On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 4:44:48 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 14 May 2019, at 20:45, Philip Thrift <[email protected] <javascript:>> > 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]> 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 >> natur*a [ 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 > > 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 > > > Materialism leads to Mechanism *only* - I claim, consistent with Galen Strawson, and also William Seager [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Seager_(philosopher) ] (who I came across recently - if it's what might be called modern materialism, equivalent with what is commonly called physicalism today in 2019 (or *physics*-alism, as some writers write to make the point).
(This is not to say that physics as subject will be the same in 2119 as it is in 2019. Who knows?) But I say the old guys - Thales, Democritus, Epicurus - had more of the right idea of *what matter is.* And most *physicists* today - at least all the ones I've read in the past 50 years - *do not*. @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]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/25aa3e48-20cc-4fe9-b811-f7f458d8bb76%40googlegroups.com.
