There’s a lot of (mostly very obscure) talk about “the soul” here and elsewhere. (Is it supposed to be different from you, your “mind,” your “ego” etc.? Is it some combo of [some of] them, or what?) A friend recently passed along the following quote from psychologist James Hillman that I thought was nice–and maybe demystifying–at least a little bit.
By soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment — and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground.
It is as if consciousness rests upon a self-sustaining and imagining substrate — an inner place or deeper person or ongoing presence — that is simply there even when all our subjectivity, ego, and consciousness go into eclipse. Soul appears as a factor independent of the events in which we are immersed. Though I cannot identify soul with anything else, I also can never grasp it apart from other things, perhaps because it is like a reflection in a flowing mirror, or like the moon which mediates only borrowed light. But just this peculiar and paradoxical intervening variable gives one the sense of having or being soul. However intangible and indefinable it is, soul carries highest importance in hierarchies of human values, frequently being identified with the principle of life and even of divinity.
In another attempt upon the idea of soul I suggest that the word refers to that unknown component which makes meaning possible, turns events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern. These four qualifications I had already put forth some years ago. I had begun to use the term freely, usually interchangeably with psyche (from Greek) and anima (from Latin). Now I am adding three necessary modifications. First, soul refers to the deepening of events into experiences; second, the significance soul makes possible, whether in love or in religious concern, derives from its special relation with death. And third, by soul I mean the imaginative possibility in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image, fantasy — that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical.”
James Hillman — Re-Visioning Psychology
Wrong. We all have had this discussion before http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/what-is-a-decision-in-phoodoo-world/comment-page-36/#comment-143479
Robin, do you also have nothing to compare colorless, odorless, tasteless, etc. with, so you can’t possibly know what is meant by those terms?
There may be some difference in usage between the US and UK but accusing a fellow member of “weaseling” sounds to me like an accusation of lying. Which is, of course, against the rules.
Alan Fox,
weasel
noun
One who behaves in a stealthy, furtive way:
prowler, sneak, sneaker.
verb
To use evasive or deliberately vague language:
equivocate, euphemize, hedge, shuffle, tergiversate.
Informal: pussyfoot, waffle.
Idioms: beat about the bush, mince words.
The American Heritage® Roget’s Thesaurus. Copyright © 2013, 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
walto,
OK just insulting then. Necessary?
Uhh…nothing there about physicalists saying anything about unicorns existing only in the mind, nevermind saying it ROUTINELY. Care to try again?
Alan Fox,
Apparently, yeah. Though I doubt it will do any good.
The entire thread is about that from that point onwards. And was even up to that point. The physicalist in question is Alan Fox.
This is of course justifiable only if you totally forgot the beginning of the thread. Nobody has been here as open about his own views as I have http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/the-soul/comment-page-1/#comment-150877
Well, FMM and CharlieM perform fairly openly too, but hardly anyone else.
walto,
I think if something isn’t working, try something else.
I think most participants are fairly clear on their own views. It’s understanding each other that is rather elusive.
Who said anything about compare? Nowhere did I use that term, so I’m at a loss as to what you think you’re comment refers to.
Here’s my claim again in case you missed it: The burden is on those who propose the existence of things that cannot be detected by the senses and that have no entailments.
“Colorless”, “odorless”, “tasteless”, etc are all adjectives that describe the lack of specific sense-related compounds/molecules as a characteristic of given objects. So they don’t exactly qualify under my claim.
But hey! If you want to say that “immaterial” is no different than colorless and is simply an adjective that describes the lack of some sense-related compound, I’m all for it. Feel free to define the sense-related compound that is lacking in objects you are characterizing as “immaterial”.
Let me guess…they lack atoms? If that’s the case, what’s the difference between “immaterial” stuff and space?
“Odorless” is an adjective
Right, and I did. But as I said, I doubt that will work either. In fact, I already see that it hasn’t.
Aside from the fact that the thread isn’t about what you claim and doesn’t contradict my point that physicalists say unicorns don’t exist because there’s no evidence for them, direct or through entailments, I’ll just add that Alan Fox hardly constitutes “physicalists” (plural) and doesn’t make the claim (ROUTINELY or otherwise) that unicorns are unreal because there’s lots of talk about them, but since they only exist in the mind they must be the antithesis of real.
Here’s a quote from Alan:
So nothing about “unreal” things existing only in the mind, but rather “immaterial” things existing in the particular or collective imagination. Fine by me since a) he notes this is his opinion and b) since thus far no one’s been able to define or offer some characteristic about the “immaterial” in such a way that Alan’s opinion is invalid.
I will further note that Alan’s statement actually confirms my statement, so really I have no idea why you thought there was something invalid in what I noted about how (some) physicalists categorize unicorns.
Honestly, your attempts at trying to explain your claims and odd rationalizations are just getting bizarre.
I think it’s foolish to make an assertion without working through specifying the pragmatic contexts in which an assertion could be justifiable. In this case, since specific cases of theoretical reduction (or elimination) are being exploited for the analogy, it’s a worthwhile question whether it even makes sense to say that the relation between thoughts to brain-states is analogous to the relation between heat and mean kinetic energy. Where shall we find the James Maxwell of the mind?
Philosophy of mind is actually one of my main areas. I know this stuff as well as you do, and I’m not going to say, “gosh, all these smart folks all disagree with each other, so I just don’t know!” Yes, they disagree with each other — and there are also such things as compelling reasons for thinking that one view is better than another. Phenomenalism has really serious problems. So does mind-brain identity theory. (Which is actually one of the reasons why functionalism, and not mind-brain identity, is the dominant view in philosophy of mind.)
And yes, I do think that Davidson’s view (for example) is a nice paradigm of both what is best and worst about that style of analytic philosophy. It’s heavily driven by a priori assumptions that aren’t fully defended or examined, and it weds epistemology to semantics rather than to philosophy of science.
Davidson follows Quine in being dogmatically committed to extensional semantics, and that in turn drives the rest of the project in epistemology and philosophy of mind. In fact I find that Quine’s committment to extensionalism is an arbitrary stipulation that he can’t defend, and Davidson just inherits this blind-spot. Dennett does as well, which is at the root of his view that there can’t be genuine semantic engines. It’s just a dogma of analytic philosophy. For that matter, Lewis (David, that is) is also committed to an extensional semantics; that’s how he gets ontological commitment to possible worlds out of regimenting counterfactual sentences.
At no point have any of these philosophers given a convincing argument against intensionalism. They assume extensionalism and go from there. Quine’s entire argument in ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism” starts off with the idea that we can just dispense with meanings. His objection to meanings isn’t driven by physicalism; it’s driven by the assumption that first-order logic is the only way to specify ontological commitments. But that assumption is never justified.
This is, by the way, not at all an original complaint with me. Hegelians and pragmatists have been pushing this point for years, Joseph Margolis and Kenneth Westphal in particular.
Kantian Naturalist,
I don’t think the supporters of the identity theory (and there remain many) would agree with your blanket assessment that they have all foolishly failed to work through “specifying the pragmatic contexts in which an assertion could be justifiable.” I find the lack of humility on this board one of the most distressing things about it, and I expect more of it from you–a professional philosopher. It is even more distressing when one considers that it is a position (at least sometimes) backed by your own hero Wilfrid Sellars.
First I apologise for the late reply, I have been having serious internet access problems recently.
Kantian Naturalist,
I don’t think you really understand what Steiner is saying. He says, “thought and sense-perception are a single essence”. We never experience pure sense perception without the act of thinking. By the time we are conscious of any object thinking has already taken place. Nowhere do we find passive perceiving within our experiences.
But in order to study cognition that which cannot be separated in reality can, for the purpose of enquiry, be separated in our minds, in a similar way that an anatomist can study a brain in isolation even though the brain cannot. in essence, exist in isolation from the body in which it is housed. In order to understand reality we use our intellect to separate that which really belongs together. This is justifiable, but it is only a stage of understanding, not a conclusion; we should not stop there. By use of our reason we must re-unify that which we have taken apart in the first place. When I observe a rose bush I do not sense red, green, fragrant, prickly as separate perceptions. What I perceive is a rose bush, I do not have to think about it. But I can only do this because of what I have learned in the past.
If you read Steiner he makes clear how he uses the terms percept and concept. He says, “it is, then, not the process of observation but the object of observation which I call the ‘percept'”. Without the addition of thinking and experience the world around us does appear as a confusion of isolated entities. This is confirmed by experiments on people born blind who have been given a chance to see for the first time. It is not perception but percepts which need to brought under a unity.
Kantian Naturalist,
It is thinking that enables us to make the connections that allow us to experience the world in its true nature. There is no unattainable “thing-in-itself” behind our world of experience. Those who posit this “thing-in-itself” merely construct in their minds a hidden world lying behind the world of experience, but they borrow its attributes from the world of experience.
Thinking humans are not separate onlookers studying something external. We are within reality. Owen Barfield point to that which our evolution is leading us, and that is what he calls final participation. It is a step on from the onlooker consciousness which is the current way of experiencing the world.
Steiner:
Thinking cannot be regarded as merely subjective because it is only through thinking that “subject” and “object” have any meaning.
Any arguments here (and elsewhere) are not achieved by some vague bodily movements within brains, in reality they are instigated by thinking individuals.
Neither Steiner nor Goethe adhered to the thought that reality consists of anything changeless. Goethe saw reality in the ever changing metamorphosis of living forms. And for Steiner anything thought of as complete and changeless was dead. Only that which is ever-changing and becoming can be alive in the true sense of the word. And the only place where death is to found is in the physical world of matter.
Okay, I’m visualising a triangle but its not static. Every side and every angle are constantly changing in relation to the others. It has no colour, only shades which distiguish it from its surroundings, sometimes it is lighter sometimes darker. I have never seen anything to which it compares by use of my external vision.
What is this a model of? It is a simplified version of what exactly?
The ideal triangle. That it keeps changing in your mind doesn’t in any way negate the ideal or base grounding from which your particular “Mighty Morphing Power Triangle” is actually generated from.
Models are not necessarily “simplified versions” of something. In a lot of cases, models are far more complex than the territory they are attempting to represent.
So you admit that the ideal triangle is a real entity which can be modelled?
Can you give me some examples of this?
It’s not a “real thing”; it’s an ideal. It’s like the “perfect” person (or “perfect” anything); there’s no such thing in the real world that is “perfect”. Such an ideal is certainly worth striving for, but there’s no “real thing” out there that is the perfect version.
Sure. There are many cases where weather models are far more complex than the weather they are actually modeling. Economic models can be far complex the actual economies, depending in a lot cases on scale. City planning models are nearly always more complex than the cities themselves because they invariably take into account risks that never come to fruition.
And here you highlight the difference between subjective idealism and objective idealism. Subjective idealism may conjure up images of the ‘perfect human’ or ‘ideal triangles’, but these images correspond in number to the number of minds in which they are imagined. For objective idealism there is only one ideal triangle no matter how many minds apprehend it.
And you are correct when you say that there are no perfect versions of anything ‘out there’ in the material world.
I can only take from this that you do not understand the weather. What model can tell us the velocity of each of the air molecules in the atmosphere, or tell us the temperature variations in every cubic meter of the atmosphere. You would need this and more to come anywhere near approaching all the details of the world’s weather systems. Any model of the weather is just an approximation.
And city planning does not model cities as they are at a given time, it is an attempt at co-operation among various city and government departments to aim at planner’s goals for the city in the future. There is no unified model. There are many models which are normally achievable by making compromises. Plans are never more complicated than the structures they model.
And what about the sense organs themselves? Would the same people hold that they are “logical constructs” of the images, or sense-data and are not themselves actually “detected” by our senses, even if their existence has causal effects on our sense organs?
Actually, I wasn’t even going for that distinction. In my example, there is only one “ideal” of anything, but it is simply that…the “ideal”. It can never be attained, not even in the mind. It is simply an ephemeral principle to strive towards. There is nothing discrete or distinct there however.
Ok. Thank you.
Actually, I understand quite a bit about weather. I also happen to understand a great deal about modeling it. What you seem not to understand is the context that weather models focus on. Further, the number of molecules (or the distinction and behavior of each molecule) in a given weather system or atmospheric area hardly constitutes “complexity” (ditto cubic meter (or cubic angstrom for that matter) of temperature variation, pressure differentiations, quantum perturbations, or any other such minutiae). What makes weather models complex is the math and known variables involved in modelling such stochastic behaviors within a context-driven system, something real weather systems don’t actually have in them.
First off…ahem: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/showciting?cid=291523 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_city_models (among other such programs and examples)
Second, while your statement in principle is still valid, many of those department focused models are more complex than the city structures and works they represent. Again, such models attempt to include extrinsic conditions and risks that are not normally actual components of the real-world counterparts
Would you like to rewrite that so it doesn’t ask whether anybody believes that our sense organs are logical constructs even if their existence has causal effects on our sense organs? I’m pretty sure you didn’t mean to ask quite that.
Robin,
nothing you have provided convinces me that city models are more complex than actual real functioning cities. A city comprises all the architecture, streets, parks, services and buildings, but it is also comprised of its population. Unless you are taking a city to be a deserted ghost town which would be an abstraction not equating to any average city I know, no model compares to this reality.
Your criticism is all quite valid, but again, many models do include architecture, buildings, roads, parks, services such as water, sewer, electrical, structural, civil, etc, and even things like traffic flow, rush hour, and public transport. They also include contingencies, risks, externals, and then options for all sorts of variables like what happens if a 7.1 earthquake hits, what likely paths would a tornado (or tornadoes) take, how would fire flow through this environment, and all sorts of similar variables that aren’t part of actual city environments.
Now, perhaps I’m off on this and the models aren’t actually that much more complex than an actual city or even actually less complex overall, but not by that much. Even with the latter, my overall point holds: whether the triangles you envision are the most complex, exaggerated, unbelievable triangles ever imagined, you still aren’t envisioning the actual “ideal” triangle.
First, I do appreciate the gentle chastising here, and you’re right to expect more humility from me.
Second, I am willing to stand by my conviction that most analytic philosophers — “the Mighty Dead” — are far too willing to turn semantic water into epistemological blood. While meaning and knowledge of course cannot be treated as wholly separate, the scope of what we know (or even can know) is far smaller than what we can meaningfully say or think.
I also am perfectly happy to align myself with the intensionalism of C. I. Lewis or (late) Wittgenstein. I do not think that we should treat the semantics of natural language as being of a type with the semantics of formal language, even if — as is controversial — first-order logic (which is nicely extensional) were sufficient for all of logic. I do admire Quine’s brilliance, but I am nevertheless quite fundamentally opposed to him (as I am to Aristotle and to Descartes, who I also admire for their brilliance but nevertheless I am to be counted among the loyal opposition).
Third, what I want, philosophically, is for metaphysics to be answerable to epistemology and philosophy of mind, for epistemology and philosophy of mind to answerable to to philosophy of science, and for philosophy of science to be answerable to sociology of science. (Note: “answerable to” does not mean “determined by”.)
That is, what we permit ourselves to say about reality should be constrained by our best understanding of what it is we are doing when we think about which of our conjectures about reality it is most reasonable to accept, and why the criteria of acceptability being implicitly appealed to in making those selections are the most reasonable criteria.
One of my favorite living philosophers is Joseph Rouse, because Rouse has thought long and hard about what it means for something to be a social practice, and what makes scientific practices distinct from other social practices. On that basis he has developed and defended a sophisticated version of pragmatism in philosophy of science with sweeping implications for epistemology and metaphysics. His defense of metaphysical naturalism is one of the best I’ve seen, because it is based on a naturalistic theory of what scientific practices are.
I would also nominate John Dupre, Ian Hacking, Nancy Cartwright, and Helen Longino as philosophers of science who have systematically pursued the implications of a practice-oriented philosophy of science for epistemology and for metaphysics.
In philosophy of mind, I think that there are diminishing returns to be had from proceeding entirely a priori. My favorite philosophers of mind — Steven Horst and Andy Clark stand out here — have been extremely good about grounding their claims about mindedness in what scientific practice in psychology and neuroscience allows us to get away with. Of course Sellars, Dennett, and Churchland are pioneers here, but they left many stones unturned.
My point was that our sense organs are just like any other external objects. So if external objects are things that we know nothing about apart from the fact that they have an effect on our sense organs, then our sense organs (also being external objects) are in that same category.
Correct. Nietzsche makes the same point in Beyond Good and Evil.
That’s right, you did not say the word compare. What you said was that you lacked any reference point.
And if I look up what someone might mean when they say they lack a reference point I find the following:
– a basis or standard for evaluation, assessment, or comparison; a criterion.
It’s as if you were complaining that you have no “reference point” for what is meant by colorless, odorless, or tasteless, thus have no idea what those terms could possibly refer to. I think that’s absurd. But I run into all sorts of absurdities here at TSZ. I’ll just chalk up another one and we can leave it at that.
So?
“Material” is an adjective.
– 1. denoting or consisting of physical objects rather than the mind or spirit.
Great line! I think, though, that if that’s really a sin, Wittgenstein (both early and late) is the main culprit here.
In my view, some sort of semantic investigation is really all philosophers can do. (We’re not any good at anything else. 🙁 )So if there’s no rich blood to be found there, there are an awful lot of damp philosophers running around. (I hope we don’t catch cold!)
Yes, a number of philosophers have said things along those lines.
It’s as if you didn’t read beyond the first five words in my replay. But golly…I addressed those terms and why I do have reference points for them. I guess the distinction between terminology isn’t your strong suit.
Well I think that would be absurd too. Good thing I clarified the distinction. Oh…if only there was a way to get you to understand it…
Quite true…and I have a reference point for “material”, just like I have a reference point for “odorless”. Did you actually have a point?
ETA: Here, let me repeat this:
But hey! If you want to say that “immaterial” is no different than colorless and is simply an adjective that describes the lack of some sense-related compound, I’m all for it. Feel free to define the sense-related compound that is lacking in objects you are characterizing as “immaterial”.
This would seem to be the logical conclusion to your current line of cross-examination, but if this is not where your meanderings are ultimately leading, you might try actually stating your point so I can try to address it directly.
Yes, I can see why one would say that, though I disagree. I think he’s elucidating the limits of extensionalism in the Tractatus and interesting kind of intensionalistic semantics in the Investigations. Even when he seems to be doing epistemology, as in On Certainty, he’s better read as elucidating the pragmatics of the words “knowledge,” “doubt,” and “belief.”
One of the main things I like about Sellars is his attempt to fuse Wittgenstein-like semantics with the kind of epistemology necessary for scientific realism. Whether or not Sellars can actually pull that off depends almost entirely on whether there’s an adequate understanding and justification of what Sellars called “picturing.” That is, shall we say, controversial. But my hunch is that picturing, or something very much like it, is correct.
Whereas from my perspective, the narrowing of philosophy to semantic investigation — whether “ordinary language philosophy” or the desperate search for “necessary and sufficient conditions” — has been a sterile cul-de-sac. Rather, I want philosophy to be an attempt to understand “how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term”.
Oh, and in case any of you are curious, I took a stab at defining “material” and “immaterial” in non-question-begging terms here.
Only walto noticed. 🙂
My explications might not be right, but I was trying to capture how I think those words are used in current discourse, without worrying too much about etymology or past uses.
I take a somewhat different view, I think. The “narrowness” you speak of is what I think gives philosophy whatever little authority and depth it has. And while I agree with you that philosophy always must be consistent with contemporary science to be relevant, I don’t think that writing explanatory or popular science books is what philosophers should spend too much of their time doing. I leave cosmology to the cosmologists and psychology to the psychologists. I don’t agree with Quine that philosophy is an empirical science–except in it’s (very peculiar) study of the forms of language. It’s not a priori–but it’s not empirical in any traditional way either. I think I may be more of a Kantian than you!–even if less of a naturalist.
I’m sure it’s partly a matter of personal taste–also of being cognizant my own limitations.
I saw your definitions, but I didn’t find them all that enlightening. From my point of view, if one can’t define “immaterial” independent of “material”, there’s a question as to what is actually known and understood about “immaterial” “stuff”.
But that’s neither here nor there. You or Walto defining “immaterial” in philosophical terms didn’t/doesn’t really address my point or goals in discussing the concept. Basically, I want to know how folks who think some “immaterial” thing actually exists define the term and then define or explain or even recognize said existing “immaterial” thing.
The whole discussion started with a supposed essay on what the “soul” is, but frankly I don’t feel anything was actually explained or addressed. Taking all the statements about the supposed “soul” all together and trying to digest the commonalities, it seems to me that the “immaterial” equates to space (in a Relativity-sense of the term) and “soul” seems to have some similarities to the Higgs field. That’s about as close as I’ve been able to come to translating the use of those terms into analogies I can relate to. But I’m probably totally wrong in my interpretation.
Yes, I think you are more inclined towards Kant than I am. For me, the important thing is to get the transcendental story to cohere with the causal story. That makes me more sympathetic to naturalism than you are. Certainly temperament plays a big role here. My undergraduate background is the sciences (biology etc.) so I’m less of a purist about philosophy than most.
Before I switched to philosophy, I was a music composition major!
Which means the same thing, and when he was understood as saying that, he didn’t object. He knew he was saying that. But of course you would not see that.
This means that I earlier and KN and walto now have the same message: Immaterial is not “stuff” and not a “thing”. It’s stuff or a thing only if you insist on misunderstanding. You are doing it with great success.
The stock of examples of immaterial, such as ideas and concepts, should give a sufficient clue immediately to anybody above age 15. Concepts are not things. They are comparable to mathematical objects which are not things either, but interconnected definitions.The mental world is entirely like that. You cannot touch it or feel it. You can approach it by logical definitions in your own mind, if it’s up for the task. Nobody else can do it for you, your own mind must be fit for it. If you find the definitions unhelpful because they don’t stink far enough or don’t have bright enough colors, it’s not the problem of the concepts. They are not supposed to have odour or color in the first place.
Robin,
Fair enough. My suggestion was to define “material” and “immaterial” in terms that aren’t question-begging. Whether or not we could possibly know that there are any “immaterial” things, events, or processes is a subsequent question. (I myself think that there aren’t.)
But this runs up against the same difficulty that Walto was pressing you on earlier.
Just because concepts do not appear to have physical properties, in “the order of understanding,” it doesn’t follow that they are not really physical, in “the order of being.”
If you wanted to say that concepts are not really physical just because our immediate awareness of them is not characterized in terms of the proper and common sensibles, then there needs to be a separate argument that the reality/appearance distinction doesn’t apply to concepts.
See, that’s the problem with you two. You limit yourselves to epistemology (well, you do epistemology, walto does logic exercises in nominalism). I do ontology. I cross-check “the order of understanding” with how things must be given certain natures, kinds, categories, and levels of existence. “The order of being” is quite approachable, but we will never get to discuss this as long as people deny it.
LOL! Of course I saw that. I personally think they are the same thing, though I gave Alan the benefit of the doubt and chocked his phraseology up to quick typing, particularly since our qualm with it was rather convoluted and didn’t actually address what Alan meant. The fact is, “unreal” things can “exist” (as concepts) in one’s imagination. What’s so odd about that? I’ve had many imaginings about Tolkien’s world and various entities; Sauron and Gandalf both readily exist in my mind, yet I certainly hold that they are not real.
You’re the one who seems to think there’s a distinction. So define the distinction and note such to Alan. Don’t blame me for your inability to define “immaterial” succinctly!
Hey…I already noted such. I’m not the one insisting it is “stuff” or defining it thus. I’ve happily said I’m great with it not being any sort of “stuff” at all. Heck, I would exuberantly embrace the notion that “immaterial” isn’t anything at all!
Again…don’t assign blame to me for your own muddled thinking or muddled communication skills…
Except that defining ideas and concepts as “immaterial” doesn’t actually add anything to the understanding of what those things are. And I have news for you: both ideas and concepts are “stuff” and can not only be mapped to specific neural activity and chemical compounds, but can actually be manipulated with electrodes, chemicals, and even other physical stimuli. So they simply do not meet the caveats and ad-hoc characteristics you keep heaping on to this term “immaterial”.
I just don’t see anything useful about a term that really doesn’t align with anything people have some actual experience with.
I take myself to be doing ontology as well. Heck; I’m a committed metaphysical naturalist!
My objection was that you’re not entitled to assert that concepts are immaterial just because they seem to be immaterial — not unless you have some further argument that the reality/appearance distinction doesn’t apply to concepts.
(For obvious — I would hope — reasons, concepts cannot be ‘mental images’ or ‘bundles of sensations’ or the like.)
And unless the “certain natures, kinds, categories, and levels of existence” are themselves immediately received by the mind like revelation or the illuminatio of Augustine, one has to give an account as to how it is that one knows what those “natures, kinds, categories, and levels of existence” are in the first place. Otherwise one is just describing one’s own parochial conceptual framework, which is philosophical anthropology and not metaphysics as traditionally understood.
(Not to slight philosophical anthropology, mind you!)