What Words Are Not

Faith & Science Conversation
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@mitchellmckain said:

So I cut all the strings which tie spirituality to irrelevancy (immaterial) and products of the mind (just in your head kind of stuff), to say that the spiritual is made of the same stuff as everything else. It’s just not part of the space-time mathematical structure of the physical universe (which makes them all subject to death and decay frankly).

Frankly I don’t see the harm (indeed I only see benefit) in tying the spiritual to what we know of the cosmos. Indeed the spiritual is made of the same stuff as everything else in precisely the same way as are insight, understanding, meaning and dreams. Everything subjective is manifest in our minds which are tethered to the physical world by way of our brains. We are subjects wondering what sort of object we may be, but that is a category error. The phenomenology of subject-hood, including spirituality, is only observable directly and privately, though we may at least discuss all that with others for confirmation.

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

So Paul’s subjective experience was of coming to be animated by what he called the grace of God after a period of doubting and even being hostile to that spiritual dimension. He acknowledges being still what he is, which is something more limited, when he acted without regard to that grace. The spiritual is then a potential available within our subjective experience, but it is not what we take ourselves to be. We are not and never will be divine but we can bring that into the world by way of our willingness to act on that which we perceive to be nobler than mere comfort. It isn’t for the sake of some afterlife outcome but because we wish our efforts to align with what we recognize as more meaningful right now.

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These points have already been addressed, so the last word is your’s. Peace out.

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Science certainly addresses many immaterial things such as mind, consciousness, information, and energy. What I take issue with is the idea that reality (or at least the only parts which are important) is exclusively objective, which science has the undisputed mastery over. Therein lies an ultimate rejection of the naturalist premise that science is the only reasonable access to knowledge of reality.

My objection depends on what is meant by “tying” for this is a metaphor for both connection and limitation. The latter ultimately amounts to a reduction of spirituality to a subject of science. As a scientist, I am always ready to promote an acknowledgement of the epistemological superiority of science to the point of equating it with objective knowledge. It is the complete limitation of reality and our knowledge of it to science and thus to objectivity alone which I must take a stand against. And this is NOT because of some need to defend some antiquated religious culture – quite the opposite. I who was not raised in any religious culture see value in religious culture BECAUSE of the importance I see in holding onto an understanding of the subjective aspects of our existence. Like I said, the price is an acceptance of a basic diversity of thought – but that is really not a bug but a feature!

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Like consciousness, the spiritual would be an emergent phenomenon supported by life. That is the way in which I see it being tied to the cosmos. Science has done a good job of investigating life which I would characterize as an emergent property of matter and energy, but it hasn’t trivialized the problem of exactly how it emerged. I’m not sure what progress science may some day make in understanding consciousness and how it emerged in the biological world. But personally I would want to know all that can be known about that and I wouldn’t fear that it would trivialize consciousness in general or that which we’re calling spiritual.

Frankly the supposition of a supernatural realm seems to me like the projection of consciousness onto the world. It turns the cosmos into nothing more than an idea in the mind of God, trivializing the actuality of the world. I believe the world is entirely real and complex enough to support the emergence of subjects such as ourselves as well as a spiritual realm within ourselves. Seems to me that we have our being both in the physical world and in the world of our subjective experience. My hunch is that the more complex always emerges from the less complex so I don’t believe God contrived dust and heat as a creative act of a divine being. If there is a spiritual realm I think it must find its place in the wider, simpler cosmos, and not the other way around.

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That would be the dreamer god pantheism which I frequently oppose and I think it trivializes both God and His creation to make the universe something which has no independent existence. But I also think this reduction of the spiritual to a physical emergent trivializes the spiritual, turning it into nothing more than an idea in the mind of man. So I see no need to trivialize either one, for we can see both as an embodiment of two different natures namely the objective and the subjective in the same basic stuff of being.

and I think it is the physical universe which has a place in the wider spiritual existence. Emergence is a fine counterpoint to reductionism when comes to questions of causality but it doesn’t really change the basic reality of an existence of mathematically governed particles which frankly has so little to with reality as we experience it. It makes the notion that this is the substance of reality downright absurd. It is frankly much more like a medium of representation like the pixels in a display screen.

But that is demonstrably as erroneous and flawed as the “hunch” that the less complex always emerges from the more complex. I oppose arguments for the existence of God to defend the basic rationality of the atheist/naturalist point of view (and other view in between like yours). But obviously, I will likewise oppose arguments against the existence of God and the nonphysical to defend the rationality of the theist point of view (and of course that is going to include attempts to equate the spiritual with physical emergentism).

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[quote="rsewell, post:42, topic:41664

Despite this, I find your argument, that this demonstrates that information is immaterial, to be scientifically wrong and philosophically unjustified. As pointed out repeatedly above, you are erroneously basing it on a muddled equivalence of information and meaning. Information theory is compatible with materialism, just as the scientific “establishment” maintains.

[/quote]

@mitchellmckain, @MarkD, @mattconnally, @Mervin_Bitikofer, @Bill_II, @Dale

“What words are not” is material or physical. This is based on a simple definition. The physical is made up of matter/energy. Words, meaning, information is not made up of matter/energy. Take a book. It is made up of paper and ink. All books are materially the same regardless of language, subject matter, or content, that is meaning of information, because words are not physical.

The issue is not what words are not, but what words are. Western dualism maintains that there are only two aspects of Reality, the Physical or Objective and the Spiritual, which is usually defined as Subjective or arbitrary. This is not true.

What words are is relational. Words relate things to each other and thus create meaning, order, and information.

Along with the Physical and the Spiritual is the Rational, which is not arbitrary. The rational is not arbitrary because it can be backed up by looking at Reality from different perspectives and logic. It is also true that the Physical needs to be closely examined by experiments and field studies As I have repeatedly said Darwin’s understanding of natural selection is incorrect because it has not nor cannot be verified scientifically.

Another issue would be brought up and that is an improper use of the term scientific. Science is rightfully a broad term, which covers many disciplines, which can be generally classified as physical sciences, biological sciences including evolution, and the social sciences.

However in these philosophical discussions about words and meaning, it is assumed that we are talking ONLY about the physical sciences. The difference between the physical sciences and the biological sciences is that living things are able to respond their environment more freely than non-living things, and humans more freely than non-human organisms. If we say that “real” scientific knowledge is about the physical sciences, then we leave out most of the sciences as well as many other types of knowledge.

We also have rational knowledge, or knowledge about how we know, and spiritual knowledge which is knowledge about how we relate to others or about morality and values.

It should be noted that science also deals with the immaterial in that it deals with time and space. Time and space are immaterial in that they are not composed of matter/energy, but they are used in measuring time/energy.

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The black marks on a piece of paper only have meaning if your brain can translate those marks into words you know. If they are written in a language you don’t know they might make interesting patterns but would otherwise have no meaning to you. To me when you have to invoke using your brain that makes it physical.

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Well I wave to you from the other side of the hunch-divide. I respect everyone’s right to their own hunch on the big questions. Plus I find your perspective interesting. I think it helps to hear how such things seem to others.

For what it’s worth, from my point of view, I don’t view an emergent existence for things spiritual as a demotion. After all, our own natures are also emergent on my view. Whatever its metaphysical basis and whatever we choose to call it, I still think what we’re calling the spiritual has the capacity to enrich our lives and promote better community.

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I think your set of three arguments employ equivocation between information and meaning and thus shifting what you are talking about when you go from “argument 1” to “argument 3.”

As information is defined in physics like my definition above as something with measures of quantity and accuracy, it is certainly objective and physical but devoid of meaning. It is only when you equivocate with meaning that you get something which is non-physical and thus completely subjective. So when you make your “argument 3” and are trying to grasp something independent of medium it is no longer the objective measurable information you talked about in “argument 1.”

In so far as the series of binary symbols can be transferred to bumps on the DVD, modulation in airwaves or electromagnetic waves by a purely mechanical process then the information is both objective and entirely physical. But if at any point humans are involved to change these patterns into meaning such as by reading the symbols into words of human language, where none of the sounds of verbalization is contained in those symbols, then the information is not the same at all, and the identity of content isn’t objective anymore, for subjective interpretation has become part of the process. And yes that would also apply to a computer reading the text because it also completely altering the information according to the interpretation of the programmer.

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I certainly agree that we do not want to conflate information with interpretation/intelligibility. So let’s stick with a very tried and true piece of information, Euler’s identity (“The base of the natural logarithm, raised to the product of pi and the imaginary unit, plus one equals zero.”) It is either objective or it is subjective.

  • If it is objective–as objective as is electricity or a chunk of granite–then it has no physical qualities. It is just as “real” as those physical things (or as “real” as the meaning of the word real is real), just as useful, yet it is immaterial.
  • If it is subjective, then it is composed of neurons or whatever.

So which is it? I’m saying that it is objective. And in the exact same way, the movie trilogy The Lord of the Rings and any other information (anything that can be digitized) is objective regardless of whether we comprehend it, regardless of how we interpret it.

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Objective information has physical qualities in the measures of quantity and accuracy, as well as the physical qualities of whatever medium in which this quantity and accuracy is measurable.

Meaning is subjective because it requires the operation of the human mind in the process of perception whereby beliefs are used to give information connections and conclusions in the context of those beliefs and the worldview they are a part of.

The digital sequence on a DVD is measurable information and is an entirely objective physical thing even when that sequence is copied to other mediums such as the modulation of electromagnetic waves. Any process which interprets that sequence using that information with other information changes this, and the only identity between the original sequence and the result is made somewhat subjective by this interpreting process. You can change the interpretive process in order to get entirely different results and the perception of only one of these as correct is definitely subjective.

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If reading and every other activity that involves the brain is a physical activity, then all activities are physical activities.

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Incorrect. That employs an obviously false premise, that all activities involve the brain.

Perhaps you meant the conclusion, all living human activities are physical activities.

But just because an activity is physical doesn’t mean that all of its effects are physical.

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You’re saying Euler’s Identity is objective but that it also has physical qualities? It is simply not possible to articulate–much less test–any suggestions as to what those physical qualities could possibly be. Neither measures nor quantity nor accuracy are physical qualities. Nor could you ever say that Euler’s identity can be described by black symbols any more than it could be described by Braille bumps or spoken Chinese airwaves or neurons (much less by all of those things at the same time!) or any of 10,000+ other media for it.

What is wrong with concluding that it has no physical qualities, that it is immaterial? That leads to a host of questions, but it is not an incoherent conclusion.

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You’re saying that ideas are invisible pink elephants stomping around under our toenails.

I am certainly not saying any such thing as you claim either. Euler’s identity is not information. It is a mathematical equation. It is not a thing in the world but a fact about the world. This fact can be communicated in various media, and yes information can be used to do so. But that doesn’t mean that Euler’s identity is that information any more than Euler’s identity is the hand signal which I have pre-arranged to tell my friend to use Euler’s identity to solve his homework problem.

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I was asking a question, not making a claim. Regardless, does this “fact about the world” (this sentence that we call Euler’s Identity) have any physical qualities? Of course not. By comparison, for example, the laptop I’m typing on is silver and smooth and solid. It has physical qualities that I can sense. But Euler’s Identity has no such physical qualities. It is as useful to me as the laptop, but it can only be comprehended and translated, not ever seen (such as in English black symbols) or heard (such as in spoken Chinese) or touched (such as in Spanish Braille). It is immaterial.

Again, what’s wrong with that conclusion?

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What I am saying is that some activities such as walking are clearly physical activities. They involve the physical body, muscles and bones and they involve physical work, that is for walking moving the body which weighs a lb x b mi = work done… Please forgive the English units.

On the other hand there are other activities that are primarily mental or rational, such as reading that involve the brain that houses the mind. This is the rational aspect of the body and involves “white collar” retail or office type of mental work, as opposed to physical factory or farm work. I use this common practical distinction to justify the more abstract bodily one.

The point I was making is that the brain is commonly involved inn almost all the activities of the body, so to say that the brain is involved is rather meaningless in trying to make a distinction between the mental ands the physical. I use the type of function that aspect of the body is involved in, mental, physical. or spiritual to determine which aspect of the body it represents.

What do you mean by saying," all of its effects are physical."?

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That is like asking if the color red has any physical qualities? It is a physical quality. Euler’s identity is a fact about the relationship between the numerical qualities of physically measurable quantities. So in reality you bring us back to the question of nominalism. Do universals like the color red have any existence apart from their particulars? As a nominalist, I say no! Universals and abstractions are linguistic creations of the human mind for the comprehension of the world it experiences and they have no existence apart from the particular physical examples and linguistic constructs in human minds. Like I said, I don’t think that is the correct direction for Christian apology to go, and that the proper link to spirituality is the subjective aspects of human existence and neither information nor the idea and abstract linguistic constructs of the human mind.

The same thing that is wrong with the conclusion that the color red has no physical qualities.

For example, people might say that prayer is a spiritual activity. But this is not because what we do isn’t a physical activity but because its effects are not entirely physical.

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Even if you want to say that Euler’s Identity “is a physical quality”, you are still dealing in pure abstraction. After all, the meaning of the word quality cannot be directly or indirectly seen, heard, felt, tasted for smelled. Nor can the words fact or relationship or quantities. These words all communicate abstract meaning. And although I think there is surely a much better way to describe Euler’s Identity than to call it a quality of matter (which might be like calling humor a quality of government), that is irrelevant to the fact that calling it a quality of matter does nothing at all to refute my argument that it is immaterial. So there is nothing really to debate there.

Likewise, I would not disagree with calling the meaning represented by the English symbols R-E-D (i.e. the color red) a physical quality. It is a piece of information translated…

  • from a pattern of light waves
  • into (presumably) a pattern of neurons in the brain
  • and then into a pattern of symbols (R-E-D) on a screen
  • and then into a pattern of electromagnetic waves
  • and then back into the pattern of symbols (R-E-D) that you’re staring at right now.
  • Etc.

What exactly is being translated from one medium to another? Pure, immaterial meaning. (No wonder our ability to perceive color completely stumps neuroscientists and AI scientists!) What could that piece of immaterial information be about? It could be about a physical bowl of 11 sweet, red, juicy apples.

Now I have no idea what nominalism or universalism are, and I’m not interested in debating what the proper Christian apologetic might be regarding spirituality. For that matter, I think that if anyone has mixed motives on this issue, it is the naturalists with their obsessive need to protect the 100% arbitrary presupposition of materialism. If they could ever dare to ask questions without that presupposition, then both “the hard problem of consciousness” and the “meta problem of consciousness” would not be so hard any more. They would become easy. In fact, they would become no-brainers.

Literally.

Alas, they can’t risk losing their presuppositions. As physicist Henry Stapp put it:

Given this recognized major importance of the mind-brain problem, you might think that the most up-to-date, powerful, and appropriate scientific theories would be brought to bear upon it. But just the opposite is true! Most neuro-scientific studies of this problem are based on the precepts of nineteenth century classical physics, which are known to be fundamentally false. Most neuroscientists follow the recommendation of DNA co-discoverer Francis Crick, and steadfastly pursue what philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper called “Promissory Materialism”. ( Quantum Theory and Free Will , 2017.)

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exactly! And as a nominalist, I do not believe in the existence of abstractions/universals apart from particulars.

abstract meanings about physical realities

It is not to “refute” but simply to disagree. You are welcome to whatever fantasies you wish to believe in.

When no human interpretation is involved then it is just a physical pattern much like the transfer of the shape of a cloud into a shadow on the ground.

Incorrect. The information does not contain any meaning. We attach meaning to them and communicate the meaning by prearranged convention. It is like sending the plans for a computer to the other side of the world. They can make a computer from those plans but actual computer was sent to them.

That may be, but since I am not a naturalist then it is a bias and presupposition which I do not share. And that is where your argument falls to pieces because even theists do not agree with you.