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How do Naturalists/Materialists account for the immateriality of morals, laws of logic or information?
- Thread starter Tranquil Bondservant
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If logic doesn't exist how did you posit these conclusions?
Edit: I just want you to stop and think about the conclusion you've come to. You have just provided the information that information doesn't actually exist, through the use of logic which you claims only exist within your mind (still as something immaterial btw). The same dilemma still exists.
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Jonaitis
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I always wondered if a dog's sense of time is different than ours (since they mature and age differently than us), what then is the true measure of time if it is subjective not only to humans? We are bound by our own constructs. We cannot fathom a world without it. Mental constructs is the skeleton of human society.
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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
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It's like the difference between what is real, vs what is make-believe. Logic does not have an actual existence, it only exist in your thoughts.
It exist in your head only. Like Santa Clause, it does not exist in the real world.
Why is this a dilemma for you? Please explain.
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Jonaitis
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This sounds more like an anthropocentric worldview.
They seem to comprehend an experience of nearing death, and have been commonly reported to behave in unusual ways before dying. Since animals are not all on the same intellectual level with each other, we really can't make a definite statement about it.
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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.
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No offense mate, I overall agree with what your saying. But just out of curiosity, how could they possibly measure what a dog thinks about death? That it gets stressed before dying or does weird behaviours before dying? There seems to be no reason to assume that the dog's comprehension of death is even close to the reality, it seems like an unbridgeable assumption.
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I see no reason to believe otherwise. You believe the longer someone lives, the shorter time appears to them? So like if person "A" lives only to be 65, but person "B" lives to 100, that times appears slower to person "B" than "A"?
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(Ken)
Only if we communicate with each other about what is in our heads.
(Ken)
More like uniformity as a result of communication.
(Ken)
They can if we communicate with each other
(Ken)
Not quite sure what you mean here; if you mean weigh as a level of importance, this can be done via communication. If you mean weigh as lbs…… as I said before, thoughts do not have an actual existence; measurement and weight requires existing.
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I mean weigh as in kgs (because I use the superior system
). Yeah this is the problem, the dilemma is here. You said thoughts don't have an actual existence and yet it is your thoughts you are communicating. These thoughts have no physical properties as you have evidentially pointed out, which means that naturalism/materialism cannot account for their existence.
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I disagree! They exist in your head; they are only a part of your imagination. That is how naturalism/materialism accounts for their existence. Naturalism is not the belief that one's thoughts cannot be real to the person thinking them, it just means thoughts do not have an actual existence; IOW not a part of the real world.I mean weigh as in kgs (because I use the superior system
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'Time', as in the sectioning of the day into discrete segments, is a human invention. So, I'd agree that dogs can't comprehend time the way humans do.
However, many animals demonstrably have a temporal awareness. There are several studies that point to animals having an internal sense of time and being capable of what's known as 'mental time travel' - the ability to remember and re-experience specific events that happened in the past (episodic memory) and to anticipate and pre-experience future scenarios (future planning).
Several species of primates and birds, along with some cetaceans, have demonstrated this capacity. It's likely present in others.
As an anecdote, I recently took a trip to some islands on the Great Barrier Reef, one of which had a resort with an artificial lagoon. There were several species of ray in the lagoon. These rays were well aware of when it was 'breakfast' and 'dinner' - they would crowd their feeding area shortly before they were due to be fed. They also knew the days when their feeding routine was different and they got 'lunch' and 'supper' instead of 'breakfast' and 'dinner'.
If their carers were late with a feeding time on a specific day, they would splash and generally raise a ruckus - this was the case whether they'd been fed earlier or not.
The fish in the same lagoon weren't as smart. They never gathered at feeding sites, despite also being fed at predictable intervals.
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jayem
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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.
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essentialsaltes
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Paulos23
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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.
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