JimFiore
Silver Member
I have apparently explained myself poorly. Perhaps an analogy would be more clear, particularly when I talk about constructs of the mind and matter.
I live in a house which includes a living room. Lovely room, high ceilings, oak floors, big leather chair in the corner where I read. You get the picture. The living room clearly is something I can point to (there it is) and is constructed of various materials yet living room is also a construct of my mind. It is an outgrowth of the physical manifestation, but they are not entirely independent of each other. I could replace the oak flooring with maple, remove the sheet rock and replace it with paneling (yeech!), in fact I could remove and replace every part down to the 2x6s in the walls and it would still be living room. I could then take all of the parts that I removed and reassemble them elsewhere as a place to store stuff but the result would not be living room. This much it seems we agree on. But, if I didn't replace those parts with other parts, living room disappears. I'm merely outside. So living room is a functional description and also a real physical thing.
So when I read this:
"We are not made of matter but process it. "
I have a fundamental disagreement. We are indeed made of matter. That matter changes at the molecular level, and even at the macro level, and we're still us. But if there was no matter, we wouldn't exist.
Also, I don't think it is entirely correct to say (I assume you're referring to dark matter here):
"96% of the known universe is not matter."
I would add "as we understand it today". Like I said, we detect it via gravity so we know there's something, we're just not sure what, so it seems to be a leap to say that it's immaterial.
My comment regarding spirituality was perhaps premature. All I can say is that I've had conversations like this before and inevitably that's where they lead. Using the "not made of matter but process it" comment as an example, I have heard people use this line of argument to attempt to show that humans are "spiritual creatures", that there is "another plane of existence", etc.
In closing, I understand that forum policy is to avoid discussion of politics and religion. I haven't seen anything prohibiting discussion of philosophy, though. ;-)
I live in a house which includes a living room. Lovely room, high ceilings, oak floors, big leather chair in the corner where I read. You get the picture. The living room clearly is something I can point to (there it is) and is constructed of various materials yet living room is also a construct of my mind. It is an outgrowth of the physical manifestation, but they are not entirely independent of each other. I could replace the oak flooring with maple, remove the sheet rock and replace it with paneling (yeech!), in fact I could remove and replace every part down to the 2x6s in the walls and it would still be living room. I could then take all of the parts that I removed and reassemble them elsewhere as a place to store stuff but the result would not be living room. This much it seems we agree on. But, if I didn't replace those parts with other parts, living room disappears. I'm merely outside. So living room is a functional description and also a real physical thing.
So when I read this:
"We are not made of matter but process it. "
I have a fundamental disagreement. We are indeed made of matter. That matter changes at the molecular level, and even at the macro level, and we're still us. But if there was no matter, we wouldn't exist.
Also, I don't think it is entirely correct to say (I assume you're referring to dark matter here):
"96% of the known universe is not matter."
I would add "as we understand it today". Like I said, we detect it via gravity so we know there's something, we're just not sure what, so it seems to be a leap to say that it's immaterial.
My comment regarding spirituality was perhaps premature. All I can say is that I've had conversations like this before and inevitably that's where they lead. Using the "not made of matter but process it" comment as an example, I have heard people use this line of argument to attempt to show that humans are "spiritual creatures", that there is "another plane of existence", etc.
In closing, I understand that forum policy is to avoid discussion of politics and religion. I haven't seen anything prohibiting discussion of philosophy, though. ;-)