quote:Creationists often invoke the catch-all phrase "God did it" which explains nothing. Critics could well claim that "Math explains it" or that QM explains it and would in fact be using these scientific disciplines to explain a beginning point in time. They could further argue that if the creationist claimed that God was eternally before that first point when time began, then so too could be immaterial concepts such as mathematics, calculus, and ideas in general.
You mistake an important part of the critic’s view. There is no need to argue whether immaterial concepts exist eternally. These are just descriptions, and it is the things they describe that must exist - although not necessarily eternally.
quote:So are you a materialist? A materialistic determinist? Do we have any reason to believe that it makes as much sense to speculate that matter is eternal as it would be to speculate that God is eternal?
I am not a determinist, and I prefer physicalist to materialist since matter is not as basic as was once thought. But there is no need to say that matter is eternal. Spacetime might be, or it might not. For the purposes of this argument I have assumed that it is not.
quote:Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonism everything is derived from The One.[1] In this view only one thing is ontologically basic or prior to everything else.
Existence monism posits that, strictly speaking, there exists only a single thing, the universe, which can only be artificially and arbitrarily divided into many things.[2] Substance monism asserts that a variety of existing things can be explained in terms of a single reality or substance.[3] Substance monism posits that only one kind of stuff exists, although many things may be made up of this stuff, e.g., matter or mind. Dual-aspect monism is the view that the mental and the physical are two aspects of, or perspectives on, the same substance.
Of these, substance monism comes closest to my views.
...In my view mind is supervenient on physical phenomena.
Wow! New word!
Wordnik writes:
Coming in upon something as additional or extraneous; superadvenient; added; additional; following in close conjunction. adj. Coming as something additional or extraneous; coming afterwards. adj. In a relationship with another set such that membership in the other set implies membership in the present set
So which is it? Mind over Matter or Matter over Mind?
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain " ***
We must realize that the Reformation world view leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state.- Francis A. Schaeffer
The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe. - Criss Jami, Killosophy
To try to put it simply physical reality is basic. All mental states are based in the physical - no difference without a physical difference is a key phrase you may see.
To put it in terms relevant to the earlier thread, information in DNA is supervenient on the chemical structure of the DNA.
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain " ***
We must realize that the Reformation world view leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state.- Francis A. Schaeffer
The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe. - Criss Jami, Killosophy
quote:So would that then imply that Brain is over Mind?
I would say that the mind is a way of looking at the operation of the central nervous system (the brain is very important but it isn’t absolutely everything).
Obviously the mind is a process - thinking, feeling are all active things. That is why it’s another way of looking at the operation Of the central nervous system, rather than the physical system alone,
Ultimately one would like to say something like: Large object -> High level material description -> Chemistry -> Atomic Physics in some sense.
The problem is ultimately you reach atomic level phenomena and things at that level are only described in terms of their effects on larger things not in terms of what they are in themselves. And thus one's fundamental physical theory requires the "Large Objects" at the start of the chain to even get off the ground. Also the theory has to assume some form of "observer" that "chooses" what phenomena to evoke from the microscopic scale.
This is just one of the many ways in which QM violates reductionism. Technically for example the colours I see aren't supervenient on the electromagnetic spectrum. I don't really think there is a philosophy that captures the current picture of the world from physics except to learn Quantum Theory in detail.
Whilst I’ve got you on this thread, can I ask a quick question about our velocity through space time. Is my recollection correct, that we (and I guess I should include every particle in that term) are moving though space time at a uniform velocity equal to the spatial velocity of the speed of light. And that that velocity is equal to the sum of our spatial and temporal velocities ? (This being a way, for me, as someone who has no chance of doing the maths, without some serious study to catch me up, to get to grips with how time dilation works, for people (or particles) experiencing different relative spatial velocities).
Could there be any greater conceit, than for someone to believe that the universe has to be simple enough for them to be able to understand it ?
Just with the caveat that it only works with classical relativity, i.e. you don't start talking about quantum matter. But that's a whole other kettle of fish.
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