Short essay on dualism, idealism, & materialism as concerns Q: What is a table?

[bennyboy]

It seems to me that any material "stuff," however rarefied, must supervene on some framework-- that is, the framework which allows for the existence of material: space and time, at the least, and some mechanism for imposing rules on interactions among forces.  This framework cannot itself be called material, for to be material, it must in turn be supervenient on some framework which allows for its existence.

Are you saying that space-time must be idealistic and not material because matter -- by definition? -- requires form, and space-time is that schema?

I suppose it's a bit of a conflation/equivocation, but I read "material" as "objective material," and to establish this view, I'd expect to find. . . objects. It turns out that the most elemental particles of "material" don't actually have a form, nor can they be located precisely in either time or space. I'd say something expressible only in terms of ideas (human ideas) is itself an idea (a universal idea)-- simply because they fail the most basic tests of objectivity.

In other words, was there a "law" or framework with reference to the conductivity of copper prior to its formation in stars?  Or are new laws of nature created with each additional element and its particular arrangement of protons and electrons?

I'd say there is a philosophical or idealistic principle/s upon which everything else supervenes. The word I prefer is "allows for." I don't know why material structures end up with the ability to experience qualia, for example, but it seems that the Universe right from the start must have allowed for it-- even before the evolution of organic biology. I'd therefore describe sentience as an idea, rather than as a material property, even though if you are doing science, the proximate cause of the sentience is the formation and function of the brain. The distal cause is whatever-allowed-for-the-Big-Bang, which couldn't have been material because there was neither material nor a framework in which material could be said to exist.

If we're going to call the "framework" immaterial I don't think we ought to include space-time, as that seems to be wholly indistinguishable from the concept of a body that moves or changes.

So you are saying that it's as proper to say that objects define time and space as that there is a space and time which contains objects? If so, it's an interesting perspective of chicken and egg, but I'm not sure which position I'd take. Problem back to the ambiguity of superposition: both views are correct, and the "truth" doesn't resolve until you take a position.

But if by an immaterial framework you mean only the "rules", then yes, I do think these make it difficult for us to talk about without wandering into idealistic or even dualistic territory of sorts.

If we consider the Big Bang Theory, then I'd refer to that as immaterial philosophical/idealistic quantity, since there was not really either matter or even time or space. To say that which preceded all matter is matter doesn't seem logical to me.

The problem is that when we speak of ideas existing outside of minds, we don't really know what we mean, other than that we experience some property of matter or relation between material things which cannot itself be reduced to the characteristics of physical objects.  I perceive magnitude in matter but I don't perceive "prime number."  I perceive "constant conjunction" but never "cause-and-effect."  These latter arise through the logical functions of the understanding, and often relate to what we mean by the term "idea."  But an Idea as it exists outside of our idea of it is not really an Idea that we ever encounter, in much the same way that matter as it exists outside of our perception is not known immediately.  This is the problem I alluded to in the OP:  one be no more justified in calling these objects (of Kant's noumenal realm?) "material substratum" or "[divine] ideas."

Right, this is the equivocation I mentioned early. Human "ideas" and universal "idea" clearly aren't the same thing, and I suspect the way we use the word in English: "Something I'm thinking about" is seriously different than what it first meant.

In the meaning of "idea" that we normally use these days, you'd probably call solipsism an idealistic world view. But in terms of this thread, I mean that reality as it exists under the hood is a collection of formative principles, which cannot be located unambiguously in the framework of space or time.