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 familiar with Absential Materialism, so I Googled it, and found no entries. Hence, I assume the paradoxical & oxymoronic term is of your own coinage. Since this post is fairly long, and technically over my untrained head, I'd appreciate an abbreviated definition of "absential materialism" that distinguishes it from "immaterialism", and identifies why the term is needed for philosophical intercourse. I may want to use it in my own argumentation, but need to make sure I understand its meaning and relevance. :smile:Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem is an examination of axiomatic sets that ground math equations. Without him looking for it specifically, Gödel elaborated within his theorem a representational description of absential materialism. Due to their encompass of absential materialism, a label for higher-order dynamical processes elaborated in Terrence W. Deacon’s Incomplete Nature, axiomatic math sets are strategically incomplete. — ucarr
I assume the paradoxical & oxymoronic term is of your own coinage. — Gnomon
…I'd appreciate an abbreviated definition of "absential materialism" that distinguishes it from "immaterialism", and identifies why the term is needed for philosophical intercourse. — Gnomon
The human individual is the exemplar of absential materialism: what is not yet but will be. This is the heart of an enduring self who lives via enactment of intentions. Selfhood wraps itself around the nullity, or absence, of about-ness, which is the set of individual intentions. — ucarr
OK. Let's just call Absential Materialism a "novel pairing" with seemingly paradoxical implications. It's oxymoronic only in contrast to Materialism as here & now Realism.For this reason, I don’t think my pairing rises to the level of a new coinage. More importantly, I’m inclined away from characterizing the pairing as oxymoronic. I see the main thrust of the pairing as an expression of the bridge across the matter/immaterial divide — ucarr
I notice that you spell "intentional" with an "e", as I do in my own thesis, following Deacon. For me, it implies Energy as in Mental Causality --- intent to cause change --- which is unexplained by Materialism. My thesis postulates a precursor to Energy, Matter and Mind in the power to transform Potential into Actual. That "power" is what J. A. Wheeler referred to in his "it from bit" analogy of matter emerging from causal information. And the most common term for the power-to-transform is "Energy"*2.The non-locality of ententional mind is not transcendence of our natural world of material_physical things. Instead, it is gravitational manipulation of spatio_temporally extended material things. — ucarr
But how is it 'materialism'? What role does matter occupy in it? — Wayfarer
I read it as suggesting that reality is exhaustively characterized by manifestations of matter and the absence of matter, eschewing the idea of anything transcendent of matter. Matter is able to manifest its own absence, a material absence that matters. not an unknowable immaterial presence. Makes sense to me. — Janus
Your question is important — ucarr
absential materialism — ucarr
Although functionally independent from their material substrates, they are, in fact, still rooted in them as emergent properties. — ucarr
Let's just call Absential Materialism a "novel pairing" with seemingly paradoxical implications. It's oxymoronic only in contrast to Materialism as here & now Realism. — Gnomon
my main interest is in the "bridge" of which you speak. — Gnomon
…Absence/Void is the not-yet-real pool-of-Potential from which Actual material things and immaterial properties may Emerge. — Gnomon
I notice that you spell "intentional" with an "e", as I do in my own thesis, following Deacon. — Gnomon
Ententional: A generic adjective coined in this book for describing all phenomena that are intrinsically incomplete in the sense of being in relationship to, constituted by, or organized to achieve something non-intrinsic. This includes function, information, meaning, reference, representation, agency, purpose, sentience, and value. — Terrence W. Deacon
Absence may play the role of causal Energy… — Gnomon
But how is it 'materialism'? What role does matter occupy in i — Wayfarer
Your question is important — ucarr
Does it have an answer? — Wayfarer
From my limited reading of Deacon I don't recall ever mentioning that phrase. Nor do I think he describes his work as materialist, rather as challenging the materialist paradigm, but within a broader naturalist framework. In other words, a form of extended naturalism. — Wayfarer
In terms of constraints in physics, these can ultimately be traced back to the fundamental cosmic constraints associated with the cosmological anthropic principle, without which complex matter and living organisms could not have formed. — Wayfarer
…how does this "absential materialism" metaphysically differ from Democritean-Epicurean atomism (i.e. swirling atoms in void)? — 180 Proof
Are you saying the natural world stands some degree apart from material things? — ucarr
Are you claiming the fundamental cosmic constraints exemplify immaterial causation? — ucarr
My Absence/Void analogy was referring to Potential for change (probability), not Actual causation (energy). In other words, Aristotelian Potential is unreal & immaterial & meta-physical, and not measurable in terms of thermo-dynamics. Potential is knowable only in hindsight by reasoning, or by mathematical calculation of statistical Probability for a future event.If Absence/Void is active and causal, as in the case of grounding emergent material things, then its energetic_material, not absential. The absential gaps are due to constraints imposed by dynamic metabolics upon the universal, thermo-dynamical tendency towards equilibrium and inaction. — ucarr
In order to "play the role of energy", Absence (void) must transform from Potential (not yet real) into Actual (matter). The mathematical waveform is not a real thing, but a pointer to the potential or possible Presence of a particle (photon). There are no material waveforms in Reality, only conceptual forms in Ideality. Do, you see what I mean? :smile:Absence may play the role of causal Energy… — Gnomon
Energy, even as a waveform, is a presence. — ucarr
how does this "absential materialism" metaphysically differ from Democritean-Epicurean atomism (i.e. swirling atoms in void)? — 180 Proof
Classical atomism is monist – atoms are aspects (à la density differentials) of void, not separable from, or transcendent of, void – so no "dualism" — 180 Proof
I 'm confident they would say existence (i.e. being); however, I prefer to think of "void" as the real (i.e. the ineluctable exceeding, or encompassing horizon, of both (human) effability and rationality). Another way of putting it: there are 'dynamics' in every sense, we say, only because void fundamentally affords 'changes, combinatorials, contingencies, chance' – or, in contemporary terms, universal computability (re: D. Deutsch, S. Lloyd, S. Wolfram, M. Tegmark ... Spinoza ...)How do Democritus, Epicurus and you define void? — ucarr
The human individual is the exemplar of absential materialism:what is not yet but will be. — ucarr
But how is it 'materialism'? What role does matter occupy in it? — Wayfarer
Ententional: A generic adjective coined in this book for describing all phenomena that are intrinsically incomplete in the sense of being in relationship to, constituted by, or organized to achieve something non-intrinsic. This includes function, information, meaning, reference, representation, agency, purpose, sentience, and value. — Terrence W. Deacon
My Absence/Void analogy was referring to Potential for change (probability), not Actual causation (energy). In other words, Aristotelian Potential is unreal & immaterial & meta-physical, and not measurable in terms of thermo-dynamics. Potential is knowable only in hindsight by reasoning, or by mathematical calculation of statistical Probability for a future event. — Gnomon
The non-locality of selfhood is serial aboutness: the self, as such, is a continual roadmap to somewhere else.* In its act of thinking, the self displaces itself from what it thinks about such that whatever it thinks about is not-yet-but-will-be. In this regard, thought is both manipulatable and unapproachable. Herein we get a whiff of Satre’s human freedom in the form of the uncontainable self as consciousness. Existentialism must therefore be about authenticity, and its impossibility. The authentic self, therefore, is rooted in a series of forward-looking fictions about the illusive_elusive self as once-was-but-no-longer-is. — ucarr
How do Democritus, Epicurus and you define void? — ucarr
I'm confident they would say existence (i.e. being); however, I prefer to think of "void" as the real (i.e. the ineluctable exceeding, or encompassing horizon, of both (human) effability and rationality). Another way of putting it: there are 'dynamics' in every sense, we say, only because void fundamentally affords 'changes, combinatorials, contingencies, chance' – or, in contemporary terms, universal computability (re: D. Deutsch, S. Lloyd, S. Wolfram, M. Tegmark ... Spinoza ...) — 180 Proof
This absent-self idea comes from Heidegger but Sartre insisted on bringing back the Cartesian subject and freely willing consciousness as the basis of the self. — Joshs
My Absence/Void analogy was referring to Potential for change (probability), not Actual causation (energy). — Gnomon
For that matter, just what is 'materialism'? Let's see some definitions:
Brittanica: Materialism, in philosophy, the view that all facts (including facts about the human mind and will and the course of human history) are causally dependent upon physical processes, or even reducible to them. — Wayfarer
Are you claiming the fundamental cosmic constraints exemplify immaterial causation? — ucarr
I think Deacon's notion of absentials and constraints challenge those forms of reductive materialism. — Wayfarer
Intersecting gravitational fields are therefore the physical model of consciousness. — ucarr
:shade: :shade: — “Lionino
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 no "real" substance, except perhaps for ethereal Aether. The waveform is described in terms of time, frequency, space, polarization, and modulation. But all of those are mental concepts, not material objects. Hence, they exist in what I call Ideality. :smile:The mathematical waveform is not a real thing — Gnomon
There are no material waveforms in Reality — Gnomon
Ocean waves might be considered as waveforms, although they are erratic. Radar, etc. are waveforms in reality. — jgill
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.