[Materiality] also [includes] abstract notions like truth, the past, the future, mind, soul, and volition, and the rest; because these things only have an existence in as much as they're represented* by material processes in the human brain (and no doubt other brains to an extent).
We’re in our quest for how an immmaterial thing could have an effect on a material thing. But we’re running into a problem. You have an extremely capacious definition of materiality. So big that I wonder what there is that could be said to be immaterial, for you.
I’m going to start by setting aside the added “material” things in this first selection from your post: the fact that all sort of abstract notions have a material existence--in our brains. I’m going to call this “second order” materiality. And here’s why I’m going to set it aside. Using this principle, I could say “immateriality” is such an abstract notion, and that when that abstract notion is at least partly responsible for my typing the sequence of letters i-m-m-a-t-e-r-i-a-l-i-t-y, there you go: “immateriality” has had an effect on something material. You’d say I was just playing word games.
So, material things include matter, light waves, magnetism, gravity, and other obvious physical stuff.
But even apart from that first way of inclucing in your definition of “material” a lot of things that many people would regard as immaterial, even your more limited understanging of materiality is very broad, broad because it includes not only matter itself but also some things, like gravity and magnetism, that many people would regard as
physical and interacting with matter, but not material per se.
Now, I learn from my go-to reference source that “matter” doesn’t have a settled definition for physicists. It used to. Only things with resting weight were regarded as being matter. But now I guess there are some subatomic particles that are weightless in their own right, but influence through their motion the weight of the atom, so they are counted as part of matter, too.
And since energy and mass are now fairly fungible across a famous “equals” sign, it’s hard to say conclusively whether certain things are material or not. But for all that, physicists regard some physical forces as non-material. Electric current was going to be the one I asked you about. Do you see how, by a more limited definition of materiality, electric current is immaterial: acting on (and in) materials, but not matter itself?
You’ve invoked a very broad definition of materiality. So broad, in fact, as to make one wonder how anything at all could be immaterial. You’ll say that’s your point. But it wasn’t your point when you asked your opening question. That assumed that there were immaterial things (the soul is the specific one that prompted the question) and you didn’t see how anything immaterial could have an effect on anything material. That was an
argument against immateriality. Which is a different thing than you seem to be doing now, which is defining materiality so broadly that anything immaterial simply isn’t conceivable.
If you’re interested in pursuing your first question, how can anything immaterial effect something material, I guess I’ll have to ask you to provide me with something you regard as immaterial.
Even if you don’t, I may be able to work from the following:
But from what I know of the brain it doesn't quite work like that. There may well be an area or areas of brain where the routine of liking pork chops is located. But it's more a matter of interconnected processes rather than something resembling a single grain of rice.
But this post is already getting long, so I’ll wait for a reply.
