3 ms·

A monism, in this context, is a metaphysics with one fundamental substance. In "physicalism" or "materialism", that stuff is "matter". In "panpsychism" or "idea

by rosser 8y ago

A monism, in this context, is a metaphysics with one fundamental substance. In "physicalism" or "materialism", that stuff is "matter". In "panpsychism" or "idealism", it's "consciousness".

vokep 8y ago
Is it not all information regardless? What makes matter different from consciousness? sounds like different terms for the same fundamental thing: stuff that exists. The matter term comes from the fact the stuff is just stuff that exists The consciousness term comes from the fact that we can see stuff that exists But these are both just observational terms of 'stuff that exists', and it seems that anything existing at all is at the core of the issue (as opposed to what exists, in reference to the 'fundamental substance').
- zwkrt 8y ago
  The tricky part of philosophy is that sometimes it attempts to overstep the bounds from 'what we can know based on data we can collect' (i.e., 'information') and 'what the fundamental concept/ontology/etc actually is'. The distinction is subtle, but one way to think about it is that you can never know somethings true nature only by investigating it scientifically--this will give you all the 'hows' but none of the 'whys'. Whether or not it is always appropriate to ask 'why' is another matter. I have a shaky and unfounded belief that asking 'why' questions about fundamental physics will not yield interesting results. In programming we make monisms all the time. Think of Unix's "everything is a file" or Java's "Everything is an object". A monism is nice because it asserts that fundamentally there is some single common denominator underlying all emergent behavior. That being said, physicists are usually happy to do the calulations and get the expected results without needing a fundamental philosophy regarding the workings of the entire universe.

3 ms·

A monism, in this context, is a metaphysics with one fundamental substance. In "physicalism" or "materialism", that stuff is "matter". In "panpsychism" or "idea

by rosser 8y ago

A monism, in this context, is a metaphysics with one fundamental substance. In "physicalism" or "materialism", that stuff is "matter". In "panpsychism" or "idealism", it's "consciousness".

vokep 8y ago
Is it not all information regardless? What makes matter different from consciousness? sounds like different terms for the same fundamental thing: stuff that exists. The matter term comes from the fact the stuff is just stuff that exists The consciousness term comes from the fact that we can see stuff that exists But these are both just observational terms of 'stuff that exists', and it seems that anything existing at all is at the core of the issue (as opposed to what exists, in reference to the 'fundamental substance').
- zwkrt 8y ago
  The tricky part of philosophy is that sometimes it attempts to overstep the bounds from 'what we can know based on data we can collect' (i.e., 'information') and 'what the fundamental concept/ontology/etc actually is'. The distinction is subtle, but one way to think about it is that you can never know somethings true nature only by investigating it scientifically--this will give you all the 'hows' but none of the 'whys'. Whether or not it is always appropriate to ask 'why' is another matter. I have a shaky and unfounded belief that asking 'why' questions about fundamental physics will not yield interesting results. In programming we make monisms all the time. Think of Unix's "everything is a file" or Java's "Everything is an object". A monism is nice because it asserts that fundamentally there is some single common denominator underlying all emergent behavior. That being said, physicists are usually happy to do the calulations and get the expected results without needing a fundamental philosophy regarding the workings of the entire universe.