(May 8, 2010 at 3:45 pm)ib.me.ub Wrote: 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.
Quote: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.
Quote: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.
Quote: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.
He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.
Mikhail Bakunin
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything
Friedrich Nietzsche
Mikhail Bakunin
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything
Friedrich Nietzsche