The Incompatibility of God and Matter

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
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value
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

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GE Morton wrote: October 27th, 2022, 8:59 pm... we have no means of answering the question of how closely or accurately that model "represents" the postulated noumena; that is forever beyond our reach.
How can you be so certain of that when an apparent limited frame of thinking that you seem to attempt to acknowledge with your statement lays at the basis of the statement?

Albert Einstein once said:

"Perhaps... we must also give up, by principle, the space-time continuum,” he wrote. “It is not unimaginable that human ingenuity will some day find (philosophical) methods which will make it possible to proceed along such a path. At the present time, however, such a program looks like an attempt to breathe in empty space.

Within Western philosophy, the realm beyond space has traditionally been considered a realm beyond physics — the plane of God’s existence in Christian theology. In the early eighteenth century, philosopher Gottfried Leibniz’s “monads” — which he imagined to be the primitive elements of the universe — existed, like God, outside space and time. His theory was a step toward emergent space-time, but it was still metaphysical, with only a vague connection to the world of concrete things.
"

It appears that he is prophesizing a method different from the scientific method to enhance humanity's intellectual exploration beyond the apparent boundaries of physics.

GE Morton wrote: October 27th, 2022, 8:59 pmThe only relevant questions are whether the model and the entities and substances it postulates have explanatory power --- whether they enable us to predict, manipulate, and control experience.
That would imply that an utilitarian life is the highest purpose in life similar to the idea that enjoying life is the highest purpose in life. Is that correct?

It is the moral ideology of atheism that they - similar to religions - also actively advocate and attempt to impose on 'the people'.

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I believe that the idea is invalid.

The idea that the laws of physics (Nature) are static and that facts can obtained on the basis of that foundation that differ from truths, is a dogmatic belief in uniformitarianism.

The simplest departure from pure randomness implies value which is evidence that all that can be seen in the world - from the simplest pattern onward - is value.

The origin of value is necessarily meaningful but cannot be value by the simple logical truth that something cannot originate from itself. That implies that a meaning of life is applicable on a fundamental level (a priori or "before value").

When one - as atheists do - uses value in the world as "meaning", what will happen when that value is lost? For example, when life may appear unbearable, how will one possibly find motivation to overcome the problems?

Overcoming problems is essential for progress in life. The fight to overcome problems makes humanity stronger. In my opinion, humanity should be driven to the extreme (by culture) to "not give up" and in order to enable success on that regard, it will be important to discover the meaning of life that makes motivation possible BEFORE value.
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

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value wrote: October 27th, 2022, 3:19 pm
Consul wrote: October 27th, 2022, 1:26 pm
value wrote: October 27th, 2022, 12:37 pm …Albert Einstein once said:

What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.
I doubt that this is an authentic quotation.
Why did you doubt it? Does it not correspond to your idea of matter? Do you believe that Berkeley's idea of matter is valid?

With regard your question. Google provides 4,230 results for the exact quote. It might indicate that on some level it is a valid quote.
google-einstein-matter.png
An alleged quotation doesn't become authentic just by being repeated many times, and the google results don't provide any reference!

Here's what a physicist thinks about that alleged Einstein quote:

"While you can’t really prove a negative,

I feel I can safely state that — no, this is almost certainly not something Einstein said.

As already pointed out by others, it doesn’t “sound” like his writing style. When Einstein talked shop, even to reporters of popular media, he used very exact terminology. He was a good communicator in that he knew to avoid too much jargon, but it was always crystal clear what he was trying to say. He would never hand-wave in such a new-agey way (e.g. vibration of what?)

Oh, and the statement is factually wrong. All macroscopic objects would have very very high frequencies, not low ones. In fact the only particles for which we can currently detect their wave nature, are those with the smallest mass."


Source: https://www.quora.com/Did-Albert-Einste ... -no-matter
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

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value wrote: October 27th, 2022, 3:19 pm Why did you doubt it? Does it not correspond to your idea of matter? Do you believe that Berkeley's idea of matter is valid?
No, I do not affirm and defend Berkeley's idealistic/immaterialistic worldview. On the contrary, I'm not a reductive mentalist about matter like Berkeley, but a reductive materialist about mind. Following McGinn's line of argumentation, my point is merely that if God existed, he wouldn't have created any (mentally irreducible) physical entities. That is, if God existed, we should expect our world to be Berkeley's world.
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

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value wrote: October 28th, 2022, 3:34 amAlbert Einstein once said:

"Perhaps... we must also give up, by principle, the space-time continuum,” he wrote. “It is not unimaginable that human ingenuity will some day find (philosophical) methods which will make it possible to proceed along such a path. At the present time, however, such a program looks like an attempt to breathe in empty space.

Within Western philosophy, the realm beyond space has traditionally been considered a realm beyond physics — the plane of God’s existence in Christian theology. In the early eighteenth century, philosopher Gottfried Leibniz’s “monads” — which he imagined to be the primitive elements of the universe — existed, like God, outside space and time. His theory was a step toward emergent space-time, but it was still metaphysical, with only a vague connection to the world of concrete things.
"
Another alleged Einstein quote without reference!
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

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Consul wrote: October 25th, 2022, 7:15 pm QUOTE>
"Berkeley’s philosophy is built around the insight that the existence of matter and the existence of God are incompatible. If God exists, then matter does not; if matter exists, then God does not.

God had the option of creating a completely immaterial world, built according to Berkeley’s specifications, so why would he create a world with matter in it?

A world of matter is not a world that any God worthy of the name would create. There is no sense in the idea of matter, according to Berkeley, so God would not create a world containing it; he would create an intelligible world. Hence, if we know that God created a certain world, then we know that that world contains no matter; and if a world contains matter, then we know it contains no God. But an immaterial world can certainly contain God, and God can intelligibly create a world containing only ideas and spirits. God and the immaterial go harmoniously together, but God and the material make an impossible pairing.

Of course it is logically open to us to reject God and make do with matter, instead of rejecting matter and making do with God: but the point is that such a decision has to be made. What we can’t do is combine theism with materialism about the physical (sic) world. That has been the standing position, more or less, since Descartes carved things up as he did; but Berkeley points out that such a position is unstable. It’s either matter and atheism or mind and theism."

Excerpts from "Godless Matter" by Colin McGinn
<QUOTE

This is a pretty plausible line of argumentation.
Consul!

First and foremost, thank you for providing a wonderfully thought-provoking OP. Though we may not always agree, I truly respect your desire and passion to seek answers to the most fundamental questions concerning the nature of 'all reality' (we're discussing the topic of a humanly 'conceivable God' here). We need more philosophers such as yourself who are steadfast in their yearning for all that is true, and what is truly possible or not possible (things that are logically possible that exist; things that are logically possible but don't exist).

That said, the short takeaway, is that Berkely, God bless him, also dichotomized reality making the nature of existence one-sided. Like many philosophers, particular of his time, I believe one should always consider which tenets are still relevant in the 21st Century. The most important metaphysical philosophy of his relates to primacy. As he famously coined the phrase 'to be is to be perceived', simply conveys the logical necessity that reality is mind dependent. No way around it. It's existential.

I agree with ernestm in that Berkely's issue was with dualism. The problem with Berkely, in my view, was somehow he didn't want to make consistent the logically necessary subject-object dynamic. In opposition to Descartes dualism (mind, matter and God), for whatever reason Berkely only considered mind and God in his metaphysical theories (what causes or creates information to morph into physical matter). However, both of them, associated God with 'information' and 'instruction', and conscious experience as a truly unexplained metaphysical phenomenon. Though it seems for some reason, (as Leontiskos suggested on page 3 of this post) Berkely couldn't get past the one-sided philosophy of Gnosticism. Nevertheless, corresponding to epistemology and cognition, it is undeniable that one's own 'objects' of thoughts are not really objects at all; it's an idea of an object recalled from subconscious/memory, etc..

Speaking of which, I found this quote from Berkely interesting, in that it mirrored the modern-day cognitive science/'stream of consciousness' which James' so very well coined. As such, relative to Idealism there is also that sense of a 'Godlike' independent existence associated with all thoughts and sensations and feelings, flowing uncontrollably in the mind. Like a river or parade of random ideas to pick and choose from. Remember, very often thoughts and feelings happen to us, not by us. It's only when we apply our Will to stop the flow of those thoughts/ideas, do we feel in control and self-aware.

But this only leads us back to the 'infamous' information narrative (conscious ideas, thought and feeling/one's experiences) emerging from matter (inanimate matter). In other words, what is actually causing one to experience an experience, and why is there this independent parade of ideas, thoughts/feelings from animate/inanimate objects. Also remember, as an aside, quantum phenomena though inanimate, also has information instantiated in its behavior, or in its matter. And so, at the most fundamental level of reality, inanimate objects not only seemingly behave like consciousness, and require an observer or in our context an anthropic subject or a thing capable of producing ideas (see Wheeler's PAP). Perhaps another way of reiterating Einsteinian spooky action at a distance:

A convinced adherent of Christianity, Berkeley believed God to be present as an immediate cause of all our experiences.

He did not evade the question of the external source of the diversity of the sense data at the disposal of the human individual. He strove simply to show that the causes of sensations could not be things, because what we called things, and considered without grounds to be something different from our sensations, were built up wholly from sensations. There must consequently be some other external source of the inexhaustible diversity of sensations. The source of our sensations, Berkeley concluded, could only be God; He gave them to man, who had to see in them signs and symbols that carried God's word.[28]

Here is Berkeley's [suggestion] of the existence of God:

Whatever power I may have over my own thoughts, I find the ideas actually perceived by Sense have not a like dependence on my will. When in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view; and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses; the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. There is therefore some other Will or Spirit that produces them. (Berkeley. Principles #29)

As T. I. Oizerman explained:

Berkeley's mystic idealism (as Kant aptly christened it) claimed that nothing separated man and God (except materialist misconceptions, of course), since nature or matter did not exist as a reality independent of consciousness. The revelation of God was directly accessible to man, according to this doctrine; it was the sense-perceived world, the world of man's sensations, which came to him from on high for him to decipher and so grasp the divine purpose.[28]



Consul, some questions that relate to the meaning of experience, and one's own objects of thought, could be summarized in this way:

1. What does it mean to have a revelation about a some-thing, some-thought, or some-idea?
2. What causes those actual ideas to happen?
3. What genetically coded instructions produce the parade of thoughts and ideas that uncontrollably happen from one's stream of consciousness?
4. Where did the instructions come from?
5. Is information and instruction itself, the primary cause of material matter's existence?
6. Or, is material matter itself, the primary cause of information and instruction?
7. Is the anthropic experience of reality logically necessary (is reality truly mind dependent)?

With due respect to Berkely, the answer to #7 is undeniably yes. The mind and its ideas take primacy in experiencing all of life, as we understand it. You asked the question of why God would make both material and immaterial 'objects'. My answer is like abstract mathematics that so effectively describe the world, the subject-object dynamic is logically necessary for anything to exist at all. Again, we seem to be back to the information narrative (subject), and the matter narrative (object), both being logically necessary. Accordingly, they are diametrically opposed, paradoxical opposite's that are logically necessary to make sense of same. A Kantian antinomy if you like... .

Anyway, lots to unpack for sure. I'm glad you put this in the 'Religion' section!
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” "Spooky Action at a Distance"
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

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Thomyum2 wrote: October 27th, 2022, 4:04 pmI think Berkeley's whole point is that there isn't a physical universe at all, only a mental one. I think he would argue that while the physical universe might be irreducible to the individual mind, it is not irreducible to all minds (which would have to include the mind of God).

And why would we have to take it as a given that God has created such a physical universe? Couldn't it possible that the universe is actually an immaterial one, but that humans could be mistaken in believing otherwise? In other words, couldn't it be that our limited human conception of matter is not an accurate representation of reality?

After all, in spite of efforts to investigate more and more closely the things we call 'material, we still have yet to substantiate that anything we encounter is actually made of 'matter'. If you look at the current scientific definition of matter, it is simply anything that has mass and is extended in space. These two properties are simply properties of observable objects - how they appear and how they behave to our physical perceptions - they are not evidence of any kind of actual existing 'material' of which the objects are composed.
The question of the existence of matter can be interpreted broadly as the question of the existence of physical entities.

(By the way, there is a distinction between matter as the sum total of massy elementary particles and all their aggregates and matter as prime matter, i.e. as the space-pervading world-stuff or world-medium, as "the aether".)

Whether our world is Berkeley's world or not is empirically undecidable, because a world where his theistic idealism/immaterialism is true is perceptually indistinguishable from one where it is false.

The question is whether Berkeley is best interpreted as being an eliminative mentalist (and thus a nihilist) about physical entities, or as being a reductive mentalist (and thus a non-nihilist) about them. Eliminative mentalists deny the existence of physical entities. Reductive mentalists do not deny the existence of physical entities, but only that they are irreducible to mental entities due to not being composed of or constituted by any mental entities.

As far as I can see, most Berkeley experts regard him as a reductive mentalist and thus as a non-nihilist about physical entities. Berkeley himself writes that material things such as stones are constituted by "collections of ideas", which is actually an expression of reductive mentalism rather than of eliminative mentalism.

(However, reductive mentalism has absurd consequences. For example, when millions of people see the sun as a collection of visual ideas, then there are millions of suns in the minds of millions of people, because ideas in numerically different minds are numerically different ideas. If "my sun" is a collection of sense-ideas or sense-impressions in my mind, then I literally have a star, i.e. a celestial body, in my mind—which assertion strikes me as ludicrous.)

QUOTE>
The basics of Berkeley’s metaphysics are apparent from the first section of the main body of the Principles:

It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind, or lastly ideas formed by help of memory and imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways. By sight I have the ideas of light and colours with their several degrees and variations. By touch I perceive, for example, hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and resistance, and of all these more and less either as to quantity or degree. Smelling furnishes me with odours; the palate with tastes, and hearing conveys sounds to the mind in all their variety of tone and composition. And as several of these are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple. Other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things; which, as they are pleasing or disagreeable, excite the passions of love, hatred, joy, grief, and so forth.

As this passage illustrates, Berkeley does not deny the existence of ordinary objects such as stones, trees, books, and apples. On the contrary, as was indicated above, he holds that only an immaterialist account of such objects can avoid skepticism about their existence and nature. What such objects turn out to be, on his account, are bundles or collections of ideas. An apple is a combination of visual ideas (including the sensible qualities of color and visual shape), tangible ideas, ideas of taste, smell, etc. The question of what does the combining is a philosophically interesting one which Berkeley does not address in detail. He does make clear that there are two sides to the process of bundling ideas into objects: (1) co-occurrence, an objective fact about what sorts of ideas tend to accompany each other in our experience, and (2) something we do when we decide to single out a set of co-occurring ideas and refer to it with a certain name (NTV 109).
Thus, although there is no material world for Berkeley, there is a physical world, a world of ordinary objects. This world is mind-dependent, for it is composed of ideas, whose existence consists in being perceived. For ideas, and so for the physical world, esse est percipi."

Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/
<QUOTE

Unfortunately, the statement that "although there is no material world for Berkeley, there is a physical world" is very confusing. Aren't "material world" and "physical world" synonyms? If they aren't, what's the difference?

If materialism is defined in Berkeley's sense as the affirmation of the existence of material entities, then immaterialism as the negation of materialism thus defined is the denial of the existence of material entities; so immaterialism is the same as nihilism about material entities. But in fact Berkeley isn't a nihilist about material entities such as stones and trees, so there is a material world for him. What there isn't for him is a mentally irreducible material world.

QUOTE>
"Given his theory of ultimate reality, we might expect Berkeley to be a nihilist. For how can there be a physical world if the only ultimate entities are minds and whatever occurs or exists within them? How can there be room for a 3-dimensional physical space or for the solid and voluminous objects we locate in it, if ultimately, apart from the heavenly world of God and (perhaps) angelic spirits, there is nothing external to our consciousness? True, given the coherence of God's volitional policies, the course of human experience is thematic, and our physical beliefs serve a useful function in recording the theme. But the utility of the beliefs is not enough to make them true. And on Berkeley's account it seems they must be false. On Berkeley's account, it seems that, while our experiences are organized exactly as if there were a physical world, there is not really one.

However, while there are other points where his position is open to different interpretations, it is certain that Berkeley was not a nihilist. Nihilism was a position which he repeatedly and emphatically disowned. It is true that there are certain quasi-nihilistic elements in his thought. Thus he rejects as incoherent the opinion of 'the vulgar' (the ordinary man) that the sensible objects (the collections of sensible qualities) we immediately perceive by sense have an absolute existence outside the mind. Here he sides with 'the philosophers' (paradigmatically, Locke) in holding that the immediate objects of perception are our own ideas – entities whose esse is percipi. At the same time, he also rejects as incoherent the opinion of the philosophers (again, paradigmatically, Locke) that, beyond the veil of our ideas, there are parcels of unthinking and insensible material substance which (subject to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities) our sense-perceptions represent. Here he sides with the vulgar in holding that the physical world is wholly composed of the sensible items which are immediately perceptible. But in rejecting these opinions, he does not take himself to be rejecting the existence of a physical world, but only to be rejecting certain prevalent but incoherent views about it. He thinks that once the incoherence of these views is exposed, we will see that our ordinary physical beliefs do not require them – see that these beliefs can be retained, without distortion, in his philosophical system. The resulting conception is one which absorbs the physical into the sensible and the sensible into the mental."

(Foster, John. The Case for Idealism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982. pp. 20-1)
<QUOTE
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

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Consul wrote: October 28th, 2022, 10:50 amUnfortunately, the statement that "although there is no material world for Berkeley, there is a physical world" is very confusing. Aren't "material world" and "physical world" synonyms? If they aren't, what's the difference?

If materialism is defined in Berkeley's sense as the affirmation of the existence of material entities, then immaterialism as the negation of materialism thus defined is the denial of the existence of material entities; so immaterialism is the same as nihilism about material entities. But in fact Berkeley isn't a nihilist about material entities such as stones and trees, so there is a material world for him. What there isn't for him is a mentally irreducible material world.
The OED defines "immaterialism" as "the doctrine that matter does not exist in itself as a substance or cause, but that all things have existence only as the ideas or perceptions of a mind." Thus defined, immaterialism is different from nihilism about matter, since to say that "matter does not exist in itself as a substance or cause" is not to say that matter does not exist at all.

Webster's 1913 defines "immaterialism" as "the doctrine that external bodies may be reduced to mind and ideas in a mind; any doctrine opposed to materialism or phenomenalism, esp. a system that maintains the immateriality of the soul; idealism; esp., Bishop Berkeley's theory of idealism."

But American Heritage defines "immaterialism" as "a metaphysical doctrine denying the existence of matter." Thus defined, immaterialism = nihilism about matter.

So the term "immaterialism" is ambiguous between reductionism and eliminativism (nihilism) about matter (material/physical entities).

Furthermore, strictly speaking, immaterialism isn't necessarily identical with eliminative or reductive mentalism (spiritualism), because to say that nothing is (irreducibly) material/physical is not necessarily to say that everything is (irreducibly) mental. For it might alternatively be the case that everything is neutral, i.e. neither physical nor mental. This is the doctrine called eliminative or reductive neutralism about matter&mind.
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

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Consul wrote: October 28th, 2022, 10:50 amUnfortunately, the statement that "although there is no material world for Berkeley, there is a physical world" is very confusing. Aren't "material world" and "physical world" synonyms? If they aren't, what's the difference?
If "material world" is used to refer to a world of nonmental items, then Berkeley does deny the existence of a material world; and if "physical world" is used (in Berkeley's sense) to refer to a world of mental items (= "ideas of sense"), then Berkeley does affirm the existence of a physical world—albeit it one which consists of nothing but mental items.
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

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Consul wrote: October 28th, 2022, 11:07 amThe OED defines "immaterialism" as "the doctrine that matter does not exist in itself as a substance or cause, but that all things have existence only as the ideas or perceptions of a mind." Thus defined, immaterialism is different from nihilism about matter, since to say that "matter does not exist in itself as a substance or cause" is not to say that matter does not exist at all.
If immaterialism is the doctrine that there are no physical/material/corporeal substances, then Berkeley is definitely an immaterialist. According to him, all apparently physical/material/corporeal substances (or objects) are really nothing but nonsubstantial complexes of "ideas of sense" (sense-impressions/sensations) that inhere in nonphysical/nonmaterial/noncorporeal substances—"what I call mind, spirit, soul or myself" (Berkeley).
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

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value wrote: October 28th, 2022, 3:34 am
GE Morton wrote: October 27th, 2022, 8:59 pm... we have no means of answering the question of how closely or accurately that model "represents" the postulated noumena; that is forever beyond our reach.
How can you be so certain of that when an apparent limited frame of thinking that you seem to attempt to acknowledge with your statement lays at the basis of the statement?
Because we know what those limits are, and that we have no means of ascertaining what exists except via data delivered by the senses. No amount of logical analysis or metaphysical speculation can reveal a thing about any postulated noumena --- not even whether it is material, immaterial, or something else entirely. We can construct models of it, but their value lies not in their "accuracy" --- which we have no means of assessing --- but in their explanatory utility.
GE Morton wrote: October 27th, 2022, 8:59 pmThe only relevant questions are whether the model and the entities and substances it postulates have explanatory power --- whether they enable us to predict, manipulate, and control experience.
That would imply that an utilitarian life is the highest purpose in life similar to the idea that enjoying life is the highest purpose in life. Is that correct?
There is no (universal or "transcendental") "highest purpose in life." Purposes are motivators to action by sentient creatures, and they vary from individual to individual and from day to day. The cosmos is indifferent to any purposes any particular individual chooses, either for one's actions at a given moment or as lifelong goals (which a few pursue fairly persistently, but which most don't have at all).
The idea that the laws of physics (Nature) are static and that facts can obtained on the basis of that foundation that differ from truths, is a dogmatic belief in uniformitarianism.
"Facts" (concerning an external world) can only be obtained by observation. And, yes, the laws of physics are "static," in the sense that they are assumed to be constant and reliable --- they must be in order to be useful. But they are not necessarily permanent, eternal. They can be revised if counterexamples are encountered. Nor do "natural laws" preclude change --- the speed of light may be C, but nothing in theory prevents it suddenly changing to 2C or C/123.
The simplest departure from pure randomness implies value which is evidence that all that can be seen in the world - from the simplest pattern onward - is value.
Well, we've covered this before. You hold some esoteric view of the meaning of "value." Randomness (which just means unpredictability), natural laws, and scientific theories generally have nothing to do with value, as that term is commonly understood.
The origin of value is necessarily meaningful but cannot be value by the simple logical truth that something cannot originate from itself.
The origin of value --- meaning the strength of someone's desire for or approval of something --- is a complex neural process in that person's brain.
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

Post by GE Morton »

Consul wrote: October 28th, 2022, 10:50 am
Whether our world is Berkeley's world or not is empirically undecidable, because a world where his theistic idealism/immaterialism is true is perceptually indistinguishable from one where it is false.
Indeed it is. Hence which theory one adopts can only be decided on the basis of which is more useful.
Unfortunately, the statement that "although there is no material world for Berkeley, there is a physical world" is very confusing. Aren't "material world" and "physical world" synonyms? If they aren't, what's the difference?
I think the author was just trying to draw the distinction between "matter" as an independent ontological substance and "physical things" as coherent constructs from sensory complexes.

Good posts!
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

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GE Morton wrote: October 28th, 2022, 1:21 pm
value wrote: October 28th, 2022, 3:34 am
GE Morton wrote: October 27th, 2022, 8:59 pm... we have no means of answering the question of how closely or accurately that model "represents" the postulated noumena; that is forever beyond our reach.
How can you be so certain of that when an apparent limited frame of thinking that you seem to attempt to acknowledge with your statement lays at the basis of the statement?
Because we know what those limits are, and that we have no means of ascertaining what exists except via data delivered by the senses. No amount of logical analysis or metaphysical speculation can reveal a thing about any postulated noumena --- not even whether it is material, immaterial, or something else entirely. We can construct models of it, but their value lies not in their "accuracy" --- which we have no means of assessing --- but in their explanatory utility.

Wrong. Quantum observation has revealed the matter myth. You know, things like superpostion, Higgs/Boson, or otherwise particles coming in and out of existence. Kind of like that spooky action at a distance thingie. God dunnit!
GE Morton wrote: October 27th, 2022, 8:59 pmThe only relevant questions are whether the model and the entities and substances it postulates have explanatory power --- whether they enable us to predict, manipulate, and control experience.
That would imply that an utilitarian life is the highest purpose in life similar to the idea that enjoying life is the highest purpose in life. Is that correct?
There is no (universal or "transcendental") "highest purpose in life." Purposes are motivators to action by sentient creatures, and they vary from individual to individual and from day to day. The cosmos is indifferent to any purposes any particular individual chooses, either for one's actions at a given moment or as lifelong goals (which a few pursue fairly persistently, but which most don't have at all).

Wrong again. Purpose confers no Darwinian survival advantages. Unless of course, one considers their Will to live and die being their purpose. In that case, the metaphysical Will (subjective idealism) is the actual cause of such behavior. You know, things like qualitative properties of the mind that can't be explained by materialism alone!
The idea that the laws of physics (Nature) are static and that facts can obtained on the basis of that foundation that differ from truths, is a dogmatic belief in uniformitarianism.
"Facts" (concerning an external world) can only be obtained by observation. And, yes, the laws of physics are "static," in the sense that they are assumed to be constant and reliable --- they must be in order to be useful. But they are not necessarily permanent, eternal. They can be revised if counterexamples are encountered. Nor do "natural laws" preclude change --- the speed of light may be C, but nothing in theory prevents it suddenly changing to 2C or C/123.

Certainly. And those quantum observations require a thinking Being that has ideas about stuff.
The simplest departure from pure randomness implies value which is evidence that all that can be seen in the world - from the simplest pattern onward - is value.
Well, we've covered this before. You hold some esoteric view of the meaning of "value." Randomness (which just means unpredictability), natural laws, and scientific theories generally have nothing to do with value, as that term is commonly understood.

Wrong. Patterns that form material existence come from a source of information and instruction.
The origin of value is necessarily meaningful but cannot be value by the simple logical truth that something cannot originate from itself.
The origin of value --- meaning the strength of someone's desire for or approval of something --- is a complex neural process in that person's brain.
Gosh, wrong again GE! Having intrinsic value is a qualitative property of consciousness. Not some "esoteric" projection of materialism :lol:

Then you said "The cosmos is indifferent to any purposes any particular individual chooses, either for one's actions at a given moment or as lifelong goals (which a few pursue fairly persistently, but which most don't have at all)."

The cosmos produced sentient thinking beings who have thoughts, ideas and feelings. The cosmos is only "indifferent" because there are inanimate objects (no talking neuron's, trees, and rocks)! At best, the cosmos decided to produce quantum phenomena that acts like consciousness (non-locality and that spooky action at a distance).

Otherwise, you bear the burden of answering the why, how, who, where and when the information narrative emerged from the matter narrative.

In summary, I think Mama's gonna punish you GE for this bad behavior!!
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.” "Spooky Action at a Distance"
― Albert Einstein
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Thomyum2
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

Post by Thomyum2 »

Consul wrote: October 28th, 2022, 10:50 am The question of the existence of matter can be interpreted broadly as the question of the existence of physical entities.

(By the way, there is a distinction between matter as the sum total of massy elementary particles and all their aggregates and matter as prime matter, i.e. as the space-pervading world-stuff or world-medium, as "the aether".)

Whether our world is Berkeley's world or not is empirically undecidable, because a world where his theistic idealism/immaterialism is true is perceptually indistinguishable from one where it is false.
I agree with this. Over the last several years, as I’ve read and listened to philosophers discuss and debate their positions for or against idealism and materialism/physicalism, I’ve gradually come to hold the opinion that these are not only questions that cannot be decided empirically but can even be seen as fundamental premises upon which different philosophies are built, which we can choose to accept or reject but which we can never prove. They are essentially different ways of looking at and understanding the world. But different things do follow from different premises, and this is where the discussion can get interesting.

Consul wrote: October 28th, 2022, 10:50 am
The question is whether Berkeley is best interpreted as being an eliminative mentalist (and thus a nihilist) about physical entities, or as being a reductive mentalist (and thus a non-nihilist) about them. Eliminative mentalists deny the existence of physical entities. Reductive mentalists do not deny the existence of physical entities, but only that they are irreducible to mental entities due to not being composed of or constituted by any mental entities.

As far as I can see, most Berkeley experts regard him as a reductive mentalist and thus as a non-nihilist about physical entities. Berkeley himself writes that material things such as stones are constituted by "collections of ideas", which is actually an expression of reductive mentalism rather than of eliminative mentalism.

(However, reductive mentalism has absurd consequences. For example, when millions of people see the sun as a collection of visual ideas, then there are millions of suns in the minds of millions of people, because ideas in numerically different minds are numerically different ideas. If "my sun" is a collection of sense-ideas or sense-impressions in my mind, then I literally have a star, i.e. a celestial body, in my mind—which assertion strikes me as ludicrous.)
As I alluded to in my previous post, I think this can only make sense when we distinguish individual minds from mind as a whole, i.e. ‘mind’ vs. ‘Mind’. So in idealism, an object such as the sun can constitute a single idea in Mind, of which we as individuals may hold different ideas in our minds due to differing perspectives and perceptions, each of which is a component of that larger idea. We do not each 'have a star in our mind', but rather each of our individual ideas is a piece of the greater idea of a star. I’ve always liked the parable of the blind men and the elephant as an illustration of this. With this understanding, it's not a contradiction to postulate that the fundament substance of the world is thought and not matter, while still acknowledging that there are physical objects which are external to our own individual minds.

Consul wrote: October 28th, 2022, 10:50 am
Unfortunately, the statement that "although there is no material world for Berkeley, there is a physical world" is very confusing. Aren't "material world" and "physical world" synonyms? If they aren't, what's the difference?
They aren't the same. I wouldn’t choose the term ‘physical world’, precisely because of this confusion. Perhaps a better choice could be the ‘objective world’, i.e. that world which is external to 'mind', i.e. to us as an individual. Clearly there is a (physical) world around us which is more than just the contents of our own personal thoughts about it. So I see the difference being that a ‘material world’ is composed of a substance (matter) which has existence independent of any and all thought, whereas an ‘objective world’ or ‘physical world’, while having existence independent of any one individual’s thought (mind), does not have existence independent of all thought (Mind). And as you've pointed out, it's not empirically possible to determine which of these might be the case.
Consul wrote: October 28th, 2022, 10:50 am

If materialism is defined in Berkeley's sense as the affirmation of the existence of material entities, then immaterialism as the negation of materialism thus defined is the denial of the existence of material entities; so immaterialism is the same as nihilism about material entities. But in fact Berkeley isn't a nihilist about material entities such as stones and trees, so there is a material world for him. What there isn't for him is a mentally irreducible material world.
I’m no expert on Berkeley and would not presume to speak on his behalf. But in my own personal version of Berkeleyism, I might suggest that we can think of physical objects, stones and trees and so forth, as ‘externalizations of thought’. They appear as physical objects because they are not exclusively my own thoughts. They are distinct from mental objects in that they do not exist solely in my own imagination but are ideas which I share with others. But collectively, these objects can still be understood as composed of thought, not of a postulated substance that we call matter that has existence independent of thought. In other words, they do exist, but they exist as thought, not as matter.
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
— Epictetus
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

Post by Thomyum2 »

GE Morton wrote: October 27th, 2022, 8:59 pm
Thomyum2 wrote: October 27th, 2022, 4:04 pm
After all, in spite of efforts to investigate more and more closely the things we call 'material, we still have yet to substantiate that anything we encounter is actually made of 'matter'. If you look at the current scientific definition of matter, it is simply anything that has mass and is extended in space. These two properties are simply properties of observable objects - how they appear and how they behave to our physical perceptions - they are not evidence of any kind of actual existing 'material' of which the objects are composed.
These problems resolve once we recognize that "matter," and every instance and constituent of it postulated by science --- atoms, quarks, quanta, waves, etc --- are conceptual constructs invented by us to explain the phenomena of experience. They constitute a conceptual model of an "external world," Kant's "noumena," which we also postulate to supply a cause for the phenomena of experience. But we have no means of answering the question of how closely or accurately that model "represents" the postulated noumena; that is forever beyond our reach. The only relevant questions are whether the model and the entities and substances it postulates have explanatory power --- whether they enable us to predict, manipulate, and control experience.
Hi GE,

Thanks for your thoughts. I agree with much of what you say here but will throw out a couple of thoughts to consider. This is probably material for another thread, but I think that Kant's idea of the noumena both makes a lot of sense and yet also leaves a lot to be desired. For one thing, I think it's in our nature to seek more than just a 'postulated' reality. Humans have an innate desire to really know and understand this world that we live in, which I think is an understanding we value for its own sake above and beyond that of the desire just to 'predict, manipulate, and control experience'. For that reason, I find the notion of a world 'forever beyond our reach' to be somewhat philosophically unsatisfactory - it almost feels like an avoidance of the question itself.

The other issue I have with the idea is that it's also through this same process of our perceptions and conceptions of an 'outside world' that we come to know each other. So, if we speak of 'constructs invented by us' and then about noumena that is beyond our reach, I think it begs the question of how can we even really know each other - how can we even speak of a 'we' in the first place? Am I just postulating the existence of other persons for explanatory power? If I answer yes here, then I create a sort of solipsism where I have a world where I am alone and everyone else is my own construct. But if we answer no, then it seems we create a little bubble inside the noumena in which humanity dwells, surrounded by a wall beyond which lies that unknowable world. And in that scenario, how can we be in this world together and be able to know each other yet not able to know anything else about our world?
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
— Epictetus
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Re: The Incompatibility of God and Matter

Post by GE Morton »

3017Metaphysician wrote: October 28th, 2022, 1:48 pm
Wrong. Quantum observation has revealed the matter myth. You know, things like superpostion, Higgs/Boson, or otherwise particles coming in and out of existence. Kind of like that spooky action at a distance thingie. God dunnit!
Quantum theory is itself a physical theory. And nothing it asserts, nor any entities or phenomena it postulates, calls into question the existence of matter (although it may call into question some metaphysical beliefs about matter).
There is no (universal or "transcendental") "highest purpose in life." Purposes are motivators to action by sentient creatures, and they vary from individual to individual and from day to day. The cosmos is indifferent to any purposes any particular individual chooses, either for one's actions at a given moment or as lifelong goals (which a few pursue fairly persistently, but which most don't have at all).
Wrong again. Purpose confers no Darwinian survival advantages. Unless of course, one considers their Will to live and die being their purpose. In that case, the metaphysical Will (subjective idealism) is the actual cause of such behavior. You know, things like qualitative properties of the mind that can't be explained by materialism alone!
??? Are you denying that human actions have purposes, i.e., that most behaviors are goal-directed? And, no, there is no "metaphysical Will." The "will" is just phenomenal awareness of a desire combined with a determination to do something. That awareness does not cause the action; neural process cause both the awareness and the action. There is nothing "metaphysical" about either.
Well, we've covered this before. You hold some esoteric view of the meaning of "value." Randomness (which just means unpredictability), natural laws, and scientific theories generally have nothing to do with value, as that term is commonly understood.
Wrong. Patterns that form material existence come from a source of information and instruction.
How absurd. Patterns form spontaneously in nature all the time, in almost every dynamic system. Every snowflake displays a unique pattern. The only "source" of those patterns is the interplay of thousands or millions of interacting variables. Now, of course, one may argue that "God" created, was the source of, every one of those gazillion snowflake patterns --- after all, being an "infinite being," such a task would demand but a minuscule fraction of His talents. But that explanation is unfalsifiable, unilluminating, and superfluous.
Gosh, wrong again GE! Having intrinsic value is a qualitative property of consciousness. Not some "esoteric" projection of materialism.
"Intrinsic value" is a vacuous expression. Value is not a property of things, of consciousness or anything else. It is a relation between a person (or other sentient creature) --- a valuer --- and some thing. We linguistically convert that relation to a a pseudo-property, and apply it to things to denote our desire for or approval of the thing. Claims in the form, "X has value V," are ill-formed and meaningless unless a valuer is specified, e.g., "X has value V to P," where P is some person. Any given thing can have as many values as there are valuers to assign one to it.
The cosmos produced sentient thinking beings who have thoughts, ideas and feelings. The cosmos is only "indifferent" because there are inanimate objects (no talking neuron's, trees, and rocks)! At best, the cosmos decided to produce quantum phenomena that acts like consciousness (non-locality and that spooky action at a distance).
The cosmos didn't "decide" to do anything. Decisions are the prerogative of sentient creatures, and the cosmos is not one.
Otherwise, you bear the burden of answering the why, how, who, where and when the information narrative emerged from the matter narrative.
Oh, we've slogged through that swamp before. There is no "information narrative" "emerging" from anything. Information is not a component of the universe. The term just denotes our knowledge of some state of affairs in that universe. The only information in the universe is that in our heads, or encoded via symbolic systems we've invented and stored in some physical medium.
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