Saturday, February 4, 2017

Person and Matter

person and matter:

philosophical idealism puts that reality is a mental construct, while philosophical materialism puts that it is a material or physical construct. materialism may seem plausible but there is no denying that it is still the senses which would tell us about such a material world. idealism puts that we cannot know of anything other than that which we perceive.

when we see a material object, of course, we can touch it, feel its hardness and shape, but is that all it is, a visual construct and the sensation we have when we touch it? the simulation theory would have that there is no true external, material world, and that that is all it is, thus a virtual reality. however reality allows us to manipulate visual objects and so it is easy to believe that they are "real" as they seem. but what is a material object is it is not what it seems? it is certainly a kind of construct, a configuration of sorts.

if materialism is not true, then do we turn to idealism? but surely not everything in reality is strictly mental? that a person may only be aware of itself, its own mental parts, its thoughts, senses, emotions, etc is fine, but perhaps there are things that exist that might not be classified as mental? but because a person is a mental thing, it is less aware of these things, that does not mean they do not exist.

perhaps many common material objects are derived from a fixed source. perhaps for example there is a fixed tree that exists, if you like, a "statue" of a tree that exists fixed in space somewhere, the source from which variants of such trees are derived that we see as material objects. these things, these objects, are not exactly mental, or not parts of a person, but they may exist.

CLEARCHARGE

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