', gives credence to the notion of there being 'another level of existence that supervenes the physical?'

From the multiple realizability argument. Do you need further explanation on that, I ask, since you haven't given any comment on that argument so far,

If there's no evidence that it is physical. Does that mean it's not physical? No.

Just look what I am saying. What you are claiming is that it IS physical. Is the evidence really sufficient to support your claim? Don't walk the proof-from-a-negative road that so many theists do, show that you are not made of this kind of fallacious reasoning.

How does it? It's just undetected, as I have said. I still need a reason to make it an exception, so that whether it's capable of being detected or not - I need evidence before I'm going to believe that thoughts aren't made of physical matter, are immaterial, etc.

That you need an exception is your problem, not that of science. To the scientific model it just is one of the challenges that it is confronted with. And in my opinion science thrives on these challenges.

b]And[/b]...I ask: When you are talking about mathematics, and other information being immaterial - what are you talking about?.

I am talking about one and one being equal to two, for instance.

Science is not about what is physically detectable but about what exists and enters our reality in some way.

I agree. So just because thought isn't as of yet physically detectable, I see no reason to believe that that means that thought is in any way immaterial/non-physical.

You should be able to figure out by now, that I haven't asserted that what we call 'the immaterial' is totally independent from the physical. So please don't make such suggestions.

So, talking about existence - I still don't know of one single reason to believe that the immaterial exists at all.

You claim to be blind for the obvious. Every concept, even the concept of hard physicalism, is dependent on first-person experience, yet physical properties do not explain this. So it is evident from first-person experience that phenomena unexplained by the physical framework exist and it therefore is allowed to categorize these phenomena as 'immaterial' (i.e. not consisting of matter as we know it), not intending to encompass any supernatural claims therewith.

Acceptable evidence for a physicalistic claim on these phenomena lies only in its ability to explain the properties of these phenomena. When Newton proposed his invisible action between two masses at a distant we now call gravitation he provided a testable hypothesis for it (i.e. the force is inversely squared proportional to the distance of the objects, and proportional to the product of their masses). From this he could explain and predict the paths of heavenly bodies in the sky with greater accuracy than any other hypothesis around at the time. You provide no such testable hypothesis, only a claim from a proof of the negative.