This is a thread to allow discussions about how those lucky enough to have free will make decisions.
As materialism doesn’t explain squat, this thread is a place for explanations from those that presumably have them.
And if they can’t provide them, well, this will be a short thread.
So do phoodoo, mung, WJM et al care to provide your explanations of how decisions are actually made?
Er, tin cans on a bit of string?
Strictly speaking, your computer doesn’t contain any bits at all. The bits are abstract entities that we find it useful to put in our abstract accounts of computation.
You accept the study with obvious exceptions as conclusive demonstration? For example, it says r must be in red – exception: Finnish punainen.
And it doesn’t say n must be in words for nose. Instead, it says, “Although it’s easy to imagine that the n-sound in nose reflects nasality, this is a guess and no such relationship can explain other associations.”
Each exception, if there’s no higher rule explaining why there’s deviation from the stated rule, is not a negligible exception. It’s a counterexample that disproves the stated rule.
No. It just seems to you that there is a (necessary or inherent or essential or relevant) connection. Admittedly, there are suggestive connections, some amazingly widespread across many languages, but none of them is conclusive, so it’s irrelevant.
ETA: And what I said in my previous post does not derive from 1900s. It’s been there since Panini’s grammar millennia ago. Sure, there are other ideas, but all demonstrably inferior.
How much do THEY weigh? How much space do they take up? No mass at all?
The tokens of the songs are material.
Patterns are a significant problem for deniers of properties, on their own, I think.
That makes no difference at all–even if the sounds were the same in every language. The study sounds interesting, but it’s completely irrelevant to the issue being discussed.
Oh, Erik. None of that stuff matters. If there were but one language in the world, the question of universals would still exist.
True. Although someone who wanted to block the inference to meanings as “abstract entities” could take a different approach here.
When we say “‘dog’ and ‘chien’ mean the same thing”, we are saying that “dog” (in English) and “chien” (in French) play similar roles. They are correctly applied in similar perceptual circumstances, function similarly in inferences, and have similar consequences in action.
The fact that “dog” and “chien” are spelled differently and sound different is irrelevant; what’s relevant is the similarity of their roles within those respective languages. Sameness of meaning is similarity of functional role, not referring to an abstract entity independent of all functional roles.
Although no one could acquire the word “dog” or any of its synonyms if there were no actual dogs in the speaker’s environment, since one would not know how to use the word.
The meaning of the word is not a mental association, but the rules that govern its use.
Only in the sense that the functional roles of the words are not determined by their phonemic or scriptorial properties.
We already saw that a specific meaning is not tied to a specific shape when words are written or spoken. On the same analogy, specific thoughts are not tied to specific neural instances. Any thought may need a neural instantiation in the brain, but the connection is fundamentally as arbitrary as with words and meanings, i.e. there is no essential connection whatsoever. Instead, there is a fundamental distinction.
It’s true that different phonemic and scriptorial properties can play similar functional roles in languages, but that doesn’t show that the functional roles must swing free of neurocomputational properties in the same way.
It could be — for all I know — that if you were to compare fMRI results of a native French speaker and a native English speaker, the same parts of the brain would be activated when they see dogs or think about dogs even though they communicate those representations in different languages. In short, I don’t think we have the evidence to support the analogy you’re making here.
In my experience atheists prefer materialism over physicalism because it’s more warm and fuzzy. They would deny that the two are synonymous.
There’s no such thing as “meaning of the word”.
No, I’m not denying meaning. I am denying the thingness of meaning.
To me, it seems to be a mistake to claim that meanings are material. But it seems equally mistaken to claim that meanings are abstract.
Fantastic post. Perhaps Patrick will meditate on it.
Science fiction writers are just fooling us all, pretending they know the meaning of those words they use, when there are no actual _______ to speak of.
I was talking about words used in empirical discourse, as Erik was. I wasn’t talking about creative uses of language in literature or poetry.
KN, this is a bit off-topic, but are there any specific books you require your students to read as part of the course[s] you teach?
I wonder, could a word denoting a non-existing thing like a unicorn have the same meaning for two different individuals?
Things that make you say hmmm
peace
I take there to be differences in meaning, perhaps subtle, even for words that denote existing things.
Interesting, I would agree.
Can one of individuals have the correct meaning?
peace
There’s no such thing as “the correct meaning”
Are you sure?
IOW If I say that there is a correct meaning how would you prove me wrong?
peace
There’s no incorrect meaning either.
Would you elaborate?
I wouldn’t try.
There’s no standard for meanins, other than the ability to communicate well. If there were such a standard, then we would have AI systems that worked well. And we would ourselves be mindless mechanical robots.
So a correct meaning would have at least that one attribute then. Funny how meaning presupposes personal communication (ie revelation)
I’m not sure how that follows,
Perhaps there is a correct meaning that is just not empirically accessible to finite humans and AI systems.
peace
No, but computers can work with either French or English. Often words do not have exactly the same meaning in both languages, either, let alone the sentences.
Computers struggle to translate English into French, and vice-versa, much as it can be for a human. That said, it’s not that difficult to recognize how a French rendering of a story mirrors an English rendering of the same story, as there is an implicit sequence of references to images, emotions, abstractions, etc., to a tale.
It is complex. It isn’t magic.
Glen Davidson
Although I already responded to this, apparently Erik feels there is a an imbalance in that definitions of “immaterial” have been demanded whereas definitions of “material” have not been forthcoming. Yet I’ve made the point several times (I don’t know whether Patrick agrees – he can speak for himself) that if there is an entity or phenomenon that demonstrates, however faintly or indirectly, some evidence of its existence, then it is material (or real as I prefer to say). Does Erik not find that unequivocal?
Precisely. A word is a tool of communication. Communication is much easier when both parties speak the same language and agree what words mean.
My example was as simple as possible, but its application was not limited to the empirical discourse. This should be clear by the time I get to my later paragraphs where I write how conceptual thought works. Thought works the same regardless if it’s about sheep or geometry or metaphysics.
True, it’s not independent of all functional roles, but functional roles are not themselves limited to the empirical world or communication. When you think about metaphysics, for example, the content of your thought is an arbitrary abstract structure. I would still call it “functional role” with some stretch, but you would probably decry it as “an abstract entity”. Well, an aspect of it is an abstract immaterial entity, because there’s no physical location t it, but another aspect of it is that it has a functional role in the thought process of the individual mind.
This is incomplete. There’s also coherence of individual thought. Very important for your own sanity, you know.
Only if it’s presupposed that meanings are strictly limited to word usage (in communication). But if thought content (regardless of communication) has/is a meaning, then “mental association” is perfectly appropriate.
The theory is this: We don’t first learn words and then learn to think. Rather, we have thought content at birth (i.e. tabula rasa thesis is false) and we gradually associate it to words and to the rest of the world around us. All the while the mind has a component that can function irrespective of the outside world.
Feel free to flesh out your contrary theory.
Abstract is not the opposite of material. Immaterial is. Meanings are immaterial.
Divided another way, there are concrete and abstract meanings. Dogs and sheep are concrete, love and truth are abstract. All of them, as meanings, are immaterial.
Alan,
You are trying to define the immaterial out of existence.
It’s a bad habit of yours. You’ve also tried it with the supernatural and with the untestable.
The last of those backfired pretty badly on you:
keiths,
That’s a funny little game you always play here, that you share with Richard. Where you always make some puffed up claim, like “remember how that backfired on you last time” “that didn’t work so good for you last time” ‘remember the last time you got burned”…and then you add some link, which no one can tell, or would even ever bother to figure out what the hell you are talking about or trying to claim victory for, by following your silly links.
You use your own scoring system to proclaim how right you are, and think that everyone is going to help follow you around and record your made up win. Did you teach Richard this, or did he learn from you?
It needs a name: Keiths Sells Himself A Medal?
So in your view God is material and real.
Yes. I’m glad you were able to spot that.
Nope. In my view the imagination that creates gods is real. It exists in human heads.
Alan Fox,
Is it the same imagination that created gravity? Electromagnetism?
Such clarity. Let’s hope it’s appreciated.
The same imagination that proposed the models and thought up the names.
God, however faintly or indirectly, has given some evidence of His existence.
Therefore, God is both real and material.
[According to your reasoning.]
Alan Fox,
But not the same imagination that created it?
If that were true…
Human imagination is a subset of human thought is an aspect of brain activity.
The dog is material,but the word dog is immaterial?
It’s all to do with how you choose your definitions.
Alan Fox,
So gravity is just made up in human imagination?
Nope, gravity, the apparent attraction between masses, is an observable phenomenon. It took human imagination to propose models as attempts at explanations.
I find it hopelessly equivocating several times over. Rationally speaking it’s so gross as being beyond ridiculous, but you probably find some naive attraction in it.
But it’s sad that you are not able to spot that. And it speaks volumes.
Here’s an explanation how your paraphrase is an intellectual insult.
Paraphrase is a reiteration of another person’s view, so there are things to pay attention to. Given that I am defending the concept of immaterial, you should understand that for me “non-physical and real” is an everyday thing. For you, since you are attacking/rejecting the immaterial, this is not so, but to be able to pull off a paraphrase, you must look at things from my point of view for the time being.
Why did I use the phrase “physically real”? To delimit a specific area of reality. The sum total of reality, for me, consists of both physical and non-physical aspects, so I need to specify. You don’t need to do it, but that’s you. When you paraphrase me, you have to show some respect for the discussion and to onlookers and exercise some intellectual integrity, and paraphrase accurately.
I said, “When something is not physically real, but real nonetheless for some purpose (e.g. logical, theoretical, explanatory purpose) then it serves as an example of immaterial.” Obvious examples are e.g. logical terms or theoretical concepts – stock examples of immaterial.
You collapsed it to “If something is real but not real then it’s immaterial?” You can only say this if “real” and “material” are the same thing. Meaning, you didn’t even try, deliberately or not, to look at it from my angle. This constitutes an intellectual insult.
You are able to pose the question only if you understood nothing of the statement. This is an intellectual insult, because the relevant context and clarifications had immediately preceded the post where you were quoting from.
In the original context with Patrick, I spoke about bogeymen causing fear. I even continued the same theme with you, so you, as a rational being, should have been able to make the relevant connection. But you didn’t, and that’s intellectually insulting.
Fear is a real consequence of a supposedly non-existent bogeyman. If the consequence is real, then the cause is not as non-existent as supposed. But since bogeymen don’t exist physically, the obvious term to use about them is non-physical or immaterial. Which means just what it says – non-physical. It equates unreal or non-existent only if you are careless with terms, and that would be intellectually insulting.
Or, speaking about logical terms and theoretical concepts, try to do science without them. Obviously impossible. So, they are inevitable. And, insofar as inevitable, they are undeniably real for e.g. hypothetical or explanatory purpose. But to say that logical terms and theoretical concepts are material (ontologically), you’d have to devise a horribly skewed ad hoc philosophy of language, which would only add further insult.
Alan Fox,
Is it material or immaterial?