Are words immaterial?

[ryan]

That is based on carbon atoms only needing certain positions to be considered a diamond which is obviously wrong. But I'll go with it if you want.
So, assuming there is no difference other than the arrangements between the black dust and a diamond, the only difference is position. Surely positions are not material.

Then what IS material?

Elementary particles seem sufficient.

Excellent!

Yet, the properties of elementary particles are dependent on relative position, distance, relative movement etc., all things that are not strictly matter.

So perhaps you should say that only matter is material?
EB

Well, if space-time is considered matter, then I guess I should add space-time to the elementary particles as what is matter. But the question of whether or not positions still remain.

 

[ryan]

Elementary particles seem sufficient.

So atoms are imaterial since they are made up of relative positions of particles.

Particles have both positions and the particles, so they are both material and immaterial.

So elementary particles would be sufficient but they are not necessary...

Matter is both sufficient and necessary, yes?
EB

If I do not yet accept that position/relationships are matter, then I do not think that matter sufficiently describes reality.

 

[ryan]

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.

You seem to make the assumption that matter and spacetime are independent things. Yet, I don't see how we ever experience one without the other.

They are not independent, but definitely seem separate.

For all we know, an orange sitting here is merely a property of spacetime. If so, changing the location of the orange is changing spacetime, which explains why the effects will be different. This is what we call "material things". A quantity of matter only come with what you call the "immaterial" properties of position, structure, movement, etc.
EB

The only way I am going to explain what has been bothering me for all of these years is if I use known science. If we assume anything but present scientific knowledge, then we are just postulating in our own domain.

The curvature of space-time and its vacuum energy does not have enough of an effect on the systems to cause such different outcomes.

 

[ryan]

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.

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.

 

[Juma]

So what?

All this discussion is meaningless since you doesnt recognize that central problem that you are misunderstand the usage of the word "immaterial". "Immaterial" is not some well defined scientific term. It is just a vague term used to describe that something is not available to science.

Remember, this is all about position. The same space-time and the same material can cause totally different effects because of their positions.

This is just a repetition of an earlier post I alreade resopnded to.

 

[Juma]

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? .

Yes: Your brains

 

[ryan]

Remember, this is all about position. The same space-time and the same material can cause totally different effects because of their positions.

This is just a repetition of an earlier post I alreade resopnded to.

Well then can you define immaterial since you claim that it doesn't exist?

 

[Juma]

This is just a repetition of an earlier post I alreade resopnded to.

Well then can you define immaterial since you claim that it doesn't exist?

I have already explained the usage and the fact that there is no useful definition. It is a bogus word used to describe things that people didnt know what they where like ghosts, spirits etc.

 

[ryan]

Well then can you define immaterial since you claim that it doesn't exist?

I have already explained the usage and the fact that there is no useful definition. It is a bogus word used to describe things that people didnt know what they where like ghosts, spirits etc.

So then what is a ghost?

 

[Juma]

I have already explained the usage and the fact that there is no useful definition. It is a bogus word used to describe things that people didnt know what they where like ghosts, spirits etc.

So then what is a ghost?

What in "it is a bogus word" do you not understand? IT DOESNT MEAN ANYTHING! It is a word used by ignorants.

 

[Togo]

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? .

Yes: Your brains

Ok, so you're arguing that the reclassification of oranges is a physical change in my brain, or a physical change in your brain, or a physical change on a computer system or written ledger. These are all disparate things, that enjoy no physical connection to the oranges at all.

But the classification does refer to the oranges. So either your explanation is incomplete, or the idea that physical forces and objects have locations is untrue, and you've created a physical force or object that doesn't obey physical laws. I suppose you could have two types of physical forces, one of which is an actual physical force or object that obeys laws, and one of which is a conceptual physical thing that doesn't, but that's just recreating immaterial things within physicality.

I think the basic problem here is that the classification of oranges is not a physical pattern in my brain, it's a concept that instantiated as a physical concept in my brain. Since it has many, many, different instantiations in multiple physically unconnected locations, it seems strange to call the concept physical. You can do it, of course, but all that really serves to do is confuse the idea of what physical is.

 

[Togo]

So then what is a ghost?

What in "it is a bogus word" do you not understand? IT DOESNT MEAN ANYTHING! It is a word used by ignorants.

We can prove empirically that the word 'ghost' carries meaning from person to person. If you're arguing it is literally without meaning, you're wrong on the (scientific) facts.

If you're arguing that the concept is without utility, then that's a little different. I'm not sure how you can argue that concepts that have no direct physical referent are useless though, particularly since they are so very common.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Yet, the properties of elementary particles are dependent on relative position, distance, relative movement etc., all things that are not strictly matter.

So perhaps you should say that only matter is material?
EB

Well, if space-time is considered matter, then I guess I should add space-time to the elementary particles as what is matter. But the question of whether or not positions still remain.

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

 

[Juma]

What in "it is a bogus word" do you not understand? IT DOESNT MEAN ANYTHING! It is a word used by ignorants.

We can prove empirically that the word 'ghost' carries meaning from person to person. If you're arguing it is literally without meaning, you're wrong on the (scientific) facts.

If you're arguing that the concept is without utility, then that's a little different. I'm not sure how you can argue that concepts that have no direct physical referent are useless though, particularly since they are so very common.

The word discussed is "immaterial", not ghost.

Bur you are right: "immaterial" has a meaning but so does "santa claus"

 

[Speakpigeon]

Yes: Your brains

I think the basic problem here is that the classification of oranges is not a physical pattern in my brain, it's a concept that instantiated as a physical concept in my brain. Since it has many, many, different instantiations in multiple physically unconnected locations, it seems strange to call the concept physical. You can do it, of course, but all that really serves to do is confuse the idea of what physical is.

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. To reply to ryan's concern, it seems that we only need to explain how each particular structure has the effects it seems to have in each particular case. If we can do that, it's no longer necessary to appeal to abstract entities, such as classes and concepts (in the realist understanding of them). We can provide one explanation to the sale of two oranges from a set of three as a change in the brains of the seller and buyer and the necessary interaction between them. This explanation relies on the scientific reduction of a particular sale event to a set of particular microscopic events typically involving elementary particles, elementary forces, spacetime and spacetime relations. Nobody can actually perform the necessary calculation in any realistic case except mostly microscopic events and a few very special macroscopic ones, but that's the principle. What remains at the end are a particular configuration with particular effects explained in terms of the generic properties described in the appropriate scientific theory. These generic properties are all regarded as physical: mass, electric charge, other qualities such quark categorisation, and elementary forces resulting from them. What remains generic are the fundamental equations of science, such as for example E = mc². These could be regarded as the fundamental properties of matter. Yet, we don't know that they are. We know the equations and I will suppose that they work fine for now but maybe the actual properties are deeper than that, as I guess is considered in theories such as string theory (and this is made necessary by the fact that relativity and quantum physics don't agree on everything). The upshot is that we are not in a position to make an informed judgement as to the actual, fundamental properties of the material world. What we can do however is to show that low-level material interactions such as are typical in particle physics experiments would explain macroscopic ones, such as for example the fact that a fly can be trapped inside a glass bottle closed by a piece of cork. If this is correct, and applies through and through the material world, then we don't need to view macroscopic phenomena as actual properties of the material world. Instead, we can say that macroscopic phenomena are what the world looks like to us observers who only have a macroscopic brain to work with. If that's true, I fail to see why we would still need to appeal to the notion of concept, in the realist sense, to explain the material world.
EB

 

[Togo]

I think the basic problem here is that the classification of oranges is not a physical pattern in my brain, it's a concept that instantiated as a physical concept in my brain. Since it has many, many, different instantiations in multiple physically unconnected locations, it seems strange to call the concept physical. You can do it, of course, but all that really serves to do is confuse the idea of what physical is.

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

 

[Juma]

I think the basic problem here is that the classification of oranges is not a physical pattern in my brain, it's a concept that instantiated as a physical concept in my brain. Since it has many, many, different instantiations in multiple physically unconnected locations, it seems strange to call the concept physical. You can do it, of course, but all that really serves to do is confuse the idea of what physical is.

The problem here is in the word "immateriel". There is nothing there is nothing that is purely immateriel. There is features that is "material ignorant", that is: they can be representet in various material representations. Concepts is such a feature. A computer can represent concepts and the concepts wont deprend on the brand or the matter the computer is made of. But that is very far from being "immateriel"

 

[Togo]

I think the basic problem here is that the classification of oranges is not a physical pattern in my brain, it's a concept that instantiated as a physical concept in my brain. Since it has many, many, different instantiations in multiple physically unconnected locations, it seems strange to call the concept physical. You can do it, of course, but all that really serves to do is confuse the idea of what physical is.

The problem here is in the word "immateriel". There is nothing there is nothing that is purely immateriel. There is features that is "material ignorant", that is: they can be representet in various material representations. Concepts is such a feature. A computer can represent concepts and the concepts wont deprend on the brand or the matter the computer is made of. But that is very far from being "immateriel"

Isn't that what immaterial has always meant?

I can represent concepts on a computer, I can also represent mount St Helens on a computer. The fact that I can represent something physically doesn't help me distinguish one from the other, and Mount St Helens isn't a physical object because I can represent it as one. So why should we accept the physical representation of concepts as suggesting that they are physical?

 

[Juma]

The problem here is in the word "immateriel". There is nothing there is nothing that is purely immateriel. There is features that is "material ignorant", that is: they can be representet in various material representations. Concepts is such a feature. A computer can represent concepts and the concepts wont deprend on the brand or the matter the computer is made of. But that is very far from being "immateriel"

Isn't that what immaterial has always meant?

I can represent concepts on a computer, I can also represent mount St Helens on a computer. The fact that I can represent something physically doesn't help me distinguish one from the other, and Mount St Helens isn't a physical object because I can represent it as one. So why should we accept the physical representation of concepts as suggesting that they are physical?

You need something physical to represent the concept.

 

[Togo]

You need something physical to represent the concept.

You need something physical to represent Mount St Helens. But it's not that representation that makes Mount St Helens physical, so why apply a different standard to concepts?