How do Naturalists/Materialists account for the immateriality of morals, laws of logic or information?

[Astrid]

Seems incompatible given that they have no physical properties

Since rain activity is the basis of these
things I dont see how you can (reasonably]
say that.

 

[Whyayeman]

As was noted, thoughts, feelings, memories, perceptions of sounds, visions, odors, tastes, and all forms of cognition are products of neuronal networks in the brain

They are products but not material in any sense that I can think of. I prefer to think of them as products of the mind, rather than the brain. It is common in speech to consider mind and brain as the same thing, but that does seem to be the case.

There is no room for the mind in materialism..This is, I think, the central weakness.

 

[jayem]

They are products but not material in any sense that I can think of. I prefer to think of them as products of the mind, rather than the brain. It is common in speech to consider mind and brain as the same thing, but that does seem to be the case.

There is no room for the mind in materialism..This is, I think, the central weakness.

Of course a thought, or feeling, or idea isn’t material. But so what? We agree that they’re products of neuronal activity, without which they don’t exist. Why is this a weakness?

BTW: Not to get off topic—but asI see it, the same is true of all the gods, spirits, and other supposed supernatural entities of all religions. They’re all products of the human imagination. Which—again—is a function of the brain.

 

[Belk]

Except you have assumed that the information in your head would comport to the information in mine. You've assumed the uniformity of nature. The dilemma is that these thoughts or information, whether or not they exist only within an individual, are inherently immaterial and therefore cannot be explained under materialism/naturalism. Nobody can weigh a thought or what that thought means, there's nothing by which you can measure it. The worldview cannot account for immateriality within it, nor even the emergence of an immaterial thing from matter.

Thoughts are material and can be measured.

New MRI lets scientists better visualize thought process

Technology is aiding research in autism, meditation and beyond UC Davis brain researchers are exploring how kids with autism do math and what happens when Buddhist monks meditate. Functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, lets scientists at UC Davis' Center for Mind and Brain see precisely...

www.ucdavis.edu

 

[Whyayeman]

Thoughts are material and can be measured.

New MRI lets scientists better visualize thought process

Technology is aiding research in autism, meditation and beyond UC Davis brain researchers are exploring how kids with autism do math and what happens when Buddhist monks meditate. Functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, lets scientists at UC Davis' Center for Mind and Brain see precisely...

www.ucdavis.edu

I do not agree. The brain is material. It is possible to measure brain activity, though not yet with any degree of accuracy. It is not possible to measure a thought. .

The article does not claim to measure thoughts. This is from the cited article:

The newer technology goes further, letting scientists visualize brain function.

Thoughts are irreducible to physical measurements. (None of this has anything to do with morality. It is a branch of philosophy; ontology )

 

[Larniavc]

You would have to assume that dogs can comprehend time, as far as I'm aware all animals apart from humans only contemplate current stimulus. The measurement of decay (time) seems to be unique to us

What evidence do you have for that?

 

[Belk]

I do not agree. The brain is material. It is possible to measure brain activity, though not yet with any degree of accuracy. It is not possible to measure a thought. .

The article does not claim to measure thoughts. This is from the cited article:

The newer technology goes further, letting scientists visualize brain function.

Thoughts are irreducible to physical measurements. (None of this has anything to do with morality. It is a branch of philosophy; ontology )

Can you explain what you see as the difference between brain function and thought?

 

[Jonaitis]

Except you have assumed that the information in your head would comport to the information in mine. You've assumed the uniformity of nature. The dilemma is that these thoughts or information, whether or not they exist only within an individual, are inherently immaterial and therefore cannot be explained under materialism/naturalism. Nobody can weigh a thought or what that thought means, there's nothing by which you can measure it. The worldview cannot account for immateriality within it, nor even the emergence of an immaterial thing from matter.

It would be better understood that the material world is happening in the immaterial, rather than the other way around. We know not a material world without a mind to comprehend form, color, etc., and though we may access to knowledge about the material world in the mind, we cannot think beyond the mind. In other words, experience is mental, and experience contains a material world to explore.

 

[Tranquil Bondservant]

Hey everyone, I had a rough night last night so I couldn't get to everybody's opposition immediately. It might take some time to respond to everyone as I am genuinely thinking these things through, please forgive my tardiness. God bless .

As was noted, thoughts, feelings, memories, perceptions of sounds, visions, odors, tastes, and all forms of cognition are products of neuronal networks in the brain. If one has a brain injury or illness, they may not exist, or may be impaired. Consider a patient with Alzheimer's disease. Who has an extracellular buildup of a protein, amyloid β, in his brain. Along with tangles of neurons. Such a person often loses memories, doesn't recognize family members, cannot think logically, and exhibits unprovoked emotional outbursts. This tells me that the cognitive phenomena you mentioned in the OP do have a physical basis. They require a properly functioning brain for their existence.

If your car breaks down and you're inside your car, just because it stops working doesn't mean that the car has stopped existing or it doesn't mean that you are your car. All the measurements of the brain tells us is the movements of the material. It doesn't for example tell you the meaning of a dream somebody had nor it's specific contents as this information is private and the only way somebody could have access to it would be to ask them. You only have indirect access to the information, which means that if it is ENITRELY based in the physical you would be able to measure it completely and utterly. Nevertheless, under naturalism & materialism you need to explain the existence of the immaterial (that which does not have physical properties) and how they fit within it. Under these systems there is only matter smacking up against other matter, it's why I specified them in the OP. To draw these conclusions you've used immaterial logical systems (like inductive reasoning) and furthermore the data you're using to inform yourself comes from technology that involved mathematics in it's invention (more immaterial laws). So to use neuroscience to draw the conclusion that only the natural exists seems rather narrow and it also leaves you with hard determinism, an inability to say why behaviours can be wrong and an inability to say that people can be responsible (seeing as responsibility requires choice) for said wrong actions. Otherwise you'd be punishing the person for something they had no control over. This is due to simply just being matter interacting with other matter, to view yourself as anything else would be to assume value.

We made up logic, and we continue to use it because it works.

We made up morals, and we continue to use morals that work.

We are continually working on improving both.

You're using logic to conclude that logic works. You're using logic to define what works means. It seems you assume the truth of logic before you come to the conclusion that it works. You say we made it up but if someone were to invent another system what would you use to determine it's viability?

In regards to morality if we made them up then agreements upon behaviour =/= why I should follow them, they are arbitrary agreements and need a basis if you want to condemn someone. If a society comes together and agrees that torture for x reason is moral, and I disagree, which one would be right and why? Your moral principles are entirely arbitrary, you need a reason as to why hurting people is bad and then a reason as to why it's true. If you have no reason as to why it's true then you literally have no reason to believe it or follow it, let alone legislate it. If your reason is the avoidance of harm, you have now assumed that the avoidance of harm is a moral truth and you assume the value of human life which has no basis in materialism & naturalism. It seems incoherent. The only consistent stance within your worldview is that morality is arbitrary preference. I've only ever seen one person take this stance and it was The Amazing Atheist (used to watch him back in my atheist days) and if you were to take it I couldn't argue against it.

 

[Tranquil Bondservant]

Since rain activity is the basis of these
things I dont see how you can (reasonably]
say that.

If you're your brain activity, you don't reason. So you should remove that word . I don't believe that brain activity is the basis for comprehension of things for reasons given in this answer (the first response).

Of course a thought, or feeling, or idea isn’t material. But so what? We agree that they’re products of neuronal activity, without which they don’t exist. Why is this a weakness?

Because under these philosophical systems immaterial things don't exist, only matter does.

Thoughts are material and can be measured.

New MRI lets scientists better visualize thought process

Technology is aiding research in autism, meditation and beyond UC Davis brain researchers are exploring how kids with autism do math and what happens when Buddhist monks meditate. Functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, lets scientists at UC Davis' Center for Mind and Brain see precisely...

www.ucdavis.edu

The things which indicate a thought is occurring is material, not the thought itself. For example fRMI scans don't tell you the meaning of a dream to the person. You only have indirect information that comes from the movement of specific parts. I'll use REM as an example. If somebody has rapid eye movement they're dreaming and yet you can't measure the meaning of the dream or the content of the dream, you can only make guesses at what's happening due to the movement of the parts. So if somebody was to imagine a number you wouldn't be able to tell me the number if you measured my neurons, only that I'm imagining something.

 

[Ken-1122]

Can you explain what you see as the difference between brain function and thought?

Everything you do requires brain function from walking, eating, to talking. Thought is a particular brain function.

 

[Tranquil Bondservant]

[This is not about morals or ethics. It belongs in the Philosophy section.]

They shut the philosophy section down

 

[Tranquil Bondservant]

What evidence do you have for that?

In order to comprehend time as we do it requires abstract thought and inductive reasoning. I'm sure they do comprehend time in some sense or rather the effects of it, because they do bury bones. But they're not planning anything for a specific moment in time in the same way we understand time, that requires maths .

 

[Tranquil Bondservant]

Everything you do requires brain function from walking, eating, to talking. Thought is a particular brain function.

If we're talking about materialism then existing as a corpse does not require brain function.

Edit: The point of this statement was to point out that you have no way to measure the concept of a person, if a person is defined by brain function then shortly after conception a person would be growing. But even then if you were to measure a person by brain function, why would you draw lines & how? What is and is not considered a person requires a definition that's entirely immaterial.

 

[Tranquil Bondservant]

It would be better understood that the material world is happening in the immaterial, rather than the other way around. We know not a material world without a mind to comprehend form, color, etc., and though we may access to knowledge about the material world in the mind, we cannot think beyond the mind. In other words, experience is mental, and experience contains a material world to explore.

Yeah I agree that what you said is better but it's impossible to presuppose immateriality under materialism. Besides, how could you prove it under such a system? To do so would be to use inductive reasoning which is part of the laws of logic. So in order to say that the immaterial exists you would have to use an immaterial logical law. It seems like you're already in the boat of the immaterial existing before you discover that you are in it.

 

[Bradskii]

Your moral principles are entirely arbitrary, you need a reason as to why hurting people is bad and then a reason as to why it's true. If you have no reason as to why it's true then you literally have no reason to believe it or follow it, let alone legislate it. If your reason is the avoidance of harm, you have now assumed that the avoidance of harm is a moral truth and you assume the value of human life which has no basis in materialism & naturalism. It seems incoherence.

The avoidance of harm (to ourselves) is natural. It's not 'good' any more than h20 being the chemical formula for water is good.

Empathy allows us to put ourselves in the position of others. So if we don't want to get hurt then we can understand that the person next to us doesn't want to either. And if we ignore her predicament and not concern ourselves with her pain then she might do the same to us.

Reciprocal altruism evolved so that those who did concern themselves with others (even with some expectation that consideration would be reciprocated if necessary) found themselves in a more advantageous position than those who did not. Those who did not were gradually removed from the gene pool. Leaving those that did.

We don't do things because they are moral. What evolved to help us get to this point, is, obviously, considered good. We therefore describe it as being moral.

Having sex with a close family member is considered immoral. But if sexual liaison within a family turned out, for whatever biological reason, to be preferable for the continuation of the species, then we would consider someone having sex outside their immediate family as abhorrent as we consider incest now. And incest as entirely normal.

 

[Tranquil Bondservant]

The avoidance of harm (to ourselves) is natural. It's not 'good' any more than h20 being the chemical formula for water is good.

Empathy allows us to put ourselves in the position of others. So if we don't want to get hurt then we can understand that the person next to us doesn't want to either. And if we ignore her predicament and not concern ourselves with her pain then she might do the same to us.

Reciprocal altruism evolved so that those who did concern themselves with others (even with some expectation that consideration would be reciprocated if necessary) found themselves in a more advantageous position than those who did not. Those who did not were gradually removed from the gene pool. Leaving those that did.

We don't do things because they are moral. What evolved to help us get to this point, is, obviously, considered good. We therefore describe it as being moral.

Having sex with a close family member is considered immoral. But if sexual liaison within a family turned out, for whatever biological reason, to be preferable for the continuation of the species, then we would consider someone having sex outside their immediate family as abhorrent as we consider incest now. And incest as entirely normal.

What is natural =/= a reason for it to be followed. It's natural to not brush your teeth, it's natural for animals to eat their young & etc. Now here's the issue with this: when you begin to pick and choose what natural things are to be followed you're going to presuppose & assume specific things. To use the example above, why would it be wrong to eat your young? Whatever answer you give will presuppose a moral truth or assume an inherent value to a living thing or person. When under your worldview there is no inherent meaning to matter, it just exists.

Regarding empathy, if someone who didn't have empathy for the same things you did murdered and stole they would still be as correct as you are due to you both sharing the exact same reason for your (I won't call them morals) 'biological oughts' being 'right', that being evolution. For example you cannot say that Rome as a nation which had a policy of rampant warfare, slavery & crucifying people were wrong, only different. Only that you disagree (due to arbitrary preference). If that is your position then that's ok and I suppose I'd commend you on your consistency to your worldview. If it's not then anything else would be to assume a moral truth (which would make it universal). So your argument of evolving reciprocal altruism is meaningless because the altruism in question will be subjective based upon the society you live in. If we don't do things because they're moral, how could you possibly universally condemn the Romans?
You also need a reason why causing harm in specific circumstances is wrong when causing harm in other specific circumstances (defensive war, punishment for crimes & etc) are considered correct. In your subjective worldview in which altruism is derived from the society, what possibly could the distinctions be drawn from but arbitrary preference? If we follow your logic on morality above, rape and abuse should be considered morally correct if it propagates the genes. What could you possibly punish them for if your morality is based upon evolution and genetic reproduction? They were right to do the things which helped spread their genes.

We do do things because they're moral, you do things because they're moral. If you you truly held to the moral system you've laid out above everything that fits the conclusion genetic propagation, including rape, would be on the table as something 'good'.

Moral subjectivity allows for atrocities to perpetuate, it is uniquely one of most disgusting things to rear it's head in a society. It allows every single desire, evil or not, to be justified and reasonable. You can't condemn an apposing society for genocide in any real meaningful way because their reason for their morals is the same as yours, again they would just be "different" not "wrong". It's further exacerbated under materialism & naturalism as well due to there not being any inherent value to human life.

God bless .

 

[Bradskii]

What is natural =/= a reason for it to be followed. It's natural to not brush your teeth, it's natural for animals to eat their young & etc. Now here's the issue with this: when you begin to pick and choose what natural things are to be followed...

You have missed the point I made completely. We don't choose what we do. What we do has chosen us. We are the ones, following certain natural characteristics, that have made it to this point. So what we have done - shared workloads, helped others, protected friends and neighbours, we term 'good.

Regarding empathy, if someone who didn't have empathy for the same things you did murdered and stole they would still be as correct as you are due to you both sharing the exact same reason for your (I won't call them morals) 'biological oughts' being 'right', that being evolution.

You don't seem to know what empathy means. It's simply being able to put oneself in anothers position. You don't have empathy for different things. You either have that ability or you do not. You can act on it as you decide. It has nothing at all to do with sympathy. And reciprocal altruism is not relative. It's simply returning a favour in its most basic form. You have nothing to eat? Have some of mine. And perhaps when I'm hungry you'll share your food.

You also need a reason why causing harm in specific circumstances is wrong when causing harm in other specific circumstances (defensive war, punishment for crimes & etc) are considered correct.

Whether it is justified or not is up to the individual. Generally people agree. I'm sure we would. If we didn't then I'd want your arguments for you holding to your view and we can put them up against mine.

We do do things because they're moral, you do things because they're moral. If you you truly held to the moral system you've laid out above everything that fits the conclusion genetic propagation, including rape, would be on the table as something 'good'.

Moral subjectivity allows for atrocities to perpetuate, it is uniquely one of most disgusting things to rear it's head in a society. It allows every single desire, evil or not, to be justified and reasonable. You can't condemn an apposing society for genocide in any real meaningful way...

Yes I can. Moral subjectivity simply means that someone will think something to be moral that someone else thinks immoral. They think it's right. I might not. Big deal. We all disagree on moral matters quite often. Does that mean that if I accept that moral relativity exists then I must allow whatever the other person wants? Why on earth do you think that? Moral relativity doesn't mean moral equivalence. Again, if we have different views then give me your argument for holding to them.

 

[Belk]

If you're your brain activity, you don't reason. So you should remove that word . I don't believe that brain activity is the basis for comprehension of things for reasons given in this answer (the first response).


Because under these philosophical systems immaterial things don't exist, only matter does.


The things which indicate a thought is occurring is material, not the thought itself. For example fRMI scans don't tell you the meaning of a dream to the person. You only have indirect information that comes from the movement of specific parts. I'll use REM as an example. If somebody has rapid eye movement they're dreaming and yet you can't measure the meaning of the dream or the content of the dream, you can only make guesses at what's happening due to the movement of the parts. So if somebody was to imagine a number you wouldn't be able to tell me the number if you measured my neurons, only that I'm imagining something.

Explain the difference between a "thought" and the physical process which is thinking please. It seems to me they are one and the same. That we can not currently interpret the meaning of one from the other does not negate this.

 

[Jonaitis]

Yeah I agree that what you said is better but it's impossible to presuppose immateriality under materialism. Besides, how could you prove it under such a system? To do so would be to use inductive reasoning which is part of the laws of logic. So in order to say that the immaterial exists you would have to use an immaterial logical law. It seems like you're already in the boat of the immaterial existing before you discover that you are in it.

How can you prove the material actually exists? It manifests in consciousness, that is, the subjective and phenomenological quality of experiencing. We only know the world by experience. A banana, for example, is only a perception, a sensation, a thought, but the object itself is unknowable. We can look at it from a molecular level, but even that doesn't escape it from being merely a perception. You live in a world of mere appearances that are designed for the experience of them. You know nothing else. What you hold in your hand is more superficial than you realise.

When we speak of a material world, we speak of the world inside this experience, not outside it. There is no experience outside consciousness, and there is no experience apart from consciousness. Your reality is an experiencing one, but how that experience arises subjectively and relatively cannot be explain from matter. Quantum Physics and Theory is catching up to that:

"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."
— Max Planck

We could call this 'consciousness' an immaterial plane reflecting a material plane; an existence superimposed on the only reality we intuitively know. We find the Scriptures, in speaking of the transcendence and immanent presence of God in creation, this:

"In Him we live and move and have our being"
— Acts 17:28

If God does not exist in the tangible sense, yet is ever-present in all things, upholding creation by the power of His word (Hebrews 1:3), then we are connected, like a branch, to God, who is Source. I am of the opinion that each individual is an expression of the collective consciousness of humanity, and the collective consciousness of humanity is an expression of the One universal consciousness, that is, God. This is not to say that you and me are God, but that God is the ontological ground of existence, shining through our experience as awareness. The eye that sees through your eyes is not hidden from the eyes of God Himself. He is all-knowing of our life, but there are not two sets of eyes, God's and yours, witnessing your experience, but rather, there is one, and in this we find the supernatural. This experience, then, is the only verifiable mystical experience that cannot be explained outside itself. To be alive, to experience, to exist, this is an immaterial reality mingled with a material illusion.