The world is not made of tiny things according to physics, so why does metaphysics claim it is?

[PyramidHead]

I don't claim to have any arguments in support of this assertion, but I'm partway through reading a thoroughly interesting and provocative book that argues this very point, called Every Thing Must Go (Amazon link). In it, the authors suggest several things that have upturned my worldview a little bit, among them being the fact that philosophical theories about reality are almost without exception "domesticated" bastardizations of what science actually tells about the world. Among these is the commonsense reductionism of wholes into parts, and parts into smaller parts, implying that reality is stratified into "levels" and that there are things that are true at one level and not another.

The authors reject all of this as unfounded and outdated, claiming there is no such thing as a "fundamental" reality that rests at a deeper base than "conventional" reality, and that metaphysics should be the project of unifying the sciences while giving primacy to the findings of physics. As it stands, most theories of metaphysics even today are situated at the level of undergraduate introductory chemistry, and since they operate under those naive assumptions, their conclusions are not likely to be true. Worse yet, there is the problem of attempting to "do" metaphysics through contemplation alone, trusting that one's intuition about things like quantity, time, separation, causation, and order are more reliable than the results of exquisitely designed experiments vetted by the international community of researchers that comprise the institution of science.

I am ignorant of physics, but my reading as of late has given me the impression that the quantum revolution was not simply a matter of showing that the little balls we call atoms are actually made of smaller balls that orbit one another, and those are made of smaller ones that have weird properties. Rather, quantum mechanics implies that there never were any little balls to begin with, never anything orbiting anything else, and that these weird properties are perfectly explicable if you discard the antiquated picture of reality as a container filled with stuff. There are not actually objects nested into other objects, but events and processes described by mathematical relationships (though what is undergoing those processes is not yet clear to me, if it is not some kind of object). This puts the lie to the kind of micro-determinism that seems to still be prevalent in popular philosophy, and even academic philosophy if the authors are accurate in their criticisms of it (the book is over 10 years old, however).

So, while it's not a badge of honor for me by any means, I acknowledge that my basic idea of physics was that it described the behavior of tiny particles and how they operate, and that all of space and time was the result of these lower-level interactions, some of which are inherently unpredictable--but those are just special cases that don't really apply at large scales. Thus far, I'm entertaining the hypothesis that this view, while familiar and superficially understandable, is deeply, literally false. In trying to picture the perennial problems of metaphysics, it seems that we are bound to regress into comprehensible but inaccurate toy models, and to draw conclusions that are satisfying instead of true.

I look forward to delving into this more, but anybody with some knowledge of physics can chime in to support or deny the main theses of this book. I have just finished reading Carlo Rovelli's most recent book The Order of Time, and already I sense that the discussions we sometimes have on this forum (about the infinity of the past, for example) are purely exercises in semantics predicated on huge misunderstandings about physics.

 

[Juma]

Eh... the world DO behave different on different scales.
So that isnt wrong.
Objects are creations of our human minds so, yes. The world does not consist of objects.

 

[untermensche]

Physicists don't know what makes up matter.

They only know how it behaves.

They have equations.

Not an understanding of what things ultimately are.

 

[steve_bank]

Looks like yet another book weaving science and speculation. Perhaps anti science. There is the New Age Mysticism stuff like Deepak Chopra. Back in the 70s The Dancing Wu Li Masters and The Tao Of Physics were popular books.

What I always object o is referring to philosophy as some organized operative function with a point to it. Philosophy is a catch all phrase. Specific philosophies which never all agree come from individuals. Therein lies the rub. Science goers on regardless of how you think about it. Philosophies differ on views. Science when tested becomes indisputable within the boundaries of the models. There is no way to unambiguously prove or disprove a philosophy.

It has been on the science forum. Those who claim science is philosophy, that they do philosophy, therefore they do science.

Science is mathematical models. IMO there is no philosophy to it. Philosophy can weigh in with ethics, morality, and meaning. That is what philosophy does.

 

[PyramidHead]

Eh... the world DO behave different on different scales.
So that isnt wrong.
Objects are creations of our human minds so, yes. The world does not consist of objects.

Why do you acknowledge that objects are creations of the human mind, but insist that "different scales" are actually present out there in reality? Isn't it a lot easier to imagine that humans evolved to only pay attention to the sliver of reality that makes its way past our sense organs, and thus we have to impose an artificial system of levels upon it to make sense of its behavior?

- - - Updated - - -

Looks like yet another book weaving science and speculation. Perhaps anti science. There is the New Age Mysticism stuff like Deepak Chopra. Back in the 70s The Dancing Wu Li Masters and The Tao Of Physics were popular books.

What I always object o is referring to philosophy as some organized operative function with a point to it. Philosophy is a catch all phrase. Specific philosophies which never all agree come from individuals. Therein lies the rub. Science goers on regardless of how you think about it. Philosophies differ on views. Science when tested becomes indisputable within the boundaries of the models. There is no way to unambiguously prove or disprove a philosophy.

It has been on the science forum. Those who claim science is philosophy, that they do philosophy, therefore they do science.

Science is mathematical models. IMO there is no philosophy to it. Philosophy can weigh in with ethics, morality, and meaning. That is what philosophy does.

Well, I can tell you that the book is not anti-science. As a matter of fact, the first chapter establishes exactly why "scientism" should not be a dirty word. The whole enterprise of the authors is to eliminate from the metaphysical lexicon anything that doesn't comport with the most recent, vetted, peer-reviewed research in physics.

 

[ruby sparks]

There are not actually objects nested into other objects, but events and processes described by mathematical relationships (though what is undergoing those processes is not yet clear to me, if it is not some kind of object).

(my bold)

One option, I believe, is energy. Another is information.

Personally, I find it hard to get my head around the idea, for example, that what we call matter might be a secondary/tertiary/whatever manifestation of information (as in saying that certain information 'has'/contains/manifests as/whatever a CD rather than that the CD has or contains information) but there you go. That might only say something about my limitations.

 

[PyramidHead]

There are not actually objects nested into other objects, but events and processes described by mathematical relationships (though what is undergoing those processes is not yet clear to me, if it is not some kind of object).

(my bold)

One option, I believe, is energy. Another is information.

Personally, I find it hard to get my head around the idea, for example, that what we call matter might be a secondary/tertiary/whatever manifestation of information (as in saying that certain information 'has'/contains/manifests as/whatever a CD rather than that the CD has or contains information) but there you go. That might only say something about my limitations.

A lot of it comes down to words. If we're being literal, energy isn't a "stuff", it's an abstraction of what needs to be present for a process to move forward. Information is a little more complex and I don't know the latest thinking on that.

The book is getting very technical for me, not in terms of the science but the philosophical arguments and counters are very dense. I'm still gleaning what I can.

One nugget I found interesting was this idea that humans naturally think about reality in terms of what the authors call the "container" metaphor. So many of our expressions, in almost all languages, revolve around being in something, in a fight, in the conversation, out of the game, going into labor, coming out of a depression, and those aren't even physical objects per se. For some reason, we want to picture the world as made up of holders and their contents, both literally and figuratively. To your point about limitations, it's so ingrained in our thinking that we have to be reminded of it in a book to notice that's it's actually kind of odd. There's no obvious reason why being enclosed inside something else should be such a dominant metaphor in our language and imagination, apart from just evolving that way to better understand our surroundings (at our scale, which included plenty of things-within-things to pay attention to). Much of metaphysics, the authors argue, is hindered by applying that ancient mental schema to the whole universe as if it were a fundamental property, and not just a habit our ancestors picked up to help them visualize stashing their food inside a hollow tree.

 

[phands]

Intersting article related to this on Aeon just this week...

https://aeon.co/essays/atomism-is-basic-emergence-explains-complexity-in-the-universe

Out of nowhere

Does everything in the world boil down to basic units – or can emergence explain how distinctive new things arise?


If you construct a Lego model of the University of London’s Senate House – the building that inspired the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four – the Lego blocks themselves remain unchanged. Take apart the structure, reassemble the blocks in the shape of the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Eiffel Tower, and the shape, weight and colour of the blocks stay the same.


This approach, applied to the world at large, is known as atomism. It holds that everything in nature is made up of tiny, immutable parts. What we perceive as change and flux are just cogs turning in the machine of the Universe – a huge but ultimately comprehensible mechanism that is governed by universal laws and composed of smaller units. Trying to identify these units has been the focus of science and technology for centuries. Lab experiments pick out the constituents of systems and processes; factories assemble goods from parts composed of even smaller parts; and the Standard Model tells us about the fundamental entities of modern physics.


But when phenomena don’t conform to this compositional model, we find them hard to understand. Take something as simple as a smiling baby: it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to explain a baby’s beaming smile by looking at the behaviour of the constituent atoms of the child in question, let alone in terms of its subatomic particles such as gluons, neutrinos and electrons. It would be better to resort to developmental psychology, or even a narrative account (‘The father smiled at the baby, and the baby smiled back’). Perhaps a kind of fundamental transformation has occurred, producing some new feature or object that can’t be reduced to its parts.


The notion of emergence can help us to see what’s going on here.

Read on at the above link.

 

[ruby sparks]

There are not actually objects nested into other objects, but events and processes described by mathematical relationships (though what is undergoing those processes is not yet clear to me, if it is not some kind of object).

(my bold)

One option, I believe, is energy. Another is information.

Personally, I find it hard to get my head around the idea, for example, that what we call matter might be a secondary/tertiary/whatever manifestation of information (as in saying that certain information 'has'/contains/manifests as/whatever a CD rather than that the CD has or contains information) but there you go. That might only say something about my limitations.

A lot of it comes down to words. If we're being literal, energy isn't a "stuff", it's an abstraction of what needs to be present for a process to move forward. Information is a little more complex and I don't know the latest thinking on that.

The book is getting very technical for me, not in terms of the science but the philosophical arguments and counters are very dense. I'm still gleaning what I can.

One nugget I found interesting was this idea that humans naturally think about reality in terms of what the authors call the "container" metaphor. So many of our expressions, in almost all languages, revolve around being in something, in a fight, in the conversation, out of the game, going into labor, coming out of a depression, and those aren't even physical objects per se. For some reason, we want to picture the world as made up of holders and their contents, both literally and figuratively. To your point about limitations, it's so ingrained in our thinking that we have to be reminded of it in a book to notice that's it's actually kind of odd. There's no obvious reason why being enclosed inside something else should be such a dominant metaphor in our language and imagination, apart from just evolving that way to better understand our surroundings (at our scale, which included plenty of things-within-things to pay attention to). Much of metaphysics, the authors argue, is hindered by applying that ancient mental schema to the whole universe as if it were a fundamental property, and not just a habit our ancestors picked up to help them visualize stashing their food inside a hollow tree.

Yes to all of that.

Certain ways of conceiving (such as your example) do seem to predominate, and as you imply, sometimes the fun of realising the limitations of that is an enjoyable end in itself. Then at other times it induces headaches.

One 'fundamentalesque paradigm' (probably not the best term but whatever) that I have read of is that we (and perhaps every living or perceiving thing) tend to/have to conceive (and perceive) of everything in terms of contrasts (some have suggested metaphors but I think that's going too far) of which 'inside' (your example) and 'outside' might only be one instance. Could we conceive of something without comparing it to something else? I'm sure that similarities also play a role, but my feeling is that it might be secondary.

 

[Juma]

Intersting article related to this on Aeon just this week...

https://aeon.co/essays/atomism-is-basic-emergence-explains-complexity-in-the-universe

Out of nowhere

Does everything in the world boil down to basic units – or can emergence explain how distinctive new things arise?


If you construct a Lego model of the University of London’s Senate House – the building that inspired the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four – the Lego blocks themselves remain unchanged. Take apart the structure, reassemble the blocks in the shape of the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Eiffel Tower, and the shape, weight and colour of the blocks stay the same.


This approach, applied to the world at large, is known as atomism. It holds that everything in nature is made up of tiny, immutable parts. What we perceive as change and flux are just cogs turning in the machine of the Universe – a huge but ultimately comprehensible mechanism that is governed by universal laws and composed of smaller units. Trying to identify these units has been the focus of science and technology for centuries. Lab experiments pick out the constituents of systems and processes; factories assemble goods from parts composed of even smaller parts; and the Standard Model tells us about the fundamental entities of modern physics.


But when phenomena don’t conform to this compositional model, we find them hard to understand. Take something as simple as a smiling baby: it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to explain a baby’s beaming smile by looking at the behaviour of the constituent atoms of the child in question, let alone in terms of its subatomic particles such as gluons, neutrinos and electrons. It would be better to resort to developmental psychology, or even a narrative account (‘The father smiled at the baby, and the baby smiled back’). Perhaps a kind of fundamental transformation has occurred, producing some new feature or object that can’t be reduced to its parts.


The notion of emergence can help us to see what’s going on here.

Read on at the above link.

Nah. Sounds a batshit crazy person that cannot differ between descriptional levels and actual

 

[steve_bank]

Machine is not a bad metaphor for universe. The problem is when metaphors become taken for reality.

All emotions boil down to brain chemistry and those pesky atoms amd molcules.

 

[fast]

Eh... the world DO behave different on different scales.
So that isnt wrong.
Objects are creations of our human minds so, yes. The world does not consist of objects.

When you say that objects are creations of our human minds, I find that immediately objectionable, so much so that I instinctively think of what the mistake is you're making, but I've also approached it from a different angle, to try and determine what truth it is you do indeed see and dismiss your articulation of what you say as simply being in error.

Through it all, I still can't quite latch on to what would drive the persistency of such a notion. Wouldn't cucumbers on a vine still be cucumbers on a vine? Why not? They wouldn't be CALLED cumcumbers without minds. They wouldn't be OBSERVED without minds.. Does that somehow factor into this? There are no PERCEPTIONS of cucumbers without minds.

I can't help but wonder what it is you would be saying if you weren't saying it the way you are. Does the word "object" bring something to the table here?

The world does not consist of objects, you say--that too! Oh my! Is there some peculiar interpretation? Are there any objects in the world? To me, it's beyond any realistic sense to think not, so I can't help but think there's an underlying driving source for such a statement.

I've tried to be careful with labels, but the more I immerse myself in the intracies of what drives odd positions, the more I think people deviate from naive realism, the more convoluted things become.

Why dispute it? Newfound information that science brings us should be interpreted, not always in denial fashion but just in a different light. The moment we deny the existence of Vulcan is not a moment to reject Newtonian physics. It's better to become aware of the scope to which statements apply.

Of course there are objects independent of the human mind. Science doesn't teach us otherswise. If interpretations of scientific findings were as rigorous as scientific experiments, views of oddity would be less (much less) prevalent.

 

[DBT]

The brain does not create external objects, it creates mental, subjective representations of objects and what they are doing, an internal 4D map of the external world, including one's physical and mental self. There is something like ten different interpretation of QM, some probabilistic, some deterministic....but what the ultimate nature of the physical world is, nobody knows.

 

[Juma]

Eh... the world DO behave different on different scales.
So that isnt wrong.
Objects are creations of our human minds so, yes. The world does not consist of objects.

When you say that objects are creations of our human minds, I find that immediately objectionable, so much so that I instinctively think of what the mistake is you're making, but I've also approached it from a different angle, to try and determine what truth it is you do indeed see and dismiss your articulation of what you say as simply being in error.

Through it all, I still can't quite latch on to what would drive the persistency of such a notion. Wouldn't cucumbers on a vine still be cucumbers on a vine? Why not? They wouldn't be CALLED cumcumbers without minds. They wouldn't be OBSERVED without minds.. Does that somehow factor into this? There are no PERCEPTIONS of cucumbers without minds.

I can't help but wonder what it is you would be saying if you weren't saying it the way you are. Does the word "object" bring something to the table here?

The world does not consist of objects, you say--that too! Oh my! Is there some peculiar interpretation? Are there any objects in the world? To me, it's beyond any realistic sense to think not, so I can't help but think there's an underlying driving source for such a statement.

I've tried to be careful with labels, but the more I immerse myself in the intracies of what drives odd positions, the more I think people deviate from naive realism, the more convoluted things become.

Why dispute it? Newfound information that science brings us should be interpreted, not always in denial fashion but just in a different light. The moment we deny the existence of Vulcan is not a moment to reject Newtonian physics. It's better to become aware of the scope to which statements apply.

Of course there are objects independent of the human mind. Science doesn't teach us otherswise. If interpretations of scientific findings were as rigorous as scientific experiments, views of oddity would be less (much less) prevalent.

I do not deny that is something ”out there”. There must be something ”out there” to ensure the consitency of observation etc. What I say is that there are no objects out there. Objects are created by the mind to enable us to discerne important features of what we experience. Its a feature of our cogntion. They fit mostly very well to our experience so we doesnt realize what they are. The addition of haystacks are a simplistic example where they fail us.

Or think of when a cliff happens to be formed like throne so you can sit in/on it and thus becomes a chair...

Think of how you would like to design a robot that can handle the world around it: it needs to recognize distinct features, how will you represrnt the features?

 

[Jobar]

Atoms, as Democritus posited them, were the tiniest possible constituents of matter. They were eternal, unchanging- structureless.

Atoms as we understand them are not any of those things. And at least so far, we haven't managed to isolate anything that would qualify as a 'tiniest constituent'- although string theory posits strings as the smallest possible unit of matter, we're a long way from being able to generate the energies that would allow us to detect them. And it may turn out that strings are no more than patterns of energy- not matter at all, as our understanding would have it.

It's possible that reality is fractal in nature- no matter how you manage to magnify its structure, there will always be further structure beneath what we see.

 

[steve_bank]

Eh... the world DO behave different on different scales.
So that isnt wrong.
Objects are creations of our human minds so, yes. The world does not consist of objects.

When you say that objects are creations of our human minds, I find that immediately objectionable, so much so that I instinctively think of what the mistake is you're making, but I've also approached it from a different angle, to try and determine what truth it is you do indeed see and dismiss your articulation of what you say as simply being in error.

Through it all, I still can't quite latch on to what would drive the persistency of such a notion. Wouldn't cucumbers on a vine still be cucumbers on a vine? Why not? They wouldn't be CALLED cumcumbers without minds. They wouldn't be OBSERVED without minds.. Does that somehow factor into this? There are no PERCEPTIONS of cucumbers without minds.

I can't help but wonder what it is you would be saying if you weren't saying it the way you are. Does the word "object" bring something to the table here?

The world does not consist of objects, you say--that too! Oh my! Is there some peculiar interpretation? Are there any objects in the world? To me, it's beyond any realistic sense to think not, so I can't help but think there's an underlying driving source for such a statement.

I've tried to be careful with labels, but the more I immerse myself in the intracies of what drives odd positions, the more I think people deviate from naive realism, the more convoluted things become.

Why dispute it? Newfound information that science brings us should be interpreted, not always in denial fashion but just in a different light. The moment we deny the existence of Vulcan is not a moment to reject Newtonian physics. It's better to become aware of the scope to which statements apply.

Of course there are objects independent of the human mind. Science doesn't teach us otherswise. If interpretations of scientific findings were as rigorous as scientific experiments, views of oddity would be less (much less) prevalent.

I do not deny that is something ”out there”. There must be something ”out there” to ensure the consitency of observation etc. What I say is that there are no objects out there. Objects are created by the mind to enable us to discerne important features of what we experience. Its a feature of our cogntion. They fit mostly very well to our experience so we doesnt realize what they are. The addition of haystacks are a simplistic example where they fail us.

Or think of when a cliff happens to be formed like throne so you can sit in/on it and thus becomes a chair...

Think of how you would like to design a robot that can handle the world around it: it needs to recognize distinct features, how will you represrnt the features?

Something out there that ensures consistency? Sounds like some form of Pantheism or belief in a higher power.

The universe exists. Our brains create symbols and concepts to deal with observation. It is as simple as that.

You are talking what I lump as New Age Mysticism. A mix of science and the mystical. Over here Deepak Chopra is a leading figure.

It is also a Christian creationist argument. There must be something that bring order to the universe, and that is god.

Goedel wrote that it might not be possible to design a human analog. He also said it might be possible to grow a human analog much as a child grows. Build a sophisticated neural net and send it to school in manner of speaking.

 

[Juma]

I do not deny that is something ”out there”. There must be something ”out there” to ensure the consitency of observation etc. What I say is that there are no objects out there. Objects are created by the mind to enable us to discerne important features of what we experience. Its a feature of our cogntion. They fit mostly very well to our experience so we doesnt realize what they are. The addition of haystacks are a simplistic example where they fail us.

Or think of when a cliff happens to be formed like throne so you can sit in/on it and thus becomes a chair...

Think of how you would like to design a robot that can handle the world around it: it needs to recognize distinct features, how will you represrnt the features?

Something out there that ensures consistency? Sounds like some form of Pantheism or belief in a higher power.

The universe exists. Our brains create symbols and concepts to deal with observation. It is as simple as that.

You are talking what I lump as New Age Mysticism. A mix of science and the mystical. Over here Deepak Chopra is a leading figure.

It is also a Christian creationist argument. There must be something that bring order to the universe, and that is god.

Goedel wrote that it might not be possible to design a human analog. He also said it might be possible to grow a human analog much as a child grows. Build a sophisticated neural net and send it to school in manner of speaking.

what? why would you call this new age? there is no new age here at all. only pure science.

 

[steve_bank]

I do not deny that is something ”out there”. There must be something ”out there” to ensure the consitency of observation etc. What I say is that there are no objects out there. Objects are created by the mind to enable us to discerne important features of what we experience. Its a feature of our cogntion. They fit mostly very well to our experience so we doesnt realize what they are. The addition of haystacks are a simplistic example where they fail us.

Or think of when a cliff happens to be formed like throne so you can sit in/on it and thus becomes a chair...

Think of how you would like to design a robot that can handle the world around it: it needs to recognize distinct features, how will you represrnt the features?

Something out there that ensures consistency? Sounds like some form of Pantheism or belief in a higher power.

The universe exists. Our brains create symbols and concepts to deal with observation. It is as simple as that.

You are talking what I lump as New Age Mysticism. A mix of science and the mystical. Over here Deepak Chopra is a leading figure.

It is also a Christian creationist argument. There must be something that bring order to the universe, and that is god.

Goedel wrote that it might not be possible to design a human analog. He also said it might be possible to grow a human analog much as a child grows. Build a sophisticated neural net and send it to school in manner of speaking.

what? why would you call this new age? there is no new age here at all. only pure science.

Your philosophical musing are not just science, like 'something out there that makes observation consistent'. Nothing inherently wrong with it, making an observation. We all have a non scientific paradigm of the universe in some form, Religious or otherwise.

 

[Juma]

what? why would you call this new age? there is no new age here at all. only pure science.

Your philosophical musing are not just science, like 'something out there that makes observation consistent'. Nothing inherently wrong with it, making an observation. We all have a non scientific paradigm of the universe in some form, Religious or otherwise.

? Nothing religious here. We are making observations of a coherent reality. How could it then be woo to stuipulate such a reality?

 

[fast]

What is an object?

According to Merriam Webster, an object is ,"something material that may be perceived by the senses." That seems to be a straight forward definition of the term. It's inline with traditionally held views. Remember, in its basic form, a definition is an explanation. It's an explanation of how words are used. More specifically in our context, a definition is an explanation of how fluent (not just anybody) speakers of a language (in our case, the English language) collectively (not individually) use (speak, write, or otherwise make use of) words. In most non-philosophical circles, it would generally be accepted to characterize a cup on the table, a plane in the sky, or a planet orbiting a star as an object. But, has science demonstrated otherwise?

Before I delve into that, there's some oddities of language that needs to be addressed. Why? Because they can mislead the unwary. First, a story. A rich car lover set out to acquire one of every kind of car. Never mind my use of "kind;" that's a nightmare to discuss in another decade. He went about his daily tasks to finally complete his acquisition journey, and he put all the cars in a single building. He went on to say something more. He not only claimed to have one of every kind of vehicle in the building, but he also claimed that only cars were in the building. Upon inspection, it was noticed that there were no tables or desks. There were no chairs, no rugs ... not even a light fixture. But, off in the corner were some toy cars.

Was the man correct? Supposing he had amassed one of every kind of car. Let's stipulate that. Does the inclusion of the toy cars have an impact on his other statement? I say, yes, most certainly. A toy car is not a kind of car; it's a kind of toy! But why (after trying so hard to include only cars) did he include toys? Language.

We cannot always rely on the preceding word in a two-worded term as an indication of what follows. An inanimate object is a kind of object, but an imaginary object is not. A heavy object is, but an abstract object is not. Of course, (of course, of course, of course), whether an object is heavy is relative. I get that, but what I want to impress upon you is that if I reach out and touch an object that we deem heavy, I've touched an object (an actual object) just as surely as I had if I had touched a cup on the table. It's an object. An imaginary object is not an object. An abstract object is not an object.

Before I appear to contradict myself, there is yet another road we need to go down. It's my hope that I won't be judged to have committed the etymological fallacy. Instead, I believe taking a stroll through its evolution that things might start coming together. To do that, I now switch from talking about objects but rather the word. It's an even keel word. It was never meant for anyone to think of a mental object as a kind of object. Consider the term, "immaterial." That, after all, is what we described 'objects' of the mind to be. And, many still do. NONE of this takes away from the scientific truths that speak of the physical processes of the brain--all of which are material. The point I'm trying to make is that "object" is a placeholder word for comparitve purposes, so while we may discuss things (be they in fact things at all) we're merely couching the distinctions propped up against the word without actually holding true that the subject matter are in fact objects.

However, evolution of usage rears its head. We have spoken so long and so prolifically about mental objects, it's actually become apart of lexical usage--but (and this is a but of biblical proportions), ambiguity has arisen. It's now true (not false) that mental objects are objects, but in order to appreciate the significance of what I'm saying, it's very important not to think of mental objects as just another kind of object. That's the same underlying confusion so many have with the postulation of abstract objects--as if they are purportedly just another kind of object; they are not.

In outline form, "objects" is not the umbrella under which various terms are a member. Well, at least not until it too took on a broader and more encompassing usage. This can be a tizzy. It becomes less overwhelming when the nastiness of same word ambiguity either uses words of different letters or incorporates numbers. Otherwise, I can say things and very much appear to contradict myself.

One more stab at highlighting the complexity still amongst us. A mental object is not an object. With goggles on, that reads, a mental object2 is not an object1. An object1 is akin to the original definition. Object2 is akin to the term in a broader scope that includes non-objects of the first variety.

When you speak of not denying things "out there," what's out there are objects. The number of, density of, movement of, and cohesive forces of (oh say, clusters of atoms) are the objects themselves. These things we name, but the name is wholly unimportant. What to a human is a cliff will not be called as such by nonhumans, but the arrangement of things out there that fit what we call a cliff is there only if it is; no understanding required. No perception needed. That which is there is there, and if we would call something an object, and if it's there, an object it is--unless we would be mistaken.

Science is wonderful, but language is a minefield. We're prone to say the darnedest things. When you say objects are created by the mind, I deny that's true, but I might agree with every reason for why you say it's true. First, there are no objects in the mind--much like there are no unicorns in the imagination. Of course, going down this road is so bumpy--with neither of us mutually coming to terms with precisely what a mind is.

So many things to say...

Getting it to all come together one letter at a time isn't working out. I just don't have time for the computer.