Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
This is fundamental, IC. If we cannot agree on this we cannot agree on anything. When I say a thing is whatever its qualities are I mean all its qualities (attributes, properties, or characteristics) whether anyone knows what those qualities are. It doesn't matter how a thing is defined, or if anyone even knows the entity exists. If it exists it is its qualities that are what it is. What else would it be?
Something more than "the sum of its qualities." ... It has a unitary existence that defies being separated into any qualities or cluster of qualities which can never be more than descriptors of particular aspects of the whole. In other words, the qualities are all just adjectives, and every adjective (or cluster or adjectives or even all the adjectives we can combine) are inevitably merely "facets of the diamond," but not "the diamond-in-itself," if you catch my metaphor.
I did not say a thing is, "the sum of its qualities," I said it is whatever all its qualities are. If an entity exists it must be something with some nature and it is that nature (all its attributes, properties, and characteristics) that are its qualities.
I have no idea what you mean by, a "unitary existence," unless you are implying some kind of Platonic, "substance," that qualities (form) are impressed on. I do suspect that is what you think since you will use, "unitary
essence," in a later reply. If so, you are confusing the ontological with the epistemological. "Essence," is strictly epistemological and is only the identification of entities with similar qualities. There are no ontological essences.
[
Note: If I am right, you have adopted either the Platonic substance-attribute theory, that a thing-in-itself is a property-bearer distinct from the properties it bears, or Aristotelian hylomorphism in which entities are a compound of, "matter," and, "form." The obvious problem with both views is that if there really were some mystic substrate to existence like, "substance," or, "matter," it would have to have its own properties to exist (because that with no properties cannot exist). If "substance," or, "matter," have their own properties they cannot be the ultimate substrate of existence because their own properties would have to be impressed on something else, which of course leads to an absurd endless regress.]
If you were able to identify every quality of diamond (the substance), that would be diamond, the, "substance," or, "matter." If you were able to identify every quality of any particular diamond, that would be a diamond-in-itself.
There is no need (or possibility) of some kind of mystic or ineffable stuff underlying everything.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
If a thing had no qualities at all it would not exist,
This part is true.
if it exists, it is whatever its qualities are, because there is nothing else for it to be.
I think that maybe here's the problem: you're using "qualities" in an unusual way. You're including in "qualities" not just adjectival properties, like width, colour, shape, age, and so on, but also unitary
essence...and yet you appear unconvinced that any essence exists beyond these "qualities." So it seems to me there's a kind of amphiboly in your application of the term "qualities."
Are "qualities," in your usage, separable descriptors, or are they inseparable sub-features of the unitary whole? I can't really tell yet what you are supposing about that.
I may be using, "qualities," in an unusual way. Almost everything I say philosophically will be somewhat unusual since I disagree with almost all that goes by the name philosophy. So your question is a fair one. Here is what I mean by qualities:
1. Any true description of any aspect of an entity's intrinsic nature is a quality.
2. As I frequently explain, what I mean by qualities is any of an entity's attributes, properties, or characteristics. A complete identification of any individual entity would include all it's qualities, as well as, its behavior (actions if any), and its relationships to all other entities. An entity's qualities determine what kind of behavior and what kind of relationships are possible to the entity.
3. With the exception of organisms, an entity's qualities include only those things which are true about that entity independent of any particular behavior or relationship to any other entity. In other words, only intrinsic qualities are a thing's identity, e.g. size, shape, mass, charge, resonance, magnetic state, physical state (solid, liquid, gas), soft, hard, smooth, rough, etc. but not any particular behavior or relationships like near, far, above, below, good, bad, new, improved, discovered, important, rare, or necessary which are extrinsic qualities of an entity.
4. Since life is manifest at the physical level as a process, that unique behavior which is called, "living," (such as breathing or hunting), is one of an organism's qualities, and since an organism's relationship to other entities includes sentience (response to stimuli vs physical reaction) those relationships, (such as to water or nutrients), determined by that sentience are also qualities of an organism.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
It is the life attribute that differentiates between the non-living entities and living organisms.
No doubt it is. But "life" is not simply an additional descriptor, or "quality," is it?
It is a quality (ontological), not a, "descriptor," (epistemological).
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
I mean, if you thought it was, that would be suppositional, and impossible to prove, I think.
There is something different about organisms that distinguishes them from non-living entities else there would be no reason to identify some things as mere physical objects and others as organisms. The name given to that difference is, "life." There is nothing to prove.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
It seems to me that to add "life" to a description is more than it is merely to add weight, or colour, or shape, or age, or any other such physical "quality."
"Life," is not a physical quality. Nevertheless, like the physical qualities, all it does is differentiate those enitities which have that quality (organisms) from those that do not (non-living things), just as those entities that are paramagnetic (attracted to a magnetic field, e.g. iron) are differentiated from those that are diamagnetic (repelled by a magnetic field, e.g. bismuth). Notice, that what makes a metal paramagnetic or diamagnetic is not some kind of "stuff," or, "substance," that is added to them, but the actual nature (behavior) of the two metals themselves. The words, paramagnetic and diamagnetic do not explain why the metals behave the way they do, they only identify the difference. The word, "life," does not explain what life is, It only identifies that which differentiates between non-living entities and organisms.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
Admittedly, what "life" adds is difficult to say in precise terms...it's something like "soul," or "breath," which are antique words used to try to capture that experience about it that we intuitively have. Or perhaps today we would say something like "consciousness" or "animation": I don't know what word we would prefer. But we do have a clear intuition of what it means when we say that all the physical properties and descriptors of an entity are still intact, but that the entity has "died." And we feel that this is a very important issue, much more important than to say, "The entity has changed its length, colour, shape, or age."
Life is not something, "added," that transforms a non-living entity into an organism, it is not some kind of, "thing," or, "substance," or "stuff." As I've said before, life manifests itself at the physical level as a process that maintains the organism as the kind of organism it is. I agree with you, that "the physical properties ... of an entity are still intact, but that the entity has 'died,'" if the process ceases. Such a process, however, cannot be explained in terms of physical properties alone, which means the life process is possible because non-physical properties, as well as physical properties, are also part of natural (material) existence.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
This seems like a good place to ask the question, "what do you mean by the,
'supernatural?'"
Very simply, that which transcends the mere physical boundaries and regularities of the universe itself, since it created the universe. (We can leave out for the moment the question of whether it's a personal or impersonal entity or realm.)
Well I don't know of any, "physical boundaries" of the universe, unless you mean that the physical aspects of existence have a specific nature and all aspect of mere (non-living) physical entities are determined by that nature. The universe I live in includes living organisms which are not limited (or bound) by physical properties, which is what differentiates them from the mere physical. I assume you regard living organisms to be supernatural in some way.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
In short, material existence is all that exists the way it exists.
This statement is merely presuppositional Materialism, though. It's something you have to take on faith, rather than something that can be shown. And when taken on faith, it results in absurd consequences that both of us have already rejected, such as Emergentism.
Nothing is being, "supposed," here, it is simply a statement of what I mean by material existence. Let me put it another way. Whatever there is that exists and whatever its nature is, I call that material existence.
Since for me there is nothing that is not physical, living, conscious, or has a volitional mind, material existence includes nothing more than that. If I believed what you believe, I would have to include the supernatural as part of, "all that exists," and therefore material existence.
The purpose of identifying material existence as material existence is to differentiate between what exists, as it exists, independently of anyone's knowledge or awareness of that existence from what only exists as the product of human consciousness, that is, between the ontological and the epistemological. The physical, life, consciousness, and human minds all exist and have the nature they have whether you or I or anyone else knows they exist of have the nature they have or not. Everything else that exists, all knowledge and knowledge methods (language, mathematics, logic), science, history, religion, philosophy, literature, and fiction, only exists as the product of human minds and consciousness, and therefore do not exist materially.
Our essential difference of view is, that you include what is called the supernatural in that which exists ontologically and I regard everything you call supernatural as only existing epistemologically.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
And this part of what you say seems to me to highlight the tautological nature of Materialism:
Second, the non-physical aspects of natural existence, (life, consciousness, volition [mind]), are known by the fact we are living, conscious, and volitional beings, which we know, not by perceiving those facts, but by doing them, that is, living, perceiving, and choosing
.
Your definition of "non-physical aspects" here has a couple of problems. The big one is that it is circular, because it says that "living, perceiving, and choosing" are identified by means of "living, perceiving, and choosing." That seems fairly redundant.
Again, I'm only explaining what I mean by material existence, which includes all physical existence which we know because we are directly conscious (perceive) its qualities, (see, hear, feel, smell, and taste it) or deduce them from what is perceived (i.e. the physical sciences). Material existence also includes all living organisms but the qualities which make living organisms possible are not physical and cannot be known by being directly perceived or deduced from what is perceived. We cannot perceive the, "life," quality, but we know what life is, because
we are alive. That is what it means to say we know what life is by doing it. It is the same for consciousness and mind as well. We know we are conscious, not by perceiving our consciousness (which we could do if it were physical) but by being conscious, just as we know we can see and hear, not be seeing or hearing those perceptions, but by actually seeing and hearing. We know we have minds, though we cannot perceive them, because of our mind's nature, that is, because we must and can consciously choose all we do, can and must gain and store knowledge (intellect), and can and must think (rationality).
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
And we do know, both deductively and by empirical means, that the universe had an origin.
Deductively I know nothing comes from nothing. Non-A cannot spontaneously become A. Empirically I know what exists exists and that there is no evidence that existence could ever not have existed.
Except for the crackpot Hawking, cosmological hypotheses do not say there was ever nothing or that nothing preceded the so-called, "big bang." It is, after all, not science in any case, because the past cannot be directly examined, and is all conjecture.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
... what if Someone could come along and tell you, "You're not here struggling between womb and tomb with no real or actual purpose. You're not a cosmic accident whose all on your own to fake meaning out of nothing. I made you, and I love you, and I want you to be fully what you can be. I want you to make your choices (and will defend your right to do so absolutely, even if you have to live with some bad outcomes as a result). But as for me, I want you to grow into the best self you can be, and then not just decay and die, but have eternal prospects of happiness, relationship, exploration, wonder and creativity -- and I'm prepared to lay down my life to make it possible for you."
I would know it was a lie and the speaker was either demented or a rogue. My life is not a, "struggle," it is joy and victory every day. I've already had more life, adventure, and done more than I could ever imagine wanting to, and every new day is only a bonus. Thinking of life as a, "struggling between womb and tomb," is a kind of neurosis or existentialist paranoia. No doubt, anyone with that kind of defective psychology would be ripe for accepting promises of unearned blessings and a "perfect" life that required nothing of them.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
If the universe were different in any way from what it is, there would be, "no coherent matter ... no people, no planets, ... nothing." But that puts a limit on your God. If God could have made life possible in any kind of universe, then there is nothing necessary about all the scientific limitations you site as proof God had to make the universe just as it is, but if life and existence are only possible in the universe such as it is, God could not have made this universe different.
Let's suppose that's so. If it were, we have no frame of reference from which to comprehend it. ...
The, "frame of reference," is the universe as it is. If it is the only possible one in which life, as we know it, (not some other imagined kind of life), God could not have made it different. If He could have made it different and life as we know it still be possible in it, there is no, "scientific," reason the universe must be as it is for there to be life. Which is it?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
You and I both know the universe has an exact nature and that there is nothing random or accidental about it.
Is that true? You don't believe that the universe happened by accident? You don't believe, for example, in the Big Bang? You believe something non-random created the universe?
Yes it's true. I do not believe in the, "big bang." I believe the universe is what it is and has the nature it has, period,
which does not require that it was created.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
You're arguing from something that clearly undermines your theory that the universe can "just happen," to the conclusion that it "just happened" into existence. You're accepting the evidence for design, and then concluding that it all happened without design.
The universe did not, "happen." The universe simply is what it is and requires nothing to make it what it is. The idea that the universe was, "designed," is exactly what you accuse me of, an
ex post facto conclusion based on the fact the universe has a specific nature; but that nature does not require a designer anymore than the wonderful patterns of the Grand Canyon or Painted Dessert required a designer.
Theist's believe there must be something that just is and has the nature it has without anything else making it what it is. The only difference between our views is that I accept the universe I actually see and experience as that which is what it is, but theists push the idea back and make that which is what it is a concept for which there is no evidence and call it God.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2019 4:47 pm
I just wanted to wish you well anyway. And I thank you for your kind words in return.
Thank you for that and for inquiring about my health. There are physical problems, but nothing to worry about. I know you must be looking forward to Christmas. I do enjoy much of the music [the old, mostly classical themes, Bach, Mozart, Handle, Beethoven, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Purcel, Elgar, Monteverdi, Tchaikovsky, Telemann, Pachelbel, Luther, not the modern stuff] and the simple joy and pleasure I see in others at this time of year, and wish all the best of that for you and yours.
RC