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The interactionist problem was solved by Berkeley when he proved, without refutation, that matter is the fiction while mind is the obvious empirical fact. Quan

by bkst 11y ago

The interactionist problem was solved by Berkeley when he proved, without refutation, that matter is the fiction while mind is the obvious empirical fact. Quantum mechanics came along and re-confirmed what he already proved. "Matter"--something solid, mechanical, deterministic--is nothing but an ancient Greek myth. There is nothing in nature that has the properties of matter, therefore nothing is matter, therefore matter doesn't exist. Quantum randomness is not deterministic. Bosons refute materialism. The wave-function itself refutes materialism. Materialism is an ancient greek faith-based religion. Berkeley killed it a long time ago but people were so shocked they still haven't accepted that their God is Dead.

jqm 11y ago
Nonsense. Anyone who believes the state of consciousness exists independent of matter should put their theory to test with a bottle of vodka.
- bkst 11y ago
  It's not that consciousness exists independent of matter, it is that what materialists keep calling matter... does... not... exist... Matter just doesn't exist. In what way is the quantum wavefunction material? It's not deterministic, it's random. It's not solid, you can have two bosons in the same place at once. It doesn't have precise position or momentum but exists as a kind of smudge. It doesn't even move through time in the way that matter is defined as moving. "Matter" has mass, yet photons don't even have mass. Massless particles take up no space. Matter takes up space. Therefore massless particles are not matter. Massless particles underpin all of reality, yet people want to say reality is made up of matter. Wavefunctions are not matter. Photons are not matter. Electrons are not matter--they behave like waves and the properties of waves are incompatible with matter. So where is this matter? It's just a fiction. Berkeley already called it in 1830. There is no way you can be an empiricist materialist these days, without being ignorant.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - joshuacc 11y ago
      George Berkeley: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley
  - super_mario 11y ago
    This is so confused and ignorant of modern physics. Yet matter has precise definition in physics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter Of course physical fields or bosons aren't matter, no one said they were (this is a strawman, if I ever saw one). By the way, electrons do have mass and charge and occupy space (i.e. have volume).
    - bkst 11y ago
      You can't resolve the interactionist problem by just fuzzing the definition of matter. Materialism is the philosophy that all things are matter. Quantum physics refutes the philosophy of materialism because it's incompatible with the philosophy of materialism. If photons are not matter, then something is not matter, and if something is not matter, then materialism is wrong. From that Wikipedia page: 'there is no single universally agreed scientific meaning of the word "matter". Scientifically, the term "mass" is well-defined, but "matter" is not. Sometimes in the field of physics "matter" is simply equated with particles that exhibit rest mass (i.e., that cannot travel at the speed of light), such as quarks and leptons. However, in both physics and chemistry, matter exhibits both wave-like and particle-like properties, the so-called wave–particle duality.' Modern physics does not actually define matter. Matter was once synonymous with mass, but redefining mass to include properties that are incompatible with matter/materialism does not bolster matter/materialism's existence. If mass is defined in such a way that it is incompatible with matter, then either mass or matter have lost their meaning. In fact, it is the word "mass" that has lost its meaning, while the word "matter" has been dropped by science. It's not me that is confused, it is the materialists who are confused. Quantum physicists and popularizers of science go around claiming to be materialists when quantum physics is completely incompatible with materialism and nothing in quantum physics behaves like matter. Feynman 'sum over histories' applies to all things, both macro and micro, and anything that behaves in that way is incompatible with the properties of matter. Since all things behave like quantum wave-particles, all things have properties that are incompatible with the properties of matter. If all things have properties that are incompatible with the necessary properties of matter, then no things can have sufficient properties for those things to be matter. If no things can have the properties of matter, then no things can be matter. If no things can be matter, then no things are matter. If no things are matter, then matter doesn't exist. If matter doesn't exist, then materialism is wholly refuted. The logic against materialism is bullet proof from every angle. People just keep it up out of inertia.
- sebastianconcpt 11y ago
  That would explain mind as dependent on matter (and I agree on that) but that would not say anything about Consciousness. Are you an automaton? If not, why Qualia? Why Consciousness exists? In a material Universe it doesn't make absolutely any sense and, in such Universe, it is not even needed. And yet I know that I can experience red and sounds, etc. in ways that are beyond just receptors and neurotransmitters. Does that happen to you too? Why? Why Qualia?!
wyager 11y ago
Oh dear. More quantum mumbo jumbo and obvious fallacy. 1. Quantum mechanics tells us that matter obeys the Schrodinger equation and has wave properties. Therefore, the classical definition of matter is slightly wrong. This in no way implies that matter doesn't exist. You're right that "matter" as imagined by many classical scientists doesn't exist (because they didn't fully understand it), but you're ignoring the fact that it obviously still exists independently of how classical scientists imagined it to work. Quantum (in)determinism is still up in the air. We don't know exactly how it works. Anyone who uses it for philosophical arguments is probably not making a good argument. In what way do bosons refute materialism? Is helium-4 immaterial? Obviously not. I can hold it in a bottle. I can feel it on my skin. I can fill my lungs with this boson and talk in a squeaky voice.
- bkst 11y ago
  >Oh dear. More quantum mumbo jumbo and obvious fallacy. If you were a philosopher you could actually refute my so-called fallacies with logic rather than insults :\ >1. Quantum mechanics tells us that matter obeys the Schrodinger equation and has wave properties. Therefore, the classical definition of matter is slightly wrong. This in no way implies that matter doesn't exist. It's not "slightly wrong"... it's TOTALLY wrong. Schrodinger's cat is completely incompatible with classical materialism. You can't just be "slightly wrong" at this. >You're right that "matter" as imagined by many classical scientists doesn't exist (because they didn't fully understand it), but you're ignoring the fact that it obviously still exists independently of how classical scientists imagined it to work. It doesn't exist but it obviously exists??? It either exists or it doesn't, or we don't know either way. "Matter" is no longer treated by science, the concept has been dropped by physics. Science has "mass" but this mass behaves nothing like "matter." >Quantum (in)determinism is still up in the air. We don't know exactly how it works. Anyone who uses it for philosophical arguments is probably not making a good argument. Tell that to every physicists who speaks in public then. All of them try to reason about quantum physics and this is a major area of interest. I agree that it is "up in the air" but... philosophy has ALWAYS been about stuff that is up in the air. So to say that quantum physics is somehow off-limits to philosophical argument is just absurd. >In what way do bosons refute materialism? Is helium-4 immaterial? Obviously not. I can hold it in a bottle. I can feel it on my skin. I can fill my lungs with this boson and talk in a squeaky voice. Well you are just flat out not familiar with the standard philosophical canon, because none of those empirical phenomena depend on matter to be explained. They can all be explained by, for instance, empiricist idealists like Berkeley. No empiricist is claiming that sense perceptions don't exist. We are claiming that sense perceptions are not underpinned or explained by matter, that is to say, we are saying that materialism does not actually explain those things at all and that materialism can't be right. Materialism being a 2500 year old philosophy that everything is deterministic, solid, extended, based on atoms, etc etc. The fact that we (the empiricist idealists) made these arguments before quantum mechanics proved us right is just grist for the comedy mill. When all of reality is shown to be underpinned by substances that have none of the classical properties of matter/materialism, then that philosophy is debunked. But for some reason people still cling to the word and want to then redefine the word to mean its 180 degree opposite. Shrug
wfn 11y ago
Just a note to some people replying to 'bkst: what Berkeley developed was a kind of monistic (not dualistic) system. Some may be committing a kind of false dychotomy by thinking "huh someone is saying consciousness is separate from matter, must be a dualist" (or if they're not aware of the history of Cartesian etc thought, automatically assign some kind of vague "theist" property to that person); when in fact Berkeley wanted to do away with the concept of matter altogether (in a manner of speaking - at the very least to diffuse the ontological charge normally associated with that term.) Just a (possibly confusing) clarification re. Berkeley and dualism.

by bkst 11y ago

jqm 11y ago

Nonsense. Anyone who believes the state of consciousness exists independent of matter should put their theory to test with a bottle of vodka.

bkst 11y ago
It's not that consciousness exists independent of matter, it is that what materialists keep calling matter... does... not... exist... Matter just doesn't exist. In what way is the quantum wavefunction material? It's not deterministic, it's random. It's not solid, you can have two bosons in the same place at once. It doesn't have precise position or momentum but exists as a kind of smudge. It doesn't even move through time in the way that matter is defined as moving. "Matter" has mass, yet photons don't even have mass. Massless particles take up no space. Matter takes up space. Therefore massless particles are not matter. Massless particles underpin all of reality, yet people want to say reality is made up of matter. Wavefunctions are not matter. Photons are not matter. Electrons are not matter--they behave like waves and the properties of waves are incompatible with matter. So where is this matter? It's just a fiction. Berkeley already called it in 1830. There is no way you can be an empiricist materialist these days, without being ignorant.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - joshuacc 11y ago
    George Berkeley: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley
- super_mario 11y ago
  This is so confused and ignorant of modern physics. Yet matter has precise definition in physics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter Of course physical fields or bosons aren't matter, no one said they were (this is a strawman, if I ever saw one). By the way, electrons do have mass and charge and occupy space (i.e. have volume).
  - bkst 11y ago
    You can't resolve the interactionist problem by just fuzzing the definition of matter. Materialism is the philosophy that all things are matter. Quantum physics refutes the philosophy of materialism because it's incompatible with the philosophy of materialism. If photons are not matter, then something is not matter, and if something is not matter, then materialism is wrong. From that Wikipedia page: 'there is no single universally agreed scientific meaning of the word "matter". Scientifically, the term "mass" is well-defined, but "matter" is not. Sometimes in the field of physics "matter" is simply equated with particles that exhibit rest mass (i.e., that cannot travel at the speed of light), such as quarks and leptons. However, in both physics and chemistry, matter exhibits both wave-like and particle-like properties, the so-called wave–particle duality.' Modern physics does not actually define matter. Matter was once synonymous with mass, but redefining mass to include properties that are incompatible with matter/materialism does not bolster matter/materialism's existence. If mass is defined in such a way that it is incompatible with matter, then either mass or matter have lost their meaning. In fact, it is the word "mass" that has lost its meaning, while the word "matter" has been dropped by science. It's not me that is confused, it is the materialists who are confused. Quantum physicists and popularizers of science go around claiming to be materialists when quantum physics is completely incompatible with materialism and nothing in quantum physics behaves like matter. Feynman 'sum over histories' applies to all things, both macro and micro, and anything that behaves in that way is incompatible with the properties of matter. Since all things behave like quantum wave-particles, all things have properties that are incompatible with the properties of matter. If all things have properties that are incompatible with the necessary properties of matter, then no things can have sufficient properties for those things to be matter. If no things can have the properties of matter, then no things can be matter. If no things can be matter, then no things are matter. If no things are matter, then matter doesn't exist. If matter doesn't exist, then materialism is wholly refuted. The logic against materialism is bullet proof from every angle. People just keep it up out of inertia.
sebastianconcpt 11y ago
That would explain mind as dependent on matter (and I agree on that) but that would not say anything about Consciousness. Are you an automaton? If not, why Qualia? Why Consciousness exists? In a material Universe it doesn't make absolutely any sense and, in such Universe, it is not even needed. And yet I know that I can experience red and sounds, etc. in ways that are beyond just receptors and neurotransmitters. Does that happen to you too? Why? Why Qualia?!

wyager 11y ago

Oh dear. More quantum mumbo jumbo and obvious fallacy. 1. Quantum mechanics tells us that matter obeys the Schrodinger equation and has wave properties. Therefore, the classical definition of matter is slightly wrong. This in no way implies that matter doesn't exist. You're right that "matter" as imagined by many classical scientists doesn't exist (because they didn't fully understand it), but you're ignoring the fact that it obviously still exists independently of how classical scientists imagined it to work. Quantum (in)determinism is still up in the air. We don't know exactly how it works. Anyone who uses it for philosophical arguments is probably not making a good argument. In what way do bosons refute materialism? Is helium-4 immaterial? Obviously not. I can hold it in a bottle. I can feel it on my skin. I can fill my lungs with this boson and talk in a squeaky voice.

bkst 11y ago
>Oh dear. More quantum mumbo jumbo and obvious fallacy. If you were a philosopher you could actually refute my so-called fallacies with logic rather than insults :\ >1. Quantum mechanics tells us that matter obeys the Schrodinger equation and has wave properties. Therefore, the classical definition of matter is slightly wrong. This in no way implies that matter doesn't exist. It's not "slightly wrong"... it's TOTALLY wrong. Schrodinger's cat is completely incompatible with classical materialism. You can't just be "slightly wrong" at this. >You're right that "matter" as imagined by many classical scientists doesn't exist (because they didn't fully understand it), but you're ignoring the fact that it obviously still exists independently of how classical scientists imagined it to work. It doesn't exist but it obviously exists??? It either exists or it doesn't, or we don't know either way. "Matter" is no longer treated by science, the concept has been dropped by physics. Science has "mass" but this mass behaves nothing like "matter." >Quantum (in)determinism is still up in the air. We don't know exactly how it works. Anyone who uses it for philosophical arguments is probably not making a good argument. Tell that to every physicists who speaks in public then. All of them try to reason about quantum physics and this is a major area of interest. I agree that it is "up in the air" but... philosophy has ALWAYS been about stuff that is up in the air. So to say that quantum physics is somehow off-limits to philosophical argument is just absurd. >In what way do bosons refute materialism? Is helium-4 immaterial? Obviously not. I can hold it in a bottle. I can feel it on my skin. I can fill my lungs with this boson and talk in a squeaky voice. Well you are just flat out not familiar with the standard philosophical canon, because none of those empirical phenomena depend on matter to be explained. They can all be explained by, for instance, empiricist idealists like Berkeley. No empiricist is claiming that sense perceptions don't exist. We are claiming that sense perceptions are not underpinned or explained by matter, that is to say, we are saying that materialism does not actually explain those things at all and that materialism can't be right. Materialism being a 2500 year old philosophy that everything is deterministic, solid, extended, based on atoms, etc etc. The fact that we (the empiricist idealists) made these arguments before quantum mechanics proved us right is just grist for the comedy mill. When all of reality is shown to be underpinned by substances that have none of the classical properties of matter/materialism, then that philosophy is debunked. But for some reason people still cling to the word and want to then redefine the word to mean its 180 degree opposite. Shrug

wfn 11y ago

Just a note to some people replying to 'bkst: what Berkeley developed was a kind of monistic (not dualistic) system. Some may be committing a kind of false dychotomy by thinking "huh someone is saying consciousness is separate from matter, must be a dualist" (or if they're not aware of the history of Cartesian etc thought, automatically assign some kind of vague "theist" property to that person); when in fact Berkeley wanted to do away with the concept of matter altogether (in a manner of speaking - at the very least to diffuse the ontological charge normally associated with that term.) Just a (possibly confusing) clarification re. Berkeley and dualism.