Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Sculptor1]

FAIL

Great!
Then show me the experiment where they demonstrated that what the word "mass" describes, is made of matter.

Mass is the measure of matter. There is no mass without it.
Stuff exists. You can deny it all you want, but the theory of gravity was devised to describe the planets in their orbits; to understand weight, and to describe falling bodies.

[Tamminen]

So-called "subjective truths" or "truths for me" are simply my beliefs (convictions, opinions, judgments); and if you use "truth" and "fact" synonymously, we also have "subjective facts" or "facts for me"—but these are again nothing but my beliefs. And the world as "the totality of facts" is not reducible to the totality of my beliefs.

Perhaps I should have said "facts in relation to my existence" instead of "facts for me", thanks for your remark. However, I have interpreted Wittgenstein's metaphysical subject so that it makes a total independence of the world of facts impossible. I have also seen other interpretations, though.

[Atla]

Great!
Then show me the experiment where they demonstrated that what the word "mass" describes, is made of matter.

Mass is the measure of matter. There is no mass without it.
Stuff exists. You can deny it all you want, but the theory of gravity was devised to describe the planets in their orbits; to understand weight, and to describe falling bodies.

Mass is a measure, so far so good.

But show me the experiment where they demonstrated that it measures matter, and not something else like mindstuff or whatever. How do you know that it measures anything with a "substance" at all?

There is something rather than nothing. What makes you think it's "material stuff"?

[Consul]

"We have a tendency to read 'nonphysical' when we see the word 'mental', and think 'nonmental' when we see the word 'physical'. This has the effect of making the idea of physical reduction of the mental a simple verbal contradiction, abetting the misguided idea that physical reduction of something we cherish as a mental item, like thought or feeling, would turn it into something other than what it is. But this would be the case only if by 'physical' we meant 'nonmental'. We should not prejudge the issue of mind-body reduction by building irreducibility into the meanings of our words. When we consider the question whether the mental can be physically reduced, it is not necessary—even if this could be done—to begin with general definitions of 'mental' and 'physical'; rather, the substantive question that we are asking, or should be asking, is whether or not things like belief, desire, emotion, and sensation are reducible to physical properties and processes. We can understand this question and intelligently debate it, without subsuming these items under some general conception of what it is for something to be mental. If 'mental' is understood to imply 'nonphysical', it would then be an open question whether or not belief, desire, sensation, perception, and the rest are mental in that sense. And this question would replace the original question of their physical reducibility. We cannot evade or trivialize this question by a simple verbal ploy."

(Kim, Jaegwon. "The Mind-Body Problem at Century's Turn." In The Future of Philosophy, edited by Brian Leiter, 129-152. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. p. 138)

It's a perfectly justified prediction. Your quote talks about mental content and not phenomenal consciousness itself, so it's off topic.

No, it's not! Kim talks about all sorts of mental phenomena. Experiential or (phenomenally) conscious phenomena are paradigmatic cases of "mental contents". Whether there are also nonexperiential, (phenomenally) nonconscious mental phenomena, i.e. whether the mind is larger than consciousness, is another question. In any case, the point is that materialists can't and don't accept any definition that equates the mental/experiential/conscious with the nonmaterial/nonphysical, such that we have two mutually exclusive and irreconcilable ontological categories per definitionem.

Phenomenal consciousness, mental content, the subjective world were given to idealism. Matter, the objective world were given to materialism. Since then we pretty much realized that mental content / subjective world can be equated with matter / objective world. Phenomenal consciousness itself was still left out though from the unification. So even today, matter is still inherently defined as not-phenomenal consciousness.

No, contemporary materialists certainly don't define material/physical properties or events/states as nonexperiential/nonphenomenal ones!
The neuroscience of consciousness is beginning to close the explanatory gap between "matter and mind" and to complete the physicalist unification of the world, including phenomenal consciousness as a physical phenomenon.

(I don't know what "antimaterialist dualism" is, but it is all dualism that is unjustified.)

It's either substance dualism or substance spiritualism (spiritualist substance monism), or only an attribute dualism according to which mental/experiential properties are neither (compositionally) constituted by nor (causally) emergent from (and supervenient upon) physical properties.

[Sculptor1]

Mass is the measure of matter. There is no mass without it.
Stuff exists. You can deny it all you want, but the theory of gravity was devised to describe the planets in their orbits; to understand weight, and to describe falling bodies.

Mass is a measure, so far so good.

But show me the experiment where they demonstrated that it measures matter, and not something else like mindstuff or whatever. How do you know that it measures anything with a "substance" at all?

There is something rather than nothing. What makes you think it's "material stuff"?

It is pointless arguing with a solipsist.

Like I said, science is a description. When you put a rock on scales you get a measurement. Take another rock and weigh that too. You have managed to isolate a key quality, and described this with "mass".
When I throw the rock at your head I demonstrate the qualities of matter. If the rock fails to crack your skull I weigh one with a larger mass, and throw that one at you until your solipsism goes away.
When the "material" stuff breaks open your head, I will also have demonstrated that your mind was once wholy dependent on the healthy working of your brain. Thus ridding the world of a solipsist and adding the the vast inductive evidence that materialism is a great tool and not at all absurd.

Can you offer a demonstration of "mindstuff or whatever," without using matter?

[Consul]

Materialism is interested in energy and how it is concerned with matter.

Physics is the basic natural science of MEST (Matter-Energy-Space-Time); and according to (reductive) physicalism, all (real) entities belong to the ontology of physics either directly or indirectly by being completely ontologically reducible to systems of (real) entities directly belonging to the ontology of physics.

Note that the equivalence of mass and energy is not to be confused with an equivalence (or identity) of matter and energy.
There is a relevant distinction between having energy and being energy.

See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equivME/#2.1

"Energy is not a stuff. (...) [E]nergy is a real, quantitative property (...). Not every property of an object consists of the object's possessing some sort of stuff. For example, to be happy is not to be filled with a large quantity of a special kind of stuff: 'happiness'. A body's velocity does not measure the amount of a stuff that it possesses. Likewise, neither a body's kinetic energy nor a field's energy is stuff. (...) Since energy is a property, any energy (like velocity) cannot exist without something possessing it. Thus, field energy requires a field."

(Lange, Marc. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics: Locality, Fields, Energy, and Mass. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. p. 152)

[Atla]

Experiential or (phenomenally) conscious phenomena are paradigmatic cases of "mental contents".

I think you don't understand what phenomenal consciousness (and the hard problem of consciousness) refer to so you may have misunderstood all my posts.

[Atla]

Mass is a measure, so far so good.

But show me the experiment where they demonstrated that it measures matter, and not something else like mindstuff or whatever. How do you know that it measures anything with a "substance" at all?

There is something rather than nothing. What makes you think it's "material stuff"?

It is pointless arguing with a solipsist.

Like I said, science is a description. When you put a rock on scales you get a measurement. Take another rock and weigh that too. You have managed to isolate a key quality, and described this with "mass".
When I throw the rock at your head I demonstrate the qualities of matter. If the rock fails to crack your skull I weigh one with a larger mass, and throw that one at you until your solipsism goes away.
When the "material" stuff breaks open your head, I will also have demonstrated that your mind was once wholy dependent on the healthy working of your brain. Thus ridding the world of a solipsist and adding the the vast inductive evidence that materialism is a great tool and not at all absurd.

Can you offer a demonstration of "mindstuff or whatever," without using matter?

Easy. The rock is made of mindstuff or whatever, and your head is also made of mindstuff or whatever, I throw the rock at you and your skull splits open.

Anyway you have accused me of believing in ghosts, of disregarding science, believing that nothing exists, being a solipsist. You are ridiculous.

While of course you consistently failed to show that actual "matter" has ever been found. (Which you can't btw because none was ever found. We just describe the world as material because it's the easists, most well-established way of description.)

[Consul]

Perhaps I should have said "facts in relation to my existence" instead of "facts for me", thanks for your remark. However, I have interpreted Wittgenstein's metaphysical subject so that it makes a total independence of the world of facts impossible. I have also seen other interpretations, though.

Neither is it true that all facts/states of affairs obtain only relatively to some subject or subjective perspective or other.

See this post of mine: viewtopic.php?p=250926#p250926

[Consul]

I think you don't understand what phenomenal consciousness (and the hard problem of consciousness) refer to so you may have misunderstood all my posts.

You're wrong, because I know very well both what phenomenal consciousness is and what the "hard problem" or "explanatory gap" is.

[Tamminen]

Perhaps I should have said "facts in relation to my existence" instead of "facts for me", thanks for your remark. However, I have interpreted Wittgenstein's metaphysical subject so that it makes a total independence of the world of facts impossible. I have also seen other interpretations, though.

Neither is it true that all facts/states of affairs obtain only relatively to some subject or subjective perspective or other.

See this post of mine: viewtopic.php?p=250926#p250926

That is your subjective perspective, not a fact, although you present it as a fact. My subjective perspective is that we have a common, objective world of facts, and everybody sort of scans it from one's own perspective. Nevertheless, the world of facts is not independent of the existence of someone scanning it, the community of "scanners". This is of course just a metaphor. But, as Wittgenstein says, the subject does not belong to the world. It is the silent observer. It is there as long as there is anything like the world.

[Felix]

I said: "Material objects are clearly not dependent upon subjects for their existence, subjects come and go, but material objects persist. Since they persist when individual subjects pass away, it is reasonable to assume (as Consul has), that they would persist if all subjects passed away. But you refuse to acknowledge this.

Tamminen: "Right, I refuse to acknowledge this, and I think I have given strong arguments against it."

I didn't mean to suggest that a world could exist permanently without subjects. As you said, that is an absurd proposition (from the Latin, absurdus, out of tune). I am only saying that there could be long periods of material existence when there are no subjects. For example, science tells us that it was over 3 billion years before life appeared on earth. Do you disagree with that assessment?

Tamminen: "If materialism says that the world without conscious beings is possible, it cannot be logically consistent."

That's true, that is simply conjecture, not a logical conclusion.

Consul: "By "a world without world-experience" I simply mean a world devoid of experiencing/perceiving beings."

A world which no one would knows exists, because there is no one there to experience it. That is just a fanciful thought experiment, like Kant's "thing in itself" that is intrinsically unknowable.

[GaryLouisSmith]

Consul wrote," Right, but materialism/physicalism isn't wedded to any particular fundamental ontology. For example, it is compatible with process ontology, with trope ontology, and with nominalism about attributes (properties).

Materialism is the belief that there is an underlying material substance that endures or perdures through change. Attributes or Forms are fleeting but matter remains. Materialism is a substance philosophy. If the Nominalism and Tropism and Process philosophy you are thinking of are also substance philosophies, then, Yes, they are compatible with materialism, if not then no. I think most people on this blog believe in matter as an underlying substance. I don’t. Berkeley effectively destroyed the idea of matter as substance.

[Tamminen]

I said: "Material objects are clearly not dependent upon subjects for their existence, subjects come and go, but material objects persist. Since they persist when individual subjects pass away, it is reasonable to assume (as Consul has), that they would persist if all subjects passed away. But you refuse to acknowledge this.

Tamminen: "Right, I refuse to acknowledge this, and I think I have given strong arguments against it."

I didn't mean to suggest that a world could exist permanently without subjects. As you said, that is an absurd proposition (from the Latin, absurdus, out of tune). I am only saying that there could be long periods of material existence when there are no subjects. For example, science tells us that it was over 3 billion years before life appeared on earth. Do you disagree with that assessment?

Of course not, but remember that also the periods without subjects belong to the spatiotemporal whole we live in, i.e. our world, the world of subjects.

A world which no one would knows exists, because there is no one there to experience it. That is just a fanciful thought experiment, like Kant's "thing in itself" that is intrinsically unknowable.

Even Kant's "thing in itself" has an ontological relationship with the subject although we cannot say anything of it.

[Tamminen]

Consul
I have noticed that you avoid touching the key points of my reasoning. I presume that this is because you do not understand them, which is my fault of course, because I have not expressed them clearly enough. Philosophizing is not easy, and we often write monologues instead of having fruitful discussions, but I think even that is better than nothing.

Proving that the world without subjects is impossible is of course itself impossible, due to the inherent ontological paradox of our existence, but we can always try to say something that illuminates the situation, using metaphors and poetical expressions. Sometimes poetry contains deeper truths than logical analysis. Who has the patience to go through Gödel's proof? However, someone may get the idea immediately, by a sudden insight, or reading a piece of poetry.