You're describing something that possibly doesn't even exist. How does one provide evidence for things that our senses and scientific instruments can't get at? To ponder the existence of such things would be a waste of time.My concept of the non-physical is phenomena that cannot be detected by our senses and the scientific extensions of our senses and which cannot be explained by existing scientific paradigms. — johnpetrovic
This is related to the "supernatural" as science provided natural explanations for environmental phenomenon, the supernatural explanations were eventually abandoned.The non-physical is associated with our current state of scientific knowledge. For example, prior to the work of Maxwell and Hertz, electromagnetic radiation was non-physical, but became physical as a result of the knowledge that they generated. At the present time, self-aware consciousness is non-physical.
What is your concept of the non-physical? — johnpetrovic
Another thing I like about the epistemological definition is that it makes it possible for everybody - materialists and supernaturalists alike - to agree that there are probably non-physical things. — andrewk
I would have thought if a materialist agreed there were non-physical things then they would be abandoning materialism, wouldn’t they? Materialism means ‘there are no non-physical things’. — Wayfarer
My concept of the non-physical is phenomena that cannot be detected by our senses and the scientific extensions of our senses and which cannot be explained by existing scientific paradigms. The non-physical is associated with our current state of scientific knowledge. For example, prior to the work of Maxwell and Hertz, electromagnetic radiation was non-physical, but became physical as a result of the knowledge that they generated. At the present time, self-aware consciousness is non-physical.
What is your concept of the non-physical? — johnpetrovic
I don't think I am misrepresenting physicalism too much by describing it as the metaphysical assertion that everything that is instantiated in Reality is physical.
You might expand on that. I had the idea that physicalism and materialism were basically two different names for the same general position. — Wayfarer
If I remember rightly (and I'm not 100% certain I do) David Armstrong was a mind-brain identity theorist (of the functionalist kind — MetaphysicsNow
Physicalism seems to admit, in accordance with the 2nd Law, that pattern is real, causal, and as fundamental as matter. — tom
it is interesting that many of the prominent materialist philosophers are or were Australian;
Bernard Williams once made a "joke" that whilst Australia wasn't the only place where materialist theories of mind were believed, it was the only place where they were true. — MetaphysicsNow
Of course it does. If physical outcomes couldn’t be predicted by mathematical algorithms, then science couldn’t get out bed. [That is precisely why Hume’s ‘criticism of induction’ was said to undermine science by Bertrand Russell in HWP] — Wayfarer
Science doesn't assume or rely on any such inductive principle. — tom
Bernard Williams once made a "joke" that whilst Australia wasn't the only place where materialist theories of mind were believed, it was the only place where they were true. — MetaphysicsNow
Unless you expand on what you mean by "physical" that description is unilluminatingly circular. — MetaphysicsNow
Sorry, I think you may be confusing the 2nd Law with dialectical materialism. — TimeLine
I did try, and here's something else wrong with it:Try reading all of the post.
You don't seem to understand how electromagnetic radiation was discovered. Maxwell gave us electromagnetic radiation as a new theoretical concept, Hertz gave us its empirical confirmation. Prior to Maxwell, physicists working in electricity and magnetism worked - like Maxwell - on electromagnetic fields. Maxwell brought together the previous work of those other physicists into "his" four field equations. It turned out that those equations have a solution which describes the wavelike propagation of electric and magnetic energy in a vacuum at the speed of light. After Maxwell's theoretical discovery/invention of electromagnetic radiation, that radiation became an object for physical research, and most famously Hertz's which culminated in confirmation of Maxwell's theory.I have never encountered the claim that the scientists working on e.m. radiation thought they were trying to understand something non-physical before. I just doesn't make sense.
You don't seem to understand how electromagnetic radiation was discovered. Maxwell gave us electromagnetic radiation as a new theoretical concept, Hertz gave us its empirical confirmation. Prior to Maxwell, physicists working in electricity and magnetism worked - like Maxwell - on electromagnetic fields. Maxwell brought together the previous work of those other physicists into "his" four field equations. It turned out that those equations have a solution which describes the wavelike propagation of electric and magnetic energy in a vacuum at the speed of light. After Maxwell's theoretical discovery/invention of electromagnetic radiation, that radiation became an object for physical research, and most famously Hertz's which culminated in confirmation of Maxwell's theory.
That's entirely consistent with the OP's suggestion is non-physical up to Maxwell's conceptual apparatus suggested its existence. — MetaphysicsNow
Some theories of mind claim that space-time only exists as a mental construction to help us make sense of the world. In this sense, the mind would be the only thing that gives rise to a spatiotemporal location. In this sense, the mind would be physical and everything else non-physical.Perhaps a metaphysical definition would be that an event or object is physical if and only if it has a spatiotemporal location within some reference frame. — MetaphysicsNow
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