Thoughts are like faces-in-clouds, mind is like sky; why are you confusing the sky with faces-in-clouds?

Are you saying that clouds could exist but not the sky, or that the sky could exist but not clouds?

I repeat: If thoughts do not exist, what's the evidence that matter exists?

What's wrong with
1 The world is all that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
— TLP
as a working definition for existence? This implies that 'whatever exists' is a fact – a contingent entity causally related to other facts; therefore, 'whatever does not exist' is a non-contingent entity not causally related to any facts. So abstract objects e.g. numbers do not exist but rather, as Meinong designated, they only subsist... — 180 Proof

My point is rather simple. To exist = To be perceived = To be physical. Where's the room for nonphysical existence!

non-physical doesn't make sense as a concept — Kenosha Kid

Non-physicalism is contended. — Kenosha Kid

Cool. If you’d said “non-physicalism doesn’t make sense as a concept” to begin with, I would’ve agreed and had nothing else to talk about. So....thanks. I guess.
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Supervenience is a post-modern analytic construct...
— Mww

Intrigued, but pretty sure this is entirely untrue. — Kenosha Kid

I should have stipulated “(...) construct...” in philosophical discourse, re: Morgan, 1923, in conjunction with the early 20th century emergence debates with respect to consciousness, behaviorism and mental activities generally. I always thought of it as a way out of the effect/affect dualism. Another dumb-ass joke played by the OLP of the day, and considering the word isn’t used these days as Morgan implied in his.
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But precisely because the mind is physical...... — Kenosha Kid

Errr.....what?????

Am I going to be embarrassed in the morning? — “Kenosha Kid

I should hope so.
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Which is impossible, because it is the case that he must necessarily employ the very things he is attempting to revoke.
— Mww

This assumes what it seeks to prove. — Kenosha Kid

It would, except for the contextual qualifier, i.e., “....given a pursuant methodology...”, in which the necessary employment (of the categories) is established.

You should have no issues with the fact all theories are only logically proved when empirical validation is impossible.
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How would one define or identify the non-physical?
— Tom Storm

I've been trying to get an answer to this for years. — Kenosha Kid

The Principle of Complementarity?

At last. Someone realized M was there.

How would one define or identify the non-physical?
— Tom Storm

I've been trying to get an answer to this for years. — Kenosha Kid

If "physical" was a well defined concept, "non-physical" would be easy to define. So let's try and define "physical".

Definitions by Oxford Languages:

1. relating to the body as opposed to the mind, e.g. "a range of physical and mental challenges".
2. relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind; tangible or concrete.

Thus "physical" means by and large: "perceivable by the senses, not just imagined by the mind." And "non-physical" must mean something like: "not perceivable by the senses, but imagined or created by the mind."

Makes sense?

That's so confused I'm :yawn:

I'm asking: why you confuse thoughts (faces-in-clouds) with mind (sky)? Thoughts subsist (in) existing minds.

That's so confused I'm :yawn: — 180 Proof

Well, at the very least, you'll get your afternoon nap! :smile: I consider that an accomplishment!

I am not confusing them, actually. Just asking: If thoughts do not exist, what's the evidence that matter exists?

Why are you asking that? The question's premise doesn't follow from anything I've stated or implied.

Because you wrote:

So abstract objects e.g. numbers do not exist but rather, as Meinong designated, they only subsist...

— 180 Proof

We can only apprehend matter via our perceptions and thoughts. If the latter do not exist, then we have no evidence that matter itself exists.

Materialism is just an idea, and not a very logical one.

If you're right, Oliver, that your body is "just an idea", then your good health will last indefinitely without ever eating and drinking again, right? :confused:

I don't know about yours, but my body is a little more than just an idea.

You contradict yourself. Bodies are material which you imply is "just an idea" but now claim your body is "more than just an idea". I agree with you about the latter but that contradicts the former which you believe and I do not. Care to make sense of your bit of nonsense for me? :chin:

I said that materialism is just an idea. Do you disagree?

Clarify what you mean by "just as idea".

By that I mean you cannot weight, measure or see materialism. If "physical" means "perceivable by the senses", them materialism is non-physical. Therefore "just an idea".

I mean you cannot weight, measure or see materialism. — Olivier5

:roll: Wtf. Okay. But we can "weigh and measure" what the idea of materialism (e.g. material, or matter) refers to? What materialism refers to (like e.g. your body) is "more than just an idea", correct?

:up: :up:

Good job, No worries, 180 contradicts himself all the time :razz:

But precisely because the mind is physical......
— Kenosha Kid

Errr.....what????? — Mww

I'm not of the 'mind is an illusion'/'consciousness is an illusion'/'qualia are illusions' camp of physicalists. Mind seems real enough, as the processes or subset of processes of the brain. Physics isn't just material things: it's configuration (information) and changes in configuration (dynamics). Mind comes under that: configuration of the neurons in the brain (brain states) and changes in those configurations (mental processes).

Am I going to be embarrassed in the morning?
— “Kenosha Kid

I should hope so. — Mww

I am haha! :P

You should have no issues with the fact all theories are only logically proved when empirical validation is impossible. — Mww

? They're never logically proven. They remain on the table so long as they are falsifiable but not falsified.

The Principle of Complementarity? — Mww

I'm guessing this is an example rather than a definition. The principal of complementarity follows purely from the wave nature of things. If a wave has a precise wavenumber, it must have an infinitely imprecise position (this is a plane wave) for instance. In quantum mechanics, wavenumber has a physical meaning: momentum. There's nothing non-physical happening here: the wave is just behaving like a wave.

But you have made me think... I misled when I said there's no concept of non-physical in physics. I was thinking of real, non-physical things. But we do use the word itself, however quite differently.

An artefact of a calculation or simulation that does not describe something supposed to be real is called a non-physical artefact. For instance, if you allowed a charge to act on itself, or for errors to build up at the edge of the simulation and propagate through, or artefacts of approximation giving unrealistic predictions, such as the effects due to a single Feynman diagram rather than the sum of all Feynman diagrams (which is exact)... Non-physical means non-real, basically.

But we can "weigh and measure" what the idea of materialism (e.g. material, or matter) refers to? — 180 Proof

Why yes, that's the point. You can weight matter alright, but you cannot weight the idea that matter is all there is, because ideas are not physical as per the above definition of 'physical' = 'empirical'.

Although... you can prove that materialism contradicts itself, which in a sense is the sort of "measurement" ideas lend themselves to: logical evaluations of their worth.

Thus "physical" means by and large: "perceivable by the senses, not just imagined by the mind." And "non-physical" must mean something like: "not perceivable by the senses, but imagined or created by the mind."

Makes sense? — Olivier5

This could be quite misleading. Physicalism concerns the senses insofar as it concerns the observable universe. It doesn't have to be a direct observation, but ultimately you have to sense the results of an experiment and agree with others who sensed the same thing, whether it's the direction the sun came up or the image produced by an electron microscope.

The above gives the impression that if you didn't sense it classically, it's non-physical. However if I can scan your brain and see a neurological correlate of your experience, I am sensing something about it in an indirect way (e.g. I could make predictions about it). This would keep it in the realm of the physical.

Physics defines physical things as things having physical properties, and physical properties are the capacities to couple those things to other things. Spacetime is physical because it has a property (stress-energy tensor field) that is coupled to a property of things in spacetime (energy). The two supervene on each other: the stress-energy tensor tells things with energy where to go, and things with energy curve spacetime, changing its stress-energy tensor field. You can do this with all such properties (electric charge, colour charge, spin, rest mass, etc.), defining a set of interrelated things each with a set of properties that interrelate them.

This is what 'physical' means to me. Non-physical would mean what? It doesn't have properties? It has properties but they don't couple to anything? They couple only to other non-physical things? They couple in a one-way fashion (i.e. break Newton's third law)? It would seem to be defining something that either cannot exist or cannot be demonstrated to exist.

The above gives the impression that if you didn't sense it classically, it's non-physical. However if I can scan your brain and see a neurological correlate of your experience, I am sensing something about it in an indirect way (e.g. I could make predictions about it). This would keep it in the realm of the physical. — Kenosha Kid

Let me precise that, when writing "perceivable by the senses", I should have added a few caveats such as: "aided by any apparatus e.g. microscope, radio-telescope, brain scanners, etc." and "with several well qualified , sober people agreeing to what they perceive". The latter caveat is to take into account the possibility of human error or illusion (mirages, hallucinations, etc.). The former is to allow for more than just our bare eyes.

This precision being made, when you scan my brain you may be searching for neural correlates for my experience, but my experience is accessible to you only by my telling you about it. So you perceive, measure, empirically gauge a brain scan or rather a series of many scans; and then I tell you: I want an ice cream right now, preferably pistachio and melon, from the bald guy in the street behind the fountain. Or: I can't stop thinking about this documentary I saw yesterday night, about a baby called Sama born in Aleppo, and her father Hamza, filmed by their mother and wife Waad.

And then you'll tell me that you see some correlation between, say, the excitation of my post-hypophyse and my speaking of war, or ice-cream.

Then what? You think that will help you predict what I think next? Even if you could, would it make ice cream any less good subjectively? Would it make Assad's murder and torture of his own people any less disgusting?

This brutal irruption of reality in a thread about the philosophy of reality may be a bit unfair; likely you were not prepared for this. Let's go back to the safety of a lab. Scientists observing subjects in a highly controlled environment, not under bombs, and no one is getting gelato either. My options, while you scan my brain, are limited to wanting to press the red button or the green button in front of me, or something equally irrelevant to anything.

So I press sometime one sometime the other and you tell me: I can predict which one you will chose next.

Is this the argument?

Physics defines physical things as things having physical properties, and physical properties are the capacities to couple those things to other things. — Kenosha Kid

By this definition, thoughts are physical, since they can couple with other thoughts and have certain properties such as being logical or not, sensical or not, etc.

This precision being made, when you scan my brain you may be searching for neural correlates for my experience, but my experience is accessible to you only by my telling you about it. — Olivier5

Ah well, let's be yet more precise. Imaging neural activity is one indirect way of knowing what's going on in the mind (in principle anyway). The person having the experience describing it is a different indirect way of knowing what's going on in the mind: the view of the information we get about it is different, hence the experience of hearing someone describe a mental state is very different to the experience of viewing the scan.

A third way is to have the brain that the firing neuron is in, i.e. to be the person having that experience. The unjustifiable claim is not that this view of the same information is very different to the other two, but that the difference is more qualitative and profound than the difference between the first two examples.

All three examples are experiences of different subsets of the total information about a thing being processed by different systems that produce different outcomes. It is precisely because of the limitations of conscious experience, not despite them, that we conceive of those experiences as being immediate, fully-formed and irreducible, when in fact they are the outputs of transient processes transforming and enriching data over time, subject to continuous revision.

One cannot point to the difference between first-hand and third-person viewpoints as evidence for a fundamental difference between subjective and objective realities knowing that, in all cases, the information we have about something is different, with different limitations, and processed by different information-processing systems.

processed by different information-processing systems. — Kenosha Kid

In the end the two channels of information converge into the minds of the scientists. So there's no avoiding the subjective dimension of reality. Physical reality is what we (minds) make of what we perceive.

You can weight matter alright, but you cannot weight the idea that matter is all there is — Olivier5

There is plenty of things we can’t weigh that we consider material. Sound waves for example. Or magnetic fields. So this proves nothing.

You can measure the intensity of a magnetic field, though.

Physics defines physical things as things having physical properties, and physical properties are the capacities to couple those things to other things. — Kenosha Kid

By this definition, thoughts are physical, since they can couple with other thoughts and have certain properties such as being logical or not, sensical or not, etc. — Olivier5

So in fine, either one considers ideas to be 'physical', or one must concede that there are things that exist, such as ideas, that aren't physical. The two options say more or less the same thing: ideas exist. They only differ by how they define 'physical'.

I'm not of the 'mind is an illusion'/'consciousness is an illusion'/'qualia are illusions' camp of physicalists. — Kenosha Kid

Cool.

Mind comes under that: configuration of the neurons in the brain (brain states) and changes in those configurations (mental processes). — Kenosha Kid

Configuration of neurons are brain states, but changes in neuron configurations are mental states? Why isn’t the configuration a mental state? And why isn’t a change of configuration a brain process? I don’t see how it’s valid to call one this and the other than, merely because of a change. Seems like a few steps missing, to me.
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The Principle of Complementarity?
— Mww

I'm guessing this is an example rather than a definition. — Kenosha Kid

Yeah, pretty much. Up/down, right/left, right/wrong, ad infinitum. Physical/non-physical. In the human cognitive system, for any possible conception, the negation of it is given immediately. Whatever a thing is, its negation is not that. Whatever physicalism is, non-physicalism is not that.

Non-physical means non-real, basically. — Kenosha Kid

Yep, sufficient to explain why non-physicalism makes little sense as a concept. How would non-physicalism be studied that isn’t already studied under metaphysics? Leave the real out there, bring the valid in here, let it go at that, I say. That it seems real in here is still just that....a seeming. Talk of the real is empirical, talk of the valid is only logical.
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Isn’t a single Feynman diagram depicting the interaction of one electron with one positron, or the interaction of two electrons, exact? In what way is it not?

"Prove that materialism contradicts itself" ... if, of course, "you can".