Are words immaterial?

[fast]

Why does the thought of a unicorn that doesn't exist mean that the thought is an abstraction?

Just so there's no ambiguity, what I'm saying that doesn't exist are unicorns, and what I'm saying that does exist are thoughts of unicorns. All thought is an abstraction.

What would you say is the difference between an abstraction and a physical object?

An abstraction is a mental consequence of a physical functioning brain. An abstraction is a subset of non-physical objects.

How would an abstract thought interact with the physical brain?

Don't confuse an abstract object (which is opposed to concrete objects) with an abstraction (which is spatio-temporal)--almost, but let's let that go for a bit. A leads to B leads to C leads to D. The brain leads to brain function leads to consciousness leads to abstract ideas. I do not deny a physical basis for consciousness, nor do I deny a physical basis for abstract ideas. What's important is that we do not confuse the result with the cause. It's linguistically unsound to refer to an idea as a physical object simply because there's a physical basis for it's existence. A cake is a physical object, and no cake there would be if not for it's ingredients, but just as a car is more than the sum of it's parts, so too is a cake more than the sum of it's ingredients. How is a car more than the sum of it's parts? It's also an assemblage of those parts. Now, what's the difference between a cake and an idea? For one, a cake is not a mental object whereas an idea is. Why is that important if there is a physical basis for both? Language. We ought not corrupt the actual linguistic meaning of words. We are learning things about the mind, but such things do not alter how words are collectively used by fluent speakers of a language.

 

[ryan]

I was looking through this thread, and I definitely missed this post of yours.

Okay then let's finally agree that matter is material and material is matter; I was not sure where everyone was at with that.

Never mind where other people are, the point is where you want to be.

It is very important that we all use the same definitions. That's all I meant.

Moving on, the amount and position of immaterial in a structure of matter makes a significant difference, but the immaterial is not significant on its own. This is what troubles me.

I'm not sure what "significant on its own" could possibly mean.

Did you at least try to understand? I don't think you did.

From Webster's the definition is, significant: large enough to be noticed or have an effect.

The immaterial I was referring to is the spaces between particles that form the structure.

Perhaps you want to say you are not in the business of sacralising the idea of substance. But maybe you think that structures are not substances but that matter is. But as I see it, the whole of science is moving from a position of matter as substance towards finding out a coherent description of the material world solely in terms of properties. If there are still scientists stuck on a metaphysical dogma of matter as substance I believe these would be the dinosaurs.

Another way to look at it is to ask yourself what is so special about matter that would be different from properties of matter? In other words, is there actually any matter per se (substance) outside whatever properties we can measure, which seem to be nothing but the structure of the material world? Which would make you use of "immaterial" lead to the notion that the material world is... immaterial.

So, instead, you could take matter to be itself a property of the material world rather than, as you do, matter being the only thing properly said to be material in the material world.

So, what is so special about matter that it shouldn't be confused with a mere property of the material world?
EB

That is an interesting point, but I am not sure how it helps the logical contradiction of detecting something that is undetectable.

 

[ryan]

To experience and be experienced? The latter implies an experiencer of the brain, but there is no such thing. The brain has the ability to form experience (consciousness), and that is all that can be said.

Why should a lot of things that can only be experienced add up to equal something that experiences and can be experienced? This is a non-reductive phenomenon.

The brain forms conscious experience based on an interaction of its sensory input and memory information through the medium of neural networks and their information processing activity, and a part of the conscious experience that is generated includes self awareness and self identity. Self/self awareness is a mental construct based on the brains memory function: autobiographical Memory

Okay, we can all agree on this more or less, but that's not the whole story. Conscious experience is not some obvious reducible property like volume, structure of a water molecule, smile, etc. Conscious experience does not fit in the "set" of elementary components of the universe. To borrow another math term, conscious experience is not in the "space" of particles. No matter how many particles you add together and no matter what configuration they are in their properties should not form what we know as conscious experience.

Give me any example except for, of course, a human brain, and maybe even some other animal brains, and I will show you that any property it has can be made by scaling their individual properties accordingly.

There is one way that consciousness can be reducible and that is if we assume particles have very basic experiences of very basic "bits" of reality. Maybe panpsychism is a possibility.

 

[ryan]

Can you please rephrase this question?

You dont know that.

What exactly don't I know?

Anything about how subjective experience works. Noone does.

Why are you bringing this up now?

What? Have you already forgot? I try to explain why you cant know what you claim in your post #393.
It was you that required it!

Experience isn't a typical property like every other property known. It is not reducible unless you believe in panpsychism (The doctrine or belief that everything material, however small, has an element of individual consciousness (from Oxford Dictionary)).

What could possibly be a third option?

 

[DBT]

To experience and be experienced? The latter implies an experiencer of the brain, but there is no such thing. The brain has the ability to form experience (consciousness), and that is all that can be said.



The brain forms conscious experience based on an interaction of its sensory input and memory information through the medium of neural networks and their information processing activity, and a part of the conscious experience that is generated includes self awareness and self identity. Self/self awareness is a mental construct based on the brains memory function: autobiographical Memory

Okay, we can all agree on this more or less, but that's not the whole story. Conscious experience is not some obvious reducible property like volume, structure of a water molecule, smile, etc. Conscious experience does not fit in the "set" of elementary components of the universe. To borrow another math term, conscious experience is not in the "space" of particles. No matter how many particles you add together and no matter what configuration they are in their properties should not form what we know as conscious experience.

Give me any example except for, of course, a human brain, and maybe even some other animal brains, and I will show you that any property it has can be made by scaling their individual properties accordingly.

There is one way that consciousness can be reducible and that is if we assume particles have very basic experiences of very basic "bits" of reality. Maybe panpsychism is a possibility.

Why even use the word 'reducible?' If consciousness is a property of a certain form of neural activity, it is a property of that neural activity. There is no need to reduce it any further. In fact you can't. How can you? As a property of a certain form of neural activity, an instance of consciousness does not exist without that specific form of neural activity, the very conditions that generate this specific instance of consciousness.

 

[ryan]

Just so there's no ambiguity, what I'm saying that doesn't exist are unicorns, and what I'm saying that does exist are thoughts of unicorns. All thought is an abstraction.

What would you say is the difference between an abstraction and a physical object?

An abstraction is a mental consequence of a physical functioning brain. An abstraction is a subset of non-physical objects.

How would an abstract thought interact with the physical brain?

Don't confuse an abstract object (which is opposed to concrete objects) with an abstraction (which is spatio-temporal)--almost, but let's let that go for a bit. A leads to B leads to C leads to D. The brain leads to brain function leads to consciousness leads to abstract ideas. I do not deny a physical basis for consciousness, nor do I deny a physical basis for abstract ideas. What's important is that we do not confuse the result with the cause. It's linguistically unsound to refer to an idea as a physical object simply because there's a physical basis for it's existence. A cake is a physical object, and no cake there would be if not for it's ingredients, but just as a car is more than the sum of it's parts, so too is a cake more than the sum of it's ingredients. How is a car more than the sum of it's parts? It's also an assemblage of those parts. Now, what's the difference between a cake and an idea? For one, a cake is not a mental object whereas an idea is. Why is that important if there is a physical basis for both? Language. We ought not corrupt the actual linguistic meaning of words. We are learning things about the mind, but such things do not alter how words are collectively used by fluent speakers of a language.

But just because C results from B does not mean it's abstract. A randomly obvious example is dropping your phone; your phone falls then breaks. Both occurrences are concrete.

A physicalist would just say that the thought is a resulting concrete function from a preceding concrete function in the brain.

The question I should have asked is: can an abstract thought affect the brain physically? The answer "yes", in my opinion, would not be ridiculous, but you might have to change the category that a thought falls into.

 

[ryan]

Okay, we can all agree on this more or less, but that's not the whole story. Conscious experience is not some obvious reducible property like volume, structure of a water molecule, smile, etc. Conscious experience does not fit in the "set" of elementary components of the universe. To borrow another math term, conscious experience is not in the "space" of particles. No matter how many particles you add together and no matter what configuration they are in their properties should not form what we know as conscious experience.

Give me any example except for, of course, a human brain, and maybe even some other animal brains, and I will show you that any property it has can be made by scaling their individual properties accordingly.

There is one way that consciousness can be reducible and that is if we assume particles have very basic experiences of very basic "bits" of reality. Maybe panpsychism is a possibility.

Why even use the word 'reducible?' If consciousness is a property of a certain form of neural activity, it is a property of that neural activity. There is no need to reduce it any further. In fact you can't. How can you? As a property of a certain form of neural activity, an instance of consciousness does not exist without that specific form of neural activity, the very conditions that generate this specific instance of consciousness.

My whole conundrum is that the consciousness seems irreducible. That is not logically sound. Every other property of every other kind of object known does not have such "alien" properties. Sure we give labels to nonmental objects like "the car is drivable", but everything that we can say about them is just an accumulation of "elementary" properties. Experience is not something elementary; where does it come from!?

 

[Juma]

Why even use the word 'reducible?' If consciousness is a property of a certain form of neural activity, it is a property of that neural activity. There is no need to reduce it any further. In fact you can't. How can you? As a property of a certain form of neural activity, an instance of consciousness does not exist without that specific form of neural activity, the very conditions that generate this specific instance of consciousness.

My whole conundrum is that the consciousness seems irreducible. That is not logically sound. Every other property of every other kind of object known does not have such "alien" properties. Sure we give labels to nonmental objects like "the car is drivable", but everything that we can say about them is just an accumulation of "elementary" properties. Experience is not something elementary; where does it come from!?

Probably has something to do with time.

 

[ryan]

My whole conundrum is that the consciousness seems irreducible. That is not logically sound. Every other property of every other kind of object known does not have such "alien" properties. Sure we give labels to nonmental objects like "the car is drivable", but everything that we can say about them is just an accumulation of "elementary" properties. Experience is not something elementary; where does it come from!?

Probably has something to do with time.

Can you elaborate on this?

 

[DBT]

Why even use the word 'reducible?' If consciousness is a property of a certain form of neural activity, it is a property of that neural activity. There is no need to reduce it any further. In fact you can't. How can you? As a property of a certain form of neural activity, an instance of consciousness does not exist without that specific form of neural activity, the very conditions that generate this specific instance of consciousness.

My whole conundrum is that the consciousness seems irreducible. That is not logically sound. Every other property of every other kind of object known does not have such "alien" properties. Sure we give labels to nonmental objects like "the car is drivable", but everything that we can say about them is just an accumulation of "elementary" properties. Experience is not something elementary; where does it come from!?

Irreducible? Evidence shows us that consciousness is related to neural activity and nothing else. As consciousness is not a single thing, but a collection of features, sight, hearing, smell, touch, thoughts, feelings, etc, consciousness itself is reducible to its constituent parts.

Conscious experience may break down to blindness, you are no longer able to perceive your environment, therefore that aspect of consciousness is no longer a feature of your experience. You can apple that to any of the many features of conscious experience. Your sense of smell may fail, your hearing may diminish and you become deaf, your thoughts may become confused with your senses remaining functional, and so on.

Consciousness is not only not continuous and irreducible, but each and every instance of consciousness specific to its neural correlates and tied together through memory function.

As I've said numerous times, remove memory function and consciousness falls into a state of incoherent unrealized experience.

 

[Speakpigeon]

the fact that unicorns don't exist doesn't mean that ideas of unicorns are not things that don't exist.

You meant "The fact that unicorns don't exist doesn't mean that ideas of unicorns are not things that don't exist", right?

The mind is a mental thing, but it's not composed of anything physical or material. There is such a thing as brain function, and a functioning brain is a physical thing that functions, so while the brain and brain function is not a mental thing, they do give rise to what we call (and is) an abstraction--which isn't material but instead immaterial.

What do you mean, "abstraction"?

abstraction a concept formed by extracting common features from specific examples.

EB

 

[ryan]

My whole conundrum is that the consciousness seems irreducible. That is not logically sound. Every other property of every other kind of object known does not have such "alien" properties. Sure we give labels to nonmental objects like "the car is drivable", but everything that we can say about them is just an accumulation of "elementary" properties. Experience is not something elementary; where does it come from!?

Irreducible? Evidence shows us that consciousness is related to neural activity and nothing else. As consciousness is not a single thing, but a collection of features, sight, hearing, smell, touch, thoughts, feelings, etc, consciousness itself is reducible to its constituent parts.

Conscious experience may break down to blindness, you are no longer able to perceive your environment, therefore that aspect of consciousness is no longer a feature of your experience. You can apple that to any of the many features of conscious experience. Your sense of smell may fail, your hearing may diminish and you become deaf, your thoughts may become confused with your senses remaining functional, and so on.

Consciousness is not only not continuous and irreducible, but each and every instance of consciousness specific to its neural correlates and tied together through memory function.

Okay, but where did it come from? This consciousness is not like other properties. Please read my analogy to understand the problem that I see.

Imagine 6 wedges cut from an orange. When you put the wedges together, a spherical property emerges. To analogize this to the brain, imagine 6 wedges of an orange again, when the wedges are put together, a spherical property emerges, but an apple emerges too.

This is exactly similar to the brain. Cells/tissues form the structure and functional properties (analogous to the spherical orange), but then something else above and beyond the usual structural properties emerges, the consciousness. Where did the consciousness/apple come from!?

As I've said numerous times, remove memory function and consciousness falls into a state of incoherent unrealized experience.

Okay, but I don't think anything that I have said conflicts with this.

 

[fast]

Just so there's no ambiguity, what I'm saying that doesn't exist are unicorns, and what I'm saying that does exist are thoughts of unicorns. All thought is an abstraction.


An abstraction is a mental consequence of a physical functioning brain. An abstraction is a subset of non-physical objects.

How would an abstract thought interact with the physical brain?

Don't confuse an abstract object (which is opposed to concrete objects) with an abstraction (which is spatio-temporal)--almost, but let's let that go for a bit. A leads to B leads to C leads to D. The brain leads to brain function leads to consciousness leads to abstract ideas. I do not deny a physical basis for consciousness, nor do I deny a physical basis for abstract ideas. What's important is that we do not confuse the result with the cause. It's linguistically unsound to refer to an idea as a physical object simply because there's a physical basis for it's existence. A cake is a physical object, and no cake there would be if not for it's ingredients, but just as a car is more than the sum of it's parts, so too is a cake more than the sum of it's ingredients. How is a car more than the sum of it's parts? It's also an assemblage of those parts. Now, what's the difference between a cake and an idea? For one, a cake is not a mental object whereas an idea is. Why is that important if there is a physical basis for both? Language. We ought not corrupt the actual linguistic meaning of words. We are learning things about the mind, but such things do not alter how words are collectively used by fluent speakers of a language.

But just because C results from B does not mean it's abstract. A randomly obvious example is dropping your phone; your phone falls then breaks. Both occurrences are concrete.

A physicalist would just say that the thought is a resulting concrete function from a preceding concrete function in the brain.

The question I should have asked is: can an abstract thought affect the brain physically? The answer "yes", in my opinion, would not be ridiculous, but you might have to change the category that a thought falls into.

That's a tough one. The answer is yes, but my saying yes might be misleading. I wouldn't want to tell you that planes fly without protecting you by sharing the fact that people fly planes. Abstract thought can affect the brain physically--or thoughts affect the brain, for short. But, not quite. Language must take partial responsibility for that. It's not quite thought that affects the brain, but it is (in my opinion) linguistically permissible to say so. See, it's the (oh say) long-term physical brain function action that spans the scope of, for instance, someone constantly dwelling on a sad event that would lead to a noticable negative effect on the brain. It might be an extreme example, but it's only the physical elements that have an eventual effect on the brain, so it's the physical aspects and not the partially language based truth and physical aspects that
effect the brain. Yet, we still may say yes.

We say we have a mind (and we do), and having a functioning brain allows for that possibility, but there is no actual place, as it does not take form, and no, a multitude of firing neurons that allow for mental awareness are not themselves the idea of a brown cat pouncing on an invisible snowmobile. The idea is not verbalized to be some actual activity in the brain, produced by it as it may be. It's like acceptably parsing non-existent objects in a non-existent place. I am very much opposed to labeling mental phenomena like ideas, thoughts, and concepts as physical objects. Language allows us to differentiate between different ideas that results from brain activity, but calling all the different mental ideas brain activity seems to undermine the distinction between what gives rise from what arises.

 

[fast]

You meant "The fact that unicorns don't exist doesn't mean that ideas of unicorns are not things that don't exist", right?

The mind is a mental thing, but it's not composed of anything physical or material. There is such a thing as brain function, and a functioning brain is a physical thing that functions, so while the brain and brain function is not a mental thing, they do give rise to what we call (and is) an abstraction--which isn't material but instead immaterial.

What do you mean, "abstraction"?

abstraction a concept formed by extracting common features from specific examples.

EB

It's important not to confuse concepts with what concepts are concepts of. I have a cat, and it purrs, and I have a concept of a cat, but it doesn't purr. We should never lose focus on what we're talking about when distinguishing between concepts which exist independently of what they are concepts of.

Unicorns versus concept of unicorns. The existence or non-existence of the former has no bearing on the existence or non-existence of the latter.

 

[DBT]

Irreducible? Evidence shows us that consciousness is related to neural activity and nothing else. As consciousness is not a single thing, but a collection of features, sight, hearing, smell, touch, thoughts, feelings, etc, consciousness itself is reducible to its constituent parts.

Conscious experience may break down to blindness, you are no longer able to perceive your environment, therefore that aspect of consciousness is no longer a feature of your experience. You can apple that to any of the many features of conscious experience. Your sense of smell may fail, your hearing may diminish and you become deaf, your thoughts may become confused with your senses remaining functional, and so on.

Consciousness is not only not continuous and irreducible, but each and every instance of consciousness specific to its neural correlates and tied together through memory function.

Okay, but where did it come from? This consciousness is not like other properties. Please read my analogy to understand the problem that I see.

Conscious experience, the evidence tells us, is shaped, formed and generated by brain activity, and does not occur though the activity of any other structure. If conscious experience is a property of neural activity, it is a specific property of neural activity, as such it does not have the same attributes and features of other properties, the intricate geometric shapes of snowflakes, or whatever, but it is still a property of certain forms of neural activity.

Conscious experience is probably a unique property, perhaps Earth being the only place in the Galaxy, or even the Universe, where it has evolved from biological processes.

Imagine 6 wedges cut from an orange. When you put the wedges together, a spherical property emerges. To analogize this to the brain, imagine 6 wedges of an orange again, when the wedges are put together, a spherical property emerges, but an apple emerges too.

That doesn't follow. The brain is an extremely complex information processor that has somehow, through millions of years, evolved the ability to form mental representations, constantly updated imagery of the environment along with the associated thoughts and feelings, motor response, etc.
Just because we (the brain itself) does not know how it is done, that this is an unrelated thing that somehow, unexpectedly, appears. It is quite mind boggling, but not because of the reason you gave.

This is exactly similar to the brain. Cells/tissues form the structure and functional properties (analogous to the spherical orange), but then something else above and beyond the usual structural properties emerges, the consciousness. Where did the consciousness/apple come from!?

That statement vastly underestimates the complexity and information processing power of a brain.

Okay, but I don't think anything that I have said conflicts with this.

But it supports the position that consciousness is something the brain is generating as a physical process, and not something that appears unrelated to the brain and its activity, ie, putting slices of orange together, but seeing an apple emerge.

 

[ryan]

Okay, but where did it come from? This consciousness is not like other properties. Please read my analogy to understand the problem that I see.

Conscious experience, the evidence tells us, is shaped, formed and generated by brain activity, and does not occur though the activity of any other structure. If conscious experience is a property of neural activity, it is a specific property of neural activity, as such it does not have the same attributes and features of other properties, the intricate geometric shapes of snowflakes, or whatever, but it is still a property of certain forms of neural activity.

Conscious experience is probably a unique property, perhaps Earth being the only place in the Galaxy, or even the Universe, where it has evolved from biological processes.

Imagine 6 wedges cut from an orange. When you put the wedges together, a spherical property emerges. To analogize this to the brain, imagine 6 wedges of an orange again, when the wedges are put together, a spherical property emerges, but an apple emerges too.

That doesn't follow. The brain is an extremely complex information processor that has somehow, through millions of years, evolved the ability to form mental representations, constantly updated imagery of the environment along with the associated thoughts and feelings, motor response, etc.
Just because we (the brain itself) does not know how it is done, that this is an unrelated thing that somehow, unexpectedly, appears. It is quite mind boggling, but not because of the reason you gave.

This is exactly similar to the brain. Cells/tissues form the structure and functional properties (analogous to the spherical orange), but then something else above and beyond the usual structural properties emerges, the consciousness. Where did the consciousness/apple come from!?

That statement vastly underestimates the complexity and information processing power of a brain.

I still don't think you understand my point. Everything that you have put is necessary and thus compatible with the point I am trying to explain to you.

Physical sciences explain what objects are made of ultimately from a limited number of elementary particles and a limited number of intrinsic/essential properties that each one has. You are trying to explain your point from the top down, and I am trying to explain my point from the bottom up; and who knows, we may even meet somewhere and agree.

Every object ever known, except for consciousness from brains, can be explained by combined effects of these particles and their intrinsic properties. Experience simply cannot be constructed by the known elementary particles and their intrinsic properties alone. To try to explain consciousness using the known elementary particles and their intrinsic properties is like trying to make an iron hammer out of silver. Consciousness simply appears in addition to the nature of matter just like an apple may appear every time wedges of an orange are put together.

It really is that simple while taking into account your explanation on what is necessary for a consciousness to emerge.

Okay, but I don't think anything that I have said conflicts with this.

But it supports the position that consciousness is something the brain is generating as a physical process, and not something that appears unrelated to the brain and its activity, ie, putting slices of orange together, but seeing an apple emerge.

Like I eluded to in this post already, the apple is related to the orange because it emerges only when the wedges come together. Every time the orange wedges come together the apple appears. So, I certainly do not think that the conscious experience is unrelated to brain functions.

 

[WAB]

Yet I'm not sure many poets would want to agree that words are immaterial!

I guess they would argue that words are not immaterial because they are immaterial.
EB

They don't argue, they're poets!

Just noticed this. lol!

Take a look:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=23294

All poets, some of them well-known and widely published, all arguing. I'm in there as Williamb. Same avatar as I use here.

 

[DBT]

Conscious experience, the evidence tells us, is shaped, formed and generated by brain activity, and does not occur though the activity of any other structure. If conscious experience is a property of neural activity, it is a specific property of neural activity, as such it does not have the same attributes and features of other properties, the intricate geometric shapes of snowflakes, or whatever, but it is still a property of certain forms of neural activity.

Conscious experience is probably a unique property, perhaps Earth being the only place in the Galaxy, or even the Universe, where it has evolved from biological processes.

Imagine 6 wedges cut from an orange. When you put the wedges together, a spherical property emerges. To analogize this to the brain, imagine 6 wedges of an orange again, when the wedges are put together, a spherical property emerges, but an apple emerges too.

That doesn't follow. The brain is an extremely complex information processor that has somehow, through millions of years, evolved the ability to form mental representations, constantly updated imagery of the environment along with the associated thoughts and feelings, motor response, etc.
Just because we (the brain itself) does not know how it is done, that this is an unrelated thing that somehow, unexpectedly, appears. It is quite mind boggling, but not because of the reason you gave.

This is exactly similar to the brain. Cells/tissues form the structure and functional properties (analogous to the spherical orange), but then something else above and beyond the usual structural properties emerges, the consciousness. Where did the consciousness/apple come from!?

That statement vastly underestimates the complexity and information processing power of a brain.

I still don't think you understand my point. Everything that you have put is necessary and thus compatible with the point I am trying to explain to you.

Physical sciences explain what objects are made of ultimately from a limited number of elementary particles and a limited number of intrinsic/essential properties that each one has. You are trying to explain your point from the top down, and I am trying to explain my point from the bottom up; and who knows, we may even meet somewhere and agree.

Every object ever known, except for consciousness from brains, can be explained by combined effects of these particles and their intrinsic properties. Experience simply cannot be constructed by the known elementary particles and their intrinsic properties alone. To try to explain consciousness using the known elementary particles and their intrinsic properties is like trying to make an iron hammer out of silver. Consciousness simply appears in addition to the nature of matter just like an apple may appear every time wedges of an orange are put together.

It really is that simple while taking into account your explanation on what is necessary for a consciousness to emerge.

Okay, but I don't think anything that I have said conflicts with this.

But it supports the position that consciousness is something the brain is generating as a physical process, and not something that appears unrelated to the brain and its activity, ie, putting slices of orange together, but seeing an apple emerge.

Like I eluded to in this post already, the apple is related to the orange because it emerges only when the wedges come together. Every time the orange wedges come together the apple appears. So, I certainly do not think that the conscious experience is unrelated to brain functions.

What (to me) you appear to be saying is that consciousness does not appear to be entirely related to brain activity because it's attributes as ' physical property' appears (to you) to be too unusual to be a physical property of neural activity. Consequently, you appear to imply, that because consciousness is a property like no other, consciousness is somehow non material and that in some inexplicable way, transcends the physical processes of the brain. Hence your analogy of an apple emerging from slices of Oranges when being assembled (coming together.)

 

[ryan]

What (to me) you appear to be saying is that consciousness does not appear to be entirely related to brain activity because it's attributes as ' physical property' appears (to you) to be too unusual to be a physical property of neural activity.

Exactly here is the problem. It is not my opinion that the property of consciousness cannot come from individual particles; it's a fact of physics. Particles do not carry the conscious property, as far as we know. All objects known except for the consciousness of the brain have only the elementary particles and their intrinsic/essential properties. When we add masses together, for example, we get more mass. Sometimes we call this heavy, fat, massive, kilograms, grams, force/acceleration, pesada (Spanish) etc. So there are all kinds of names for one property. But "consciousness" is not a name for an elementary property.

Consequently, you appear to imply, that because consciousness is a property like no other, consciousness is somehow non material and that in some inexplicable way, transcends the physical processes of the brain. Hence your analogy of an apple emerging from slices of Oranges when being assembled (coming together.)

Depending on the definition used for material, I feel as though the material/immaterial debate is over. The answer to the OP, I strongly feel because of recent realizations, is "yes"; words are both immaterial and material. The realization came when we defined a word to be exterior to the brain that is a unique source causing the visual experience of what we perceive as a word. Immaterial then becomes useful to outline letters so that it can be a word as we recognize it. So it is the immaterial space between color, or vice-versa, that enables words to be words. Of course this is not true if words are, say, the color red with the color blue between the letters. And this is true if we use the definition of material to be matter (the substance with rest mass that takes up space), or energy, then words do have material and immaterial and so does almost everything else.

So, if you can agree that the brain is material and immaterial, then it is not a far stretch to agree with my apple analogy.

 

[DBT]

So, if you can agree that the brain is material and immaterial, then it is not a far stretch to agree with my apple analogy.

I have no idea what ''immaterial'' means in terms of what is clearly a material process, an activity that is effected by chemical and structural changes. I have no idea what a non material aspect of a physical structure, the brain, may entail, or how such a non material element could interact with a physical structure, or why this even needed as an explanation for consciousness because we do not know how a brain forms its own conscious experience. It seems to me to be better to put the how of it in the category of 'we do not know yet'' and not accept 'solutions' that are not testable or falsifiable.