- #331
Iacchus32
- 2,315
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Yes, I agree.
And just as sure as day follows night, we are all part of the "overall design."
Why the bias against materialism?
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The discussion centers on the tension between materialism and idealism, emphasizing that materialistic views are often dismissed despite their empirical support. Participants argue that while science is a valuable tool for understanding the physical universe, it has limitations and cannot fully explain consciousness or the meaning of life. There is a critique of anti-materialist sentiments, likening them to historical resistance against scientific progress, and highlighting the psychological need for beliefs beyond materialism. The conversation also touches on the role of community in belief systems and the subjective nature of human experience. Ultimately, the debate reflects a struggle to reconcile scientific understanding with deeper existential questions.
And just as sure as day follows night, we are all part of the "overall design."
- #332
Fliption
- 1,081
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OK I'm glad you answered that wya because it will be easier for me to explain what I'm thinking. Assuming what you've said is true, then the laws are the instructions by which all matter operates. The laws are information. Where are they? The laws aren't "held" by any matter are they? Hopefully you can see why I struggled with the word "held".
Also, let me go ahead and clarify before someone goes ballistic. I use the word "instructions" not to mean anything about intent or design. I use it to draw the analogy to software which is also just a set of instructions that directs the hardwares behavior.
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- #333
Zero
Well, Fliption, if you thing about it, there is a lot of information 'held' by even the simplest matter, that 'instructs' it on how to behave. Say you have an atom of carbon. The mass of the nucleus 'instructs' the atom on how to 'react' to gravity. The number of electrons 'instruct' the atom on how to form chemical bonds, react to a magnetic field, etc. I'm sure there's lots more 'information' in a single atom when you get into quantum stuff.
Some people would ask: how does DNA 'know' what to do? I would counter that it doesn't know any more than a single carbon atom knows about bonding to other atoms...but it does it the same way every time in the same situation.
Some people would ask: how does DNA 'know' what to do? I would counter that it doesn't know any more than a single carbon atom knows about bonding to other atoms...but it does it the same way every time in the same situation.
- #334
sascha
- 127
- 2
Zero, I agree fully that a materialist worldview is practical (and I will try to use only laymen's words in my posts -- thanks for the hint). Insofar it is quite reasonable.
Did the fight not start when some tried to think everything in materialist terms, i.e. not just specific aspects -- eg. tools, gadgets -- for which this perspective is adequate? For finding laws, the presently fashionable form of science operates by 'generalization'; so some feel that something successful in one realm should be applicable in other, and -- swoosh -- they generalize eg, the materialist approach. The trouble with the principle of generalization is that it can secure laws in a limited realm only, it can't secure strictly universal laws (eg. even the law of entropy is subject to entropy -- while there are universal laws: eg. the principle of truth is subject to truth).
So I don't think the problem is that people would not admit practical solutions to real problems, but that some refuse to accept the materialist position as the solution for everything. It is no coincidence, for example, that since the upsurge of materialism a new wave of ethics arose -- because knowing how to manipulate things does not warrant knowing about the context as a whole, into which all manipulations must fit.
The weakness in the materialist's viewpoint is in its wanting to handle material things while choosing a way of setting out that limits understanding the ultimate nature of material things. On this path, one can caclulate bits and pieces to an amazing degree, but not know what they are in their own right. On this path, one can't know what it is to be an electron, or a quark. Or mass / energy and information. We can depict such structures in many systems, and they make sense depending on the system. The crux shows fully with the aliveness of living beings. And while we can't say we have really understood the nature of the things -- not even of inert matter, for that matter -- the principle itself of approaching things in looking at them from outside limits the potential as such of this attempt. This approach seems to offer objectivity, but it is limited already because no empirical data can cover everything. Insofar, the idea that one day one will eg. be able to understand even difficult things such consciousness is not a secure idea. One can depict aspects of awareness to some extent, eg. in real time on a tomograph, but that is not the actual nature of awareness, it is only a picture of it. One may know what somebody is thinking about, but that does not improve human understanding. For getting along with each other, we don't need such gadgets. This does not exclude that some will believe what such gadgets show is the reality of their awareness, just as there are always some who robotize themselves, or believe they are in reality Napoleon. One can produce even collective beliefs (look at what the media are doing).
Some time ago there was debate on this thread about cultural dangers of the materialist viewpoint. You did not seem convinced that there is one, but I think if a culture were to rely only on this viewpoint, it would incur severe dangers, up to a moral decay. Look at how already small kids learn to kill off their emotional responsiveness by seeing everything only in terms of a manipulative control over things, up to cold killing that can be learned in video games. For sanity to be possible, there must be an overview. It is important that all this is the effect of conditioning. The interesting challenge is thus to find a world view that does not foster forms of disintegration, or impose a fundamentalist ideology, but allows to integrate properly all the -isms, letting all things 'fall into place'. That's my sort of work. I am trying to develop an approach that is not self-limited by assumptions. That's not just academic daydreaming, but also quite practical (even though it is not limited to the materialist stance). IMO this approach would allow also a better understanding even of the nature of material matter, and finally a better integration of the diverse physical theories (while not necessarily treading eg. the GUT path, which is still based on a 'look from outside'). To my sense, a physics is possible that integrates life fully.
But maybe I have not yet hit on the head the nail that you had in mind?
Did the fight not start when some tried to think everything in materialist terms, i.e. not just specific aspects -- eg. tools, gadgets -- for which this perspective is adequate? For finding laws, the presently fashionable form of science operates by 'generalization'; so some feel that something successful in one realm should be applicable in other, and -- swoosh -- they generalize eg, the materialist approach. The trouble with the principle of generalization is that it can secure laws in a limited realm only, it can't secure strictly universal laws (eg. even the law of entropy is subject to entropy -- while there are universal laws: eg. the principle of truth is subject to truth).
So I don't think the problem is that people would not admit practical solutions to real problems, but that some refuse to accept the materialist position as the solution for everything. It is no coincidence, for example, that since the upsurge of materialism a new wave of ethics arose -- because knowing how to manipulate things does not warrant knowing about the context as a whole, into which all manipulations must fit.
The weakness in the materialist's viewpoint is in its wanting to handle material things while choosing a way of setting out that limits understanding the ultimate nature of material things. On this path, one can caclulate bits and pieces to an amazing degree, but not know what they are in their own right. On this path, one can't know what it is to be an electron, or a quark. Or mass / energy and information. We can depict such structures in many systems, and they make sense depending on the system. The crux shows fully with the aliveness of living beings. And while we can't say we have really understood the nature of the things -- not even of inert matter, for that matter -- the principle itself of approaching things in looking at them from outside limits the potential as such of this attempt. This approach seems to offer objectivity, but it is limited already because no empirical data can cover everything. Insofar, the idea that one day one will eg. be able to understand even difficult things such consciousness is not a secure idea. One can depict aspects of awareness to some extent, eg. in real time on a tomograph, but that is not the actual nature of awareness, it is only a picture of it. One may know what somebody is thinking about, but that does not improve human understanding. For getting along with each other, we don't need such gadgets. This does not exclude that some will believe what such gadgets show is the reality of their awareness, just as there are always some who robotize themselves, or believe they are in reality Napoleon. One can produce even collective beliefs (look at what the media are doing).
Some time ago there was debate on this thread about cultural dangers of the materialist viewpoint. You did not seem convinced that there is one, but I think if a culture were to rely only on this viewpoint, it would incur severe dangers, up to a moral decay. Look at how already small kids learn to kill off their emotional responsiveness by seeing everything only in terms of a manipulative control over things, up to cold killing that can be learned in video games. For sanity to be possible, there must be an overview. It is important that all this is the effect of conditioning. The interesting challenge is thus to find a world view that does not foster forms of disintegration, or impose a fundamentalist ideology, but allows to integrate properly all the -isms, letting all things 'fall into place'. That's my sort of work. I am trying to develop an approach that is not self-limited by assumptions. That's not just academic daydreaming, but also quite practical (even though it is not limited to the materialist stance). IMO this approach would allow also a better understanding even of the nature of material matter, and finally a better integration of the diverse physical theories (while not necessarily treading eg. the GUT path, which is still based on a 'look from outside'). To my sense, a physics is possible that integrates life fully.
But maybe I have not yet hit on the head the nail that you had in mind?
- #335
Zero
[rant]This is nonsense, you are all mad, I give UP![/rant]
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- #336
Fliption
- 1,081
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Oh I don't think I would necessarily disagree with the idea that some information is held by matter. I just don't think that being "held" by matter is a necessary condition for information. As I am trying to illustrate with AG and the laws of nature.
Also, I wouldn't go so far as to claim that the mass of a nucleus is information. That is just a physical attribute. That is simply a variable in the equations of nature to help determine the result. The variables or inputs into the equations are part of matter but the underlying equation itself is the information.
- #337
Zero
I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this point, don't you? I don't think either of our views is wrong, based on the evidence. I think it is more of an interpretation difference.
- #338
Royce
- 1,538
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Hey, Zero, I thought you gave up (days after declaring yourself the winner). If a law or formula is information then the variabes that are plugged into the formula are information too. Mass therefore would be information as well as an attribute or it could not be plugged into an informational formula. Is it all math and information then like whatshisface said or is math and information the means and rules of behavior for matter/energy. What form does this information take? Is it carried with or part of a photon or electron or quark?
This is really getting too deep for me. I'll have to think about this for a while. It would make a great new thread rather than hiding it 20 page deep in another entirely unrelated thread. Just a thought.
This is really getting too deep for me. I'll have to think about this for a while. It would make a great new thread rather than hiding it 20 page deep in another entirely unrelated thread. Just a thought.
- #339
Fliption
- 1,081
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Yes, Royce you could make the argument that it is information. But I've been trying to isolate the existence of a certain type that is not material since that's what a few people have been denying and is the topic of the thread.
- #340
Zero
Sorry to say, but I am almost 100% sure that you can't find evidence for information in the absence of matter...which may be a limitation of our perception as much as a statement about the universe.
- #341
sascha
- 127
- 2
Is madness something relative or absolute? Against what is it 'measured'? Should we not be careful in applying such judgments? It is amusing, for example, that those in the loony bin believing that in reality they are Napoleon believe that the wardens are mad because they do not recognize this 'fact'... In our debate, which are the ultimate facts that determine what is a wider rationality than previously adopted, and what is real madness? (To my sense, as long as a madness is only transitory, it can be useful for transcending previous thought barriers. Trouble arises when a madness becomes rigid and is institutionalized, as eg. in an ideology).
With a clarification of the interrelation between laws of nature and information we will advance more securely. In this domain, I distinguish strictly between the partial forms of order (as manifest in any given law of nature, which never covers the whole) and the overall order (the totality of all laws, which regulates that things arise and vanish just as it regulates that in certain query perspectives there is a need for ideas about laws of nature, forces, etc.).
In a first approach, the relevant point between laws of nature, information, matter, and energy, is not so much whether they exist separately -- eg. information in the absence of matter -- but rather that for a complete understanding we must distinguish conceptually the aspects (in this case of information versus matter; by the way, the originators of information theory -- people like Shannon and Weaver -- made this distinction very clearly; only lately there has been a certain sloppiness about it). In this sense, the overall order of all laws may be present in the universe as a whole. But a non-contradictory 'thinkability' of the whole requires the said distinction.
Beyond that, it is of little use to believe that information necessarily requires matter for existing. After all no phenomenon can show directly the overall law it obeys, since its appearing and disappearing is part of that law. This is why the postulate of palpable evidence is simultaneously a self-limitation in the laws that it allows to discover. The overall order of any process, phenomenon, 'thing', and especially of the universe as a whole, is occulted by applying this postulate. It allows to know aspects, but not the ultimate rule of the game.
With a clarification of the interrelation between laws of nature and information we will advance more securely. In this domain, I distinguish strictly between the partial forms of order (as manifest in any given law of nature, which never covers the whole) and the overall order (the totality of all laws, which regulates that things arise and vanish just as it regulates that in certain query perspectives there is a need for ideas about laws of nature, forces, etc.).
In a first approach, the relevant point between laws of nature, information, matter, and energy, is not so much whether they exist separately -- eg. information in the absence of matter -- but rather that for a complete understanding we must distinguish conceptually the aspects (in this case of information versus matter; by the way, the originators of information theory -- people like Shannon and Weaver -- made this distinction very clearly; only lately there has been a certain sloppiness about it). In this sense, the overall order of all laws may be present in the universe as a whole. But a non-contradictory 'thinkability' of the whole requires the said distinction.
Beyond that, it is of little use to believe that information necessarily requires matter for existing. After all no phenomenon can show directly the overall law it obeys, since its appearing and disappearing is part of that law. This is why the postulate of palpable evidence is simultaneously a self-limitation in the laws that it allows to discover. The overall order of any process, phenomenon, 'thing', and especially of the universe as a whole, is occulted by applying this postulate. It allows to know aspects, but not the ultimate rule of the game.
- #342
Another God
Staff Emeritus
Gold Member
- 970
- 4
Photon?
- #343
Zero
No thanks, I've already had lunch.
- #344
amadeus
A little off-topic perhaps, but I'd like to mention it:
There's a mistaken notion that crazy people are crazy because they can't think straight. A little chat with a madman is enough to reveal the misconception. Crazy people are as rational as anyone else, quite often far more so. They have explanations for everything, including the fact that no one agrees with their explanations. Everything in a madman's mind makes perfect sense - which happens to be exactly the problem.
The really striking thing about insane people is not that they are poor at thinking, but rather that they are too good at it for their own sake. No one is as certain of his own ideas, as self-assured as a lunatic. Ordinary people always think they might be wrong about anything; insane people do not consider that a possibility.
Many people are bothered by the idea that, if they go mad, they won't be able to realize it. Which is true, but only because mad people are the only ones who don't worry about their mental health. So long as you think you might be mad, you're probably sane. As soon as you become certain you're not mad, you've already got one foot in the asylum. From then on, rational thinking does the rest.
- #345
sascha
- 127
- 2
Thanks, Amadeus, that's a neat insight. Not really off topic, since having or not having it determines much of what we say, also here.
- #346
Fliption
- 1,081
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Another option could be just poor semantics. No one has directly responded to why their definition is absolutely correct. I've heard that "it is not possible" and that we have to "agree to disagree" but yet I've seen no explanation for why instructions of nature aren't a nonmaterial existence.
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- #347
Zero
Uh huh...
- #348
Fliption
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Hmmm... seems we have a few lunatics participating in this thread then. But I could be wrong
- #349
Zero
You very well could be wrong...I've seen it before!
- #350
sascha
- 127
- 2
For clarifying some more this issue of information and its role in matter, I would like to draw the attention to a conceptual problem. Here we have heard the opinion that information actively does something. As eg. Zero put it lately: "The mass of the nucleus 'instructs' the atom on how to 'react' to gravity. The number of electrons 'instruct' the atom on how to form chemical bonds, react to a magnetic field, etc." Adopting this idea implies attributing to information some kind of agency, a force aspect. This is not what information is generally meant to be (at least the link between regularity and agency should be clarified more exactly). What is going on in the minds here? A clear insight? (I don't think so, but what do the others say?) A conceptual conflation, by non-distinction? (This is what I feel is the case; such conflations are what usually pushes into having to pursue the problem -- here of information versus energy, in my jargon law versus force -- into ever smaller entities, which however does not solve the problems, as long as the conceptual conflation remains). Note that the empirical evidence is the same; only the interpretations vary -- according to the differences in the chosen concepts / categories at the outset.
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- #351
Fliption
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Lol, if you understood all the subtleties of that quote from me you wouldn't have posted that
. You fell for it! You so crazzzy!- #352
Zero
Well, I figured you went through all the trouble to set that up and all...Originally posted by Fliption
Lol, if you understood all the subtleties of that quote from me you wouldn't have posted that
- #353
Zero
I didn't say that 'information does something'...I was trying to make the opposite point. Material objects do things, and we call it information. Or something...semantics, really.
- #354
Iacchus32
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Except that "action" is only accomplished out of that which is functional as "a whole," and so belies the "motive or intent" -- not some random occurrence.
- #355
Zero
It doesn't follow that something 'non-random' has 'motive' or 'intent'...no matter how many times you post it.
- #356
Iacchus32
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No, the fact that motive and intent do exist, suggest that things don't happen by chance, but by "design."
Whereas if something wasn't complete and fully functional -- or, at least endowed with that capacity -- then that rules out the faculty of choice, which can only be achieved through the stability (equilibrium) of the overall design. Hence without a choice there would be no intent, or motives, and "no glue" which binds things together.
- #357
heusdens
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Was the "sun" designed, is the way molecules and atoms interact "designed"?
This are just stupid notions, since the physical laws can not have been designed.
Even in realms of human society, the term "design" is not what it seems to be. Is the car concept as we have it now "designed"?
No. There has just been development (started with the "invention" of the wheel) and then later improvements.
Non one had a thought before about the actual nowday design of a car. And every improvement is first tested, to see if it improves anything.
So, there is just a continual interaction between the mind and the material world, which changes car design and develops old concepts into new ones.
- #358
Iacchus32
- 2,315
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And yet why does the sun bother to hold itself together if it wasn't "designed" that way? Why does it even exist, if there wasn't some principle (or glue) to tell it to cohere together?
Except that we use these same physical laws and turn around and use them to "design" everything we see around us which is "artificial." Which is to say it didn't come together naturally, and on its own.
And I suppose everyobdy just stood around and watched while it happened, Right? I don't think so. And, while a design is merely the blueprint which demonstrates functionality, it's the functionality of the design that we can't do without.
And what was it about the Japanese designing better cars than us, and we having to get off "our duffs" and say, "Well maybe we better come up with some better designs ourselves?" You don't think there was any conscious will or intent involved with that? You're fooling yourself if you don't.
You make it sound like it almost came about by "magic."
You just go ahead and keep thinking random thoughts and let us know when you come up with something interesting, Okay?
Of course we might be in for a long wait, give or take few billion years!
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- #359
sascha
- 127
- 2
The argument from design is, to my sense, not helpful for an ultimate understanding, because the basis for motive and intent is not clarified as yet by it. In the end the argument from design must resort to another belief, so the explanation in a strict sense is still not achieved. This is why I prefer to operate in universal categories, i.e. which reflect securely the overall order and are applicable as much to inert as to alive structures (this distinction requires additional criteria).
Now with this you still don't know what these universal categories are. For that we could go through the systematic developing steps of the approach I propose (which is published, even if partly only in German), or we might proceed more pragmatically, as we are doing. So, before we go into that approach in detail I will try the pragmatic path. As necessary we can switch to the other or not, or I might offer an abridged version of this approach.
We talk about information versus energy (in my process categories: law versus force), in relation to matter (which appears in my categories as structures of force defined by two precise conditions of dynamic equilibrium; alive structures have the possibility to affect one of them). My point is that Zero saying 'material objects do things, and we call it information' is not just 'a question of semantics' (which is a phrase that really says nothing), because the qualifications that make an entity capable of acting are not clarified in saying so (while this is done in the categories I propose; but for knowing why they are justified we would have to go through the systematics...).
There is the basic difficulty in today's science to tell what principle makes an entity be alive or not. Physics, genetics, or economics: any science postulating material entities to be active, without being able to tell what makes them active, is self-coerced by its non-universal categories to the same fate: it must shift its real question into ever smaller entities while never reaching total clarity (atoms; genes; deciding agents: all sciences using the same postulate experience the same fragmentizing effect). To say 'material objects do things, and we call it information' is conceptually just as unprecise as saying 'information does something'. Neither inert matter nor information can act on their own. Such sayings are merely ad hoc hypotheses. We should achieve better than that.
Heusdens' dialectical materialism has a certain point insofar as it describes -- even if in Marxian style, still in Hegelian fashion -- the evolution of conceptual structures. But this is not the whole of the thjing. The link to the thinker (who has to move his thoughts) -- and on the other side to complete reality (in which there is a 'movens', some agency) -- is not completely clarified. But I don't want to go into the full length of this now.
So all in all I am not yet asserting positively very much (otherwise my post would be too long), I am mainly stating the problem as clearly as possible. But if we persevere in thinking properly in our debate, we will gradually reach the required precision. Hence the success of this debate depends on your participation, eg. in telling where you need more clarification.
Now with this you still don't know what these universal categories are. For that we could go through the systematic developing steps of the approach I propose (which is published, even if partly only in German), or we might proceed more pragmatically, as we are doing. So, before we go into that approach in detail I will try the pragmatic path. As necessary we can switch to the other or not, or I might offer an abridged version of this approach.
We talk about information versus energy (in my process categories: law versus force), in relation to matter (which appears in my categories as structures of force defined by two precise conditions of dynamic equilibrium; alive structures have the possibility to affect one of them). My point is that Zero saying 'material objects do things, and we call it information' is not just 'a question of semantics' (which is a phrase that really says nothing), because the qualifications that make an entity capable of acting are not clarified in saying so (while this is done in the categories I propose; but for knowing why they are justified we would have to go through the systematics...).
There is the basic difficulty in today's science to tell what principle makes an entity be alive or not. Physics, genetics, or economics: any science postulating material entities to be active, without being able to tell what makes them active, is self-coerced by its non-universal categories to the same fate: it must shift its real question into ever smaller entities while never reaching total clarity (atoms; genes; deciding agents: all sciences using the same postulate experience the same fragmentizing effect). To say 'material objects do things, and we call it information' is conceptually just as unprecise as saying 'information does something'. Neither inert matter nor information can act on their own. Such sayings are merely ad hoc hypotheses. We should achieve better than that.
Heusdens' dialectical materialism has a certain point insofar as it describes -- even if in Marxian style, still in Hegelian fashion -- the evolution of conceptual structures. But this is not the whole of the thjing. The link to the thinker (who has to move his thoughts) -- and on the other side to complete reality (in which there is a 'movens', some agency) -- is not completely clarified. But I don't want to go into the full length of this now.
So all in all I am not yet asserting positively very much (otherwise my post would be too long), I am mainly stating the problem as clearly as possible. But if we persevere in thinking properly in our debate, we will gradually reach the required precision. Hence the success of this debate depends on your participation, eg. in telling where you need more clarification.
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- #360
Iacchus32
- 2,315
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This would be great if everything were on autopilot.
You have to break it up into category huh? All I can I tell you is that things tend operate better from the standpoint of functionality, and don't tend to work well at all when they're dissected and spilled all over the table.
What about one universal category, say the Universe itself?