The Category Error of Scientism

[Neo-Scholastic]

...Explain to me the necessity of this "non-physical stuff", and why you think it must exist. Start with any example of reality that I may perceive, and then point out what I must acknowledge to be incomplete with a Monist view of experience.

That’s simple! Any sensible object, like an apple, will do. Suppose you have before you an apple. You can observe its features and know the apple exists. Now you take a bite from it. It has a bite taken out but it’s still the same apple. If you wait a while you will see that the crisp white edges of the bite turn brown and mushy. You see two opposing principles in action: 1) the apple persists in its being and 2) the apple changes.

If you continue to eat, at some point you will say to yourself that the apple is gone and all that remains is a core. “Appleness” is not a feature of some physical object, but your judgment about it. And in order for the apple to even be an “it” you must observe a set of related features, you identify a thing, including yourself, as something that exists within an otherwise seamless reality.

The apple persists in its being because that being is grounded by a material substance. And what exactly is material, the stuff of which apples and all other things are made? You can deconstruct the apple into other substances like water, cellulose, etc. These you can break down into elements, elements into sub-atomic particles, to quarks, maybe strings, until… What is the end point? What remains when you have stripped away every formal property? That would be something that exists in-itself and which has the potential to be anything at all. This stuff is called Primal Matter.

From a physical point of view, your previous experiences with eating apples established base line values in your neural net that coincide with your belief about whether something is or is not an apple (that or some such similar mechanism.) Hold that thought.

The word ‘apple’ is a sign. Change one letter and ‘apple’ becomes ‘apply’ a sign with a completely different meaning. The significance of a sign comes from your awareness that the word refers to something, usually a recognizable pattern in physical reality. In and of themselves, physical systems do not have any meaning at all. An apple does not refer to anything else. It just is what it is. Meaning is assigned to recognizable patterns by the mind that is conscious off it. In its own way the apple is also a sign. One that the brain recognizes and to which you apply meaning.

So back to the neural net system of your brain… The brain is a physical system. Your brain, like all other physical things, doesn’t mean anything. It just is. And it takes on recognizable patterns. These patterns may be observed from the ‘inside’ as qualitative subjective experiences. The same patterns may be observed from the ‘outside’ (MRI images, etc) as quantifiable objective observations. Two different minds, yours and that of an independent MRI reader looks at the brain as a sign and interpret its significance. As an observer you have direct privileged access to brain signals, whereas an MRI reader’s knows the signals in your brain only after they have been mediated by the MRI machine and their own brain processes, which the reader also observes with direct privileged access.

So what is this thing called awareness that observes and supplies meaning. It is not your ideas themselves. Neo-Scholasticism teaches you that ideas are not knowledge; but rather, recognizable patterns, the means by which you know. Your ideas, perceptions, and sense data can change to make what you know more or less complete and accurate. You remain the observer of those changes, including changes in your self-concept. Your personal identity, in large part (and I would argue as a whole) is constructed by that within you that observes those ideas and thoughts.

Now I believe that all things continue in their existence apart from the observations of an individual observer. A tree in the forest is still a tree. And the parts of you of which you are currently unaware continue to exist. As stated earlier, things persist in their being and preserved as they change, by a mind that differentiates the otherwise seamless and formless primal matter.

The above should have clarified my statements that, “Non-physical stuff is that which gives form to primal matter. Primal matter is the formless ground of being.”

Is the picture of the ocean in my camera made manifest through non-physical properties?

In a sense, yes, because all physicality is made manifested by conjunction with the non-physical, as presented above.