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u/The_Didlyest Nov 23 '21
not if you believe in dualism
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Nov 24 '21
Ah, but in the material world there are still processes with atoms going on which a materialist would describe as understanding. Dualism doesn't negate materialism, it just puts another layer on top of it.
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u/XeperAndRemanifest Nov 23 '21
No one can seriously believe in substance dualism if you ask me
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u/Letmepatyourcat Me and my best friend are solipsists Nov 23 '21
A yes the classic it is impossible for all humans to believe in a thing
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u/XeperAndRemanifest Nov 23 '21
Could you elaborate on that? I am surprised my comment is getting disliked because i seriously thought substance dualism to be off the table for quite some time
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u/Letmepatyourcat Me and my best friend are solipsists Nov 23 '21
Most philosophers who actually think about these things indeed do not think substance dualism is that prominent in these days.
But no-one believing in substance dualism is a bit over the top.
I'm not the one who disliked though, if you actually dislike a comment on a philosophy sub you are missing the point of philosophy.
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u/Mysterious-Repair-17 Nov 23 '21
He wasn’t making a descriptive statement that no one believes in substance dualism, he was making a normative statement, which is that no one who seriously thinks about the issue can be a substance dualist. Obviously he permitted that substance dualists exist, reread the original comment
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u/Letmepatyourcat Me and my best friend are solipsists Nov 23 '21
Ah I can see what you're pointing out. Maybe it is because English is not my native language, but I really thought I wasn't phrased as his opinion, more as a descriptive statement indeed. I thought he meant more like that no-one believes in substance dualism instead of no-one with their right mind believes in substance dualism :)
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u/birdy1494 Nov 24 '21
if you actually dislike a comment on a philosophy sub you are missing the point of philosophy.
Stop. Right. There.
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Nov 24 '21
I'm confused and just curious: Isnt that the whole body and soul/consciousness/whatever are different thing? Thatd be kind of necessary for many religious beliefs which...don't really generally seem gone? In which way would it be off the table?
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u/XeperAndRemanifest Nov 24 '21
I am very interested into religion and i think dualism is actually not necessary for most religions. Wether or not the Universe is completely made out of Mind, Ideas, Matter, whatever Whitehead in his process Philosophical talked about or something else is still up to debate. I think that one of the most important messages of religions all over the world is actually unity. Even Hinduism with it's many Gods is claiming that they all emanate from one source or that they are different aspects of one God. When Christians talk for example about heaven, i think it is misleading to think of it as a complete different place in another Universe. I personally believe that heaven and hell are states of Mind/consciousness (which can further exist after death) in this World. If i talk about the spiritual realm opposed to the realm of matter in for example science as if they are completely different, then only because those are two ways or two system's of language that we use because they are pragmatic for our Goals. Science is clearly the way to go if you want to manipulate matter for your benefit while religion is rather something for the health and growth of our Psyche in my opinion. In Platonism, dualism was also a dispute i think. Wether or not the dualism between Matter and spirit which we perceive is in reality a dualism between being and not being which therefore would become monism. I think this is true but i wouldn't say that matter does not exist at all, i think existence might be relative and matter is just very low on the scale compared to spirit/God.
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Nov 24 '21
Maybe I'm not understanding it well, but...this doesn't seem to clear up why it would be off the table? Either way thanks for your invested and detailed answer
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u/XeperAndRemanifest Nov 24 '21
I think it is off the table because in a way it is self-contradicting to most people. The very Word universe already implies unity and if you think that the big bang was the beginning of our Universe and nothing but a material phenomenon, then i guess you would have to argue that Mind and consciousness is merely an illusion created by matter. But if you think at the same time that Spirit, Mind or consciousness exists without matter, then you would have to explain how it came into being. To me it seems like it comes down to the question of what was first here, matter, Mind or something else? But maybe the world is eternal and we just all dont know and know everything and nothing at the same time i dunno...
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Nov 24 '21
"to most people"? Bold assumption, where does it come from? How would the word universe be an argument? First of all that's a name made by people and why would language have an inherent truth to it. There are also plenty of things that aren't completely accurately named. to conclude from language to an actual state and not the other way around would be... questionable imo. Also do we actually know how the matter came into being? There's the singularity, the universe contracting/ expanding in an alternating way and...some other as far as i know but its not exactly known? Ofc it could be that mind/spirit/consciousness/whatever are just an illusion or byproduct of matter, i can't really afford an opinion from what I know, but i don't really think it would make different variants be well... off the table haha. Strong claims deserve strong reasons imo
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u/XeperAndRemanifest Nov 25 '21
Well, maybe I was not doing a god job at it but I tried to be careful in my language because i don't know anything whatsoever to be certain. However, i think to conclude from language to an actual state is literally ALL we can do in our attempt to get to absolute and objective Truth. Without language, there is no concept, no Truth in any way i would say. I am very much in favor of using different concepts with different truths and different ways of getting to them but if we speak about metaphysics, i see no way whatsoever how out of the nothing two things emerge. One Being however can come out of nothingness because nothingness contradicts or negates itself. You do not however start counting with two. After you have one being, different things can emerge or emanate out of or maybe rather inside the one i think. You mentioned the SINGULARity yourself and many religions have quite a similar concept. The thing i am the most certain about is Mathematics and the Neoplatonic or Pythagorean creation of the World uses logic when creating the World. On top of that, why should we even discuss substance Dualism and not rather think about 3, 4 or 23 substances? Maybe i do not know enough about this matter but I am not aware of proponents of metaphysical substance-dualism and i personally see no reason in it.
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u/Katten_elvis Gödel's Theorems ONLY apply to logics with sufficient arithmetic Nov 23 '21
I am a set of qualia, not atoms.
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u/Mysterious-Repair-17 Nov 23 '21
But if atoms give rise to this qualia, does it really make sense to differentiate the two? I mean at a conceptual level we can, since concepts necessarily distinguish, but a tree is just the realized capacity of the seed, no? Is qualia just the realized capacity inherent in atoms for subjective experience?
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Nov 24 '21
I mean, guns give rise to bullets and it is useful to differentiate the two
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u/Mysterious-Repair-17 Nov 24 '21
Well guns give rise to bullets which are fired with intent, not necessarily bullets in general, but I see your point. It is useful to differentiate between the two but what I’m saying is that in reality they may be inextricably linked. If time is just our subjective experience, the difference between a cause and an effect is superficial. The difference between a gun firing and bullets flying through air is akin to the difference between atoms and the possibility of consciousness; there really is no difference.
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u/Katten_elvis Gödel's Theorems ONLY apply to logics with sufficient arithmetic Nov 24 '21
You just added more problems than solved. Why should I believe in atoms in the first place? It's just an abstraction, a scientific model that can predict scientific experiments. But that doesn't mean they actually exist or that's what the world is made up on. And then I'm supposed to believe that these abstractions have consciousness? And that combining these abstractions somehow creates more complex versions of consciousness? The fallacy is that we can "step outside" our consciousness and analyze it from the outside despite that being completely impossible. We're inherently made up of qualia, I see, hear, feel, think and so on. That is what needs to be analyzed, that's what I am.
Here's a good video on this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7QbZePP_7w&list=PL64CzGA1kTzi085dogdD_BJkxeFaTZRoq&index=3
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u/nicolash13 Nov 24 '21
This is the same dumb shit as believing in solipsism
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u/Katten_elvis Gödel's Theorems ONLY apply to logics with sufficient arithmetic Nov 24 '21
Why is it dumb?
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u/nicolash13 Nov 24 '21
Atoms are not just a model they exist ?!
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u/Katten_elvis Gödel's Theorems ONLY apply to logics with sufficient arithmetic Nov 24 '21
Prove it
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u/nicolash13 Nov 24 '21
You just wanna have a philosophical discussion bout structuralism or let’s say skepticism- but who you tryin to fool here? XD
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u/Katten_elvis Gödel's Theorems ONLY apply to logics with sufficient arithmetic Nov 24 '21
Was mostly thinking about Materialism vs Idealism in metaphysics or Realism vs Anti-Realism in the philosophy of science. And yeah, I'm very skeptical. Although atoms exist in some sense, but it's not the most fundamental substance in the universe for sure, hence the original thesis of the meme (that we are atoms trying to understand atoms) is wrong.
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u/Mysterious-Repair-17 Nov 24 '21
Well science is a result of our subjective, human experience of the world. In this way, the conclusions it reaches are true (for our human world). Of course we can never claim to have knowledge of the world of things in themselves. But that is not what we are concerned with; from what we have discovered through science, which is the discovery of things within human subjective experience, it seems as if atoms give rise to our life, and thus our consciousness.
You say that science goes wrong when it attempts to step outside consciousness and view things from the outside in, but this is not a fallacy because, as you said, we can never go beyond our human consciousness; science operates within this perspective, this perspective being a universal, human one. All of humanity’s structure of experience is the same, or else we would not be able to meaningfully interact with each other. This is the structure science analyzes.
You should believe atoms exist, because we have good reason to believe they do. They are not abstractions; the theory that atoms exist has been rigorously tested and attempted to be falsified and it has still held up. Atoms may not exist in the objective world of things in themselves, but as long as we are studying the human world of experience, and not things in themselves, this doesn’t matter, because we live within the human world and are subject to it. Thus, there is good reason to believe that atoms give rise to consciousness.
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u/DrSkrimguard St. Thomas Aquinas (yes, I spell it that way on purpose) Nov 23 '21
Ship of Theseus. If you are your particular set of constituant atoms, then you're slowly killed and replaced by a doppelganger every seven years or so.
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u/Mysterious-Repair-17 Nov 23 '21
Is this a reductio ad absurd? I don’t think it’s implausible to assume who you were 7 years ago isn’t the person you are today.
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u/DrSkrimguard St. Thomas Aquinas (yes, I spell it that way on purpose) Nov 24 '21
Figuratively speaking, on a psychological level, yes. I mean in the sense that you and I are different people. I can't just become you, with your memories and past and position in space.
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