Proud to be a [Philosophical] Materialist

Love could be explained materialistically. It could be a combination of memories, instincts, urges, needs, etc., all of which can be explained materialistically.

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agrote wrote:

Love could be explained materialistically. It could be a combination of memories, instincts, urges, needs, etc., all of which can be explained materialistically.

I hate you! Twisted Evil

(just kidding) -- I guess hate could be explained materialistically also...

Is there any that can't be explained materialistically?

Hmmm...how about Why does anything exist? Why does material exist in the first place?

Or if thats an easy question to answer materialistically-- can you think of a question that can't be explained materialistically?

***

Actually, this is one area where I willingly suspend my disbelief.

That is: I know it may be possible that my love for my mom or other relatives or other people; I know it may be possible that feeling of love is all chemicals. But I choose to believe in love. Even if its a myth, I'm kinda okay with that.

But I don't know, perhaps I could be persuaded: What would be the value in finding out there is no such thing as love and its all a chemical and we are pretty much like robots just reacting to all these chemicals being released in us?

I mean, I guess someone could say "Well you'd then understand the truth" ...okay, I'll grant you that. But what good would it do any of us to come to find out we're just robots & chemicals or something like that?

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Agrote, would you include the electrical nature of atoms and the ephemeral constitution of sub-atomic activity as material "stuff". I ask because the reductionist position you seem to take, a position that reduces "love" to matter, would justify reducing everything to its sub-atomic nature. And who knows what that can be reduced to? And does it strike you as irrelevant that all that we point to is fundamentally our experience, experience that we reify as things?
It might serve us to remember the saying, "no matter, never mind."

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Just because you know how something works does not make it any less amazing. I know that the stars are 'just' flaming balls of fusion, but I still think they are pretty awe-inspiring.

If love is, in fact, merely a complex array of chemicals, it does not make it any less real. Knowing what happens when you fall in love does not change the feelings you have. Maybe it is possible for the mechanism to be earthly, but the experience to be ethereal.

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I denounce both materialism and mysticism!!! Who's with me? Laughing

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Ray wrote:

I denounce both materialism and mysticism!!! Who's with me?

hmmm...that would make an interesting new thread (you should start it).

After denouncing both materialism and mysticism, would you promote something else instead?

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JLNobody wrote:

Agrote, would you include the electrical nature of atoms and the ephemeral constitution of sub-atomic activity as material "stuff".

I guess so. I suppose I haven't really thought about materialism in general. I've just realised that I take a materialistic stance on the mind-body debate, and that when muslims use the word materialism as an insult, I don't see it that way.

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Two highly informative articles for your education:

http://www.cuttingedge.org/news/n1875c.cfm

http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/news/part1.htm

ANY emotional or spiritual state can be duplicated electronically with the M.M.E.A.
Brain matter . . . is exactly that.

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agrote wrote:

Love could be explained materialistically. It could be a combination of memories, instincts, urges, needs, etc., all of which can be explained materialistically.

Thus, the extension is: Even when we sit here realizing that love and hate and all feeling and all that is just an arrangement of atoms....

Even that very Realization "that we are nothing but atoms" is nothing but us arranging our atoms & molecules in our body in a certain way to realize or think this.

So is it really any kind of meaningful realization at all? Oooo--look, this human arrangement of atoms arranged his brain atoms to trick himself into this realization about atomic reductionist nature of his existence.
Thus, even this "Realization" itself is not really a realization, its just more chemicals in our bodies floating around and mixing. Atoms looking at atoms.

We know nothing. We are simply atoms arranging ourselves to "think" we might know something. Novelty atoms who can do human tricks.

"Hey, look at this arrangement of atoms over here--they call themselves humans and look around and look at themselves--they think they know stuff, and stuff like that, but really all they are is another rubic's cube arrangement of atoms, Version 4.1.2."

Almost points one toward nihilism.

If we accept all the above then, one question might be:

What is the Realizer or the Experiencer of the above?

Are there a couple of special atoms in us that allow us to sort of control our atoms?

What atoms are behind the wheel?

How could simply atoms look at theirself and realize they are atoms?

What is the Realizer? More atoms?

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Extra Medium, that is one of top ten most insightful and well-expressed arguments I've heard on A2K in the last three or four years. Its logic might also apply to determinism. The determinist can't take much credit for his insights, since he was determined to have them. Both materialism and determinism assign humanity to the rank of robots...and, by the way, contradicts its own claim to having a priviledged position from which it can see and describe reality.

BTW, idealism and indeterminism (free will) have their problems as well.

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Thanks JLN! Embarrassed

That means something coming from you.

I was thinking about this thread as I drifted off to sleep last night, and sort of had that flash. I'm sure someone has expressed it before.

On the one hand, the idea that The Realizer or The Experiencer is nothing but another arrangement of atoms looking at atoms, that idea seems elegantly simple and obvious, and has a truth to it.

On the other hand, it seem almost impossible that this is all it is.

I find it almost impossible to believe that the Experiencer or the Realizer of all this is just another atom or group of atoms...

not that I am trying to prove existence of a soul or its equivalent here or anything....that would be a different thread. :wink:

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Does complete understanding necessarily lead us to nihilism? If we can explain the world in purely mechanistic terms, does that mean that there is no such thing as Truth or Justice?

If you do feel this way, then ignorance must be the only way to keep our lives meaningful. Why ask 'how' when it just leads to so much headache? Rolling Eyes

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Quote:

After denouncing both materialism and mysticism, would you promote something else instead?

yes I was thinking about this. I disagree with the general definition of materialism, gaining wealth and stuff. I realize however that in philosophy the term materialism simply means that matter is the only reality. Yet, this also proves to be a problem. Light has both particle and wave-like properties; is light merely matter even though it shows wave properties. I don't have much knowledge about this issue so I'm going to leave this alone. Back to a noumena-phenomena model (reality itself- experience of reality model), can I see my consciousness? I can see matters that enables my consciousness to arise and yet can I simply say that my conscious being is matter? Also, is energy matter?

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extra medium wrote:

Even that very Realization "that we are nothing but atoms" is nothing but us arranging our atoms & molecules in our body in a certain way to realize or think this.

So is it really any kind of meaningful realization at all? Oooo--look, this human arrangement of atoms arranged his brain atoms to trick himself into this realization about atomic reductionist nature of his existence.
Thus, even this "Realization" itself is not really a realization, its just more chemicals in our bodies floating around and mixing. Atoms looking at atoms.

If ideas can be explained materialistically, why does that make them meaningless? My knowledge that I am using a keyboard at this moment in time may just be a brain-state, but so what? If it's a brain-state caused by my using a keyboard at this moment in time, then it is still a meaningful idea. Just because beliefs and ideas can be explained by chemicals and electronic impulses moving around in my brain, that doesn't stop them being real beliefs and ideas. Why can't a realisation just be matter interacting with other matter in a particular way? (i.e. particular neurons firing in response to some physical event outside the brain, percieved by the eyes, blah blah blah).

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agrote wrote:

extra medium wrote:
Even that very Realization "that we are nothing but atoms" is nothing but us arranging our atoms & molecules in our body in a certain way to realize or think this.

So is it really any kind of meaningful realization at all? Oooo--look, this human arrangement of atoms arranged his brain atoms to trick himself into this realization about atomic reductionist nature of his existence.
Thus, even this "Realization" itself is not really a realization, its just more chemicals in our bodies floating around and mixing. Atoms looking at atoms.

If ideas can be explained materialistically, why does that make them meaningless? My knowledge that I am using a keyboard at this moment in time may just be a brain-state, but so what? If it's a brain-state caused by my using a keyboard at this moment in time, then it is still a meaningful idea. Just because beliefs and ideas can be explained by chemicals and electronic impulses moving around in my brain, that doesn't stop them being real beliefs and ideas. Why can't a realisation just be matter interacting with other matter in a particular way? (i.e. particular neurons firing in response to some physical event outside the brain, percieved by the eyes, blah blah blah).

What gives it meaning?

Where does the meaning come from?

It appears to me you're saying all is atoms. Thats it.

Where does the meaning come from?

What atom does the meaning come from?

What atom is that?

Where is that atom?

Rocks are atoms.

You are atoms.

Why are you any different than a rock?

Why should you have any more meaning than a rock? :wink:

It seems to me you are almost the same as a rock in motion, a rock telling itself it is meaningful, with its moving atoms in the atomic structure it calls its brain.

I don't know that you can have it both ways: all is atoms, but some atoms are more "meaningful" than other atoms are? Why would certain atoms have more meaning?

Why should you have any more meaning than a rock? :wink:

Do you have a special atom in you or something? :wink:

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Stop winking at me.

Rocks have no perception, no memory, no consciousness. These are cognitive characteristics, which, as cognitive neuropsychology shows, can be reduced to physical events in the brain. That is my view anyway. Now an idea can perhaps be given meaning by being a brain behviour that is caused by the perception of something in reality. I'm not sayign that an idea can be reduced to a single atom. I'm sayign that an idea can be reduced to the behaviour of billions of atoms - namely a brain-state or a brain behaviour. Neurons firing, and what-not. It's like code. A robot coudl be programmed with a silocon brain that dunctions just like a human brain - he could see a dog, and as a result have an idea of a dog, constituted by electronical impulses caused by his perception of an actual dog.

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agrote wrote:

Stop winking at me.

Rocks have no perception, no memory, no consciousness. These are cognitive characteristics, which, as cognitive neuropsychology shows, can be reduced to physical events in the brain. That is my view anyway. Now an idea can perhaps be given meaning by being a brain behviour that is caused by the perception of something in reality. I'm not sayign that an idea can be reduced to a single atom. I'm sayign that an idea can be reduced to the behaviour of billions of atoms - namely a brain-state or a brain behaviour. Neurons firing, and what-not. It's like code. A robot coudl be programmed with a silocon brain that dunctions just like a human brain - he could see a dog, and as a result have an idea of a dog, constituted by electronical impulses caused by his perception of an actual dog.

The atoms in my brain are arranged in a way that is creating the apparent idea that the arrangement of atoms in your brain are configured in a pattern that appears to resemble a pattern that is fundamentally flawed and missing key molecules that would allow your overall molecular structure to match that of a standard human.

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Ah, so you agree with me? Your idea that I am insane can be explained materialistically...

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agrote wrote:

Ah, so you agree with me? Your idea that I am insane can be explained materialistically...

First I'll need to examine the atoms in my brain under an electron microscope, their inner workings, then I'll do a statistical analysis of the chemicals and the various molecular structures that might be affecting opinion...and I'll almost be able to give you an answer.

But wait: When you say "I"--- this does not compute? Where can I find the atoms to analyze that constitute the "I" you speak of.

What is "I"? Where are those atoms?

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Stop thinking about atoms. Think about brain states and brain behaviours. The brain is made of atoms, so any brain states or behaviours are arrangements or behaviours of atoms. Okay? So shurrup about atoms and lets talk about the brain. Isn't it plausible that the brain is the source of consciousness, and that consciousness can be reduced to brain states and brain behaviours? Couldn't my concept of "I" be a collection of memories and perceptions, etc.? (Such as my memory of the meaning of the word "I", and my perception that there are other people and objects that I can distinguish from this thing (me) that remembers what "I" means.) Isn't it plausible that perception and memory can be explained in terms of brain states and behaviours?

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Proud to be a [Philosophical] Materialist

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