Types of materialism

April 2024 Forums General discussion Types of materialism

Viewing 15 posts - 16 through 30 (of 108 total)
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  • #245843
    LBird
    Participant

    DJP quotes Pannekoek:
    “Atoms of course are not observed phenomena themselves: they are inferences of our thinking. As such they share the nature of all products of our thinking their sharp limitation and distinction, their precise equality belongs to their abstract character.”

    If ‘atoms’ are ‘not observed…themselves’ and are ‘inferences of our thinking’… how are they ‘material’?

    Of course, I agree with Pannekoek’s position, which follows Marx’s.

    Our world (which is both ‘ideal’ and ‘material’) is our socio-historical product, and thus we can change it.

    #245845
    DJP
    Participant

    It seems I have conjured a spirit.

    #245846
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    See?

    The Feathered One.

    A material being? Or not?

    https://images.app.goo.gl/NHqnRyFMuuF11YoX9

    • This reply was modified 8 months, 2 weeks ago by Thomas_More.
    • This reply was modified 8 months, 2 weeks ago by Thomas_More.
    #245848
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    Dark energy is where I draw my line of understanding. Scientists don’t understand it.
    I always took energy to be a property of matter. So matter must be behind dark energy and the expansion of the universe, but we don’t know what.

    #245849
    Thomas_More
    Participant
    #245850
    Bijou Drains
    Participant

    Good to hear you are with us Oh Great Feathered One. Hope the world (or perhaps I should say your perception of the world) is treating you well.

    I think that what Pannekoek was trying to say was that atoms at that point were theoretical non observal concepts inferred from observal phenomenon. Atoms can now be observed.
    https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/1652-seeing-atoms

    • This reply was modified 8 months, 2 weeks ago by Bijou Drains.
    #245852
    Wez
    Participant

    Dialectically speaking something depends on the concept of nothing.

    #245854
    DJP
    Participant

    “I think that what Pannekoek was trying to say was that atoms at that point were theoretical non observal concepts inferred from observal phenomenon.”

    No, he wasn’t saying that. What he was saying isn’t changed by developments in microscopes.

    Following Dietzgen, he’s talking about how in order to make sense of the world and operate within it, we chop up the observable world of phenomena and abstract it into different categories and concepts in our minds. What he said about atoms could be said about anything else.

    i.e You don’t “see atoms”, you perceive some phenomena and use the concept of “atom” to make sense of it.

    • This reply was modified 8 months, 2 weeks ago by DJP.
    #245856
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    It sounds like my old classes of Apologetic and theology with the Jesuits and Salesian fathers, or the concept of who was first, the chicken or egg, or the egg or the chicken, we discussed the same issues that you are describing now, that is the concept of nothingness, emptiness or void, it is a theological question

    God created everything from nothing, there was not matter, the space was empty, therefore, matter did not exist, but the reality is that matter has always existed and nothing can exist without matter.

    It has been proven that there was not chicken and there was not egg, it was a dinassours and it was not oviparous, therefore. apologetic was wrong because it was viviparous, and the process of miniturization exists in biology and medicine, some large animal became small animals, god did not create the chicken or the egg, matter already existed, and some organs in the human beings are miniaturized too

    #245857
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    The egg came first, by the fact of evolution.

    #245858
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    We are talking about the chicken, we are not talking the general concept of evolution. Life started in the sea, and probably amoeba was the first life form that existed, and it was described by Engels many years ago
    ———————————————————————
    The egg came first, by the fact of evolution.

    That is theology, and nothing, and nothingness is also theology

    —————————————————————
    The Jesuits and the Dominicos had doctors in Physics, Medicine, Biology, Chemistry , Sociology, Economic, Business administration and they combined science with theology

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/moon-life-tides/#:~:text=The%20molten%20mantle%20thrown%20into,about%203.8%20billion%20years%20ago.

    #245860
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Our world (which is both ‘ideal’ and ‘material’) is our socio-historical product, and thus we can change it.

    I must be reading Raya Dunayeskaya again. Marx, the most idealist of the materialist philosopher, and the most materialist of the idealist philosopher. Hegelian Gumbo soup

    https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1958/dunayevskaya.htm

    #245863
    DJP
    Participant

    “So what would a modern scientific materialist say space is?
    Not matter?”

    Well according to that source of not always accurate information, Wikipedia; “in everyday as well as scientific usage, matter generally includes atoms and anything made up of them, and any particles (or combination of particles) that act as if they have both rest mass and volume. However it does not include massless particles such as photons, or other energy phenomena or waves such as light or heat.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter

    #245864
    Thomas_More
    Participant

    Well, if you grasp “empty” air and see nothing in your hand, what you don’t see are nonetheless billions of atoms, so I don’t agree with that reductionist definition of matter.

    But since scientists are not accessible as individuals to us of the great unwashed, we depend on their TV appearances, where only certain questions are asked, without us being able to ask what we necessarily want to.

    #245866
    Bijou Drains
    Participant

    “Following Dietzgen, he’s talking about how in order to make sense of the world and operate within it, we chop up the observable world of phenomena and abstract it into different categories and concepts in our minds. What he said about atoms could be said about anything else.”

    Ah, I see, I should have read the rest of the sentence. Piaget expressed a similar concept when he talked about the development of mental structures as children develop “These structures of mental operations are applied on representations of objects rather than on the objects themselves. Language, mental images, and numerical notation are examples of representations standing for objects and thus they become the object of mental operations.”

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