Physical idealism

[The Grand Nudger]

Jesus christ Benny, did you read what you wrote up above...and do you still think that you aren't disputing things like evolution, or the mechanisms thereof? Yes, evolution has occurred, but since evolution has nothing to do with your "one object evolving into another" your comments on the subject are uninformative. That's some crocoduck shit...and you know better.

(I'll stop saying stolen concepts when you cease to engage in incoherent arguments by means of stolen concepts, btw, lol. If you accept the materialists explanations for things..then allow yourself to accept them.... rather than disputing them with the next breath or claiming that they are in fact support of the immaterial. If you don;t accept them, and feel that some immaterial explanation is better, then stop claiming to accept them - or pointing to the truth of what you do not accept as true...in support of what you do.)

[bennyboy]

Jesus christ Benny, did you read what you wrote up above...and do you still think that you aren't disputing things like evolution, or the mechanisms thereof?  Yes, evolution has occurred, but since evolution has nothing to do with your "one object evolving into another" your comments on the subject are uninformative.  That's some crocoduck shit...and you know better.

lol did YOU read it?

Evolution isn't a thing or even a process which acts on things. It doesn't EXIST as such. And yet it is the formative principle by which a collecion of like animals slowly change in nature over time. I'm arguing that while it doesn't exist physically, it is still very real as a physical idea-- it is the inevitable result of the interactions of chaotic systems with persistent patterns over time.

(I'll stop saying stolen concepts when you cease to engage in incoherent arguments by means of stolen concepts,  btw, lol.  If you accept the materialists explanations for things..then allow yourself to accept them.... rather than disputing them with the next breath or claiming that they are in fact support of the immaterial.  If you don;t accept them, and feel that some immaterial explanation is better, then stop claiming to accept them - or pointing to the truth of what you do not accept as true...in support of what you do.)

Have I argued that ideas are immaterial? No. Have I said that evolution isn't real? No.

I'm trying to dig deep here, and understand the relation between chaos and order, and what this means for things like evolution. You are fixating on semantics, and on keeping your world view in a tidy little box. If we are going to continue, you'll have to demonstrate that you have grokked how I've defined the word "idea" in this thread.

[The Grand Nudger]

lol did YOU read it?

Evolution isn't a thing or even a process which acts on things.  It doesn't EXIST as such.  And yet it is the formative principle by which a collecion of like animals slowly change in nature over time.  I'm arguing that while it doesn't exist physically, it is still very real as a physical idea-- it is the inevitable result of the interactions of chaotic systems with persistent patterns over time.

You know I did.   You know I don't see any sense in calling a collection of natural forces both made -of- and achieved -by- material objects and interactions a "formative principle" or "physical idea".

Have I argued that ideas are immaterial?  No.  Have I said that evolution isn't real?  No.

If an idea is just another word for a material object/interaction then this discussion is DOA.  As to the latter..yes..ofc you did, when you claimed that it didn't exist...after telling us that the "idea" of a hand, (fin, or scale)_ was the driving force behind the evolution that doesn't exist. Not only have you flatly stated that it doesn't exist (and yes, I see you backpedaling) - you also tried to sub out it's known mechanisms for something more appropriate to your proposition.

I'm trying to dig deep here, and understand the relation between chaos and order, and what this means for things like evolution.  You are fixating on semantics, and on keeping your world view in a tidy little box.  If we are going to continue, you'll have to demonstrate that you have grokked how I've defined the word "idea" in this thread.

Perhaps -you- should demonstrate that you understand what your own claims are?  Provide greater clarity. As I alluded to above, if these "ideas" (however you define them) which are fundamental and somehow informative as to the relationship between order and chaos are interchangeable with material objects and interactions, then you aren't digging deeper...you're just re-branding. I'll simply continue to call what you call "ideas" material objects and interactions and suggest that these notions are nothing more than plagiarizing deepities.

If you're going to make corrections to our worldview and to biology, then I don't want to hear any noise about being careful with semantics, or the tiny boxes of others, or that people "just don't get it" and must demonstrate to you that they do. That shit is insufferable.

[Neo-Scholastic]

It's a different kind of idealism than I've talked about in the past.  In this post, I'm talking about ideas as formative principles, without reference to any conscious entity....tbh I'm not even arguing against materialism, except to say this: that formal principles clearly precede materialism, and that the way that matter in a chaotic system organizes itself is better seen as an expression of those principles, than to say that the organization is a happenstance of material properties. 

Your position appears to most closely match that of Aristotle solution to the problem of universals, i.e. Forms are real and causally efficacious but they cannot be alienated from a material substrate. Contrast this with Plato's earlier notion that Form, or Ideas, are alienable and could be said to exist in some manner without actually manifesting on some way. As for me I advocate the type of moderate realism developed later by the Scholastic Doctors. At the very least the Scholastic solution requires some kind of universal Mind, though not necessarily having a one-to-one relationship with the Christian notion of the Divine, although it's really just a hop, skip and a jump logically. :-)

I think you will find that 99% of AF members advocate either nominalism or conceptualism. This is not a uniquely atheistic position. Both Anslem and William of Occam were nominalists. However, I do believe that while a nominalist need not be a theist, a logically consistent atheist must be either a nominalist or a conceptualist. Most likely this would not be the case with a deist, so your concerns about having to worship some entity are not a concern.

[The Grand Nudger]

You believe alot of things about what an atheist must be.    

Probably more than a few atheists that are also realists.

[Mudhammam]

How exactly am I to understand "physical ideas"? Is it that a principle describes the behavior of bodies or that the "properties" of ideas -- such as a perfect right triangle -- necessarily involve a notion of "physical space," that makes an idea "material"? What about the differences inherent in the properties of odd numbers versus even... Are these "material"? If by materialism it is meant that nothing immaterial exists then I cannot see how this is consistent with experience, in which I have no more reason to doubt that thoughts and the principles by which intellection is made possible are every bit as real as the material objects that make impressions on the mind; and that a mind is not divisible, or extended, as bodies are (and infinitely so, at least conceptually), seems obviously true; therein lies the essential difference between what the early modern philosophers, following the Greeks, termed nonthinking bodies and thinking souls. It most certainly is a chicken or egg question, though I lean towards materialism in the sense that the mind "emerges" (a word that admittedly is no more descriptive than if I were to say "is miraculously brought into being from nothing") by some unknown configuration of bodies in motion; a free standing "idea" that exists not as a single thought in any mind, though itself not inconceivable, but that it might moreover possess causal efficiency, is something that is too detached from experience for me to understand what could be meant. All of this to say, I'm halfway towards agreeing with Benny, if only I can see what benefit is derived from conceiving things in this way... Perhaps it is simply that the alternative is less intelligible or consistent with experience?

[Mudhammam]

However, I do believe that while a nominalist need not be a theist, a logically consistent atheist must be either a nominalist or a conceptualist. Most likely this would not be the case with a deist, so your concerns about having to worship some entity are not a concern.

Platonism is not inconsistent with atheism, though I think it is inconsistent with Christianity.

[bennyboy]

Perhaps -you- should demonstrate that you understand what your own claims are?   Provide greater clarity.  As I alluded to above, if these "ideas" (however you define them) which are fundamental and somehow informative as to the relationship between order and chaos are interchangeable with material objects and interactions, then you aren't digging deeper...you're just re-branding.

Given a specific instance of an idea-- say the idea of animal reproduction, there's no difference between what I call an idea and what you might call something else. However, I think that the formative principles or ideas transcend their mechanisms. I don't mean that they don't NEED a mechanism, but that they may be expressed in a number of different mechanisms-- much as an .mp3 song is one whether it's in RAM, on a CD, or encoded in colored seashells on a beach.

For example, I think any watery Earth-sized planet, if it has life, will have what we would recognize as fish, whether they use the same genetic encoding system that Earthbound animals use. There is, implicit in the chaos of a primordial soup at certain temperatures, etc. the idea of "fishiness." They may develop totally different evolutionary mechanisms, but they will have fins, because fins allow for better propulsion, and they will have skin and teeth, and probably backbones, brains, etc.

The rule is, and I've been here before in very different threads: if something is expressible in multiple media, but requires SOME media, then that thing is a physical idea, and the media is simply the mechanism of the expression of that idea.

[The Grand Nudger]

Given a specific instance of an idea-- say the idea of animal reproduction, there's no difference between what I call an idea and what you might call something else.

Well then that's that.  You're referring to materialism -as- idealism.

[bennyboy]

Given a specific instance of an idea-- say the idea of animal reproduction, there's no difference between what I call an idea and what you might call something else.

Well then that's that.  You're referring to materialism -as- idealism.

No I'm not.  Words have meaning, and you should consider the meaning of all the words in the thing you just quoted, since I tend to choose words very carefully.