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Short essay on dualism, idealism, & materialism as concerns Q: What is a table?
#21
RE: Short essay on dualism, idealism, & materialism as concerns Q: What is a table?
(February 25, 2017 at 8:03 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Longer response later but why did you pass over  an Aristotelian approach or Scholatic moderate realism?
We could only choose three and the options were between: 
  • Platonism

  • Aristotelian metaphysics

  • Cartesian dualism

  • Idealism

  • Empiricism (materialism)

  • Social Constructivism

I'm not entirely sure what constitutes Scholastic moderate realism, but do you interpret Aristotle as nestling his twelve categories of being into "Nature as primal substance," as opposed to Kant, who placed his ten categories of understanding firmly in the intellect?  I lean towards Aristotle's idealism... at least, I think it would be fair to call him idealistic on this point.  What says you?

(February 25, 2017 at 5:36 pm)Khemikal Wrote: An empiricist would say the same.  That all knowledge is ultimately derived from sense experience.  Some of that certainly seems to occur in the mind, other bits don't (there is a chemistry to fragrance and we do have noses....).  To say that "it" is not in the object it self seems to miss out on some dependencies of sense apparatus.  Vanillan does contain the chemical compounds we call vanilla as a taste or a smell...we can even be fooled by synthetics.  A chemist can arrange for that experience by recipe.  There seems to be some "mind stuff" happening and some "other stuff" in each example of sensory perception.  The ready made answer to that is any number of representationalist theories.  
"It" is not in the object to the degree that "fragrance" refers to a sensation or quality of a particular smell -- and not simply a process that involves parts (different molecules) in motion, none of which contain in themselves a discernible odor.  Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities still sounds good, even if new data has required that we adjust our understanding since he wrote at the end of the 17th century, as is the case with temperature and kinetic energy, for example.  When you speak of "mind stuff" that interacts with "matter stuff" to allow for experience, are you expressing some form of (property) dualism?
(February 25, 2017 at 5:36 pm)Khemikal Wrote:  Don't see why we couldn't.  The properties of the thing-in-itself and our idea of the thing might overlap.  They certainly seem to in the case of vanilla, vanillan, and synthetics.  
With respect to primary qualities, one can more readily agree, despite the very strange claims that are sometimes made about more fundamental aspects of space and time and the like...  It's not clear to me how secondary properties -- take colors -- could exist as properties of objects-in-themselves... which makes it difficult to assess if a question like, "What does world look like from an "objective" POV?" is even meaningful, though in some sense I think it is.
(February 25, 2017 at 5:36 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Elaborate?   Why would memories being different, somehow, to sense experience, be a stumbling block for the position or for you?
For all of the reasons that people give to justify dualism.  Leibniz' famous "mill" analogy is one popular example.  He said,
Quote:It has to be acknowledged that perception can’t be explained by mechanical principles, that is by shapes and motions, and thus that nothing that depends on perception can be explained in that way either. Suppose this were wrong. Imagine there were a machine whose structure produced thought, feeling, and perception; we can conceive of its being enlarged while maintaining the same relative proportions among its parts, so that we could walk into it as we can walk into a mill. Suppose we do walk into it; all we would find there are cogs and levers and so on pushing one another, and never anything to account for a perception.  So perception must be sought in simple substances, not in composite things like machines. And that is all that can be found in a simple substance—perceptions and changes in perceptions; and those changes are all that the internal actions of simple substances can consist in.
I know the materialist/reductionist response is to argue that Leibniz' and similar POVs are making a category mistake, often comparing "mind" to something like "team spirit" or an entity like a "nation," but that doesn't instill much conviction for me.  Arguments like those that Rawls seemed to make don't really sufficiently account for or explain this so-called "unity of apperception" (i.e consciousness) and all that goes with it -- but maybe that is just MY experience.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
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#22
RE: Short essay on dualism, idealism, & materialism as concerns Q: What is a table?
(February 25, 2017 at 7:21 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Mudhammam, I have a couple questions about how you view things as we normally consider them.  For example, in the case of a wave of water, what's a "wave," really?  Is it an illusion?  Is it a kind of pre-set form which expresses itself through a medium like water?  Is it just a name for something water does in our experience?

Given that we know the properties we see in a table don't exist on the most fundamental level of physics (nothing is actually "hard" at the QM level, nothing is "flat" under a microscope, and it seems to be the way humans view things that make those concepts meaningful), would you describe the modern scientific view of reality as materialist, idealist, dualist, or something else?
Well, I need a lot of help on the physics but in layman terms it seems to all boil down to a plenum of "gravitational forces" acting on bodies variously constituted... Leibniz, of course writing three hundred years ago and ignorant of our "modern" scientific understanding, described the world as follows:
Quote:In the world of composites, the world of matter, everything is full, which means that all matter is interlinked.  If there were empty space, a body might move in it without affecting any other body; but that is not how things stand.  In a plenum [= ‘world that is full’], any movement must have an effect on distant bodies, the greater the distance the smaller the effect, but always some effect. Here is why. Each body is affected by the bodies that touch it, and feels some effects of everything that happens to them; but also through them it also feels the effects of all the bodies that touch them, and so on, so that such communication extends indefinitely. As a result, each body feels the effects of everything that happens in the universe, so that he who sees everything could read off from each body what is happening everywhere; and, indeed, because he could see in its present state what is distant both in space and in time, he could read also what has happened and what will happen. . . . 
You might also find this other passage useful, wherein he is speaking about his "law of continuity":
Quote:Many of our own present perceptions slip by unconsidered and even unnoticed, but if someone alerts us to them right after they have occurred, e.g. making us take note of some noise that we’ve just heard, then we remember it and are aware of having had some sense of it. Thus, we weren’t aware of these perceptions when they occurred, and we became aware of them only because we were alerted to them a little perhaps a very little—later. To give a clearer idea of these tiny perceptions that we can’t pick out from the crowd, I like the example of the roaring noise of the sea that acts on us when we are standing on the shore. To hear this noise as we do, we have to hear its parts, that is the noise of each wave, although each of these little noises makes itself known only when combined confusedly with all the others, and wouldn’t be noticed if the wavelet that made it happened all by itself. We must be affected slightly by the motion of this one wavelet, and have some perception of each of these noises, however faint they may be. If each of them had no effect on us, the surf as a whole—a hundred thousand wavelets—would have no effect either, because a hundred thousand nothings can’t make something!
Although he is there speaking about perception, you might apply something similar to the behaviors of each individual H20 molecule and how they operate together in conditions that to our everyday experiences appear as and are described as "waves."  But again, I couldn't tell you what it is that is going on in terms of the science.  I don't think it is illusory but it seems likely to be an effect of "pre-set forms" (i.e. laws of nature) that define the parameters of material interactions, encountered in our experience to a very limited extent, though we are capable of broadening our understanding through induction.

To answer your second question, I'm willing to bet that most scientists are materialists... but until consciousness is understood, nobody can say for sure one way or another, and those other viewpoints will remain relevant.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
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#23
RE: Short essay on dualism, idealism, & materialism as concerns Q: What is a table?
(February 26, 2017 at 12:19 am)Mudhammam Wrote: Well, I need a lot of help on the physics but in layman terms it seems to all boil down to a plenum of "gravitational forces" acting on bodies variously constituted
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.

It seems to me this at the very minimum is the requirement for something being called material: that it exists. And to be said to exist, it has to be locatable in time and space (or at least its effects or properties must be so).

Seeing, then, that material must supervene on a framework which is itself immaterial, then "matter" turns out to be a sub-class: the expression of properties such that they me be brought into relation with each other independent of a subjective observer. BUT that doesn't mean they are more than a composite of ideas supervening on ideas-- it means only that the ideas are not a product of the human self, i.e. of solipsistic genius.
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#24
RE: Short essay on dualism, idealism, & materialism as concerns Q: What is a table?
(February 26, 2017 at 2:20 am)bennyboy Wrote: 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?  As far as "rules" or laws of nature, should we consider these absolute or relative?  Do they also precede the existence of forces or are they simultaneously receiving form as matter is forged by previous interactions?  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?

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.  That is, everything that we can "know" about matter is applicable to space-time, not necessarily because form precedes matter, but because one does not have meaning without the other -- like trying to speak of a concept derived only from reason and without any object of possible experience to which it can be said to apply.  If matter is like the object and form is like the idea, then, in the one case both are equally necessary for intelligible dialogue, and in the other case, for an understanding of the term "existence"; even a space that is conceived to be totally "black and empty" involves physical substratum, namely, an expanse that has dimension and color (not withstanding debates over whether or not "black" should be classified as one), and time demands that something be motion, e.g. the "inflation of space."

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.
(February 26, 2017 at 2:20 am)bennyboy Wrote: It seems to me this at the very minimum is the requirement for something being called material: that it exists.  And to be said to exist, it has to be locatable in time and space (or at least its effects or properties must be so).

Seeing, then, that material must supervene on a framework which is itself immaterial, then "matter" turns out to be a sub-class: the expression of properties such that they me be brought into relation with each other independent of a subjective observer.  BUT that doesn't mean they are more than a composite of ideas supervening on ideas-- it means only that the ideas are not a product of the human self, i.e. of solipsistic genius.
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."
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
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#25
RE: Short essay on dualism, idealism, & materialism as concerns Q: What is a table?
(February 25, 2017 at 11:06 pm)Mudhammam Wrote: I'm not entirely sure what constitutes Scholastic moderate realism, but do you interpret Aristotle as nestling his twelve categories of being into "Nature as primal substance," as opposed to Kant, who placed his ten categories of understanding firmly in the intellect?  I lean towards Aristotle's idealism... at least, I think it would be fair to call him idealistic on this point.  What says you?

Personally, I think that it is a mistake to project modern post-Descartes categories, like idealism versus materialism, backwards onto the prior classical tradition. The mind-body paradox simply didn't exist until Descartes et al made it a problem by dropping many of the careful distinctions made during the Scholastic period. For example, ideas became conflated with beliefs and conception became conflated with abstraction. So no, Aristotle is neither an idealist nor a materialist. The same for Plato and Plotinus. Those definitions do not make any sense when applied to their philosophies. The mind/body debate doesn't really interest me anymore because the way I see it there isn't any problem. It's a false dilemma.
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#26
RE: Short essay on dualism, idealism, & materialism as concerns Q: What is a table?
(February 25, 2017 at 11:06 pm)Mudhammam Wrote: I know the materialist/reductionist response is to argue that Leibniz' and similar POVs are making a category mistake, often comparing "mind" to something like "team spirit" or an entity like a "nation," but that doesn't instill much conviction for me.  Arguments like those that Rawls seemed to make don't really sufficiently account for or explain this so-called "unity of apperception" (i.e consciousness) and all that goes with it -- but maybe that is just MY experience.

I don't think the point of a rebuttal to an objection is to instill conviction in you that the position which has been objected to is true...but that the objection to that proposition is not properly formed, and therefore uninformative.  

"While position x may not be accurate, the objection y does not demonstrate this as stated"
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#27
RE: Short essay on dualism, idealism, & materialism as concerns Q: What is a table?
(February 26, 2017 at 12:38 pm)Mudhammam Wrote:
(February 26, 2017 at 2:20 am)bennyboy Wrote: 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.

Quote: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.

Quote: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.


Quote: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.

Quote: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.
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#28
RE: Short essay on dualism, idealism, & materialism as concerns Q: What is a table?
(February 26, 2017 at 3:16 pm)Khemikal Wrote: I don't think the point of a rebuttal to an objection is to instill conviction in you that the position which has been objected to is true...but that the objection to that proposition is not properly formed, and therefore uninformative.  

"While position x may not be accurate, the objection y does not demonstrate this as stated"
It's an interesting idea but does it mitigate any of the problems for materialism that the Cogito supposedly creates?  Is it uninformative to conceive "mind" as a distinct entity which is greater than the sum of its parts, rather than merely as a concept which signifies nothing in reality but the collective operation of those parts?  It seems like an identity problem still remains (recall the "ship of Theseus") and not one that that is purely theoretical or a matter of definition, as is the case with "nations", but that an actual (and perhaps fundamental) process remains unexplained and prone to the criticisms upon which all forms of body-mind dualism establish themselves.

(February 26, 2017 at 6:44 pm)bennyboy Wrote: 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.
Are you suggesting that "something expressible only in terms of ideas... fail the most basic tests of objectivity"?  If that's what you mean, that objectivity can refer exclusively to material objects, then I don't know if I agree.  On the one hand, if we talk about something that supposedly exists outside of our experience, then yes, it seems we need to have an object to which we can make reference, even if this object is only known indirectly through sensation.  Do the most elemental particles fail us in this regards?  I don't think so. On the other hand, if we are talking about ideals, or objects of reason, like value or beauty, then cannot we also appeal to the objectivity of logical functions, which necessitate universal ideas and are themselves necessary for intelligible experience? (As an aside, morality might then be but those laws that a hypothetical being who always acts rationally, or for the rational good, etc. determines and is compelled (by reason) to follow).
(February 26, 2017 at 6:44 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I'd say there is a philosophical or idealistic principle/s upon which everything else supervenes.  The word I prefer is "allows for."
Is this anything else but what is meant by "possibility"?  There are an infinite number of possible worlds.  In what sense do these "exist"? Is every single possibility an eternal "idea," some of which are "actualized" into spatio-temporal realities?  (This seems to have been what Plato thought, and later on Christians like Augustine and Leibniz).  It's an odd -- some might say self-contradictory -- thought that these possible worlds and objects actually exist simply on the merit that they can potentially exist.

(February 26, 2017 at 6:44 pm)bennyboy Wrote: 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.
Indeed, I am suggesting that as a possibility. Besides, as you say, all matter, time, and space, at least on some theories, is considered to have emerged at the beginning of our universe.  You're right that physics seems to want to take us back through the looking glass and into an ideal realm.
(February 26, 2017 at 6:44 pm)bennyboy Wrote: To say that which preceded all matter is matter doesn't seem logical to me.
Nothingness is always an option.  Smile Maybe matter sits on a knife's edge somewhere between Being (form) and nothingness, the great war between Apollos and Dionysius, leaving all in a perpetual Heraclitean flux of "becoming," growth and decay... Rolleyes
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
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#29
RE: Short essay on dualism, idealism, & materialism as concerns Q: What is a table?
(February 26, 2017 at 10:03 pm)Mudhammam Wrote: It's an interesting idea but does it mitigate any of the problems for materialism that the Cogito supposedly creates?  
Problems specifically for eliminative materialism...you mean?  I don't think that anything can mitigate the problems eliminitivism has with cogito, in it's strongest application.  

Quote:Is it uninformative to conceive "mind" as a distinct entity which is greater than the sum of its parts, rather than merely as a concept which signifies nothing in reality but the collective operation of those parts?
If the eliminative position is even partially accurate most of our concepts regarding mind are uninformative, no matter what they are.    Wink

Quote: It seems like an identity problem still remains (recall the "ship of Theseus") and not one that that is purely theoretical or a matter of definition, as is the case with "nations", but that an actual (and perhaps fundamental) process remains unexplained and prone to the criticisms upon which all forms of body-mind dualism establish themselves.
That's not an identity problem, you're describing....that's an argument from ignorance.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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