Why are ideas considered separate from matter?

[BurnedOut]

The conundrum of ideas and matter being two different and separate entities or fused entities has pervaded philosophers for a very long time. Notwithstanding Hegel who creatively proposed a fusion, he still considered them as two distinguishable entities. Empiricism on the other hand is fully consequentialist on this topic. A posterior is the way to go and each idea is traceable to a certain stimuli and that leads to a deterministic perspective on will. What I don't understand is why is it so difficult to understand that ideas are matter themselves - They are tangible, that is, they are knowable and palpable enough to be translated tangibly. Neuroscience did not exist at that point to bust Plato's rationalist bubble but despite that, it is quite easy to conceive that ideas are not separate entities but rather result of matter itself.

It is also deemed impossible that matter can itself emanate abstract patterns in the form of 'ideas' by interacting with other ideas. Ideas are purely built on observed causalities which themselves build on other causalities - a net so deep and recursively defined that it emerges in the form of cognition - a rudimentary map created by living organisms by feedback mechanisms that they become self-sustaining and ever-adapting. Imagine building your predictions on other predictions and imagine a large internetworked connection that is stateful. I don't think these formulations require the application of any kind of hard sciences.

What I am saying seems to tie in perfectly with the ideas of empiricism and its subsequent offshoots. However, this is not what I am referring to. By saying so, we again delegate the matter of discovery back to matter itself with making matter as a source of response than a source of active stimuli. I think this is incorrect thinking because matter is a source of response and stimuli simultaneously. Consider this as a categorical imperative or don't.

What needs to be understood that matter themselves are in a state of flux and they happen to interact with each other and produce a stable map of certain causalities which are established adequately to any particular matter that attempts to exist in those state of affairs and those matters happen to be us. Our consciousness seems so because of its ability to predict interactions which is not at all surprising. This is because we are programmed to seek a certain equilibrium in certain state of affairs to ensure our basis existence and that constantly colors our perception (because we seek it automatically).

The end result of this is that there is no end to matter and its attributions. This view challenges the empiricists' perception that everything can be traced back to a particular phenomenon when in reality it simply may be that a single chain of causality cannot be traced back. The world rather than being deterministic, works deterministically as far as it is conceived in a completely haphazard manner.

I am planning to write more on this because at this point, my theory is very nebulous and based on quite a lot of unexplained claims but I hope a gist of my idea is presented to all.

 

[Hadoblado]

The end result of this is that there is no end to matter and its attributions. This view challenges the empiricists' perception that everything can be traced back to a particular phenomenon when in reality it simply may be that a single chain of causality cannot be traced back. The world rather than being deterministic, works deterministically as far as it is conceived in a completely haphazard manner.

Can you show me the part of the empiricist position that requires being able to trace causality backward?

Not saying you're wrong, it just doesn't seem to follow from the core tenets. I consider myself an empiricist but do not think causality can necessarily always be traced backward.

Are you speaking in terms of observation (the tracing operation) or the reality (the fact of whether there was a cause)?

 

[Black Rose]

can a computer be conscious? If the body is just atoms I say yes. The arrangement matters though.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Human brain would be predictable if it were behaving in constraints of a depleted system like say you live in a desert.

The decisions in such environment are way too limited and few and each decision takes a lot of energy expenditure. So you really have to know what you want to do each step of the way.

In today's world you can do just about anything it would not really matter that much.

Consequently and not surprisingly people do behave such a way.

Because you benefit always.

Which is good so long as people keep in the back of their mind that some few decisions do matter. Many of them are arbitrary, but few decisions do really matter every single time whether people know it or not.

 

[BurnedOut]

For starters, inductive reasoning has been the de facto method for eons. Falsification is also gaining traction and deductions are kind of looked upon as being too 'subjective'

Can you show me the part of the empiricist position that requires being able to trace causality backward?

Science thrives on inductive reasoning and falsification. The job of science to establish causality

 

[Black Rose]

Let's say there are math objects beyond the calculation of our finite universe. Would those objects exist in theory? They are too big to even describe/write down but would they exist in theory?

 

[The Grey Man]

Ideas are considered separate or at least distinguishable from matter because, in Aristotelian terms, the form of a thing is distinguishable from its substance, its formal cause from its material cause. For example, a particular Frenchman, the French people, and the country of France are all instances of 'one' thing, but they are far from exhausting the possible manifestations of unity. In fact, we can list examples of unity indefinitely, but we cannot reduce it to any of its instantiations, and the same is true of other 'transcendentals' like goodness and truth. This, I think, is Platonists' main motive for asserting that ideas are independent of and transcend matter (it is certainly mine).

 

[CuriousMonk]

The separation of ideas and matter is only perceived in our thoughts. Which means the idea of separation itself is a thought (an idea). Therefore, if there are no thoughts there will be no separation of matter and idea. Furthermore, thoughts are the result of memory. Memory is our survival mechanism.

 

[scorpiomover]

The conundrum of ideas and matter being two different and separate entities or fused entities has pervaded philosophers for a very long time. Notwithstanding Hegel who creatively proposed a fusion, he still considered them as two distinguishable entities. Empiricism on the other hand is fully consequentialist on this topic. A posterior is the way to go and each idea is traceable to a certain stimuli and that leads to a deterministic perspective on will. What I don't understand is why is it so difficult to understand that ideas are matter themselves - They are tangible, that is, they are knowable and palpable enough to be translated tangibly.

Because matter has certain properties, that restrict what matter can do in this universe.

If ideas are matter, then ideas have the same properties as matter, and are also restricted to what matter can do in this universe.

For instance, if ideas are matter, and matter/energy is conserved, then ideas + matter + energy is conserved. So if you have a new idea, since that idea now stays in human consciousness, then some matter or energy has to disappear from the universe, of the law of conservation is broken.

When an idea is forgotten by humanity, then again matter/energy has to pop out of nowhere to compensate, or again the law of conservation is broken.

But then the law of conservation of matter/energy as physicists have empirically observed it, would be smashed to smithereens, or ideas would have to be conserved, and then there could only be a fixed number of ideas at any one time.

We'd need a Law of Conservation of Ideas.

Then if you have a new idea, some other idea has to be forgotten from humanity at the exact same time, to make room for it.

So then we must consider, why do we have ideas when we already have matter?

We already have matter. But matter has properties that restrict what matter can do in this universe. For instance, you can jump and down as much as you want. But humans can't really fly by themselves.

Humans had the idea of aeroplanes, in order to overcome the limitations of matter.

Matter like smallpox can kill.

Humans had the idea of vaccines, in order to overcome the limitations of matter.

So if ideas are matter and thus they have the same limitations as matter, then that means that ideas cannot overcome the limitations of matter, which is the main reason why humans come up with ideas in the first place.

So that means that if ideas are like matter, then there's no benefit in having ideas that would solve the problems of not being able to do everything we want due to the limitations of matter.

Neuroscience did not exist at that point to bust Plato's rationalist bubble but despite that, it is quite easy to conceive that ideas are not separate entities but rather result of matter itself.

It is also deemed impossible that matter can itself emanate abstract patterns in the form of 'ideas' by interacting with other ideas. Ideas are purely built on observed causalities which themselves build on other causalities - a net so deep and recursively defined that it emerges in the form of cognition - a rudimentary map created by living organisms by feedback mechanisms that they become self-sustaining and ever-adapting. Imagine building your predictions on other predictions and imagine a large internetworked connection that is stateful. I don't think these formulations require the application of any kind of hard sciences.

Those sorts of systems are horrendously chaotic and incredibly difficult to deal with. Even the hardest of sciences struggle to deal with the simplest of those cases.

What I am saying seems to tie in perfectly with the ideas of empiricism and its subsequent offshoots. However, this is not what I am referring to. By saying so, we again delegate the matter of discovery back to matter itself with making matter as a source of response than a source of active stimuli. I think this is incorrect thinking because matter is a source of response and stimuli simultaneously.

If something to be a response and stimulus at the same time, then it can go forwards and backwards at the same speed at the same time. What speed is it travelling at?

What needs to be understood that matter themselves are in a state of flux and they happen to interact with each other and produce a stable map of certain causalities which are established adequately to any particular matter that attempts to exist in those state of affairs and those matters happen to be us.

That's how QM works, and makes it so difficult to calculate what happens, that we've gone for quantum superposition, thinking that everything that can happen, is all happening simultaneously, until we know what happens, and then everything we think we know collapses into a heap.

Our consciousness seems so because of its ability to predict interactions which is not at all surprising. This is because we are programmed to seek a certain equilibrium in certain state of affairs to ensure our basis existence and that constantly colors our perception (because we seek it automatically).

The end result of this is that there is no end to matter and its attributions. This view challenges the empiricists' perception that everything can be traced back to a particular phenomenon when in reality it simply may be that a single chain of causality cannot be traced back. The world rather than being deterministic, works deterministically as far as it is conceived in a completely haphazard manner.

When things are haphazard, that usually means that scientists don't have a clue what is going on.

I am planning to write more on this because at this point, my theory is very nebulous and based on quite a lot of unexplained claims but I hope a gist of my idea is presented to all.

I don't really get your gist about empiricism solving anything here.

I'm not even sure how you could think of this in the first place, not without ignoring some of the really important laws of physics.


But as a pure hypothetical in a hypothetical universe, like Terry Pratchett's Discworld, I think it would be an interesting discussion.

 

[sushi]

this is the mind body problem that has been discussed multiple times

ideas is part of mental internal universe we built using external senses.

 

[sushi]

tangible vs intangible

we build an abstract picture based on our senses

 

[Creeping Death]

can a computer be conscious? If the body is just atoms I say yes. The arrangement matters though.

Yes the arrangement matters, it allows for certain chemical reactions that may not occur in things we consider to be lacking consciousness.

 

[sushi]

ideas are mental forms and concepts based on our observation of external reality.