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Seraphim
Supreme Hero
Knowledge Reaper
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posted April 29, 2013 12:33 AM |
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I've been looking for an excuse to give artu a bonus shiny as he's rapidly become a productive member of the community, and this seems as good as any. Nice work, artu. One more and you'll finally be free of that pesky post limit!
Did you just break the rules you are supposed to uphold by posting off topic in a thread?
Son, I am disappoint...
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Drakon-Deus 
Undefeatable Hero
Nixonite
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posted April 29, 2013 12:39 AM |
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I agree master Hagen, I am not bound by neither idealism nor materialism.
That's wonderful Drakon, since 2500 years nobody ever thought of that. We all salute you in your revolutionary approach.
And where did I say that I was the first who thought that?
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Horses don't die on a dog's wish.
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 29, 2013 12:41 AM |
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To me, it seems like asking about idealism vs materialism is similar to asking about whether computer programs exist or if they're just electrons moving around (the answer is "both"). While it is true that everything that exists is dependent on matter/energy at a fundamental level, most things are ideas on a conceptual level, and if they are properly formed ideas, it is meaningful and correct to say that they exist. For example, on the physical level, tables don't exist - they're just an arrangement of fundamental fields/particles. Yet we can make abstractions from them.
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Eccentric Opinion
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted April 29, 2013 01:10 AM |
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Edited by artu at 01:18, 29 Apr 2013.
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@Corribus
Thanks for the compliment and QP's. Getting rid of the post limit is really handy.
@Sal:
There is a stop-gap in Era modding in general, don't you think? You use to come up with a mod almost every week. I guess we're running out of ideas. Maybe when Bersy comes up with 2.5 things will liven up again, I know 2.3 to 2.4 did that. Thanks for suggesting the third QP.
@Drakon:
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And where did I say that I was the first who thought that?
I was just being sarcastic. You can't say I belive in God but I don't fall under the idealist category, it's intrinsically impossible.
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To me, it seems like asking about idealism vs materialism is similar to asking about whether computer programs exist or if they're just electrons moving around (the answer is "both"). While it is true that everything that exists is dependent on matter/energy at a fundamental level, most things are ideas on a conceptual level, and if they are properly formed ideas, it is meaningful and correct to say that they exist. For example, on the physical level, tables don't exist - they're just an arrangement of fundamental fields/particles. Yet we can make abstractions from them.
Having abstract ideas or not isn't definitive here. You can have as many abstractions as you please yet if you think your mind (consciousness) is simply the result of interaction between matter, you can still be a materialist. Materialist people can be artists (and many great ones are). Actually that is quite an interesting part of the discussion, back in the university, one of my philosophy lecturers was heavily influenced by Plato (and he could speak Greek, read Ancient Greek to be more precise), he used to say that Aristotle misunderstood Plato and in Plato's philosophy the world of idea's didn't refer to what most people think it did. He said, the ideal chair is not some perfect chair metaphysically existing in the world of ideas, it is the art of carpentry. Ironically, that means Plato is not necessarily an idealist in the traditional sense. (I think he is though, for a lot of different reasons.)
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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Nixonite
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posted April 29, 2013 01:26 AM |
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Whatever. I just don't like labels.
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Horses don't die on a dog's wish.
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 29, 2013 01:28 AM |
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artu:
Right, which is why I identify as a materialist. But there are some materialists who make claims like "only matter exists, so consciousness is an illusion, free will doesn't exist, emotions are lies, nothing has value, etc", and while materialism doesn't actually imply those ideas, an unfortunate number of materialists believe them.
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Eccentric Opinion
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 29, 2013 08:51 AM |
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Having abstract ideas or not isn't definitive here.
For me it is, though. Wheels are not existing. For wheels to come into existence a mind had to see something that would give it the abstract or true idea of a wheel based on its supposed function and what it might do or accomplish. The law is as much an idea as religion, god, or love.
In my opinion, what Plato meant was exactly that. The ideal chair is not the perfect chair, but the ESSENCE of it, or the idea of it's defining characteristics and functions. There is no such thing as the "perfect" chair, because that's not defined (and yet another idea; perfection, I mean). It's more the abstract (or metaphysical) archetype of a chair.
Now take an abstract idea like "freedom". How is that idea in any way matter (or energy). It has no kind of existence except in the minds of people. Or the ideas of additional universes - are they existing? Doubtlessly very vividly in the minds of some people, but what kind of existence is that? Not a material one - not even if the mind was based purely on matter, but as far as I know there are strong indications for quantum processes in the brain.
Another example is art. What is a painting? Materially spoken, it's a piece of canvas with oil colours on it. Period. Looking at it, a human may be able to fathom the idea the artist had and banned onto the canvas. Look at a painting of Dali, for example. Aren't they ideas given existence?
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted April 29, 2013 08:55 AM |
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The question is can an idea exist outside the limitations of the material world. Can you imagine a chair which is impossible to create (not just now but ever)?
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 29, 2013 09:04 AM |
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted April 29, 2013 09:06 AM |
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It doesn't need a definition, the same question can be asked about anything. The question can also be asked that way: can you imagine the impossible?
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 29, 2013 09:21 AM |
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Of course it needs a definition, otherwise it makes no sense.
And of course you can imagine the impossible. Humans do that all the time.
Start by imagining a sun in the form of a chair. Can you imagine that gigantic chair in the darkness of space? Now zoom out with your imaginary camera until you see the first chair orbiting it not in a square but squarely, in the plane of the square seat, by following the square lines and then abrubtly turning 90 degrees...
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted April 29, 2013 09:30 AM |
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You obviously don't understand the question. You can imagine all kinds of nonsense but can you imagine something which can not exist because of some objective law, say the laws of physics? Or if this is not clear enough - can you imagine what the world was before the laws of physics were different from today's? If yes - how?
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 29, 2013 10:28 AM |
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You obviously don't understand the question. You can imagine all kinds of nonsense but can you imagine something which can not exist because of some objective law, say the laws of physics? Or if this is not clear enough - can you imagine what the world was before the laws of physics were different from today's? If yes - how?
I'm not sure, I understand your point or what you want.
I don't see any objective law of physics. Mathematics can produce objective laws, but they are valid only within the axiomatically defined framework that is the body of mathematics in question. The fact that the purely abstract construct of mathematics is the tool needed to describe and decrypt the "world" would seem to be of some importance here.
Also, scientists also seem to be on the lookout for something, whether it's dark matter, a "constant", an "ether" or any other thing that MIGHT FIT INTO THEIR IDEA OF THE WORLD.
Now: if we assume that the theory of relativity is valid, it's impossible for a mind (or any kind of receptor of information) to define something like a simultaneity. Meaning, every human can imagine the idea of a vast universe with a diameter of, say, 30 billion light years with a very high, but finite number of galaxies and a much higher, but still finite (but maybe growing) number of suns and populated planets. Can there be any simultaneous contact between those civilizations, which amounts to the question of whether information can be transported with infinite speed (which would mean that every information available could be everywhere at the same time). On the quantum level, the phenomenon of quantum entanglement says, yes, instantaneous information transfer is possible - but just on that level. It would seem that last year's CERN experiments would have been a strong indication for the existence of the Higgs-boson which would explain how "mass" comes into being.
Which simply means, we do not know what is possible and what is not. We don't even know whether the materialism/idealism debate makes sense, because both may be based on wrong assumptions.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted April 29, 2013 03:21 PM |
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Which simply means, we do not know what is possible and what is not. We don't even know whether the materialism/idealism debate makes sense, because both may be based on wrong assumptions.
It does not mean that at all.
That's also one of my problems with idealism, while the material skepticism of the scientific method functions as a way to test and re-evaluate our ideas (as in the falsifiability principle), idealism is always so inclined evolving into mysticism, into what can we really know, nothing (or pass it forward to God, only he can know). But nobody actually lives like that, they just say it. Of course, you can come up with an objection like, our ancestors lived according to the "fact" that the world was flat but did they really know it. No, but imperfection of our knowledge does not nullify its existence, how else are we capable of inventing stuff for instance. If we may be so wrong about the laws of our universe, how does a computer work, how does a plane fly?
Also, most concepts that the humans "created" are just retouched or exaggerated elements of nature. There are already things we sit on in the world, a chair is simply a surface and a back-support little less flawed, there are already rocks rolling down the hills, an idea of a wheel is not something so far away from that, there is already burning fire and pain, the images of hell is just the exaggeration of it. That's why in some Northern European mythologies hell is a very cold place of ice in contrast to the burning hell of Middle Eastern mythologies, because to them folks, pain is related to freezing. When we arrive at the "abstract math" of science, it is not some guy working on an empty paper all thinking by himself, it walks hand in hand with observation and heritage of knowledge from previous generations. Dark matter is theorized because there has to be an explanation why (or how to be more precise) the universe moves and expands in this particular speed the way it does. And we say the universe expands because we claim that we can observe it as an external reality. That's not really so different than the method Newton used is it? When all people thought a prism gave colors to white light, he had the idea that white light consisted of all colors, the prism was not giving anything, just separating the colors, so he tested his idea and this is what he found:
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 29, 2013 03:57 PM |
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I don't think that your point holds. What we do is, we pull puzzle pieces out of a bag and we try to set them together to form a coherent picture, when it comes to "our world", but we have no idea how big the picture is and how many puzzle pieces there are - although we try to interpolate that from the pieces we already have turned up and pieced together.
The picture as such is inconclusive as yet.
However, there are things like mathematics, and while mathematics has been started as an abstraction from practically observed stuff, modern mathematics has nothing to do with that anymore and is fully based on axioms - it's a completely abstract thing, and in fact the relationship between mathematics and "our world" is the other way round: there IS mathematics, and once in a while people have a good idea and realize that they can describe certain real-world effects by using mathematics, and not the other way round.
In my opinion mathematics alone refutes pure materialism, but as I said, as with other things, a lot of of old either/or question are based on probably faulty assumptions: there may not be a clear answer, because the question may simply prove incorrect.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted April 29, 2013 04:11 PM |
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What we do is, we pull puzzle pieces out of a bag and we try to set them together to form a coherent picture, when it comes to "our world", but we have no idea how big the picture is and how many puzzle pieces there are - although we try to interpolate that from the pieces we already have turned up and pieced together. The picture as such is inconclusive as yet.
I agree with this. I just don't think it necessarily leads to idealism. It only means imperfection which I have no fundamental issue with.
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However, there are things like mathematics, and while mathematics has been started as an abstraction from practically observed stuff, modern mathematics has nothing to do with that anymore and is fully based on axioms - it's a completely abstract thing, and in fact the relationship between mathematics and "our world" is the other way round: there IS mathematics, and once in a while people have a good idea and realize that they can describe certain real-world effects by using mathematics, and not the other way round.
But they spent millions of dollars to build a lab underground and test that math with observation, didn't they?
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted April 29, 2013 04:44 PM |
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A mathematical formula means nothing on its own until it's somehow related to the physical world. Just because something can be mathematically proven before it is found in the physical universe does not mean that the act of finding it is irrelevant. On the contrary - the discovery itself is what says if all the calculations have any meaning. There's no abstraction which is true by itself, except... God.
As for the impossible stuff - the point is that you can not imagine the unimaginable. There will always be a starting point which will include a number of predicates originating from the observable world - form, colour, position, etc. For the very same reason, there's no real way to imagine the nothingness, i.e. something which holds zero information because you can not imagine something which has absolutely no description - you, as a subject, will always give it at least one bit of information gained from observation and it will no longer be nothingness (that's partially another topic though). The mathematical description of whatever doesn't change anything because - if it is accurate - it can not be separated from a phenomenon and still have a meaning.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted April 29, 2013 05:15 PM |
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A mathematical formula means nothing on its own until it's somehow related to the physical world.
I can't understand how apparently intelligent people with a lot of understanding can write so crude stuff with such determined conviction.
Which makes debate useless, of course.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted April 29, 2013 05:27 PM |
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I guess you're aware that your last post is just a spam without any actual explanation.
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Seraphim
Supreme Hero
Knowledge Reaper
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posted April 29, 2013 05:31 PM |
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A mathematical formula means nothing on its own until it's somehow related to the physical world.
I can't understand how apparently intelligent people with a lot of understanding can write so crude stuff with such determined conviction.
Which makes debate useless, of course.
Why? I have no problem with what he said. But of course, value might hve a different meaning for different people.
Ideas, concepts and all of that are parts of the material worlds because all of them boggle down to thoughts and the mind.
To me, as a materialist, a mind is made up of matter and the thoughts that lead to ideas, concepts and axioms in math are just a reactions of matter.
Also, dont forget that the thread is not really inviting to discussions.
ITs like a thread of whether you like red or blue and why?
Certainly, arguing about which one of them is more natural is pointless in itself.
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"Science is not fun without cyanide"
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This thread is pages long: 
