Calling Out Scientific Materialists (Please respond)

SEE: http://www.youtube.com/user/Professoranton#grid/user/D2E07D1648589430
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWwLtNk-t3o

Category:

Education

Tags:

• phenomenology
• hermeneutics
• ontology
• fundamental ontology
• radical empiricism
• relations
• reality
• materialism
• William James
• science
• scientific materialism
• nothingness
• consciousness
• distance
• embodiment
• emotion
• perspective
• constitution philosophy

[0ThouArtThat0]

@JAYDUBYAH29 If numbers and mathematics are reducible to the matter in the brain, physics has a bit of a paradox on its hands, since all it knows about so-called matter are abstract mathematical formalisms that make no sense whatsoever when explained in terms of the 3-dimensional objects we are used to thinking about. Are you suggesting that physics is really revealing the fundamental nature of the human mind, rather than of some mind-independent world?

[Baldmother]

Nice video demonstrating pretty clearly what i had failed to see up until now.

[TheRedHutt]

Relations are abstract and thus not real in the same sense as energy. What existing thing is identified when you say that the post-it notes are to the left of the hair band? You are describing an existential modality of real things, a way the things appear to be situated, an interaction. But not everything that can be identified exists. As is the problem with putting other abstracta in one's ontology, you end up postulating an infinite of things, which, in my opinion, is intellectual hubris.

[TheRedHutt]

Relations are abstract and thus not real in the same sense as energy. What existing thing is identified when you say that the post-it notes are to the left of the hair band? You are describing an existential modality of real things, a way the things appear to be situated, an interaction. But not everything that can be identified exists. As is the problem with putting other abstracta in one's ontology, you end up postulating an infinite of things, which, in my opinion, is intellectual hubris.

[dogon3]

So, the universe revolves around the Earth? It is only inverse proportions, but the mathematics in relation to humans becomes unwieldy.

[Chrono826]

@0ThouArtThat0 I wish I could thumb this up twice =D

Self defeating, much?

[adjohnson916]

Anton, perhaps E-prime would clarify this situation. The relative properties you mentioned like "to the left of", "below", etc. would, in E-Prime, be easily identified as what they are, namely non-objective, imagined properties.

[MarkLucasTube]

If relations are 'as real as the things between which they stand' then there must be a relation between an object that stands in a relationship to another object and that relationship. Another relation between that second relation and the original relation and so on ad infinitum. Are you saying all of these infinite relations are equally “real”?

[renancenbs]

What makes you think that things like left and right or the numbers really exist?

We use these concepts for practical reasons, but it doesn't necessarily mean they are part of the universe. The *idea* of using they is real, but *they* existing... I'm not so sure.

[ArcadePerfect]

This does wonders for my neurosis'.

:D*

[deepashtray]

Relations are real relative to the observer, but not necessarily to the object(s) being observed. You're reading way too much into it. Our brain and nervous system evolved for one purpose: movement. Movement first, then the senses. As the efficiency of that system grew in its complexity the brain evolved the capacity to "map" the environment and to recognize threats. Juvenile trunicates have a fully functioning brain & CNS. The CNS is digested when the animal becomes sedentary.