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Are words immaterial?

Juma said:
ryan said:
First of all, the OP is not asking about souls.
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How do you know? You never thought of checking what definition of "imaterial" it uses.
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By "it" did you mean none?

None specifically typed "word". And none is not responding to people on this thread anyways.

This concern of yours seems very irrelevant and is completely unexpected. I don't even know how you can seriously be concerned about what kind of immaterial was meant, especially when it was specified in the OP.
 
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I was just asking about words, and I don't really have a definition. haven't thought about it much
it seems the user "fast" made some progress but I didn't understand what was being said in his exchanges.
I wouldn't take offense if we talk about souls, heck if there is one then why not two?
 
none said:
I was just asking about words, and I don't really have a definition. haven't thought about it much
it seems the user "fast" made some progress but I didn't understand what was being said in his exchanges.
I wouldn't take offense if we talk about souls, heck if there is one then why not two?
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Why can't a word exist outside of the mind? After all don't we read words from a book?
 
none said:
I was just asking about words, and I don't really have a definition. haven't thought about it much
it seems the user "fast" made some progress but I didn't understand what was being said in his exchanges.
I wouldn't take offense if we talk about souls, heck if there is one then why not two?
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Maybe we could march in a little closer by exposing the answers to the questions we aren't after.

For instance, if we answer the question, "what is a word," have we answered the question, "what do words do?" Aren't we instead interested in knowing what they're made of? Perhaps we want to know where they are, so we can find them and inspect them and see for ourselves if they are things that are made of matter. The provocative notion that there can be something that exists yet not be made of matter just might be the underlying conflict that drives some to deny that something exists. Of course, we aren't denying that words exist. That forces people to explain its location, and when there is no actual location for something, many (and boy don't I mean many) people will declare that it's in the mind--perhaps in the form of electricity and chemicals.

A word that is verbalized is detectable as a sound. A word that is written is detectable as lead, ink, or toner. A word that is computer generated is detectable as pixels. The physical representation of words can be found in many places, but in what form does a word take notwithstanding its detection? We know what they're composed of. They are composed of letters. But, what are they composed of?

Sure, they're apart of our alphabet which is apart of our language, but what elements from the periodic table are included in their being? For this, let's turn to what they do. They denote. They denote meaning. Yes, we use them to denote (or to stand in place of meaning), but what are they?

I think they are more like a class (and more of an abstract nature) than things regarded as being made up of material matter. Awe, and it's this that prompts me to classify them as immaterial (or things that do in fact exist that are not made up of material substance). In the mind? No way. The idea of a pig is in the mind. The concept of a pig is in the mind. A statue of a pig ... In the BBQ parking lot. The idea of a word...in the mind. The concept of a word...in the mind. Written representation of a word...in books, etc.

A word is not an actual thing. It's something, but it's not a thing. Perhaps it's a class.
 
ryan said:
Perspicuo said:
"Forced" or "prefer"?

'P-O-S-T' is objectively, physically different from 'T-O-P-S'. So much, that when you typed those letters in that order on your keyboard, it affected your PC and the TalkFreethought servers in exactly that way, that order. When you attempt to make a call, if you type 8787-1419 instead of 8787-1491, the system connects your call to two different phones. So, verbal elements, from small phonemes to long phrases and sentences, behave, according to the example you suggested, in much the same way as physical systems do.
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Like told everyone else, "tops" has both a material and an immaterial aspect. We know this because the exact same material is causing two different kinds of effects.
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It's easy to quote what I said and pay zero attention to anything in it, creating the illusion that you have answered. All effects have been fully accounted for in empirically tested physical terms. Answer that or you have answered nothing at all.

Your example was that order was substantially different but having no physical effects on the mind of the observer. I have shown that physical order of physical objects creates physical effects in complex physical entities (such as digital and analog phones), therefore showing that order is a physical event with physical effects. The same effect that is attested by neuroscience to happen in the human subject.

No woo required, and by virtue of Ockham's razor, the issue is settled until refuted with a relevant argument by you or anyone else.
 
ryan said:
By "it" did you mean none?
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I meant the OP.

ryan said:
None specifically typed "word".
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Yes. And what do you imply bh that?

ryan said:
This concern of yours seems very irrelevant and is completely unexpected.
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So you think that the concepts used are irrelevant and the concern for that is unexpected? So utterly bizarre...

ryan said:
I don't even know how you can seriously be concerned about what kind of immaterial was meant,
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If you dont care about what is meant by "immaterial" then discussion that concept is utterly futile.

ryan said:
especially when it was specified in the OP.
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No. It was not.
 
Speakpigeon said:
Dictionaries seem to disagree.

Word
1. A sound or a combination of sounds, or its representation in writing or printing, that symbolizes and communicates a meaning and may consist of a single morpheme or of a combination of morphemes.

1. (Linguistics) one of the units of speech or writing that native speakers of a language usually regard as the smallest isolable meaningful element of the language, although linguists would analyse these further into morphemes.

1. a unit of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning, is typically seen as the smallest such unit capable of independent use, is separated from other such units by spaces in writing, and is often distinguished phonologically, as by accent or pause.
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EB
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Have the authors of those dictionaries' definitions never heard of sign languages?

Speakpigeon said:
Bomb#20 said:
how a word is written isn't all there is to a written word -- you can have two completely different written words that are written exactly the same way.
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Oh, so you should have completely different letters that are written exactly the same way, like "a" in "This lady told me in Gabon there's a nasty hairy cat in Cairo called Cain."
Yes?
EB
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Yes and no. Yes, you can have completely different letters that are written exactly the same way. No, those aren't examples of it -- all those letters written "a" are the same letter. Here's an example: the Russian word "MHE" means "me". The first occurrence of the "H" symbol in that sentence is the letter we pronounce "aitch"; the second one is the letter Russians pronounce "en".
 
Perspicuo said:
ryan said:
Like told everyone else, "tops" has both a material and an immaterial aspect. We know this because the exact same material is causing two different kinds of effects.
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It's easy to quote what I said and pay zero attention to anything in it, creating the illusion that you have answered. All effects have been fully accounted for in empirically tested physical terms. Answer that or you have answered nothing at all.

Your example was that order was substantially different but having no physical effects on the mind of the observer. I have shown that physical order of physical objects creates physical effects in complex physical entities (such as digital and analog phones), therefore showing that order is a physical event with physical effects. The same effect that is attested by neuroscience to happen in the human subject.

No woo required, and by virtue of Ockham's razor, the issue is settled until refuted with a relevant argument by you or anyone else.
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Okay, that's fair; I was fired up.

So, I am trying to explain how we take for granted or overlook the effects that immaterial has on material.

Yes there is a predictable cause and effect relationship with all known systems at the macroscopic scale. But these systems can be identical in everyway yet behave differently depending on an immaterial factors. Three immaterial factors that come to mind are the configurations of the components of the matter (notice the term "matter" is independent of the term "configuration"), the direction the system faces as a whole and the angle and position at which it interacts with a different system. These are 3 qualities that are the reason for different effects and different interactions on the material of the systems.
 
ryan said:
Juma said:
I meant the OP.


Yes. And what do you imply bh that?
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I really don't know what the problem is.

I am trying to explain how words, along with any other kind of matter, have immaterial inputs.
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The problem is that you mean something different when you use the word "immaterial" than most people.
 
ryan said:
Perspicuo said:
It's easy to quote what I said and pay zero attention to anything in it, creating the illusion that you have answered. All effects have been fully accounted for in empirically tested physical terms. Answer that or you have answered nothing at all.

Your example was that order was substantially different but having no physical effects on the mind of the observer. I have shown that physical order of physical objects creates physical effects in complex physical entities (such as digital and analog phones), therefore showing that order is a physical event with physical effects. The same effect that is attested by neuroscience to happen in the human subject.

No woo required, and by virtue of Ockham's razor, the issue is settled until refuted with a relevant argument by you or anyone else.
Click to expand...

Okay, that's fair; I was fired up.

So, I am trying to explain how we take for granted or overlook the effects that immaterial has on material.

Yes there is a predictable cause and effect relationship with all known systems at the macroscopic scale. But these systems can be identical in everyway yet behave differently depending on an immaterial factors. Three immaterial factors that come to mind are the configurations of the components of the matter (notice the term "matter" is independent of the term "configuration"), the direction the system faces as a whole and the angle and position at which it interacts with a different system. These are 3 qualities that are the reason for different effects and different interactions on the material of the systems.
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Configuration is physical. Configuration is location on the x-y-z axes of the space-time continuum. Saying it's "immaterial" is a smart way to dodge the fact that it is physical. Both mass and energy are forms of matter and part of the physical world. Physical existence and material existence are interchangeable.
 
Perspicuo said:
ryan said:
Okay, that's fair; I was fired up.

So, I am trying to explain how we take for granted or overlook the effects that immaterial has on material.

Yes there is a predictable cause and effect relationship with all known systems at the macroscopic scale. But these systems can be identical in everyway yet behave differently depending on an immaterial factors. Three immaterial factors that come to mind are the configurations of the components of the matter (notice the term "matter" is independent of the term "configuration"), the direction the system faces as a whole and the angle and position at which it interacts with a different system. These are 3 qualities that are the reason for different effects and different interactions on the material of the systems.
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Configuration is physical. Configuration is location on the x-y-z axes of the space-time continuum. Saying it's "immaterial" is a smart way to dodge the fact that it is physical. Both mass and energy are forms of matter and part of the physical world. Physical existence and material existence are interchangeable.
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When I change a configuration of some oranges, I am not putting distances between them and taking distances away; the distances of space-time were already there. It simply comes down to the fact that we can have two different outcomes using the exact same material in both instances. We don't add anything or take anything away from the input or the system, yet two different effects can take place.

Maybe we can say that the difference is physically described by using measuring instruments between the objects, but space-time does nothing causally and has no input to make the difference. Space-time isn't really doing anything that I can tell in either instance.
 
All jokes aside, metavenience is interesting. Things with overlapping spheres of influence, such as words, beings, and other forms of matter/energy/consciousness, affect one another.

And it's been a tiring few days, so it's time for my consciousness to stop metavening with my body.
 
ryan said:
Maybe we can say that the difference is physically described by using measuring instruments between the objects, but space-time does nothing causally and has no input to make the difference. Space-time isn't really doing anything that I can tell in either instance.
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This is just plain bullshit. You are not making any sense whatsoever. It is obvious that position/distances/structure is an important part of what is called material.

Immaterial is useually used to mean something that is not material in any way. And position is definitely not that usually is part of the immaterial.


It is like this: there is stuff, the real world, the world we experience with our senses. This is called the material world. Then there is some that believe an a altogether different real: the immaterial. The world of thoughts and feelings.

Your usage of the word "immaterial" has nothing to do with that concept.
 
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