Are words immaterial?

[Juma]

Oh yes they are. Your thoughts are the interplay of neurons.

No, thought is a consequence of this 'interplay'. The physical nature of things (like electrochemical signals) is one thing--these are the things we can detect with instrumentation. But, these things we say exist but cannot find are language driven.

Cannot find? Let me be clear about this: there is nothing going on in your mind that is not neuron activity. Nothing. (With neuron activity I mean the biological/electrochemical activity of the brain. That is mostly done in/by neurons)

 

[NobleSavage]

I can't bring myself to read 19 pages of this. Did I miss anything good?

 

[fast]

No, thought is a consequence of this 'interplay'. The physical nature of things (like electrochemical signals) is one thing--these are the things we can detect with instrumentation. But, these things we say exist but cannot find are language driven.

Cannot find? Let me be clear about this: there is nothing going on in your mind that is not neuron activity. Nothing.

Haha, there ain't no neural activity goin'-on's in my mind! And with that, good night.

 

[Juma]

I can't bring myself to read 19 pages of this. Did I miss anything good?

No. It is just sad. Sad...

 

[Juma]

Cannot find? Let me be clear about this: there is nothing going on in your mind that is not neuron activity. Nothing.

Haha, there ain't no neural activity goin'-on's in my mind!

:-/

And with that, good night.

And a good morning to you. (It's 7 in the morning here)...

 

[ryan]

I can't bring myself to read 19 pages of this. Did I miss anything good?

No. It is just sad. Sad...

Would you please define material?

 

[Juma]

No. It is just sad. Sad...

Would you please define material?

What context?

 

[Togo]

I'm not talking about a specific concept. I'm talking about concepts. Concepts are a neuronic behaviour and thus physical.

There isn't a one-to-one relationship between a concept, and the neural state that represents that concept.

 

[Juma]

I'm not talking about a specific concept. I'm talking about concepts. Concepts are a neuronic behaviour and thus physical.

There isn't a one-to-one relationship between a concept, and the neural state that represents that concept.

There is no "neural state" that is one-to-one with anything recognizable. The brain is working in time. Its the interplay that matters. Not states.

And concepts are not shared, they are synchronized.

 

[Perspicuo]

I'm really running out of didactic tools here. Not a ghost of an idea how to make it clearer.

hm.. Let's say I have three oranges, and sell two to you. You have not collected the oranges and I have no need to move them.

We've gone from a set of 3 oranges, to a set of two oranges (yours) and one orange (mine).

Has something physical changed?

There has to be some level at which inclusion in a set or exclusion from a set is either an immaterial change, or else 'material' really doesn't mean very much.

Every change you cited was physical. Every single damn one.

And if you don't recognize language as a signalling system between physical systems of the genus Homo (and also some computers) I think we are both speaking from two different ontological systems, one Platonic (yours) and the other empirically founded (mine). It's just empirically based, that's all there is in its favor, although it's not a small and insignificant thing to be based upon.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Please try to keep focused! We were talking about the use of the word "material", not of the word "matter". We're not debating about the word "matter".

So, sticking to current science as you urged us to do, I will assume that science does not regard spacetime as matter. Yet, we use the word "material" to refer both to matter and spacetime (or perhaps more accurately to all spacetime relations between distributions of matter over spacetime). I take it that all material properties are considered by science as dependent on the spacetime distribution of quantities of matter. You cannot make any observation of matter except through these spacetime-dependent properties. So, the word "material" really means that spacetime and matter cannot be considered in isolation of one another, and this is science. All you can say, and everybody I guess would agree, is that some material things are not matter but something else, i.e. spacetime, or spacetime relations between distributions of matter over spacetime. Yet, from that, you want to say that spacetime and spacetime-dependent relations are not material. But what's wrong with just accepting that these things are material but not matter?
EB

I thought that we all understood that matter is material.

Parse it differently: what's wrong with just accepting that these things are material but (these things are) not matter?
So?
EB

 

[Togo]

There isn't a one-to-one relationship between a concept, and the neural state that represents that concept.

There is no "neural state" that is one-to-one with anything recognizable. The brain is working in time. Its the interplay that matters. Not states.


And concepts are not shared, they are synchronized.

I don't see how that helps.

There isn't a one-to-one relationship to the interplay between neural interactions either.

If concepts simply were brain states, or brain interplays, or some form of neural interaction, then we would expect to see the properties of one equal the properties of the other. There would be a one-to-one relationship, such that everything that is true of one is true of the other, and nothing that is not true of one is true of the other. This is not the case. When people talk about concepts, they are talking about concepts as if they were a thing in themselves. They aren't, as a point of fact, talking about individually synchronising neural interplay.

That's why I made the distinction between modelling concepts as neural interactions, and stating that concepts simply are neural interactions (or written accounts, etc). The first makes sense, the second simply isn't true.

However, even if you model concepts as being individual instances of expression that synchronise with each other, you're left with a number of holes in the account, some of which I've already touched on (see post 156).

For example, when one of these neural interplays synchronises with a written account of the same concept, what is happening? How are the two accounts recognised as being about the same topic, since we're insisting that the two accounts are two different concepts that synchronise. And which account changes? Obviously, the words don't morph, but the reader doesn't necessarily change their ideas to match the written account either. And if a third instance is compared, which changes to match which?

A model of concepts as individual instances that synchronise gives us no clue as to which should change to match which. However, an account that models concepts as abstract ideals in their own right to which individual instances gradually approximate does tell us what happens - the accounts gradually shift to match the concept in abstract. This occurs precisely because the concept is not an arbitrary collection of physical instantiations, but actually has some kind of significance.

More generally I'd argue that any account of concepts that models them purely physically is missing most of the significance that makes them useful things to study.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Just so no mistake is made, immaterial no more has meaning than do cats--and I'm talking about lexical meaning. The point is that never does the referent of a term have a lexical meaning. It's always the term that denotes meaning, so a lamp, for instance has no lexical meaning, but the word, "lamp" does.

What about "hello" and "hi". "Hello" may mean "hi", and "hi" may mean "hello".

It would be incorrect to say that the words "Hi" and "Hello" mean each other as well as themselves. Instead, they have the same meaning (they are synonynous).

The act of saying "Hi!" is what's called a "performative". It's not a word (it's an act) but it does mean the same as the word "Hi" (or "Hello"), i.e. greeting somebody. Performative is doing what you say you are doing, e.g.: "I'm responding to you that I disagree". I think the point in your example is that to say "Hi!" to somebody is the same as making a sign, or displaying a symbol, and therefore has meaning, like roadsigns, with or without words, or most gestures.

Still, these are marginal to this discussion.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

I can't bring myself to read 19 pages of this. Did I miss anything good?

Yes you did!

So you have to read the stuff!

But only my posts.
EB

 

[Togo]

I think we are both speaking from two different ontological systems, one Platonic (yours) and the other empirically founded (mine). It's just empirically based, that's all there is in its favor, although it's not a small and insignificant thing to be based upon.

I think there's some truth in that, but they're not alternatives to each other. Frege, credited by some as the founder of modern logic, suggested that rationality and empiricism were indispensable to each other in the search for truth. You can't make statements about the real world without measuring the real world, but you can't conclude anything from those measurements without a consistent logic, including definitions. He saw truth as coming from empiricism and rationalism combined.

I'd also dispute that your ontological system is empirically founded. It's founded on rationalist concepts commonly found in empirical models yes, but I don't see that you can usefully test an ontology against the real world.

- - - Updated - - -

I can't bring myself to read 19 pages of this. Did I miss anything good?

Probably, but nothing that would prevent you joining in the discussion at this point.

 

[Speakpigeon]

No. It is just sad. Sad...

Would you please define material?

Typically, dictionaries say:

Material Adj. Of, relating to, or composed of matter.

A car is regarded as material since it is made of matter though it has also a shape, a structure, a functionning etc. Shapes, structures, functionnings etc. are not made of matter but are regarded as material properties since they don't appear without some quantity of matter (words too). A ghost, if immaterial, would have, say, shape, perhaps movement, possibly colours, but not matter.

So things that exist would be immaterial if and only if they didn't need to be asociated with matter. Since shapes, structures, functionnings and indeed words are always associated with matter they are said to be material.

That being said, to say that the mind is immaterial makes sense. It means that you believes that the mind can exist without any matter associated with it, as indeed many people seem to believe.

However, I fail to see the point of arguing that shapes, structures, functionnings or indeed words etc. are immaterial. They are not made of matter, we all agree with that, but they always come with matter associated with them. We could not perceive them if they didn't come with matter associated with them. Even our mind does. Unless you can find an example.
EB

 

[Perspicuo]

Wrong. You changed the configuration of the oranges, your hand being physical within physical spacetime with respect to physical oranges. And then these affect the physical system which is the human observer having physical phenomena happening in his optical nerve, optical cortex and deeper structures, recorded in physical neurons to be later evoked in the physical neural network (cognition, emotion, etc) and probable physical motor behavior.

I'm really running out of didactic tools here. Not a ghost of an idea how to make it clearer.

This is a nonissue. Just imagine two different configurations of the exact same matter in the exact same environments.

Imagination allows for that and pink unicorns peeing liquid gold.

 

[Perspicuo]

I can't bring myself to read 19 pages of this. Did I miss anything good?

No. It's basically "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" versus the mean boys who say mom and dad put the gifts under the tree. I'm the mean boy, or one of them.
It's a nasty task.

 

[Speakpigeon]

The initial point by ryan was that what we can broadly call "structures" seem to have physical effects. Since structures are not matter, it seems clear that we need both matter and structures to explain the material world. However, what you are talking about seems to be a different issue.

That could well be.
You make frequent appeal to 'a realist sense' but I'm concerned that what you mean here is actually 'a physicalist sense'.

No. I make the distinction between the metaphysician’s possible view that concepts, such as for example the concept of circle, exist independently of minds and of the physical world. Fast I think supports this view. On this view, concepts exist but not in space, time, or even spacetime. Russell made the distinction between "existing" (in space-time) and "being" (nowhere, nowhen).
Also, I’m not sure there’s a proper physicalist view of the existence of concepts except to reduce our subjective impression that we know concepts to something physical inside the brain, and why not. Another thing would be to provide a convincing explanation how that could be.

The point I'm making is that an immaterial concept of ownership and sale is an accurate, useful and reliable way of dealing with the phenomenon, while a discourse on the neural changes made in the buyer's and seller's brain does not, in practice, accurately capture what is going on.

Yes, I admit that I had forgotten your views on this. I guess it’s been a while since last time you discussed them. And I broadly agree if by concept you meant the object of a thought rather than something existing outside spacetime.

Now you can make a conscious choice to try and base everything in physical interaction. So to represent a concept, you imagine a theoretical set of physical interactions that would populate all the necessary mental, physical and social interactions, from words on paper, to computers to people's heads, in which that concept is instantiated, or could ever be instantiated, in all of space and time.

You are assuming that concepts are shared. I don’t accept the premise and materialists do not either. I say, and they should say, that all you need to do to demonstrate that concepts are material is implement a physical mechanism which achieves the same result as what we people do when we perform an action on the basis of a particular concept. For example, we can implement the concept of circle in a computer and ask the computer to draw circles, to follow a circular trajectory etc. Obviously, it’s been done and more. Selling and buying for example, for instance selling and buying shares on the stock exchange.

It's possible, but there are some objections. A few off the top of my head...
The first is that this isn't a particularly useful way of representing a concept. The concept of ownership neatly categorises certain kinds of social relationship. A vast sprawling collection of physical states that are physically unrelated to eachother, while it may cover the same ground, doesn't do the same work.

It’s useful if you get machines to do the work for you as in the case of the stock exchange, or finding bigger and bigger prime numbers etc. It’s not useful if the machine won’t perform as or more efficiently than us at the particular task.

The second is that you're seriously violating Occam's Razor here. Insisting on the 'reduction' of a fairly simple and straightforward concept to a vast array of otherwise unrelated and unconnected physical processes is about as far from the concept of maximum parsimony as it's possible to get. This is important largely because Occam's Razor is the most common reason given for adopting some form of physical explanation in the first place.

If you were not talking about shared concept I would agree. But shared concepts seem to have to exist outside our minds and if they are not material then it’s ipso facto a massive ontological assumption.
If one takes the view that a concept is the object of a human being’s thought here and now then I don’t see how we could explain this other than through some physical theory. I would also disagree that it’s not ontologically economical since each concept would be explained by the same basic mechanism, ultimately for example the interplay of twelves material particles and one force. What would need to be explained on top of that would be the subjective experience of having a concept in mind. Which of course nobody seems able to even suggest the beginning of an answer.

The third is that it's not really an adequate replacement. Replacing a conceptual category with the instantiation of everything that could fall into that category is not an equivalency. A category is not equivalent to its contents, a set is not equivalent to its members. One does not accurately replace the other.

Again, you are making this assumption. You are assuming that the view of concepts as something real outside our minds is adequate but you would need to show it. If a concept is the object of a thought, we only need to show how this kind of thought can be effective, as I suggested above, and how the brain produces these thoughts, while the question of the subjective aspect of the situation remains unexplained, by all.

A fourth objection is that you lose the distinction between fact and fiction. If 'the scientific method' is merely a collection of physical descriptions or conceptions of that concept, and 'Santa Claus' is similarly a collection of physical descriptions or conceptions of that concept, then on what grounds are they treated differently?

I don’t see any distinction as far as concepts are concerned, so I don’t have this problem. The distinction may be made by reality itself, i.e. some concepts may have a reference, other do not. But the belief that a certain concept has a reference is something else entirely.

So while you certainly can decide to replace all mention of immaterial things with physical things, it's not clear to me that it's somehow desirable, or accurate to do so.

I’m not sure we would need to do that for Santa Claus but that may be useful when it comes to numbers or even words.

Useful perhaps even to the point of making us redundant on day...
EB

 

[WAB]

No. They don't. To say that a concept is physical is to not understand what a concept is. To say that a concept is physical is to ignore the distinction between abstract and concrete, quantity and quality, etc. This distinction exists. Man has recognized it and written about it for thousands of years. It will not be willed or wished or waved away too easily.

I'm not talking about a specific concept. I'm talking about concepts. Concepts are a neuronic behaviour and thus physical. What concepts represents doesnt need to be physical though, indeed the referents doesnt need to exist at all. (As f ex is the case of the concept of ghosts)

My argument isn't that concepts are not the result of the activity of the brain. Without brains, there would be no concepts. That much is true. Nonetheless, what fast has argued works for me, so if I were to run off at the fingers all it would do would be to repeat what he's already said, in my own fashion.