Re: Criticism of philosophical materialism (and a comment on someone2)

On May 4, 7:48 am, Mark Nutter <manutte...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 4, 7:16 am, urthogie <urtho...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On May 3, 10:25 pm, "Robert Barstead" <barste...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

"Mark Nutter" <manutte...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1178239474.115450.281060@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On May 3, 9:53 am, "Robert Barstead" <barste...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

If consciousness were material, what "physical traces" of it would you
expect to find?

There is an ambiguity that might affect the answer to your question:
does "material" mean specifically "made of matter" (and thus
possessing mass, location, and other characteristics of matter), or
does it mean material as in part of the material world (i.e. the world
that actually exists outside of our subjective imaginations and
perceptions)? Events and processes are materially real, in the latter
sense, even though they are not made of matter (e.g. "falling" is not
something that has mass--the mass belongs to the thing that falls, and
not to the process of falling itself). Likewise, the number pi is
materially real, even though it does not have any particular location
in the cosmos. It does not take up space, it has no inertia or energy,
yet it is not something that was created by the mind of
mathemeticians. So a thing can be "material" in the philosophical
sense without being material in the sense of being composed of matter.

m

I do not restrict material to mean specifically made of matter, but rather
in the broader sense of part of the material world. It's not clear to me
what the OP means when he uses the term. How about it, Urthogie?

Bob Barstead- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

It's hard to give a concrete definition here, but I'd say the best one
I can think of is "occupying space". I don't know enough about
physics to be sure this definition is good, but would it be fair to
say that this rules out everything studied by physics today?

Time, for example, is materially real, yet does not possess mass or
location, nor take up space.

Time is a whole separate subject... I'm not sure we can assume that
it's real any more than we can assume numbers are real. Also, time is
different from consciousness in that it appears to have an effect on
how things work in space. (example: things going at a certain speed in
a certain direction get farther as more time goes by)


.

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