Monthly Archives: February 2014

The Joy of the Immaterial and Material

Posted on by
1

The English word ‘immaterial’ has an interesting couple of meanings, based on two different meanings of their root word, matter. One meaning of matter, that of physical substance, has it’s root in the latin word materia, ‘substance, timber’. The other, that of the subject or problem under discussion comes from the word mater, ‘mother’, i.e. what gave rise to this discussion. These two roots give rise to the two meanings that at first glance may seem highly related, especially given the materilistic slant of much of Western popular philosophy, that

1. Something immaterial is something that cannot be physically interacted with, which has no resting mass,

2. Something immaterial is something that is irrelevant, something that makes no difference to the discussion at hand.

Some people seem to act as though one meaning is the same as the other, that whatever cannot be physically interacted with is irrelevant and makes no difference, effectively (or literally) not existing at all.

Let’s look at that for a moment. Think of your favourite story. What is it, materially? Continue reading →

The Joy of Consciousness

Posted on by
2

My apologies for my last entry, it was too disjointed and got too bogged down in the technical details (ironic, I know). Here is a rewrite:

Talking about flowing water in the last post in this series reminded me of this scene from Prince Caspian (starting from 1 minute 12 seconds into the video below):

Let’s imagine I witnessed these events in the flesh and described them to you like this:

A temporary and constantly changing arrangement of water molecules came sweeping down an open flow channel, interacted with and modified structures composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, calcium, iron and other trace elements, then carried them various distances downstream. It was amazing!

I’d expect you to look at me as if I was slightly insane. Continue reading →