> On 14 May 2019, at 20:45, Philip Thrift <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Tuesday, May 14, 2019 at 11:24:06 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> On 13 May 2019, at 20:24, Philip Thrift <[email protected] <javascript:>> >> wrote: >> >> >> >> On Monday, May 13, 2019 at 12:25:38 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >>> On 10 May 2019, at 09:12, Philip Thrift <[email protected] <>> wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> When someone says "consciousness is not a material thing" I think of Wile >>> E. Coyote. >>> >>> Consciousnesses need something (matter) to hang on to. Consciousnesses just >>> don't go floating around willy-nilly. The Coyote finds that out when he >>> finds out he is hanging on to nothing, and looks down. >> >> >> That is nice Aristotelian poetry. But you just repeat you ontological >> commitment in a material world, where no physicist has a consistent theory >> of it, nor even have tried to test its existence. What the Aspect experience >> has only shown, is that IF there is a physicaly reality then it can’t be a >> boolean reality (which would have already annoyed Aristotle). >> >> Then with Mechanism, “Matter” invocation needs to add some magic >> incompatible with YD+CT. >> It is like invoking a God to impeach testing simpler theories which do not >> commit a so strong ontological commitment. >> >> Bruno >> >> >> I was shooting for Epicurean poetry (or Lucretian; Lucretius's De rerum >> natura [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura >> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura> ] was a poem about the >> philosophy of Epicurus). >> >> Aristotle's philosophy is confused nonsense, especially when compared to >> Epicurus’s. > > This is weird. I appreciate Aristotle, because it is rather clear, and enough > precise to be refuted, with in the natural science and the theology. I tend > to consider him as the inventor of the notion of primitive matter, that is > the first which postulate the existence of a physical universe (in > metaphysics), but that is also the only place where he get confused (his > metaphysics). > > As a materialist (a “believer in matter”) it is astonishing you don’t > appreciate Aristotle. He is really the one who got the idea that “God” is a > physical universe, even if he add the chiquenaude divine to create the first > move. > > Bruno > > > The atomistic materialist Democritus came before Aristote, and Epicurus, the > most advanced of the atomists (as written about by Lucretius) was about the > same time as Aristotle. > > But way before them was Thales, who inspired Aristotle's thoughts on matter: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales_of_Miletus#Water_as_a_first_principle > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales_of_Miletus#Water_as_a_first_principle> > > Thales' most famous philosophical position was his cosmological > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmology> thesis, which comes down to us > through a passage from Aristotle <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle>'s > Metaphysics <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics_(Aristotle)>. In the > work Aristotle unequivocally reported Thales’ hypothesis > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis> about the nature of all matter > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter#Historical_development> – that the > originating principle of nature <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arche> was a > single material substance <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_monism>: > water. Aristotle then proceeded to proffer a number of conjectures based on > his own observations to lend some credence to why Thales may have advanced > this idea (though Aristotle didn’t hold it himself). > > Aristotle laid out his own thinking about matter and form > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylomorphism> which may shed some light on the > ideas of Thales, in Metaphysics <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics> > 983 b6 8–11, 17–21. (The passage contains words that were later adopted by > science with quite different meanings.) > > That from which is everything that exists and from which it first becomes and > into which it is rendered at last, its substance remaining under it, but > transforming in qualities, that they say is the element and principle of > things that are. …For it is necessary that there be some nature (φύσις), > either one or more than one, from which become the other things of the object > being saved... Thales the founder of this type of philosophy says that it is > water. > In this quote we see Aristotle's depiction of the problem of change and the > definition of substance <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_theory>. He > asked if an object changes, is it the same or different? In either case how > can there be a change from one to the other? The answer is that the substance > "is saved", but acquires or loses different qualities (πάθη, the things you > "experience"). > > > > Aristotle conjectured that Thales reached his conclusion by contemplating > that the "nourishment of all things is moist and that even the hot is created > from the wet and lives by it." While Aristotle's conjecture on why Thales > held water as the originating principle of matter is his own thinking, his > statement that Thales held it as water is generally accepted as genuinely > originating with Thales and he is seen as an incipient matter-and-formist. > > > > Now Thales may have been wrong about matter=water per se (unless you are a > wave-function monist), but that is water under the bridge.
Materialism is a very natural option, then it leads to Mechanism, often used to hide the mind-body problem, if not to eliminativism, or some non sensical dualism. Then, after the Church-Post-Kleene-Turing discovery of the universal digital machine/number, “matter” begins to show its contradiction, and eventually we are back to Pythagorus, enhanced by the Turing-Church thesis. Thales was a great guy, Aristotle too, and they would be there, they would feel honoured to be refuted, because that is *the* only real honour we can give to a scientific researcher: to refute its theories. Bruno > > > > @philipthrift > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/7e479e4e-df81-4175-9106-b92bfa63e1a4%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/7e479e4e-df81-4175-9106-b92bfa63e1a4%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CC988AE6-A57D-4B65-BBAB-CF135FEE2D38%40ulb.ac.be.
