But the so-called material world that we actually inhabit is shot-through with meaning, information, none of which is itself material. — Pantagruel
Everything material must ultimately be mental, since we live inside our minds, and the world we interact with must therefore also be "in here" with us. — Echarmion
Physically rearranging a configuration of wooden blocks from a straight line to a ring is changing the information stored in that system of blocks without changing any block in its own reference frame. But the state of the block has changed in any fixed frame (position being part of something's state). Each block -- that is, each material constituent of the system -- has changed. — Kenosha Kid
Everything material that we experience must have some mental correlate. It doesn't follow that in order for a thing to materially exist, there must be a mental thing to experience it. — Kenosha Kid
The other question is whether in order for a thing to experience anything, must it have a materialist existence. If the answer is Yes, then we're firmly pointed toward the material as having primacy (since an inexperienced material thing is not ruled out while an immaterial experiencer is). If No, then we're looking at dualism. — Kenosha Kid
The likely answer depends heavily on how seriously you take empirical evidence over beliefs. If you believe immaterial consciousnesses exist, and the empirical evidence for the physical basis of consciousness doesn't move you, either dualism is true or material existence is false. If you take seriously the evidence that mental processes are physical, then either you need two qualitatively different ways of making a mind (material and immaterial) or else materialism is likely true. — Kenosha Kid
True. But what renders a certain configuration as "informational" is something external to the configuration itself. — Pantagruel
Even if you are talking about physical entropy, some states may be more "improbable" than others, but that is a long way from containing meaningful information. — Pantagruel
No, I didn't mean to say that it does. — Echarmion
And that's why I was saying there seem to be two contradictory statements which both seem obviously and necessarily true. I did not mean to imply that there are no solutions to this problem, only that it seems at the heart of the philosophical problem. — Echarmion
Sure, I get what you're saying. But I feel like the best way to resolve the dilemma is a compatibilist one. I consider my experience as if it was a true representation of a material world, but at the same time I take seriously my own experience of myself as an acting subject. — Echarmion
So, having reflected and the way in which material possibly is more ambiguous, do you think my question would have been of a different nature, from your point of view if it it has been posed as is the physical world the absolute reality? — Jack Cummins
How does this weigh in on the issue of real vs unreal? Well, if one subscribes to some variation of rationalism, ideas, whatever they may be, are real, as real as the apples Kant may have partaken of during one of his meals. If so, everything would be real. — TheMadFool
At least as regards ordinary language use, a dream (which is intra-personal), a language (which is interpersonal), and a physical apple (which is objective) can each be real, but in qualitatively different manners. — javra
The implication is that the mind can survive beyond death as an independent entity in its own right. — Jack Cummins
It looks like the mind inhabits a world of its own, quite different from the world of the physical and there are regions of overlap between the two but some experiences are exclusively mental or exclusively physical. — TheMadFool
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