methylatedghosts
Can't brain. Has dumb.
things *of* things?
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Mind/Body Distinctness
- Thread starter Fluffy
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I agree, Mark, but I would consider it more significant to eliminate the distinction in order to restore logic.
eudaimonia
Fellowship of Reason
If a baseball is said to exhibit the properties of mass, then are there two things present? The baseball and mass? And if the baseball has the property of reflecting light, are there now three things present: the baseball, mass, and reflectiveness? There are all sort of observations we can make about a baseball. We are going to end up with a lot of things!
Aspects of a thing are not additional things. They are true of that singular thing.
And so I personally would not say that consciousness is a thing. Rather, the conscious human individual is a thing. There aren't two things present.
eudaimonia,
Mark
eudaimonia
Fellowship of Reason
If a thing is not a thing, then it is nothing. Is mass nothing, i.e. not there?
An aspect of a rose is a rose by any other name.
eudaimonia
Fellowship of Reason
No... the object that has the properties of mass is there. Mass is not a thing because it is an aspect of a thing, not a thing itself. There aren't two things there, but one -- the mass-laden object. Mass has no independent existence -- it is only a property of a thing. An aspect is, in a sense, "part" of a thing.
If an aspect of a rose is a rose, does one rose suddenly become a bouquet? If we can speak of the beauty of a rose, do we now have two roses instead of one? Should the flower store charge more?
No, an aspect of a rose is something true of a rose as seen from a particular vantagepoint and with a particular mental selectiveness in mind. The beauty of a rose is not a thing, but rather an aspect of a beautiful rose, namely its beauty. It does not have beauty apart from the fact that it is a rose, however.
eudaimonia,
Mark
In my view mass, too, is an object. We can take it and look at it as a conceptual thing, analyse it, define it, apply it and manipulate it. There is no difference in object-hood between that object and the baseball bat object.
Everything is an object. Every thing is a thing.
The flower store charges per flower, not per thing.If an aspect of a rose is a rose, does one rose suddenly become a bouquet? If we can speak of the beauty of a rose, do we now have two roses instead of one? Should the flower store charge more?
No, an aspect of a rose is something true of a rose as seen from a particular vantagepoint and with a particular mental selectiveness in mind. The beauty of a rose is not a thing, but rather an aspect of a beautiful rose, namely its beauty. It does not have beauty apart from the fact that it is a rose, however.
An aspect, a property, a characteristic --all are the world fractured into more things. That's what we humans do, we fracture the world. We take the "world"-thing and make it into "object"-things (as you may well call them), take the "object"-things and fracture them into "aspect"-things ... but they're all things. Together they are the all-thing.
Hela cells/lab pandemic
Panentheist sans dogma
Mainstream scientists insist that the material universe is all that exists...
One of the arguments against materialism , which lies at the heart of the entire mind/body dualism debate ...asks : How the physical cosmos, which is something , came from nothing ? And how consciousness spontaneously emerged from insensate matter ?
Lets play devils advocate and pretend that physicalism is true. This would mean that the mind too, is naught but matter, and therefore at the mercy of naturalistic laws of cause and effect. This in turn would seem to negate free will , which is sheer nonsense IMO.
I can take a break for lunch , or keep writing. I can have a ham sandwich, or opt for a pizza slice. Im certainly free to make these conscious decisions. Theyre not predetermined by some arbitrary arrangement of atoms inside my cranium. Those atoms have no say in the matter. ***
Inside the atom, ostensibly solid substances have a nebulous particle vs. wave duality - which can only be viewed in one state or the other, but never both simultaneously. Interestingly, quantum physics ( along with ancient mysticism IMO ) have revealed that it isnt matter itself which determines this, but rather ones state of mind. This hints at the power / pre-eminence of mind over matter, since somehow , our conscious perceptions about reality actually have the power to shape it ?!???
Ive always felt , intuitively, that quantum physics has opened the door for a rational exploration of supernaturalism/ the paranormal. In this intuition, Im not alone. One of the first modern scientists to see this , was physicist Arthur Stanley Eddington. In his 1928 Thome entitled, The Nature Of The Physical World , he mused that : "
I would argue that the most serious flaw in sciences much favoured materialist paradigm ( which denies that consciousness/ the soul can exist independent of matter ) is that it presupposes an objective reality, independent of conscious perceptions , when no such animal exists.
CHEERS
One of the arguments against materialism , which lies at the heart of the entire mind/body dualism debate ...asks : How the physical cosmos, which is something , came from nothing ? And how consciousness spontaneously emerged from insensate matter ?
Lets play devils advocate and pretend that physicalism is true. This would mean that the mind too, is naught but matter, and therefore at the mercy of naturalistic laws of cause and effect. This in turn would seem to negate free will , which is sheer nonsense IMO.
I can take a break for lunch , or keep writing. I can have a ham sandwich, or opt for a pizza slice. Im certainly free to make these conscious decisions. Theyre not predetermined by some arbitrary arrangement of atoms inside my cranium. Those atoms have no say in the matter. ***
Inside the atom, ostensibly solid substances have a nebulous particle vs. wave duality - which can only be viewed in one state or the other, but never both simultaneously. Interestingly, quantum physics ( along with ancient mysticism IMO ) have revealed that it isnt matter itself which determines this, but rather ones state of mind. This hints at the power / pre-eminence of mind over matter, since somehow , our conscious perceptions about reality actually have the power to shape it ?!???
Ive always felt , intuitively, that quantum physics has opened the door for a rational exploration of supernaturalism/ the paranormal. In this intuition, Im not alone. One of the first modern scientists to see this , was physicist Arthur Stanley Eddington. In his 1928 Thome entitled, The Nature Of The Physical World , he mused that : "
I would argue that the most serious flaw in sciences much favoured materialist paradigm ( which denies that consciousness/ the soul can exist independent of matter ) is that it presupposes an objective reality, independent of conscious perceptions , when no such animal exists.
CHEERS