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ngill09
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Most cases of cataracts, which causes blindness, can be cured, especially in children. In fact, it can be very inexpensive to do so. This is directly a result of scientific advancement in medicine.
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Aloysium
Guest
I suppose like every other word, “materialism” means different things to different people.
Materialism to me is a vague term that relates to a belief that everything that exists, does so on a material plane.
It seems not that well thought out because being a belief, it is not material, but mental; it is self-contradictory.
At any rate, one could say that persons are emergent from physical processes.
However, one then has to formulate the concept of personhood as being material in nature and then demonstrate the force that translates neurological processes into those that constitute the presumed physical entity that would be the person.
You could believe that, as an electric current through a wire generates a magnetic field and vice versa, a brain affects a “physical” mind as a “physical” mind affects brain.
The problem clearly is that no such force or matter exists.
One could say that its in the gaps, I suppose, to be revealed in time.
I think it more likely that the understanding of what is matter will change before that of what consitutes mind or spirit.
This sort of baseless thinking is very cumbersome, so in most cases, mind and spirit (especially), are ignored as being inconsequential. Basically, what Tony was saying.
BTW: Suffering from crumbling vision and having undergone numerous operations myself, one of which collapsed my good eyeball leaving me for some time in a muddy camo world of funhouse mirrors, I am very much indebted to the many ophthalmologists who have looked after me over a couple of decades. I can still read on the computer and appreciate that fact that colours exist. Talk about cures, however, seems to really irk me.
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CHRISTINE77
Guest
My kid is all grown up.
Though he had his shots and occasional checkups, he, like most kids, was perfectly healthy without a doctor.
I’m not say that you shouldn’t go to the doctor, but you need to have faith in your doctor and his cures. I totally think they are good for putting people back together again after an accident, but I do not think that a lot of the so called medicine they give people actually works
Placebos can work even people know they are taking a sugar pill.
sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101222173033.htm
“Placebos – or dummy pills – are typically used in clinical trials as controls for potential new medications. Even though they contain no active ingredients, patients often respond to them. In fact, data on placebos is so compelling that many American physicians (one study estimates 50 percent) secretly give placebos to unsuspecting patients.”
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CHRISTINE77
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Like I said, doctors are good at physical surgery, no doubt. What I am talking about is the huge amount of pharmaceuticals modern man consumes with very little results.
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polytropos
Guest
Well, there are a lot of flavors of materialism. Eliminativist materialism doesn’t accept emergence accounts.
Then there are several other accounts… reductive materialism (ie. mind-brain identity theory), non-reductive materialism (including realization and supervenience varieties), and emergentism. The trouble in general is that it is very difficult to articulate what the realization-, supervenience-, and emergence-relations are. Whatever is proposed for realization and supervenience tends to be to weak to account for anything categorically different “emerging” (ie. consciousness, qualia, intentionality). On the other hand, emergence-relations threaten to be circular, since we don’t have any strong examples that resemble, for instance, the emergence of consciousness.
So tonyrey is wrong to suggest that all (or anywhere near most) materialists are eliminativists. But it’s also definitely not obvious what “materialist” means. And on all accounts, personal identity is one of the more vexed issues that materialism faces. Several of the modern philosophers (Locke, Hume) gave basically mereological accounts of non-living identity, but then sought to construct personal identity out of other features (like memory, personal history, etc.). But if a mereological account of inanimate identity is forced upon one, then it is going to be a big task to have any robust personal identity “emerge” (again, however the emergence-relation winds up being clarified).
The hylemorphist, on the other hand, is happy to invoke form as a the principle of identity in all cases (living and non-living), so that the application to humans is not at all ad hoc.
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orang
Guest
at 8 years old we all had our eyes checked…everyone almost in the family needed glass’s to read. ( many children) I never really was too interested in school things and couldn’t really be bothered with wearing glass’s. The others followed the program and now their prescription is similar to the bottom of a coke bottle and one of my brothers got the clinical correction done. I’m still not wearing glass’s and don’t really care or believe I need them. I was asking my sister about things who teach’s in a Catholic School, do you remember when we were youngsters and the general gang of kids ? Yes she replies, continuing, well how many had inhalers and pills to take for all these so called chemical problems in their brain and so on…answer hardly any,
this culture and society is in a mess by the suggestions in the media. These are bad times and history will feel sorry for the generation that broke its contract with the next in almost every way . So my opinion is the media is # 1 villain in everything. All of them, all networks, all media, magazines …all of it, Number # 1 villain. Nothing in any history of man to compare, a total loss of any sign’s of a species with zero regard for future generations creating a world only interesting or controversial for Adults. . This is one of my passions, this is The Villain. IT …is making the youngsters sick.
this culture and society is in a mess by the suggestions in the media. These are bad times and history will feel sorry for the generation that broke its contract with the next in almost every way . So my opinion is the media is # 1 villain in everything. All of them, all networks, all media, magazines …all of it, Number # 1 villain. Nothing in any history of man to compare, a total loss of any sign’s of a species with zero regard for future generations creating a world only interesting or controversial for Adults. . This is one of my passions, this is The Villain. IT …is making the youngsters sick.
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ngill09
Guest
I think a lot of these words, “inanimate” for one, are misapplied, at least to the sort of positions I’m advocating. I’m just seeing a lot of the hylomorphic and dualist conceptions as being about ontological semantics, whereas materialistic neuroscience is making real headway into actually understanding how the mind works.
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CHRISTINE77
Guest
I’m with you. The mainstream media is a huge propaganda machine pandering to corporations, power and wealth. I discontinued cable TV, and I am so glad I don’t have to listen to the ads and the “news” and the stupid shows anymore. Everyone should do it.
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Aloysium
Guest
. . . how the brain works.
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
Granted, but they will never " detect " the soul. That is an impossibility because, as spirit, the soul cannot be detected.
Linus2nd
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
It is not the brain that seeks to understand how the brain works.
It is the mind that seeks to understand how the brain works to feed the mind.
It is the mind that seeks to understand how the brain works to feed the mind.
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tonyrey
Guest
Indeed! Our primary datum and sole certainty is our mind. We infer the existence of the brain - and everything else.
The fact that no one has direct knowledge of physical reality demonstrates that materialism is absurd.** Neuroscience presupposes insight**.
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tonyrey
Guest
Indeed! One materialist on this forum claimed truth is "an isomorphism of atomic particles!
I wonder how one set of atomic particles (we) produced another set of atomic particles (the conclusion)…
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edwest2
Guest
Yep. That sums it up.Well, since classic evolution is random as opposed to purpose driven, everything is random.
Peace,
Ed
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tonyrey
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edwest2
Guest
That’s just speculation and ignores the fact that Jesus Christ is alive at this moment. I’m tired of this we’re just a walking, talking bag of chemicals that reproduce, or not, while responding to outside stimuli. It’s not rational, especially in light of the fact that God exists. The scientific answer has a boundary it cannot cross. It is incomplete by design.
Take this anti-God propaganda elsewhere, please.
Peace,
Ed
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edwest2
Guest
That is very true. The leaders of this government, including the Judicial branch, have broken their contract with a few generations of people in the West, giving us lies and immorality disguised as something good and right. Only a tiny handful of media exists that is beneficial, otherwise, it’s been mostly downhill over the past 40 years.
Peace,
Ed
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ngill09
Guest
My opinion is that a person is conscious, sentient, sapient being. Humans, and other animals to some extent, have these qualities because they are social animals with advanced cognitive abilities that allow for empathy and recognition of self and others as conscious. The ultimate cause of this could be a God, or it could just be natural evolution. I don’t have to suppose that humans have some magical aspect to recognize and appreciate the depth, breadth, and beauty of the human experience.
This is not anti-God propaganda. This is an attempt to discuss the nature of the mind as it relates to the brain. You can describe physical humans as “walking, talking, bags of chemicals”, but that is just a pronouncement of your own bias. It is more accurate to describe physical humans as entities operating within and ruled by a predictive physical structure.
Most of the spiritists in this thread have completely misunderstood the materialist position- asserting that because the mind is inexorably and intensely tied to the brain, the mind doesn’t exist. You can take your strawman somewhere else, it isn’t useful here.
On the other hand, I admit that I’ve learned a great deal about the Thomist position on this, and am not sure how it contradicts anything I’ve said.
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CHRISTINE77
Guest
Do you think human beings are different than animals? Or just animals with more neurons firing in their brains?
Do animals wonder about how their minds function? Do they communicate their ideas about philosophy, beauty, wonderment, mathematics, science etc. to one another? Do they wonder how it all began, how and where we came from and where we will go after we die? Do they wonder who created it all? Doesn’t this show how unique a human being is?
And how could there not be the living God, since humans have this “magical aspect to recognize and appreciate the depth, breadth and beauty of the world”? Not only to appreciate and wonder, but to create music, art, poetry, architecture, prayers, songs… We call it the human soul.
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
It seems that materialism is stuck with the same problem that atheism is stuck with.
As atheism cannot prove that God does not exist, materialism cannot prove that mind does not exist.
All common sense (not to mention desire) is on the side of God and spirit.
This common sense is too powerful to overcome, and those who seek to overcome it, while pretending to be protagonists of truth, are really antagonists of hope and desire.
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