On 6/8/2014 4:03 PM, LizR wrote:
David Nyman gave a much more rigorous definition of primitive materialism in another
thread (he calls it "primordial").
ISTM that what is supposed to be "primordial" about a specific set of
entities and
their relations is precisely that they *exclusively* underlie (or more
correctly,
comprise) everything that is "really real". So the hierarchical structure of
everything we observe thereafter - be it physical, chemical, biological,
physiological, etc. - would be deemed to be underpinned, exclusively and
exhaustively, by such a primordial substratum.
That's a definition of ur-stuff, but it doesn't say anything about "material". I agree
with Bruno that saying the most basic ontology is "matter" is meaningless because "matter"
isn't well defined. Physicists have regarded it as substances, particle, fields, quantum
fields, strings,... If it's computation or arithmetic those are just the basic ontologies
of different theories. What's really of interest is whether the theory can describe and
predict what happens at level of kicking things and have them kick back.
Brent
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