If it quacks like Immaterialism, and has a knack for "looking like immaterialism", why not call it "Immaterialism"? Why the evasion? Why must "Ideas" ...
To some, Strong Emergence seems to imply a violation of Determinism, and Downward Causation implies a violation of physical Cause & Effect. Is this se...
I'm not familiar with the term "platonic realism". I have always associated him with Idealism. But a quick look at the Stanford article under "Idealis...
Maybe you are interpreting Descartes' "stuff" and "things" as referring to material objects. But both are indeterminate (non-specific) references to "...
You don't seem to understand how or why I interpret Deacon's Incomplete Nature in terms of Information, and to imply that Mind was transformed from Ma...
I have been enjoying the philosophical exercise of our on-going give & take dialog. Too many threads on this forum quickly descend into polarized name...
No. No. No. It's merely a description of the power to enform (Potential) in the physical world. Yes. But by means of natural laws, not divine interven...
Any generalization of principles (all things are . . . .) from less than comprehensive experience is considered a metaphysical concept, not a physical...
The hypothetical Big Bang was an energetic outburst, but from what or where? And the projected Heat Death is the end of that cosmic energetic cycle. I...
I gradually realized that our communication problem stems mostly from our different ways of doing philosophy. We are talking about Deacon's radical sc...
Thanks for the "everyday" examples. But I was hoping for more general philosophical or physical principles behind each of those neologisms. For instan...
There is a philosophical difference between a> Climate Change Denial, and b> Climate Disaster Panic, and c> Stoic acceptance that Sh*t Happens that we...
Do you have a scientific name for this transforming "operator", other than mundane Energy? You say that this mysterious "medium" is a space-time pheno...
A lot of your technical terminology is not in my personal word-stock, or in Deacon's glossary ; making communication difficult. Please give me a funct...
Yes, but the Mind can be philosophically & categorically dis-entangled from the body-brain. That's why I prefer to avoid getting tangled-up in materia...
I would interpret your use of "absentially tied" as referring to a Cause & Effect relationship. For example, in the Photoelectric Effect, incoming inv...
Because Deacon's notion of Absence is relevant to my own information-based philosophical worldview, I'm still trying to make sense of your materialist...
As is the case with many disagreements on this forum, some key words are used with unconventional, or abstrusely technical, meanings. So they need to ...
I'm sorry you're not as impressed with Deacon as I am. Perhaps you need to skip forward to the Epilogue --- after the chapter on Consciousness --- whe...
When I first posted on this thread, I assumed that we had something in common, besides accepting the dependence of mental functions on material mechan...
By your empirical definition of "exist", Abstract concepts do not exist. That's because they are in an ideal state : private, knowable, and fleeting. ...
Good! Deacon is one a handful of practicing scientists who are not afraid to think outside the Reductionist box about Holistic concepts. Although he s...
No. Why do you ask? Are you trying to determine if I am a Platonic Idealist, like Kastrup? He makes some good arguments for Idealism as prior to Real,...
That's an excellent example of the difference in how the Materialist and Metaphysical worldviews imagine Ontological Existence. Ironically, imaginatio...
I didn't think of "energy as causation" as insightful. I thought it was obvious. Perhaps the dictionary definition of energy as "ability" is vague. Bu...
I'm not aware of any specific discussion of "Metaphysics" in Incomplete Nature ; that word is not in the index. Also, the unscientific word "spirit" i...
A wavy photon zooming through the Aether has the potential for mass, and can transform into mass, but while traveling at lightspeed (zero mass), is no...
Apparently you "know" what I say, but not what I mean. Our communication problem may be that you are thinking like a Scientist, while I am trying to t...
First of all, I'm not an Immaterialist or Idealist --- in the sense of denying material reality. Second, you conflate Material with Physical, whereas ...
Makes sense to me. But, like a Phase Transition, the intermediate physical stages between material and non-material are not apparent to me. Sounds lik...
Energy works by Potential-to-Actual transformation, as in E=MC^2. For example, Invisible causal Photons (lightning) convert into mathematical Mass, wh...
I never understood what Sartre meant by that cryptic phrase. But, since you asked, I started looking into it. Apparently, he was not talking about bio...
Welcome Rob. I first want to distinguish you from the politician currently running for American president : Robert Kennedy Jr. One of your accidental ...
A representation of an energetic wave and the wave itself are different things : one a natural function and the other an artificial mental model of th...
No. I was suggesting that you were portraying us --- "immaterialists" --- as opposed to your own position : "materialist". Is that an incorrect guess?...
Please look in the mirror. Can't you see that "Boo!" and "Boo-Hoo!" are childish emotional reactions to something personally unpleasant. Not a philoso...
Energy is an "abstract principle" that has effects in the phenomenal world. We refer to that effect as Change. And all material transformations take t...
OK. I'm imagining those interacting gravitational fields. Now, what does that mutual attraction have to do with Absential Materialism? Deacon says tha...
Yes. Mass is not an objective thing, it's a measure of Matter. And measurement is a mental function. In my personal philosophical thesis, Mind (e.g. I...
Energy is real in its observed effects, but immaterial in its thingness. :nerd: Is energy real or a concept? The reason it is so hard to define is bec...
Yes. But, ironically, Ursula Goodenough and Terrence Deacon, in The Sacred Emergence of Nature --- referred to the topic as "religious naturalism". ht...
Actually, on this thread, "double-agent" Gnomon is trying to understand your "course" right through the middle of Materialism and Absentialism simulta...
No. I was not talking about storage of invisible energy in tangible chemistry, but about Potential as a Principle, as Aristotle defined it. The Map is...
Hmmm? An ocean wave is a modulation of water, but what is the real substance of a radar waveform? Radar is a modulation of physical Energy, but it has...
Parallel to your argument that the elliptical*1 infinite series .99999. . . . is not equal to 1.0 (but only approximates), the philosophical First Cau...
My Absence/Void analogy was referring to Potential for change (probability), not Actual causation (energy). In other words, Aristotelian Potential is ...
OK. Let's just call Absential Materialism a "novel pairing" with seemingly paradoxical implications. It's oxymoronic only in contrast to Materialism a...
I'm aware of Deacon's application of the mathematical Incompleteness Theorem to the real world in his book Incomplete Nature. However I was not famili...
As you noted, 's numerical chain is an abstract concept, not a perceptible "actual" thing. But he also doesn't seem to realize that the "First Cause" ...
I was not aware of the philosophical notion of Fundamentality*1. But that is exactly what my un-orthodox personal worldview is based on. For philosoph...
Comments