God, Santa, and The Tooth Fairy

[Neo-Scholastic]

Do minds have space in them? I'm thinking that mind, though associated with the brain, is not itself something which has extension. Certainly a given form in someone's mind doesn't seem to have a measurable space that it occupies. (I'm guessing you're using this as a metaphor.)

If they exist in the mind, then they do exist in a particular way. 

If they exist in the mind but not in a material sense, then there are things which can exist non-materially.

How would you define this non-material realm? Can the things which "occupy space" in people's minds be in some way real, like numbers? In terms of hylomorphism, we can talk about things of which the forms exist (morphe) without the matter (hyle). This would certainly be in line with standard theology.

There are no numbers without a brain, computer, abacus, piece of paper, or the like to be imprinted on or processed within. All of those things take up space. Numbers and ideas and concepts can't be demonstrated to exist without matter and energy in space and time.

Something can be distinct without being alienable.

[The Grand Nudger]

Are souls not alienable from their earthly vessels?

[Mister Agenda]

There are no numbers without a brain, computer, abacus, piece of paper, or the like to be imprinted on or processed within. All of those things take up space. Numbers and ideas and concepts can't be demonstrated to exist without matter and energy in space and time.

Something can be distinct without being alienable.

I'm open to evidence. For example, if ghosts were real, truly immaterial, and could do math, that would be that for the idea that matter is needed.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Are souls not alienable from their earthly vessels?

I do not know. Maybe. As for me personally, I believe there will be a bodily resurrection, which works with hylomorphism. But I am pointing out that many forms can be instantiated by a single material and a variety of materials can manifest multiple forms, just as a single novel can be translated into multiple languages on different kinds of media.

[The Grand Nudger]

Would you need to be bodily resurrected to have your mind?

[Belacqua]

There are no numbers without a brain, computer, abacus, piece of paper, or the like to be imprinted on or processed within. All of those things take up space. Numbers and ideas and concepts can't be demonstrated to exist without matter and energy in space and time.

Well, sure. Numbers exist in the brain. In the brain, they occur as electrochemical events among synapses. These have extension, but it's pretty small. There are thousands of synapses in every voxel of an fMRI scan.

So OK: numbers are synaptic events.

Now if we look at a piece of paper, if there are numbers on that paper, there must be synaptic events on the paper, since we've established that numbers are synaptic events. But strictly speaking, paper doesn't have synapses. The numbers on the paper are something else. Some of them are only a couple of millimeters tall, but I've seen billboards with numbers two meters tall. 

So now we have two types of numbers which are completely ontologically different. Synaptic events and printed symbols. And even the symbols can differ, since two can be shown as 2 or 二 or 弐 depending on culture and context. 

And then we have the abacus, which has neither synaptic events nor printed symbols. So it appears that there are all kinds of numbers in the world. And each of these has materiality and extension. 

Frankly, I think none of these things we're talking about are numbers. They are symbols which refer to numbers. We have developed a variety of useful ways to symbolize and refer to numbers. 

Now if all the numbers we use in daily life are symbols or referents, to what exactly are they referring? Perhaps the REAL number two is kept in a vault in Zurich. What is it made of? Is it heavy? Could Lupin III steal it?

No, I'm sorry, I think that's all silly. We use material symbols for convenience when talking about numbers, but numbers themselves have no materiality, no extension, and no location. They are immaterially real.

[The Grand Nudger]

Now if all the numbers we use in daily life are symbols or referents, to what exactly are they referring? 

You ask this question as though you've never done any math in your daily life?  Commonly, they refer to quantities and distances.  The value of defining your variables.  Not a standard 2 in a vault in zurich..though, just for reference..we do actually keep standard units of this or that in vaults sometimes.

If I asked you to double a recipe then I've asked you to do math.  2x.  2x one cup and 2x one teaspoon will give you different solutions, though.  2x can refer to different things, we can write it in different fonts (or express it in different languages), construct the recipe out of steel and make it 500 feet high, or..yes, even put it in a vault somewhere. Does this suggest that there are immaterial volumes? An immaterial cup? An immaterial teaspoon? When I ask you for two cups of flour and two teaspoons of sugar...at what point do you think I'm referring to anything immaterial? You may think a thing is ludicrous, but it isn't for any of the comments above that you've decided so, in mere reality.

You might be thinking of ideals, certainly not math in our daily lives, but since we've already decided that ideas are, despite long confusion to that effect, physical things that do have materiality, extension, location......the realm of ideas is no longer interchangeable with the realm of the immaterial. This notion misinformed alot of people, especially people who very much wanted there to be an ideal world with an ideal maker. They noticed that the ideal tree was not the same as a tree..it was different, distinct. Just as the elephant in your head is different from an elephant. The trouble..is that for all the difference between things in ideal spaces and things in what we otherwise call real spaces..materiality wasn't one of them. The idea of the thing is not the thing..but its just as material as the thing. The idea of two cups is not two cups..but both have material volume. This letter A is not a cow...but both the a and the cow are physical objects. We could go on and on and on with symbolic language this way.

In the end, if you're holding out hope for some immaterial anything..it's probably not a great look to list off a bunch of unremarkably true things, and then declare them to be ridiculous as pretext for insisting on what you believe in for entirely different and completely unspoken reasons. This is what frustrates me about so many convos on this board or anywhere else about our religious beliefs. People, apparently, would rather try and fail at some doomed apologetic claptrap than simply share what they do believe and why they believe it.

You aren't convinced in the immaterial because of numbers. You aren't completely stumped by what numbers refer to in our daily lives..and you don't..really..think any of those unremarkably true things you listed off are ridiculous. You just realize that they don't get you to the place you want to go.

[arewethereyet]

Are souls not alienable from their earthly vessels?

I do not know. Maybe. As for me personally, I believe there will be a bodily resurrection, which works with hylomorphism. But I am pointing out that many forms can be instantiated by a single material and a variety of materials can manifest multiple forms, just as a single novel can be translated into multiple languages on different kinds of media.

Would you flesh this out for me? If there is bodily resurrection, where are all the people who have been resurrected over the last many years? I'm a little lost here. Is this like reincarnation or do the actual dead bodies resurrect as they were?

[The Grand Nudger]

The notion, commonly, is that it's a future event. They're taking dirtnaps right now. JWs also believe in a bodily resurrection.

Proto christians certainly believed in a bodily resurrection, on this earth..in the immanent davidic campaign to subjugate the planet. They just got tired of waiting, things didn't go to plan, and that's when they started believing in heaven as you know it today, in dead people being returned immediately to sender, elsewhere, as it were. There was the expectation that their bodies would be theirs but, in many ways, new or improved. Cripples didn't imagine being crippled come their restoration. That would be a bad sales pitch. For what it's worth, you kind of have to posit some other whatsit in that scenario..because people might have noticed that the bodies of the faithful remained in the ground, right where they were left.

An even funnier answer to that question..in the context of proto christian belief..is that they believed that the resurrected dead were walking all over jerusalem. Romans didn't notice..but who knows, it may have been hard to tell a dead rebel from a living one. The distinction could only ever be academic to the roman military.

My own interest here comes from the fact that Neo appears to be closer to proto christians in this belief, at least..and, oddly enough, christianity did not begin with any belief in the "immaterial". Not even souls. I can see how proto christian belief, aside from the prophetic elements..as yet anyway, would be a better fit for our contemporary world, at least insomuch as it conceptualizes what we are. I wonder if the notion of immateriality has any necessary place in neos beliefs..or if he could just as easily (and perhaps more forcefully) argue or persuade without it. A physical resurrection of a physical creature certainly doesn't require it, for example. Say, that a mind or soul was inalienable from it's material construction and the process to restore it involved restoring that body.

[arewethereyet]

Thanks Nudger...this all just reads to me as such a pile of BS. I can sort of wrap my head around the idea of people believing that Jesus being resurrected is a thing, what with him being divine and all. But the idea that every schmuck that played the game will suddenly return at some point seems to take some of the shine off the resurrection of the divine.

Boggles my mind the lengths the believers will go to in an attempt to explain what they want to believe.

btw - is this part of that chosen 144K chosen?