By: @ucarr

Prelude

Cognitive Experiences are a Part of Material Reality

The ache in the pit of your stomach was real, and so was the pounding of your heart. For these reasons, we go to the movies. The mind and its experiences are physically real. No brain, no mind. — ucarr

The experience is real. That does not mean the characters in the movie are real. They are only real as constructs, not literally. There is no "real" wizard named Harry Potter with magical powers even though the movies about Harry Potter made you feel emotions and have real physical reactions. Unless of course you want to "fuzz" the meaning of "real" which brings us right back to why I responded to the post in the first place. Harry Potter exists as an imaginary character. Imaginary characters are by definition, NOT REAL. They do exist as mind constructs, not as literal objects. This means of course that existence and being "real" are not synonymous which is what I have been contending. It may be of more benefit to say there are different categories of existence as well as different types of "real". — philosch

It's now clear to me that going forward from here, it will be impossible to continue my argument without stepping into the bog of the “Material Vs Non-Material Debate.”

Existence Equals Material Reality

When I say that mental impressions of the material world are themselves material, I'm trying to say that mental impressions are a material link in a chain of material terms connecting them with the material world. At the beginning of the material chain, we have the material world. Next comes the five senses that translate material reality into neural circuits of charged particles that code for material reality within the brain. The following link is cognition, which is internalization of the material world within the brain as an analog simulation of said material world. After this comes reason, which forms judgments by a process of logic. Reason is the hard link to unpack. It’s the time element that turns the mind into a puzzle. Internalization of the material world into ideas of the mind involves a manipulation of time most curious.

The Time Element

In my walk of life supported by empirical experience of the world, I take many impressions of the material things I detect by way of my senses. Let’s imagine I visit a public garden maintained by the city. After many visits I conclude, “All roses have thorns.” This may or may not be true. The point here is that after many experiences of the material world of roses, I make a generalization about them within my mind. This generalization, as we know, is not materially present in the city garden. I can’t go there and view directly “an idea about all roses.” Given this reality, it’s natural for us to conclude “an idea about all roses” is non-material. We conclude it’s a non-material concept that inhabits the mind only.

What is the phenomenon that acts as a powerful support for the belief abstract concepts are non-material? This phenomenon is the time element. In making my numerous impressions of roses, I spent months assembling my collection. In my mind’s eye, I think about the many impressions of roses extending across several months of observations and “compress” that time into a timeless generalization: “All roses have thorns.” A timeless generalization encoded within the brain as neural circuits does indeed give an appearance of being non-material. How can something so unanalogous to its source be no less material than its source?

Emergent properties are known to be partially independent from their grounds because they have attributes and functions not present in their grounds. Chief among these distinct attributes and functions is intent. Intent is a function of the designing mind that thinks strategically about “that which is not yet but will be.” Again, we see the time element playing a pivotal role in creating the impression abstract thought is non-material. Abstract thought can be characterized as absential materialism. This is materialism that is about “that which is not yet but will be.” This is a more complex expression of time “manipulation” towards abstract generalization. It is cognitive-time- dilation of present action towards a strategically determined future material outcome.

Critical to absential materialism is the bi-conditional relationship between the supervenient emergent property: abstract thought, and the subvenience of the ground for the emergent property; the brain. They are a matched pair and there is one IFF there is also the other.

Just as the time compression of abstract thought makes mental constructs seem timeless, the time dilation of absential materialism makes intentional constructs seem immaterial. The time compression of abstract thought is to the time dilation of absential materialism as the discrete boundaries of the particle form are to the probability clouds of the waveform.

For the sake of clarification of my claim mental ideas are material, let me put “an idea about all roses” into the context of a chain of material terms extending from the material world: material world_senses_neural circuits_analog simulation_reason_“an idea about all roses.”

Let me take this chain of material terms and turn it into an expression by putting it into an equation: material world_senses_neural circuits_analog simulation_reason_“an idea about all roses.” = material reality. Therefore, by this reasoning, the chain of material terms, once placed within an equation, evaluates to “material reality.”

The main point expressed by the equation is this: there is a continuity of the material extending from the start, continuing through the middle, and concluding at the end.

There is no sudden, unexplained jump from material to non-material. If there were, the jump would have to be explained in order to maintain the validity of the logic of the chain. Such an explanation would have to show how material and non-material connect. Can such a connection be shown? Anyone attempting to establish logically that mental concepts based upon sensory impressions of the material world are non-material must show the transition from material to non-material and, critical to that demonstration, show how the two modes connect. Has anyone ever done this?

Premise – Showing how material connects with non-material entails proving non-material does not equal non-existence. Stated another way, showing how material connects with non-material entails showing that the non-material can be measured. If the non-material can be measured, then perhaps the measured expanse of a section of a non-material thing shares common ground with a section of a material thing. This overlap can be parsed as a Venn diagram and this would show, mathematically, how there can be a transition from non-material to material. If measurement and a Venn diagram were possible with the non-material, I think a proof of its causal link to the material would’ve been presented long ago.

As things stand currently, arguments for non-material existence are rooted in the inference of the non-material positioned within the gaps of information rendered by incomplete physics. Since a gap is a real-world stand-in for non-existence, I find such arguments unpersuasive.

Brain in a Vat

If the brain never receives sensory input from its reactions to the material world via the senses, does it have content? What’s the content of the brain in the total absence of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell?

Might there be some type of neuronal activity that supports some type of pure thought? Would such pure thought arise from quantum fluctuations within the neuronal circuits? What might pure thought devoid of input from the five senses consist of? If we imagine pure thought devoid of input from the five senses nonetheless somehow codes for the material world, how could we know that stimulus for its encoding is non-material instead of material? The supreme challenge for non-materialism might be showing how a brain minus sensory input codes for non-material things that can be measured. Finally, this coding for non-material things that can be measured must not be inference to non-material things by way of measurement of gaps in physics’ knowledge of the world.

Negation Vs Affirmation

Since non-existence can’t share common ground with anything, not even itself (infinite negation), it can’t precede anything, not even itself. Picture an infinite, bi-directional spiral of negation. If the non-material can only be detected in relation to the material, then we have a suggestion of non-material being emergent from material. This converts non-material to quasi-non-material.

Existence, which shares common ground with all material things (infinite affirmation), cannot be preceded by non-existence, and therefore it has nothing prior to it. This tells us by the logic of the indirection of complexity (You can’t look at eternal existence directly; you can only infer it logically.) existence is eternal. Combining the infinite negation of non-existence with the infinite affirmation of existence, we get a picture of general existence equaling material reality.

Reality is Communal

The abhorrent thought of conducting an experiment of such total isolation as described above upon a newborn invokes the condemnation appropriate for a heartless act that equals a crime against humanity. Nothing existing (and no one) is totally alone.

Conclusion

Now I can return to my argument for understanding that cognitive experiences are a part of material reality.

My goal in this conversation is to examine the question, "Does grounding a thing within existence add anything to its collection of attributes?” — ucarr

My position, contrary to that of Meinong – he denies Existence Precedes Predication – answers, "yes" to the question. Affirming the existence of a thing places it within a context; the obverse of this is claiming a thing exists outside of an encircling context. I don't expect anyone to make this claim. Moreover, I claim that existence is the most inclusive context that can be named.[/quote]

Insuperable material context is the reality of existence. Connection, life, communication, and love are the meanings of existence.