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There are no material objects

citizenzen said:
That doesn't make sense. If the quivering from vibrations is there, then it's physical.

If you want to argue that it takes a brain to process and interpret that vibration as a "sound" then okay ... your picking nits.

If your pet dog perks up it's ears and turns it's head because it hears a sound beyond your perception, do you think that there was no sound (physical vibration) at all and your dog was simply imagining things?

You see electromagnetic radiation at a very narrow bandwidth and interpret that as color. Other electromagnetic wavelengths are undetectable to our senses. Do you think they simply don't exist because you can't detect them?
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Yes, the quivering or vibrations are physical. The sound isn't. There is no sound IN the forest.

We always detect material objects, even when they are hidden, but their physical extent is determined by us.
 
Dancing David said:
No, non-functioning 'TV' may still be labelled a 'TV", as do ones not 'used for entertainment'.
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How can you define the phsical limits of a TV to an alien that has no concept of entertainment or information, and who thinks through intuition alone?
 
Dancing David said:
Wow, welcome to the JREF where we seem to already know what labels are. So maybe you should join the conversation. These issues have been many sources of ongoing conversations that longest running of which are the 'nature of mathematics' and the nature of 'consciousness'.

I beleive that language takes meaning only by idiomatic self reference to objects and behaviors between communicants.

However since both material and ideal ontologies are identical, it makes no difference what the basis of what 'shared reality is'.
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Thanks for that. Where do I go for such discussions?

As an aside, I would argue with your idea that material and ideal ontologies are identical. I can show you that they are not identical.
 
Ichneumonwasp said:
I'm a little confused by your series of posts in this thread. Are we discussing properties or things/objects?

No one argues that there are TV atoms that comprise something that we call a television.

Your basic point seems be pretty self-evident -- we define objects in terms of their function. Objects assume functions based on the way that we use/define them.

For instance, I can use a rock as a table while hiking in the woods, but that does not mean that the rock suddenly changed form or became something different. It's function, for me, changed in my mind; but the physical object is still the physical object with no change whatsoever.

At one point you called color a non-material 'thing'. That is simply false. Color is not, properly speaking, a 'thing'; it is an interaction between light and the nervous system with the concept being a construction of prior experiences, language use within a language community, activation of a subset of receptors, etc. All of that is physical, though it is not a 'thing' but an action occurring within a nervous system as a result of that nervous system interacting with a physical substance known as a photon.
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sorry. What I meant to say was, was that there was no physical property that could define the physical limits of a TV. Unless, of course, that you had a;lready defined a TV and its physical limits.


'Colour is not a thing' I said - I meant a physical thing. You used the term "interaction". But an interaction poses as a thing between two domains, in this case colour and nervous system. The two domains cannot be merged by the tern "interact". It only falls between them, as a reference to a metaphor.
 
PixyMisa said:
An object is defined by what it does.

What does "one third of the table joined to the glass" do?
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Now you are asking. It might mean something to some poor creature, I mean the glass and one third of the table mered into one object.
How about the object that 'lifts the glass without the table moving' ?
 
bruto said:
But that does not make it indistinguishable from the carpet, or from other objects. The TV, whether or not we know what it is or what it is for, or what to call it, is an object distinct from those around it. Even if we look at objects as undifferentiated, such that the TV and carpet are just two things in the sea of things, and even if we lack the perception or the language to differentiate them, they are still not the same thing. I brought them into the room at different times from different places. Even if they were to me as functionless and indistinguishable as the pieces of gravel in the driveway they would exist as separate objects.
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The TV is distinguishable from the carpet only because you have distinguished the carpet and the TV. The material world sees, or holds, no such distinction.
 
dafydd said:
I just got back home after a gig. I played guitar,fiddle and mandolin. They felt like material objects to me.
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So why didn't you play the kerbstone and the fence? Or have you already selected the instruments you want?
Are you saying that the instruments selected themselves?
 
Originally Posted by Jonesboy View Post
It's easy. Sounds are not vibrations in the air. Sounds are a non-material perception of vibrations in the air. They have no material or spatial presence, such as a "sound IN the wood". There was no sound in the forest from the falling tree.
If you notice he made no reference to any sounds.....he said
Originally Posted by Apology View Post
What if a tree fell in the woods and nobody else was around when it landed on your head, would it still be immaterial? Inquiring minds want to know.
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Yes, quite right. No damage done. Just substitute sounds for landing.
 
Jonesboy said:
Yes, but only because YOU have set the physical limits that you want them to be.
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Not really. I want my TV to be bigger, and not have that blackish splotch in the picture on the left side. My TV's physical limits are what some electrical engineer in Japan wanted them to be.
 
Jonesboy said:
Why not one third of the table joined to the glass? That's an object, isn't it?
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But it's not joined to the glass. I pick up the glass of beer (which was on a coaster, a very nice one from a Gasthause near Innsbruck) and there's no table attached to it.
 
Jonesboy said:
Now you are asking. It might mean something to some poor creature, I mean the glass and one third of the table mered into one object.
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An object is defined by what it does.

What does "the glass and one third of the table mer[g]ed into one object" do?

How about the object that 'lifts the glass without the table moving' ?
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How about it?
 
Jonesboy said:
How can you define the phsical limits of a TV to an alien that has no concept of entertainment or information, and who thinks through intuition alone?
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You should first prove that aliens exist, before entering them into the discussion.

Jonesboy said:
Hi. Lost for words. Me that is. Not you. YOu started off well. Pink cheeks and rosy complexion.
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Right, as Dafydd said: Hello, Troll!
 
Jonesboy said:
Originally Posted by Jonesboy
Objects do not set their own physical limits


A physical dimension of an object IS its physical limits.
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Sort of, electrons are very fickle, they may be here but they may also be far away. There is more than its current position, there is a probability distribution ...
 
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