You can measure the intensity of a magnetic field, though. — Olivier5

What does that have to do with anything?

You tried proving that one must concede that ideas exist, and since they don’t have weight, they are immaterial. False. There are plenty of things that don’t have weight that are material.

Are you moving to intensity now? Well a rock doesn’t have intensity and we still call it material. So that doesn’t work either.

I think your ideas have weight.

Configuration of neurons are brain states, but changes in neuron configurations are mental states? — Mww

Mental process, not mental state. (I was in a mental state last night.) I'm not differentiating between mental state and brain state: both refer to the same thing (a snapshot of the configuration of the brain at a given time).

Yeah, pretty much. Up/down, right/left, right/wrong, ad infinitum. Physical/non-physical. In the human cognitive system, for any possible conception, the negation of it is given immediately. — Mww

Ah okay. Well then the same as real/non-real I guess.

Isn’t a single Feynman diagram depicting the interaction of one electron with one positron, or the interaction of two electrons, exact? In what way is it not? — Mww

It's convenient to think of them as physical processes, but in fact they're just terms in an infinite sum that describes a physical process. Some match pretty well, especially the lower order ones, but there's no real physical process corresponding to, say, a vertex correction.

Physical reality is what we (minds) make of what we perceive. — Olivier5

That's not physical reality, that's solipsism. Physical reality is the causes of our perceptions. Or do you mean physical theory is what we make of what we perceive? In which case, yes

Conclusion: Thoughts are neither matter nor energy. — TheMadFool

Here is why I think you have reached a false conclusion. You did not consider that thoughts are always inseparable from the neurons/brain matter that contain them. By observation they always go together. Bipartite and irreducible. Neurons are matter so your argument is not complete in its analysis.

Here is why I think you have reached a false conclusion. You did not consider that thoughts are always inseparable from the neurons/brain matter that contain them. By observation they always go together. Bipartite and irreducible. Neurons are matter so your argument is not complete in its analysis. — Mark Nyquist

My conclusion has nothing to do with "...thoughts are always inseperable..." Even if that were true, thoughts can be nonphysical. Mind you, just because something is nonphysical doesn't imply it's independent of the physical or that it doesn't experience its own kind of death!

That's not physical reality, that's solipsism. Physical reality is the causes of our perceptions. Or do you mean physical theory is what we make of what we perceive? — Kenosha Kid

It is our common reality: we know of the world through our senses.

We can ascertain that a given physical object exists by using our senses (and instruments).

In fact, the very definition of 'physical' in regular English is 'empirical, confirmed by the senses', as opposed to 'imagined, invented by the mind'.

Do you understand the point now? It is simply a matter of definition.

You of course define 'physical' in a different manner, which appears to include ideas. If ideas are considered physical, or material, then I have no problem with such a 'weak materialism'. It solves the obvious logical contradiction of 'strong materialism' (=the idea that ideas don't exist).

the very definition of 'physical' in regular English is 'empirical, confirmed by the senses', — Olivier5

...

You of course define 'physical' in a different manner, which appears to include ideas. — Olivier5

...

the obvious logical contradiction of 'strong materialism' (=the idea that ideas don't exist). — Olivier5

I don't see the contradiction. If I have 'an idea', is not some part of my brain sensing that? Or are you suggesting that only two or three 'senses' are involved in detection of physical reality? If so, why the limitation?

The point is that common English defines 'physical' as 'apprehensible by the senses, measurable'.

If I have 'an idea', is not some part of my brain sensing that? — Isaac

Do you mean that ideas are empirical because we can hear them in our head?

Not 'hear', but we can detect they're there. How is that different to any other 'sense'?

How do you detect ideas?

How do you detect ideas? — Olivier5

Are you unsure as to whether or not you have ideas? If the answer is no it follows that you must have some means of detecting them. My money is on the hippocampus.

Okay so you don't know how it's done.

In my case, I hear my thoughts in my head.

Okay so you don't know how it's done. — Olivier5

Well, I wouldn't go that far, we've got some very strong theories, but yeah, I don't know everything there is to know about how the brain functions. We don't know everything there is to know about how the eyes, nose or ears function either. The point is that your distinction is illusory, we detect ideas with our senses to no less an extent that we detect objects.

Prove that materialism contradicts itself" ... if, of course, "you can". — 180 Proof

Of course I can. The only question is whether you can understand the proof.

Materialism, in it's most naïve form, stipulates that ideas don't really exist, at least not as fully as material stuff. But materialism is itself an idea. Therefore if materialism is true, materialism does not exist.

we detect ideas with our senses to no less an extent that we detect objects. — Isaac

Okay, point well taken. Therefore ideas are empirical, and can be considered as physical. They are objects too.

Therefore ideas are empirical, and can be considered as physical. — Olivier5

Yeah, that's the idea.

Well then, all is fine and there are no more logical contradictions that I can see.

You of course define 'physical' in a different manner, which appears to include ideas. If ideas are considered physical, or material, then I have no problem with such a 'weak materialism'. It solves the obvious logical contradiction of 'strong materialism' (=the idea that ideas don't exist). — Olivier5

We're talking ideas in someone's, right? It doesn't permit redness to exist objectively as a perfect form outside of brains as an idealist might have it. But yes clearly my ideas exist in some way: I can convey that without any understanding of what they fundamentally are.

In physicalism, there really is no problem to solve as I see it, never has been, never will be. The criteria for what is physical are specific, not wishy-washy enough for the sorts of ambiguity needed to keep dualism alive. But they're also all-encompassing. For us to know about anything, it has to be physical. We can postulate non-physical realms, but by virtue of them being non-physical, we cannot say anything about them.

I think these ideas, like thought having no weight, did make some sense before we understood what we understand about the brain and had built artificial ones (computers) but I don't think they're really mysteries anymore, more akin to dogmas.

"In it's naive form" ... a strawman. Proves nothing except you're woefully misinformed about materialism.

Why don't you inform me about materialism, then?

Not worth my time. Have a good one.

Not worth my time. Have a good one. — 180 Proof

Being worth the time is a relationship that's non-symmetric. Sad but true.

Being worth the time is a relationship that's non-reflexive. — TheMadFool

That's either very depressed and self deprecating or you meant symmetric?

Ha ha ha... See you around.

We're talking ideas in someone's [?], right? It doesn't permit redness to exist objectively as a perfect form outside of brains as an idealist might have it. But yes clearly my ideas exist in some way: I can convey that without any understanding of what they fundamentally are. — Kenosha Kid

There's a word missing up there after 'someone's'. Assuming it is the word 'brain', 'mind' or 'head', I agree. I'm not an idealist. More of a synthesis between materialism and idealism. So I draw from idealism what I see as the useful bit: the importance of forms, and from materialism the importance of matter.

No matter without form, no form without matter.

So a form cannot exist without being the form of some matter or another. Assuming ideas are forms, they must be the form of something material. Forms have material substrates, so to speak.

But the interesting thing with forms, is that they can be duplicated, copied, from one material support to another. And that may be why you and I can apparently share ideas.

Configuration of neurons are brain states, but changes in neuron configurations are mental states?
— Mww

Mental process, not mental state. — Kenosha Kid

Yeah, sorry, my bad. C & P, write, edit, (Invisible Fence guy), edit, (Non-Stop Talker neighbor), edit (dinner time), edit, post......I lost track of the original.
—————

It's convenient to think of them as physical processes, but in fact they're just terms in an infinite sum that describes a physical process. — Kenosha Kid

Ya know what? I’d like to take a survey, of people in general, after a quick perusal of this:

https://web2.ph.utexas.edu/~vadim/Classes/2012f/vertex.pdf

.....followed by a quick perusal of this:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4280

.....with the survey question being, which one of these is the least useless, with respect to a theoretical description of goings-on between the ears of the human rational animal.

Ya know what? I’d like to take a survey, of people in general, after a quick perusal of this:

https://web2.ph.utexas.edu/~vadim/Classes/2012f/vertex.pdf

.....followed by a quick perusal of this:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4280

.....with the survey question being, which one of these is the least useless, with respect to a theoretical description of goings-on between the ears of the human rational animal. — Mww

What measure of utility would you want to use?

What measure of utility would you want to use? — Isaac

It’s not complicated; each participant answers as he sees fit.