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Old 1st January 2018, 02:38 PM   #169
Darat
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Originally Posted by baron View Post
'Matter' is a throwback term to when the subatomic world was thought a mirror the macro world and consist of tiny little balls bouncing around and interacting. We have known for decades that this is not the case. Any current definition of 'matter' cannot relate to all that can be observed, and indeed does not. The photon does not have mass, the quark does not even exist in three dimensional space, and that's before you even get onto the question of fields and forces, which have never been defined under the term, and have historically been ignored by materialists of all flavours. No attributes of macro objects are mirrored in the subatomic world and therefore the idea of 'matter' and 'material' as applied to the latter is literally not even wrong, it is moot; it has no meaning.



About 20 years ago I bought a book titled 'The End of Science', a confused, attention seeking tome suggesting that we were approaching a time when we know everything there is to know about reality. Some elements of the scientific community have been bleating on in a similar vein for the past two thousand years. Perhaps once it was a valid avenue of speculation, now it is inexcusable. What should be clear is that statements such as "We know that X cannot exist" are unjustified and unscientific.



I don't know the article, and I've never heard of such a statement being made, but it smacks of sensationalism. That something of this magnitude is contained in single article is laughably unlikely. I certainly haven't encountered anything similar in the books I've read, even the ones published in the last 18 months.

In fact, 'unknown mechanism'? Consciousness, you mean? Consciousness does operate via an unknown mechanism. That's not even in serious dispute (unless you believe the title of Dennett's book 'Consciousness Explained', in which he waffles on about peripheral irrelevances before announcing he doesn't actually have a clue what consciousness is; I did consider getting a refund on the basis of false advertising). The general consensus, in my view, is that right now we know there is more we don't know that at any point in our history.



Of course it's changed, that's my whole point! It changes every five years, when its followers realise the current flavour fails miserably to describe the prevailing scientific consensus yet don't have the wit or the honesty to admit they are wrong and re-evaluate their worldviews.

I was a materialist once, I have no qualms about admitting it. But then I did the research. Materialism wasn't a religion to me so I had no issues about letting it go.
I've never been a materialist so for me it ain't even about letting go a childhood favourite, it's just about being pragmatic. What materialism refers to of course changes over time, but that is indeed its strength. I've often thought materialism would be better named stuffism I. e. the stuff that exists regardless of what that stuff is.
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