The Very-Many-Questions-Not-Worth-Their-Own-Thread Thread XLIII

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Made up of stuff/not made up of stuff. Pure "common usage." Again, I would submit if told that two such distinct things don't exist any more.

(Though I might write a limerick about that).

I start with one word. The last word. Then I build sentences backward from that (or forward to that). Drawing in grammar as necessary to the task.

Setting aside limericks. I know for certain that I don't think in sentences. I catch myself imposing sentences on pre-sentence thought. But I do think in words.

The material/immaterial aspect of consciousness is what the recent round of experiments was about, sort of. The central idea was that in the classic vase/2 faces image, we can only see one or the other, and that moment when we switch is when consciousness should be apparent, and measurable.

There are several theories of how the information we receive from the external world is distributed around the brain and how it manifests itself. There were at least 20 entrants in the competition last year. More results are expected later this year, but the leading contenders were Integrated Information Theory IIT by a group including philosopher David Chalmers, and another group from the Francis Crick Institute.

I'm guessing that maybe you mean, in common parlance, that "material" is atomic matter (actual lumps of stuff), and "immaterial" is something like an electromagnetic field?
If so, then I suspect neurons work by using both aspects. But then again, I'm not Dr. Woo.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go out tomorow and buy enough pairs of sissors to put one pair in each of your five rooms. Your choice of the style of sissors to buy should consider that you are married to a lawyer and that sissors can be a deadly weapon; when in easy reach, an impulsive act can result in bloodshed.

Alleged bloodshed.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I'm guessing that maybe you mean, in common parlance, that "material" is atomic matter (actual lumps of stuff), and "immaterial" is something like an electromagnetic field?

Yes, that is what I mean.

If so, then I suspect neurons work by using both aspects.

Ok, thank you.

Now I think I feel a limerick coming on. Matter.

 

[Samson]

Made up of stuff/not made up of stuff. Pure "common usage." Again, I would submit if told that two such distinct things don't exist any more.

Is it a bit like if the ship of Theseus material? At all points in time the ship of Theseus is made of material, but it is not the material that defines the ship. An action potential is made of material, but at each point in the axon the material is different. The action potential is defined by the behaviour of material.

 

[Gori the Grey]

How substantial is this mental chatter?
Is it sparks? is it cranial batter?
Is it brain? Is it mind?
So I brood, 'til I find
Myself asking "ah, what does it matter?"

 

[The_J]

Of the premises of modern neuroscience, would the following phrasing be unobjectionable?

"Modern neuroscience holds the basic premise from physics that something immaterial (electrical impulses) can run through something material (neurons)"

It's the "immaterial" that I'm particularly concerned is correct. Is electricity properly spoken of as "immaterial"? (It seems that way to a layman. Well, this layman, anyway. I would call electricity "physical" but not "material.").

(Farm Boy's "interplay of electrical impulses across the meat of our bodies")

I think so. I am slightly worried someone will come along and say what is actually travelling is photons representing the depolarisation of the membrane, and those photons are moving down the axon carrying the information. I think that is a stretch, and your formulation would be more informative to most people.

I'm guessing that maybe you mean, in common parlance, that "material" is atomic matter (actual lumps of stuff), and "immaterial" is something like an electromagnetic field?
If so, then I suspect neurons work by using both aspects. But then again, I'm not Dr. Woo.

Yes, that is what I mean.

Ok, thank you.

Maybe I'm missunderstand the discussion here, but: While electricity, which comes out of your power socket, consists out of electrons moving (which, I think, per definition, do not have mass, and you could argue if they are immaterial in this case), the electricity in your neurons consists out of the mass balance between sodium/magnesium and chloride ions (which are the ingredients of salt), which are pretty much material.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Useful to learn this as well. Thank you @The_J

 

[Birdjaguar]

Are quarks, Leptons and Bosons material?

3 quarks make a proton or a neutron; are protons and neutrons material?

Protons and neutrons and electrons make up matter/atoms; are atoms material?

Can material things do immaterial things? Is an action immaterial?

 

[Gori the Grey]

Well, one of the reasons I was open to Narz's early suggestion that material/immaterial might just no longer be a valid concept in physics is my sense that what we used to think of as solid, tangible stuff has actually been established as basically packets of energy--that there is no "stuff" anymore. I've been very careful about dropping myself down into chairs since I learned that.

 

[Birdjaguar]

When the scope of the world was first discovered in the early 1500s, map makers often annotated their maps with the likes of "There be dragons here!" or other such phrases to indicate the perils of the unknown. Quantum mechanics is very much a "There be dragons here!" zone for how we think about the nature of the world.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Well, one of the reasons I was open to Narz's early suggestion that material/immaterial might just no longer be a valid concept in physics is my sense that what we used to think of as solid, tangible stuff has actually been established as basically packets of energy--that there is no "stuff" anymore. I've been very careful about dropping myself down into chairs since I learned that.

A useful mnemonic to remember what's what in physics.

Female made from atoms: Material Girl.
Induction cooker: Immaterial Grill.

You're very welcome, Gori.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Female made from atoms: Material Girl.
Induction cooker: Immaterial Grill.

Translation please.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Translation please.

Material girl -> Materiali mergina.
Immaterial grill -> Nematerialus grilis.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Material girl -> Materiali mergina.
Immaterial grill -> Nematerialus grilis.

Go buy your sissors.....

 

[Gori the Grey]

He's just doing word-play, Bird.

He's starting from my interest in material. That calls to his mind the Madonna classic "Material Girl"

Then he asks himself, "What would be a funny immaterial thing to contrast with a material girl?"

He thinks to himself that induction cooktops are a kind of "grill" that do their cooking through immaterial means and that grill is a kind of anagram of girl.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Yes, that is what I mean.

Ok, thank you.

Now I think I feel a limerick coming on. Matter.

In a recent trial in New York
A woman described an old dork
Her obvious charms
Didn't do the most harm
But his stubborn refusal to talk

 

[Gori the Grey]

You Aussies pronounce "talk" in a way more unusual fashion than 'erb, even!

Since at physics I'm hopelessly dim,
Can I get online help? Chances slim.
If I ask "what's material?"
Then Comrade my query'll
Bafflegab. I'll get nothin' from 'im.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

You Aussies pronounce "talk" in a way more unusual fashion than 'erb, even!

Since at physics I'm hopelessly dim,
Can I get online help? Chances slim.
If I ask "what's material?"
Then Comrade my query'll
Bafflegab. I'll get nothin' from 'im.

They say you're mad as a hatter
with a brain that's akin to thin batter
It's not what you say
or the games that you play
But the thoughts that you think, they're not matter.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Gori the Grey Yes, i know.

 

[Gori the Grey]

His own words! (I'm not sayin' he's dumb):
In his brain there's a lexiless hum
As he walks through this door
And examines that drawer
Twitching finger and wiggling thumb.