Why materialists are predominantly materialists

[Mudhammam]

The standard model is all we have.  Anything that doesn't tie back into that has "unknown" for its start.  Yeah, philosophers get to make shit up but in the end its just made up shit.  just one pile of bullshit thrown at  pile of horse shit.

Well, not really.  There's this major aspect involved in any view of the world called linguistics, and it goes hand-in-hand with another branch of study called logic.  Together, these allow us to make sense of the phenomena we observe in the world, and together with other areas of study one forms a system which guides their thinking.  Philosophy, in a broad sense, encompasses all of it, but in particular areas it has made great progress in the past few hundred years, especially in the development of a methodology known as science.  Just because you don't appreciate what philosophers do doesn't mean their work is just "made up shit," though, it might say a thing or two about your understanding of philosophy.

[The Grand Nudger]

Are ideas interacting, how might they do that?  By what means?  According to what principles?  What is their context?  What purpose does the separation between functions or ideas or experiences and structures serve....could they not be the same?  Why not?  I'm going to need more than your insistence.  I have an example that violates that separation right here in front of me, so obviously, it's something that computer stuff can do.  Tell me why brain stuff or idea stuff can't do that, or why it has to be different, or why you think it is different?

Any time you bring small parts into a systematic organization, you have new information which the small parts didn't have.  In other words, a system is ALWAYS greater than the sum of its parts, and the new "stuff" represents a level of context that doesn't exist at the level of function of its parts.

That's clearly not the case for a computer.  Every function of a computer exists -as- the function of it's parts.  There's no "extra", no more, no greater.  Just what the parts can do and what they can't.  Again, the brain may be different, I just don't see any need to assume as much.  

You could say, for example, that Windows is just a bunch of electromagnetic interactions of semiconductors, and be right.  But what's important about Windows is that an idea is imposed onto those interactions which have meaning in a different context.

No, you couldn't say that -and- be right...you'd have to pick one or the other, lol.  What idea is imposed onto windows, in your estimation?  

So yeah, you can keep saying that even ideas are physical.  However, they represent a layer of entanglement with the environment-- the "extra stuff" isn't really of the brain-- it's imposed ON the brain by interactions with the environment.

I'm saying that they -can- be, not that they are or always are.  As I said..maybe some ideas are not.  Maybe the brain is different.  What extra stuff? What's being imposed, upon what, and by what?

Take as another example an .mp3 file.  The information on it represents a complex interaction between scientific knowledge, the way humans experience sound, and ideas about how to encode sounds.  That information comes from outside the medium, say a CD.  The CD is not the thing that makes music, even though you couldn't have music in a CD player without it.  The CD is a carrier for another context-- the context of musical ideas.

MP3 is a digital compression algorithm.  A computational function.  Computational functions violate the seperation you insist on, their structure -being- their function, and so provide a counter-factual example of what you propose. An mp3 file -is not- a representation of complex interactions between scientific knowledge, the way we experience sound, and ideas about how to encode sounds. It's a format to store data. Your description is linguistic flourish, a mismash of things related to but -not- an mp3.

[The Grand Nudger]

-as an addendum to the above.

Discussing cds and mp3s and music is a discussion of the transferability of an experience.  An issue of translation between your nglish and the computers spanish.  If anything, it suggests that the experience is at least compatible, if not equivalent, to computation.  Not that some extra non-x is imposed by an as yet unmentioned y through means of an as-yet undescribed method z.

[bennyboy]

No, you couldn't say that -and- be right...you'd have to pick one or the other, lol.  What idea is imposed onto windows, in your estimation?  

-the idea of windows as viewing areas, being imposed from outside the mechanism of the computer. The idea of a pointing device, the idea of folders, of files, of text.

MP3 is a digital compression algorithm.  A computational function.  Computational functions violate the seperation you insist on, their structure -being- their function, and so provide a counter-factual example of what you propose.  An mp3 file -is not- a representation of complex interactions between scientific knowledge, the way we experience sound, and ideas about how to encode sounds.  It's a format to store data.  Your description is linguistic flourish, a mismash of things related to but -not- an mp3.

The .mp3 file IS all of those things, in the sense that all those things were required for the existence either of the file format or the specific media on which it is encoded.

Strange for you, of all people, to argue against that point, methinks.

[The Grand Nudger]

-the idea of windows as viewing areas, being imposed from outside the mechanism of the computer.  The idea of a pointing device, the idea of folders, of files, of text.

I'm not sure what you man by any of this.  In what sense are these ideas, and in what sense are they being imposed on windows?

MP3 is a digital compression algorithm.  A computational function.  Computational functions violate the seperation you insist on, their structure -being- their function, and so provide a counter-factual example of what you propose.  An mp3 file -is not- a representation of complex interactions between scientific knowledge, the way we experience sound, and ideas about how to encode sounds.  It's a format to store data.  Your description is linguistic flourish, a mismash of things related to but -not- an mp3.

The .mp3 file IS all of those things, in the sense that all those things were required for the existence either of the file format or the specific media on which it is encoded.

Not in any accurate technical sense.  Again, those are related things, not an mp3file.  Feel free to use your sense as you wish, for the convenience of your continued insistence...but I don't see any value in it. I can see, easily, how such a sense would lead to unfortunate logical missteps. I'm not the big bang, even if the big bang had to happen for me to exist. Back to the drawing board bud.

Strange for you, of all people, to argue against that point, methinks.

..............?