Atheism feels shunned...

[Kyuuketsuki]

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.

Maybe this is a phraseology thing so I'll ask ... do you mean to say that there exist things that have no physical attributes? If so (and I'm by no means sure that is what you were saying) what?

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 It has been replaced by 'physcalism'.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?

I disagree ... fields are matter (as in physical/material) because they can be detected and inferred from various evidences to be constructed of exactly the same kind of stuff other things are made of.

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.

Surely that is just thought, thought that it is passed on through various social constructs all of which are entirely explainable? That we don't understand the abstraction (which I think is what you might be saying) is not enough to claim it is non-physical, it's still thought.

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.

Concepts & abstractions are just thoughts, there is no need to elevate them to some special status especially if (as I suspect will occur) in a few decades we have decision making, emotive computers with the ability to think (even if they can't do it as well as at that point ... time will cure that).

I think it is and maybe you, me and Ev are just talking semantics here ... as far as I am concerned if it can be detected (potentially or actually, in part or whole) then it is part of the physical/material universe if it cannot then it is not and right now there is no evidence for any of the not.

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.

So what if something is not detectable on a given instrument ... we can detect the phenomenon even if we can't fully explain it yet, Japanese researchers have begun to be able to read back aspects of the human brain ... what will you say if/when they are fully able to resolve thought?

Today we believe we understand many things that a thousand years would have been classified as equally immaterial or beyond explanation ... were they immaterial then? In a thousand years time (assuming we're still around) we will likely understand much, much more including (I have few doubts) explanations for many things some currently consider unexplainable. IOW we are slaves to our ability to resolve things ... the microscope and telescope allowed us finer resolution, the electron microscope and radio telescope allowed us to resolve some things finer still, the Hadron Collider and other things have allowed us even greater resolution ... what technologies will exist in a thousand years to resolve better still? Ultimately your argument doesn't raise things like math and concepts to the level of immaterial, all our current inability to explain does is leave us unanswered questions.

And I think that last pretty much says what I think of points 6 & 7 so I wont pursue it further except to say that these things may well be immaterial, may well be unexplainable I don't know but what I do know is that you have no better idea than I how to explain them and that my money is on science being able to shed greater light on these things x years, decades or centuries down the road.

I might be wrong but based on what we know now that we didn't know then I think it reasonable to assume that the time will come when our explanations for these things are more sure.

Kyu