On 5/29/2018 8:25 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 28 May 2018, at 21:06, Brent Meeker <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 5/28/2018 6:08 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
2018-05-28 14:54 GMT+02:00 <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>:
On Monday, May 28, 2018 at 11:49:49 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 26 May 2018, at 22:56, [email protected] wrote:
On Saturday, May 26, 2018 at 9:56:39 AM UTC, scerir wrote:
Aristotle distinguishes two aspects of ordinary things:
form and matter.
Form only exists when it enforms matter. Matter is just
potential to be enformed.
Aristotle identifies matter with potentiality, form
with actuality.
"For, as we said, word substance has three meanings,
form, matter, and the complex of both and of these
three, what is called matter is potentiality, what is
called form actuality." (De Anima, II)
(According to Heisenberg wavefunctions are
"potentialities", at least before measurements).
Bruno exudes extreme aversion to "primary matter”,
Not at all.
I just show that the assumption of primary matter
contradicts the assumption of mechanism (that is not obvious
and requires some work). Mechanism is incompatible with
(weak) Materailsm (the belief that there is some
ontologically primitive/irreducible matter).
What is "primary matter"? AG
Simply matter as an ontological primitive...
ie: irreducible to something else, which is the base of reality.
Quentin
The interesting question is, if it's the ur-stuff of reality in what
sense is it "matter", isn't it everything.
Matter is usually defined by the object studied in physics, which
means “observable”, or “measurable”. That type of things you can knock
on.
It becomes primary when you think that such matter can explain
everything, including consciousness. But with mechanism, it cannot be
everything——in fact, it cannot be anything, but a subjective
appearance in numbers relative experiences. It is but one mode of
arithmetic when scrutinising itself.
You miss my point that no one, no physicists, no philosopher, starts out
by defining "primary matter". It is your invention as a straw man to be
defeated by computationalism. Some physicists and some philosophers may
suppose that the stuff described by physics is enough to explain the
world we observe; but most also suppose that it is not "primary". They
look for a deeper more unified ur-stuff and many physicists have
followed Wheeler and Tegmark in thinking of the equations of
mathematical physics as simply defining the ur-stuff.
Brent
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