The Helmetmaker

Hey Randle,


I thought it was better to start a new thread as this topic is not on track with survival values. Anyway, I thought our last two posts pretty much said the same thing.

A "lowly engineer," huh? Does that mean you design church keys? Only kidding. It's hardly a "lowly" profession. I am just a feral philosopher, too. But then again, as the last thread shows, everyone is. You haven't bored me, but have given me a little bit to go on. Like you pointed out in your first post in the suvival thread, there are some potent philosophers here. This is by far the best philosophy list I've been on.

You said, "From my thinking, if a "seperate" reality (or parallel universe) or anything can have any effect on this reality - then *for that very reason* it is part and parcel of the material world and not actually seperate from it. If it can't have any effect on the real (material) world in any sense at all, then I can safely ignor it, and use Occam's razor to shave it away from my thinking." You also said, "Therefore I think there may be stuff that isn't either matter or energy to finally answer one of your questions. But the truth is that I just *dont know* if there is or not. However, I am sure that if there is, then whatever it is, is *natural* and not supernatural." As for parallel universes, or Martin Rees's multiverse, if these are anything other than conjecture then, like you, I think this only expands the concept of "universe." But you also say you don't know if there is anything other than matter and energy in the universe. (As an aside, I would say a radical materialist would assert that there is _only_ matter and energy.) I am not a materialist in this sense. Nor am I an Idealist. I think though, that after a moment's consideration, you will agree that the universe is more than just matter and energy, and not that you just don't know. I'm not referring to a "supernature," but to nature itself. For example: What does the science of ballistics explain? It doesn't explain the material aspects of a projectile, and it doesn't explain the energy which propels it. Instead, it explains the trajectory of the projectile. But that is neither matter or energy, and yet if it didn't exist science would not bother to explain it. And trajectories exist whether or not there are conscious observers of them. I think it would be inaccurate to say we made up the idea of trajectories; they exist in some fashion that is neither material nor energetic, even if it is only an ephemeral existence, and we just discovered them. Many things that science describes are this way. In fact, when it comes to explaining matter and energy itself science faces tough questions. Why does matter have mass, for example.

So I think you can agree the universe is composed of (at least) matter, energy, and (for lack of a better term) ideas. The question is, it's easy to see how ideas like trajectories are an outcome of matter and energy and a real part of the universe, but can they in turn have physically measurable effects on matter and energy? The first impulse may be to say no, but I wouldn't be so quick. There may be real effects, and if so, then the whole idea of "universe" takes on a new meaning. Then, we end up with a trichotomous universe, and it's a false question to ask which came first.

As to knowledge and truth, truth is not something which is out there waiting to be discovered (The X-Files not withstanding ). Truth is a quality of the statements we make about things, rather than a quality of things themselves. That is, the new moon is neither true nor false, but it is true to say there is one each lunar month. Truth is in the language we use to describe things, and true statements can be made about non-existent and imaginary things. It is true that unicorns have one horn. We can recognize and have knowledge of the truth, but that is not the same as saying we have knowledge of the real. Knowledge is not the same thing as truth, but is something else again. So saying we don't know all the truth is somewhat misleading. Since truth is a quality of statements we have made, all truths have been known, but since not all things are yet known, then we cannot yet state all truths. Additionally, it will never be possible as the more knowledge there is, the more unknown there is, and exponentially more true (and false, and invalid) statements can be made about what is known.


The Helmetmaker




Below post by R.P. McMurphy in the "Does Religion Have Survival Value" thread:


You asked about my calling myself a radicle materialist - I don't know if that is a description that has a specific meaning or not. I'm not trained or educated as a philosopher so I might use terms in an inaccurate way to someone who knows formal meanings in philosophy. Actually, I'm a lowly engineer.

I called myself a radicle materialist because I reject dualism from an apriori point of view.

That is, it just seems silly to me to say that there is another reality (such as a "spiritual" reality) that nevertheless can interact with the material world that we all live in. From my thinking, if a "seperate" reality (or parallel universe) or anything can have any effect on this reality - then *for that very reason* it is part and parcel of the material world and not actually seperate from it. If it can't have any effect on the real (material) world in any sense at all, then I can safely ignor it, and use Occam's razor to shave it away from my thinking.

This means to me that as a radicle materialist I may or may not have faith in God, believe in the existence of the soul, etc. It's just that if I do believe in say for example heaven, that I simply believe that heaven is a place in the universe that can, at least theoretically, be geographically located and that heaven is place where physics operates.

I don't personally hold such views, but if I did they could still be held without resorting to a dualism of natural and supernatural. It would simply require me to have "faith" that these things exist in a natural rather than a supernatural sense.

For me as a materialist, faith is not an unreasonable concept. I have faith in lots of things that I don't have direct physical evidence of. This brings me to what I consider to be a very profound concept - namely knowledge.

Try this exercise for kicks. Write a list of true statements. But order the list according to how certain you are of the truth of each statement so that at the top of the list is the single most absolutely true statement you can think of.

My list starts with

#1 - We don't know all the truth

The knowledge of ignorance is the most certain knowledge there is - at least in my puny opinion.

So whereas I am a materialist I don't extrapolate that to mean that I know all the physical, natural laws of the universe.

Therefore I think there may be stuff that isn't either matter or energy to finally answer one of your questions. But the truth is that I just *dont know* if there is or not. However, I am sure that if there is, then whatever it is, is *natural* and not supernatural.

I prefer to use scientific methods to determine what I *believe* and what I don't. It's not quite correct to say that I don't believe in God. It's more correct to say that I am unconvinced of the existence of God as advertised based on the "evidence" presented to me so far. I am conservative in my requirements for knowledge or belief. So I am a radicle materialist and also a skeptic.

Well that should be enough to bore you to death, sorry about that but you asked,

Randle P. McMurphy