Matter = sensation ?? So if we do a simple thought experiment - I assemble a mole of nitrogen molecules in a rubber balloon ... you're saying that that assemblage of molecules is exactly equal and equivalent to an undefined "feeling" of some sort and nothing more or less?Originally Posted by Eric the Green
No. That makes no sense.
" ... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
It makes sense if you understand what "matter" really is. It is what we see and feel. Consider this thought experiment. Assemble nitrogen molecules in a test tube. Would we call it "matter" unless we made the common assumption that we would feel something if we rubbed-up against them? On what other basis do we call these molecules some kind of undefined and invisible "stuff?"
Subtract that feeling, and what do you have? Just some theoretical classification of data of some sort; perhaps useful knowledge for arranging some experiments and making some kind of technology. Matter could also be called an attitude on our part; that of grabbing and using the world for our own benefit.
It seems like the stimulus we get in our senses (sight, sound, touch, etc.) from contacting these molecules in some way could just as easily be called contacting energy, or vibration, or spirit.
We need to remember how much our own feelings and assumptions make their way into today's so-called "science."
You can't separate ourselves from the science that we do, although scientists fondly hope for such a purely objective view in which they themselves are reduced to nothing. But there's really no such separation between ourselves and the world we study.
If we would study "matter," we must study sensation.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 03-27-2015 at 01:26 AM.
You have this way of jumping from one thing to another, leaving out a multitude of steps in between.
So ... if I'm sitting inside a room with no windows, insulated from the outside, the sun doesn't exist?
You sometimes seem to have a bad case of solipsism.
" ... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
Even the physicists sometimes make my point. In quantum physics, it is shown (according to the best interpretation) that something appears as a particle only when we observe, or see it. Otherwise it is a wave-like cloud of probability whose location and speed can't be fixed. So, seeing IS believing, in that sense. Seeing it brings something into particle form that we can call "matter." Sensation determines how it appears.
The point I was making was not whether nitrogen molecules or the Sun exist if we don't sense it. My point was that sensation encourages us to label things a certain way, as "matter," because they touch us (or we touch them). Whether something is called "matter" or not has nothing to do with whether it "exists" or not. So, you are the one who jumped. Get it?
But, jumping ahead....
It is a well-known philosophical principle that "the sun will rise tomorrow" is NOT a priori, necessary truth. It is a contingent truth. It may rise tomorrow, it is very likely to rise tomorrow, but it is not certain that it will rise tomorrow.
Solipsism is a common charge against philosophical idealists like me. The well-known point is that if a tree falls in the forest, it does not make a sound. Unless something is experienced, we may infer that it exists, but we cannot prove that it exists. The sun is not light unless you see it. You invoke it. You are involved in reality. Consciousness is involved in reality; it IS reality.
That does not mean however that, as a solipsist would say, only MY individual mind exists. No, the tree is a living being; it perceives itself. And God perceives it. There are other beings who perceive it. But calling other beings "matter" is to make a mistake. I am a conscious being, and an energetic one, but not a "material" one. "Stuff" is a human invention; a concept that we add on top of what really exists. It degrades what exists too. And it is a concept that is never perceived in anything.
I perceive myself. Therefore, all other beings are conscious beings too. To one degree or another, they perceive themselves, and possibly me as well. I am connected to all other beings, even if I don't perceive them with my senses. On a deep level, I can experience them. That is sometimes called the sixth sense. In that sense too, I can say that "only MY mind exists." But it is also your mind, and everyone else's mind too.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 03-27-2015 at 02:17 PM.
WHEW!! Thank heavens. For a minute there, I felt myself slipping away ... I thought that maybe I don't exist. But I'm relieved ... I DO exist ... within YOUR mind!
" ... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
*kicks rock*
I REFUTE HIM THUS!!!
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
And, YOU exist within MY mind. As Bob Dylan said, "you can be in my dream, if I can be in yours."
I trust then, everything was perfectly clear in my last post.....
It is a common mistake by materialists. If some idealist says, "there is no matter," they think they are saying, "nothing exists." Of course, if you claim that what exists is "matter," then if matter doesn't exist, then "nothing exists." But the materialist is just stuck in the worldview of his/her own making. No, the idealist was saying, what exists, is not matter. It is spirit that exists; not matter. It is a question of what exists, not whether anything exists.
Now, if that is not clear to you, then you're right. We don't speak the same language. But it is I who am speaking English.
Sensation, as I said!
YES! YES! That's what I said! I'm so relieved! Perhaps now, I can even contemplate living FOREVER! As a figment of your imagination!
" ... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
Yup. That's what you ALWAYS say. And of course it makes no sense at all.
" ... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
Spoken like a true solpsist.
" ... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
Since I live forever, then yes you can. But you can also live forever even without my imagination, because, well, you are a true solipsist.
And since, as I said, I speak clear, understandable English, then you need to tell me which language you speak. Maybe I can find an interpreter for you.
Great Nova program tonight on the Mysteries of Math. It of course lauded the effectiveness of math, but also sounded some cautionary tones too. It also mentioned some things that normally get poopooed by some people around here, and other such materialist believers.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics...h-mystery.html
It didn't mention Zeno's paradox, but it did have a scholar on who pointed out that numbers are abstracted from our experience of putting things together as the same things. We see 2 eyes and 2 of lots of other things, so we develop the number 2. Once we have abstracted these quantities though, the universe reveals relationships between them that describe the behavior of the universe. Nova discussed some of these, such as pi, the fibonacci series' link to botany, the proportion of falling objects that Gallileo discovered that was developed by Newton into the law of gravity, and the discovery of the Higgs field and Higgs boson. Some even say that math is the language of the universe, or even everything that exists, as Pythagoras had proposed in the 6th century BC, the great Axis Age. On the other hand, the program mentioned that for dealings in the practical world, precision must be sacrificed to workability, so that machines and buildings etc. can be engineered. And for many subjects, math does not work. I have mentioned my "law" that the more alive a subject studied is, the less its physical causation can be measured and calculated.
I was thinking about Zeno's paradox again recently though, in the following way. When I count how many seconds I need to do to complete an exercize, I count them. After I reach 1/2, it takes quite a while to reach 1/3 of the way left to go. Then the proportions come faster and faster: 1/4, 1/5, 1/6; then I skip to 1/10, 1/20, 1/40, 1/80 until I'm on the last second; half way through the last second, the proportion doubles, and then in the last half second, the number skyrockets, until in the last nano seconds the number is astronomical; and then it's over; I reach infinity, or I am at zero again ready to start the next set.
What happened? How did I skip from 1/240 to infinity? How did I cross from astronomically high to infinity? and yet, I did it. I crossed the gap that math cannot measure. Reason has reached its limit, as Jehan Alain said in his dedication of his great organ piece Litanies. Faith must go the rest of the way. Rational numbers give us access to the proportions that govern living things and stars alike. And yet they are unreal, by math's own definition. They don't exist in the real world, as Plato said; only in the ideal or formal world.
The program also mentioned the Platonic solids and their relation according to Plato to the old elements, including the 5th element which Plato called "what organizes the whole heaven." Nova called it "the universe." And what is the whole universe? It can only be the wholeness of everything, which is everywhere, or as Plotinus later named it: Spirit. No list of the old elements (or states of matter as science now calls them) is complete without the 5th element, nor is any system of magick or esoteric philosophy. Spirit is one of the elements of the universe, and inseparable from the other four.
The Nova program also told me something I didn't know about Mercury: it rotates three times every two revolutions. Without making the explicit link (that was left for me to do), the program also mentioned that Pythagoras showed that the fifth tone is produced by the 3/2 ratio. Music is based on rational numbers. Mercury happens to be the planet linked in esoteric philosophy to the 5th chakra, and both are linked to the fifth tone (G in the C-major scale). And so I had to add this to my essay on Bach and The Chakras, because the 5th chakra section of Bach's great Toccata in F BWV 540 is in g minor. I hope you have all taken a look at how Bach's Toccata in F reveals amazing correlations and patterns related to not only esoteric philosophy, but to science as well, and is possibly a model of the universe and the spiritual journey.
And the coicidence of it being given the number 540 in the BWV catalogue of Bach's works continues to amaze: the program discussed how all music is based on the Octave, the Fifth, and the Fourth; that is, the number 540. I mentioned in my Bach essay how the number 540 is also demonstrated in Venus' relation to Earth, as well as being the number of degrees in the angles of a dodecahedron-- the Platonic solid associated with the universe, or Spirit.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 04-16-2015 at 11:20 PM.
I'm looking forward to Vandal weighing in on your "reaching" infinity.
I thought that only Chuck Norris had counted to infinity ... twice. And Chuck Norris who knows ALL of the decimals of pi.
" ... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
I've reached infinity a few times.I'm looking forward to.... your "reaching" infinity. ::
I thought that only Chuck Norris had counted to infinity ... twice. And Chuck Norris who knows ALL of the decimals of pi.
But I was younger and wilder, and the memories aren't too clear.
Mathematics and music go together. The octaves are in 2:1 ratios of frequency. Most rhythms are 2 or its powers, 3, 6, or 12. Anything else is awkward; thus "Mars" in Gustav Holst's The Planets uses 5/4 time to show the mechanical clumsiness of war. Genuine pentuple time is rare; I have noticed a couple of cases in which Gustav Mahler uses it to indicate that the climax is nigh. Dividing one beat into five even notes must be one of the trickiest of behaviors in music, as one is tempted to play two sixteenth notes and three corresponding triplets.
It is remarkable that the children exposed to music -- orchestra or band -- tend to do best in math and science. It is telling that one country (Hungary) does what it can to get every child playing an orchestral instrument. It also has an above-average output of mathematicians, scientists, and engineers.
Give your child a computer or a violin? Go with the violin. It's hard to describe what benefits the violin offers -- but any idiot can operate a computer and do some really dumb and crazy stuff on it.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
No, he doesn't. Again, you miss the point. You can't "count" to infinity. I reach infinity though. Zeno's arrow reaches its target, but you can't count the distance without making the leap beyond counting. When I reach the goal, I am back to zero, not an infinitely high number.
If Vandal "weighs in," we can be sure he will bring the discussion down to absurdity and personal attack.
Brower makes good points, which harmonize what I said in my philosophy masters paper: that rational numbers are essentially rhythms.
Enjoy the music!
Last edited by Eric the Green; 04-16-2015 at 11:23 PM.
You know, it's always that damn 're-entry' that's such a bitch!I've reached infinity a few times.
But I was younger and wilder, and the memories aren't too clear.
Prince
PS:
In-Deed it has, Eric.
<chuckle!>
I Am A Child of God/Nature/The Universe
I Think Globally and Act Individually(and possibly, voluntarily join-together with Others)
I Pray for World Peace & I Choose Less-Just Say: "NO!, Thank You."
Bishop George Berkeley, who recognizes matter only for what it can do to other things. If something has no potential for effect upon other things, then it does not exist.
I need be careful about reading myself into the discussion. Nitrogen obviously has mass, so the nitrogen within a sealed flask would have some gravitational effect. Contrast a vacuum (literal nothingness) or lighter-than-air gases, basically hydrogen and helium. All gases have some heat capacity, so if the nitrogen is cooler than the gas outside it it will absorb heat; if warmer it will release heat. Chemical properties of nitrogen are largely the extreme stability of the triple bond between two nitrogen atoms much stronger than any other bond that nitrogen atoms could have. Nitrogen is not going to oxidize easily (basically it does not burn even in fluorine), and it is not going to oxidize anything as will oxygen or halogens. As an example, highly-reactive fluorine would cause the disintegration of almost any commonplace material (including glass or lead) commonly used for the storage of most acids and oxidizers.
The validity of matter or energy as a reality is what matter or energy (Einstein relates them with his famous formula e = mc^2) does or can do. Without such properties something has no physical reality. That most of what we consider matter is empty space (as in separation of atoms even in molecules) and the separation between electrons themselves and those and the separation between electrons and atomic nuclei, let alone the separation of components even of such particles (quarks) within protons and neutrons within atomic nuclei illustrates that matter is basically its ability to have effects upon matter and energy.
"I refute it thus -- Samuel Johnson"
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together
of Bishop Berkeley’s ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of
matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed,
that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to
refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered,
striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he
rebounded from it — “I refute it thus.”
Source: James Boswell: Life of Samuel Johnson book 3.
...If one kicks a great stone, then one's foot (identified with the forces of atomic particles that appropriately arrayed to create the structure of a foot) will neither kick through the stone nor merge with the stone. The physical structures of solids (atomic bonds) will resist each other even if the atoms and molecules of both the stone and your feet are largely empty space. Bishop Berkeley has largely been proved in that most of what we consider matter is emptiness.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Not sure where to put this, so ...
This week I transported a court-committed psych patient by ambulance from Albuquerque to Las Vegas, NM, where the sole state psychiatric secure lock-up is located. As it is about a two hour process, I was privileged to have a chance for a long visit with the patient.
As my partner drove the ambulance, I sat in the back with the patient. We chatted about several very interesting topics:
1. He is a diagnosed, classic paranoid schizophrenic. He does not think that he has any serious mental problems and would prefer to be left to his own devices out in polite society.
2. He believes that the government is corrupt, that it is overrun by corporate influence and is frankly non-functional. Hmm.
3. He believes that the medications he receives are a conspiracy foisted upon him by Big Pharma, who is only trying to make money. His evidence for this is that a few years ago, he was given a medication that, he felt, was really working for him, but that they took it away and now he experiences a round-robin of different medicines. In fact, at the hospital in Las Vegas, part of the treatment plan is to try to find a good medication for him and get it “stabilized.” Hmm, again.
4. He believes that the Roswell aliens were real, and that he and others have been abducted by aliens for nefarious purposes. He said that the aliens are very, very old, that age eventually kills even them, and that they need to consume our blood in order to maintain their lives.
Then we visited about a very interesting idea, or two, somewhat mixed together that I’m still fascinated by!
He has read about neuroscientists who have observed patients whose senses are kind of mixed up. They taste colors, see sounds, that sort of thing.
Well, my patient said that he is working on an “invention.”
He illustrated by saying as we drove by a large highway sign, “I see that sign, and everything it says on it, but I’m not really aware of it. It’s filtered out of my conscious mind. However, years from now, a hypnotist could hypnotize me and I would be able to recollect it perfectly!”
Then he went on to say that he thinks that these phenomena of tasting colors, seeing sounds, etc., are related to the wiring in the brain that separates the conscious mind from the subconscious mind.
His “invention” will be to find a way to break down the barrier between the conscious and subconscious, and also between the separation of the senses.
His goal is to use the speed and ability of the subconscious to sense and record, and the elimination of barriers in the senses so that one might read, say, War and Peace in five seconds. And not just read it, but smell the gun powder, hear the people talking, the trains blowing their whistles. And thereby have a totally much richer experience!
As we discussed all this, I couldn’t help but get drawn into his conceptual structures! One could write a superb novel from ideas like this!
In our training, we are cautioned not to go down rabbit holes with our psych patients, but to either be silent or say only things that have a basis in “reality.” With this guy, I found myself really wondering about how he sees our current society, and how a lot of his paranoia really isn’t so far off the mark!
Bottom line: What a mystery is consciousness??!! Who is “crazy,” and who isn’t?! Am I lucky or what, to get to do stuff like this?
" ... a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
The hardest reentry I ever had was once when I slept for 3 days. It was spring break 1980. I was an 18 year old college freshman and well, I found out that in the long run we are finite after all. :You know, it's always that damn 're-entry' that's such a bitch!
Prince
<chuckle!
That. Is. Hilarious.The hardest reentry I ever had was once when I slept for 3 days. It was spring break 1980. I was an 18 year old college freshman and well, I found out that in the long run we are finite after all. :
Prince
PS: Three days? Really? (I am so jealous.
I Am A Child of God/Nature/The Universe
I Think Globally and Act Individually(and possibly, voluntarily join-together with Others)
I Pray for World Peace & I Choose Less-Just Say: "NO!, Thank You."
Tim, that really is pretty interesting, IMO.
Pretty weird, but interesting, none the less.
Prince
PS:
Lucky? I guess.
(I was thinking more like 'crazy'!
I Am A Child of God/Nature/The Universe
I Think Globally and Act Individually(and possibly, voluntarily join-together with Others)
I Pray for World Peace & I Choose Less-Just Say: "NO!, Thank You."
After it all was over I was a little jealous of those who got to enjoy all of spring break. Lost weekend? I lost half of my frosh. year spring break. I was more careful in my following 3 years as an upperclassman to catch at least most of spring break in a functional, well semi-functional, condition. :That. Is. Hilarious.
Prince
PS: Three days? Really? (I am so jealous.
