Immaterial Physicalism
This is an idea I had some time last year and as there are no current posts on the blog I thought I might share it with you. No doubt no one will agree with it but I am looking forward to hearing why.
Basically the view arises from the following two considerations: (1) The materialist claim is that everything is extended. The essence of extension is that it is dividable. There exist some things which are not dividable, such as gravity and other fields. (I should also note that there is a tradition of existence being connected to oneness, if something can be divided then it does not have oneness and thus does not exist, all that exists are the parts that make it up). Thus we have the immaterial half of the thesis. (2) Plain old physicalism; the physical facts exhaust the facts. It just so happens that the physical picture contains some non-extended things. I would like to argue that in fact all physical things are essentially non-extended and that it is the combination of an infinitude of non-extended things that any extended things arise.
Basically the view arises from the following two considerations: (1) The materialist claim is that everything is extended. The essence of extension is that it is dividable. There exist some things which are not dividable, such as gravity and other fields. (I should also note that there is a tradition of existence being connected to oneness, if something can be divided then it does not have oneness and thus does not exist, all that exists are the parts that make it up). Thus we have the immaterial half of the thesis. (2) Plain old physicalism; the physical facts exhaust the facts. It just so happens that the physical picture contains some non-extended things. I would like to argue that in fact all physical things are essentially non-extended and that it is the combination of an infinitude of non-extended things that any extended things arise.
posted by Anonymous at
9:30 PM
·
3 comments
3 Comments:
Like Patrick said. "the combination of an infinitude of non-extended things" would be, well, a really big bunch of non-extended things. You will need to suppose at least one other substance, a thinking substance or some other substance that discriminates between the accidents of the non-extended substances, thus the *appearance* of extension or the *phenomena described as* extension arise from the contiguity of the really big bunch of non-extended things and the discriminating substance.
You're redoing Plato, though, aren't you? From a number of non-extended Real Things arise the affect/effect of the extended substances? Whether your non-extended things are "mental" like mathematical laws or "physical" like gravity, the effect and the problems are going to be similar.
Oh, and kick out "infinitude" when you can and should mean "a big bunch." Positing actual infinities (i.e., "an infinity of X exists") is magical thinking with a mathematical veneer.
Cheers,
PGE
3/21/2005 11:51:00 PM
It sounds plausible enough to me. It seems that a line could be understood as made up of infinite points, for example.
Reuben, how do materialists typically deal with gravity and such? Could we say that forces (etc) are not concrete particulars, but merely relations that hold between particulars and perhaps influence them?
(I assume the materialist thesis applies only to concrete particulars - they allow for properties and relations to exist, don't they?)
3/22/2005 10:19:00 PM
I think if Descartes had a look at our physics now, he would have said, "See! I told you not everything is physical". There are claims he makes beyond this, but you're right that on the Cartesian account of materialism it's quite easy to see that materialism is false.
3/25/2005 07:53:00 AM
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