Donnadogsoth

I have no idea what this means. Consider it another way: you see the colour red. But where did "redness" come from in the first place? You see a building is extended in three dimensions, but where did "extension" come from? So with any quality you could care to name, including being (i.e., a thing exists or partakes of being) and nonbeing (i.e., a thing is absent or partakes of nonbeing). The materialists have absolutely no explanation for where red, extension, being, and nonbeing come from, they merely presume that these things are "brute facts"--facts with no explanation. If you don't care, then your problem is solved, but if you are philosophical enough to care, these "brute facts" pose a very big problem for materialist philosophy. The only explanation for these things is that they have a source, but this source is so important we should dignify it by calling it the Source. Or, we could call it the Origin, or, more traditionally, the Creator. Some kind of Creator is the source or origin of red, extension, being, and nonbeing. Being the source, this Creator is different from all of these things, and is to all created things as the Sun is to the bodies of the Solar System.

Given that it is the nature of substance to have perception and desire, everything must act with purpose. How then can that which created the Universe not also act with purpose in that creation?

In order to think about 1+1=2 you need to have a mental picture, whether that picture is of remembered or idealised physical items or else abstract symbols, whether or not you can see (a blind person might have audio or tactile "pictures"). I will allow that a person advanced enough in math will reduce the operation of 1+1=2 to instinct, to action without thought, and so the mental pictures employed would be going by very very quickly, virtually reflexively.

Learned ignorance is how we approach that which is beyond the categories. So, "I don't know" from the perspective of learned ignorance is from a novitiate perspective equal to "God". What is it that we do not know? Take being and nonbeing. A person darkens your door, and then is gone. First he is, then he is not, where you are. These two things are part of a commonality, they form a continuity, but they are different. Whatever the commonality is, is beyond both being and nonbeing. We then see that this commonality applies to all things, as the light of the Sun illuminates everything it touches, and when it is absent (absent the other heavenly bodies) nothing is illuminated.

God is the cause of causes. Why do causes exist?

“Attribute” or “intuit”--the action is the same: taking a sphere of existence and extrapolating an invisible thing that governs that sphere. Intuiting that the rain is God crying is incomplete: the full idea would be that visible things in the Universe indicate an invisible God, just as our individual experiential sums indicate our respective minds, or just as colour indicates sight.

Strictly speaking you're right. The mind is to the thoughts are vision is to colour. Who has seen vision? We only see colour. Our supra-logical Intellect intuits that there is such a thing as vision, and mind, though these things are outside of the logical apprehension.

Concept: 1+1=2. How can a person think this concept without using the mathematical characters?

Every concept has some sort of mental picture associated with it, however abstracted. Just because you may not be able to draw what "justice" means inside your mind doesn't mean that "justice" has no associate picture. No one navigates through mental space without having touchstones and arrangements and architecture. Someone like that would be said to be "empty headed". If a giant came and squeezed the forest together into a single solid block of wood would you then consider it a legitimate object you can break a piece off of? So your problem is one of density?

You've never imagined anything that doesn't exist in the physical world? I suppose any mental picture has pedigree, original Platonic forms that were encountered earlier in life and that are put together in a novel way.

Sure they're concepts, they're just waiting. By "concept" I mean "mental picture". I can have a mental picture of a tree or of a forest, and those pictures are distinct from the actual tree or the actual forest being referenced. Or, I can have a mental picture that isn't referencing anything. A tree is an aggregate of tree cells and so could be treated like you're treating forests.

Exactly.

Haven't you ever wanted to do that which you must? We must remember the simple particles may lack all imagination and so awareness of options.

EclecticIdealist is an interesting collection of sense-data points comprising photograph and words appearing on the screen. It's almost as if there's another....mind?..."behind" these data points, yes some kind of guiding mind. But I don't believe in intelligent design and such a mind is not observable so there's no reason to think that this intuition has has any merit. The only mind I know for sure exists is mine own. Everything else is "dead," unending deadness...mere phenomena, and nothing more.

Principle of least action, which binds the inorganic things. They only want to do one thing, they have no choice. Maybe in some quantum sense things have a choice, but in everyday practical terms they have no choice.

A forest is associated with a concept called "forest" just as a tree is associated with a concept called "tree". You are associated with a concept "you", etc..

Fermat's least-time principle of light. Poke a straight stick into a body of water and observe the stick appears to break at the boundary. The materialist explanation is that the light takes the least-time path when changing media. The problem is, how does the light know to take this path? So with any principle, including the principle of your own free will. The things in the Universe do what they do, because they want to.

Hard to respond when my responses get eaten, which has happened twice now. You have not supplied any evidence for entities being anything other than packets of sense-data in the mind. Absent the sense-impressions we are left with nothing--at least, you are left with nothing, because you believe the mind is a function of matter, not matter a function of mind. My Universe is lavishly arrayed with substances like the sand grains of the beach and the stars of the sky, whereas yours is substanceless, empty, dead, some kind of scientistic fever-dream.

He said I say, why can't you break a piece of a forest? Go up to it and cut down a copse worth of it. How is that not breaking a piece of the forest?

“Physical reality” is not necessary for a thing to exist. Everything we know of what you're referring to as “physical reality” amounts to sense impressions. How can I say “the object” is anything other than a mere packet of sense impressions? You haven't given me any quality or nature the object possesses aside from what I already know are sense impressions. You're presenting me with objects that are mere hollowed-out ghosts, lacking all nature or substance. Oh but the lungs-mind is very simple, it enjoys i-i-i-i-in and o-u-u-u-u-t over and over, that's a good time for the lungs-mind. Am I jesting? Not really. Whatever exists outside of merely my sensorium, still has some kind of mind. These minds, as in the case of protons or molecules or pieces of driftwood or what have you, will probably be pretty strange compared to ours. What does a proton think about? I conjecture that the smaller the entity, the more it "sings" mathematically. Just as the solar system embodies the "music of the spheres" so does the microverse operate musically. Anyway, my argument isn't for what kind of mind these things have, only that, in order to be real things outside of my sensorium, they must be mental in nature. Everything you point to in “objective reality” is nothing to me but packets of sense-data. The primary datum of experience is experience itself, which is why I position it as primary. “Brains” and “material world” are secondary constructs made out of my mind. And your mind, too, and the minds of all monads. What is the nature of “phenomena itself”? What does it look like, outside of all sense-data associated with it? You have yet to supply credible evidence that any “phenomena itself” exists, outside of all sense-data.

Why not?

God is a monad, you are a monad, I am a monad, etc.. I don't see why you're pretending plurality is impossible. No, you have simply misunderstood the question. I am asking what is left once we exclude all sense-data from the identity of a given object. What noumenon do you propose? Is there then a lungs-mind? And so the lungs-mind is the “doing” of the lungs. Yes, if I close my eyes, my experience of the world disappears. You have your own experience of the world which disappears when you close your eyes. But there is nothing “in between” your mind and my mind that we can point to and call “objective reality” unless you wish to address my demand for a noumenon, above. Answered by you erroneously. The “red” of the apple is a phenomenon existing solely within my mind (and those of others who also see the apple etc.). We cannot find an experience-of-red anywhere in the Universe outside of a mind, and if I close my eyes, the red goes away. All phenomena are thus states of mind and nothing else. Where is the noumenon that exists outside of my subjective, phenomenal perception?

"... everything that exists exists as a monad, a non-extended, non-material locus of experience (perception, desire)." Don't see your point. God is a monad. What is the ontological status of this “world” when you're not looking at it, or otherwise experiencing it? What colour is the apple when you don't see it? What does the grease smell like when you're not working on your car? What do we need the mind for then, if the brain does it all? Still no need for a mind, if the brain does it all. Mind violates the principle of least action. I'm not talking about quantum mechanics. I'm talking about you looking at an apple and seeing that it is red, shiny, curved, apple-like, with a stem and green leaf, and a spot on one side. All of these are sensory inputs. Close your eyes. Is the apple still red, shiny, etc.? How can it be such, if the qualities of “red,” “shiny” etc., are purely functions of your mind apprehending it? What is the apple really like when you're not looking at it. All you see, taste, smell of the apple is a bundle of sense impressions. What is left of the apple when we remove those sense impressions and leave it “in the dark”?

Hence the need for revelation. Hence the need for Christ as mediator between man and the Creator. As I indicated, time and space are constructs of human experience and do not exist “outside” minds. Dualism, the idea that mind and matter coexist and mutually interact, is untenable due to the problem of influence. How can mind affect matter, or matter affect mind? Pure materialism, the idea that mind is “epiphenomenon” in matter, can never explain where experience comes from, but accepts it as a brute fact. Neither option explains where the Universe came from. And neither option explains what the ontological status of an object is when no one is looking at it.

Yes, the Creator exists without physicality or cause. But the Creator is beyond complexity, so in that sense he is simple. Though strictly speaking he is beyond simplicity and complexity alike--as I said, beyond the categories—but the reconciliation of opposites. The Creator causes events and existences. But he is outside of time and space, true. Yes, everything that exists exists as a monad, a non-extended, non-material locus of experience (perception, desire). Our human experience we call “the Universe” but it is actually percepts projected before us inside our monad (mind). Like Leibniz and Bishop Berkeley, I am an idealist.