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lex_aver

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I am struggling to grasp what matter is, but with no luck so far. In philosophic dictionary, I found the following definition: "Matter is the philosophic category for sensory, material world". It is an obvious tautology. Also, under this definition, a pen does not consist of matter, but matter consists of pens, as well as other objects.

I have developed several possible hypothesa myself:

1) Matter is hypothetical substance from which all physical objects are made of.

2) Matter is ontologically erroneous. Material object is a concept for existents existing by themselves, not as faculties. Matter was merely a result of naive ontologizing by Ancient Greeks, just like Aristotle's forms were.

Yet I am not completely satisfied with either: in the first case the matter is an anti-concept for all entities except elementary particles, and in the second case I find my self at odds with Ayn Rand, who frequently used it in Galt's Speech, for example, as well as all other philosophers I know. It is ok by itself, but makes me uneasy. Is there something I missed or misinterpreted?

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The definition taught to kids goes something like: Matter is anything that has mass and occupies space.

Since you raised the subject, I assume that you think this type of definition is bad Physics. Could you explain why.

Edited by softwareNerd
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I am struggling to grasp what matter is, but with no luck so far. In philosophic dictionary, I found the following definition: "Matter is the philosophic category for sensory, material world". It is an obvious tautology. Also, under this definition, a pen does not consist of matter, but matter consists of pens, as well as other objects.

I have developed several possible hypothesa myself:

1) Matter is hypothetical substance from which all physical objects are made of.

2) Matter is ontologically erroneous. Material object is a concept for existents existing by themselves, not as faculties. Matter was merely a result of naive ontologizing by Ancient Greeks, just like Aristotle's forms were.

Yet I am not completely satisfied with either: in the first case the matter is an anti-concept for all entities except elementary particles, and in the second case I find my self at odds with Ayn Rand, who frequently used it in Galt's Speech, for example, as well as all other philosophers I know. It is ok by itself, but makes me uneasy. Is there something I missed or misinterpreted?

Join the ranks of the thinkers who have been searching for protee hulee (transliteration from the Greek), i.e. Primary Stuff, the Stuff of Being. Aristotle sought to define it in his Physics and Metaphysics. He did not quite connect, but he was looking in the right direction. For Aristotle the basic kinds of Stuff of Being were Matter and Form conjoined in some active fashion. Separate but inseparable, you might say. It may turn out that there is more than one kind of Primary Stuff and the very notion of kind is at the root of Being. Aristotle asked - what is Being and what is Becoming (i.e. potency or potential). That remains to be seen.

I have just taken a course in Aristotle's lecture notes (unfortunately we no longer have his dialogs) in particular -Nature- (aka phusikee or Physics) and -First Philosophy- (aka Metaphysics). Aristotle made many mistakes and he did not do a very good job of experimentally testing his conclusions, but he did have some very potent notions of Being and Becoming which could perhaps be updated and made consistent with modern findings. The Nobel Laureate, Ilya Prigogine wrote several books in which he attempts to incorporate some of Aristotle's very lively notions of Being and Becoming. For Aristotle, Being was not just sitting there like a lump. It is a very active thing. This is probably why Aristotle missed out on the concept of Inertia which assumes (at least in classical physics) that matter is essentially inert and all activity in which it partakes is external to lumpen matter. Inertia is really more like an active force than a lack of activity. In Aristotelean terms, Inertia is a force or affection in which a body wants to keep on going the way it is going and a resistance to external forces. Mathematically what we have is the conservation of momentum which is a very abstract way of seeing the thing and is a very denatured version of Aristotle's grasp of the matter[sic!]. The physicist, Lee Smolin, has written a book -The Life of the Cosmos- in which he is trying to restore the liveliness of Being and Becoming. So Aristotle lives on in spirit (in a way) if not in detail

May I recommend for your edification the translations of -Physics- and -Metaphysics- done by Joe Sachs. What Sachs has done is to strip away the Latin cognates in English that were given as translations of Aristotle's Greek into Latin. Sachs points out how the Latin has distorted the meaning (because the Latin cognates do not translate into English accurately) and made some of Aristotle's subtle and distinct statements clear which are virtually incomprehensible to English readers who do not know the original Attic Greek dialect or the Latin translations. He has substituted English phrases which better capture the meaning of the original Greek. You probably won't find final answers to your questions, but you will be better able to tune into Aristotle's wavelength (so to speak). That might give you some intellectual material to work with. Mistakes and all, Aristotle was a very brilliant man and he has something to say that should be listened to. Prigogine expresses this sentiment as "the re-enchantment of Nature" (no, he is not talking about magic!). It is an attempt to recapture the liveliness of Being.

I am about to speculate and do Hunch, so take it for what it is worth to you. I think the way physics is going to break out of its present cul de sac is to reconnect with some of Aristotle's tropes. This does not mean repeating Aristotle's errors or neglecting the empirical aspect of physics. We will always demand of our sciences that they stay glued to reality and pass experimental muster. This is just a guess, mind you, so take it as seriously or not seriously as you choose.

Bob Kolker

Edited by Robert J. Kolker
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Matter is anything that has mass and occupies space.

First of all, matter is not identical to entity. Pen probably consists of matter, but is not matter as such. Identifying matter with entity is a contradiction, because that means any entity is identical to any other entity, and that is pure defiance of axiom of identity itself, which leads to inability to identify matter with entity. It can be that matter is not homogenous and identity is manifestation of particular state of the matter, but then entity is not just matter, but is matter + identity. That would explain Primacy of Existence, by the way: no faculty can exist by itself, without matter.

Secondly, photons have no mass in state of inertial motion, which is a proven fact at odds with school definition.

May I recommend for your edification the translations of -Physics- and -Metaphysics- done by Joe Sachs.

Thank you, I'd love to read them if I will be able to afford the delivery. The copy I was trying to read is the most obscure of the works read by me up to the date.

Edited by lex_aver
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Secondly, photons have no mass in state of inertial motion, which is a proven fact at odds with school definition.

Photons have 0 rest mass. However they are never at rest. In any reference frame they have a velocity whose magnitude is c. Photons may have 0 rest mass, but they manage to bang electrons about. Photons exist. They account for the photoelectric effect and the Compton effect.

Bob Kolker

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Photons have 0 rest mass. However they are never at rest. In any reference frame they have a velocity whose magnitude is c. Photons may have 0 rest mass, but they manage to bang electrons about. Photons exist. They account for the photoelectric effect and the Compton effect

Movement with constant speed is inertial state, so photon's mass is zero. Their ability to "bang" electrons has nothing to do with Newtonian force F = ma. When photon is absorbed by electron, its energy E = hν is added to electron's, and electron is elevated to the higher subshell, if it is a part of atom. If it is not a part of atom, but is a part of beta-particles ray, for example, then its change of motion is due to addition of photon's momentum p = hν/c.

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Movement with constant speed is inertial state, so photon's mass is zero. Their ability to "bang" electrons has nothing to do with Newtonian force F = ma. When photon is absorbed by electron, its energy E = hν is added to electron's, and electron is elevated to the higher subshell, if it is a part of atom. If it is not a part of atom, but is a part of beta-particles ray, for example, then its change of motion is due to addition of photon's momentum p = hν/c.

But, is a photon - is energy - "matter?" (not can it be converted, but is it - I believe this is a semantic question which must be answered by definition, not inspection. Until it is, the discussion loses its conceptual moorings)

For me this issue goes hand-in-hand with the one on entities, winding down on the "A is A" discussion.

Conceptually we say that a thing "is composed of matter." This implies that matter (or being composed of matter) is an attribute of a thing. Because of the nature of matter, we can say either that it is made of matter, of a certain type of matter, or of a specific set of matter (others?). If I see five golden rings, I recognize first that they are made of matter, then, by closer inspection, that they are each made of the same type of matter, but not of the same set of matter. In addition to being made of a certain type of matter (an attribute which implies a host of other attributes - density, color, malleability - shared by other things made of the same type of matter), the rings have other, non-matter-dependent attributes, such as form, size, orientation, temperature, velocity, etc.

The two questions still hanging from the entity discussion are:

Does matter necessarily entail entity? (I've gotten two opposing opinions on this question)

Does entity necessarily entail matter? (ditto)

Edited by agrippa1
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Identifying matter with entity is a contradiction, because that means any entity is identical to any other entity, and that is pure defiance of axiom of identity itself, which leads to inability to identify matter with entity.

Actually, disregard that. "If all A are B and all C are B then all A are C" is a classical example of invalid syllogism.

Does matter necessarily entail entity? (I've gotten two opposing opinions on this question)

Yes, it does. Although you can take only a part of the ring, it is still finite quantity of its consistuent parts. Reality is finite and quantinized.

Does entity necessarily entail matter? (ditto)

Yes, it does. Even if you take immaterial enitities like consciousness, you'll find that they pertain to material things like living being in this case. Nothing immaterial can exist by itself, e.g. there are no ghosts.

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I think SN gave the correct ordinary-use definition. AFAIK, the terms is seen to be too imprecise to be of value in physics. It's not the same an an "entity" (an energy field is an entity but it is not matter). So why exactly do you care? Do you believe that there is some important philosophical conclusion that depends on definition A vs. B of "matter"?

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an energy field is an entity but it is not matter

1. An entity means a self-sufficient form of existence...

2. An entity, in the primary sense, is a solid thing with a definite boundary...

3. An entity is perceptual in scale, in size...

-Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series (1976), Lecture 3.

Doesn't an energy field, I'm thinking of gravity, fail all three tests?

There is an important philosophical conclusion that depends on the precise definition of "entity." Depending on what that definition is, the definition of matter might come into play.

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The word "matter" is related to "mother," and as this may imply, it is one of two things required to give "birth" (i.e. existence) to an entity. The other requirement is the order (in other words, the organizing principle or structure) imposed on the matter--this is what Aristotle called the "form."

Thus, the genus of the concept "matter" is "fundamental constituent of entities," and the differentia--which distinguishes it from the other fundamental constituent--is that it provides the parts that make up the entity, as opposed to the organization of the parts.

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The relationship between percepts, concepts, entities and reality.

Unless we can precisely define the fundamental concepts of a philosophy, all conclusions based thereon become progressively fuzzy.

Am I wrong is claiming that "entity" is a fundamental concept?

Actually the fundamental concepts will remain undefined. To avoid infinite regress or circularity of definition one must stop somewhere (going downward) and where we stop are the rock bottom terms. It is similar to mathematics. You have certain terms which are undefined, such as set, element, etc. Definitions and postulates are built on these undefined terms.

Bob Kolker

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Actually the fundamental concepts will remain undefined. To avoid infinite regress or circularity of definition one must stop somewhere (going downward) and where we stop are the rock bottom terms. It is similar to mathematics. You have certain terms which are undefined, such as set, element, etc. Definitions and postulates are built on these undefined terms.

Bob Kolker

That's close, but not completely right. The fundemental concepts are not undefined, they are simply not explicitly defined. They do have definitions, but they are all ostensive (i.e. "By blue I mean this, by existence I mean all of that")

Edited by Cogito
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So why exactly do you care? Do you believe that there is some important philosophical conclusion that depends on definition A vs. B of "matter"?

Matter matters because the failure to grasp the exact meaning of the concept has allowed the ideology known as materialism to wreak endless amounts of havoc. Besides being one of the essential tenets of Communism, materialism is responsible for the widespread failure in today's culture to understand the fact that ideas matter--making it the key pillar of pragmatism.

The fundamental fallacy behind materialism is that matter is all there is to the Universe; in other words, that the only metaphysically relevant attribute of an entity is the set of material particles it is made of. The definition I provided above makes it immediately clear why this is not true: Since matter is one of the two fundamental aspects of entities, it cannot be all there is; an entity is metaphysically more than just a heap of particles. To name just the single most important example: the nature of a man is not exhausted by the fact that he is composed of atoms and molecules, but also includes the fact that those atoms and molecules are organized and act according to a specific kind of guiding principle, namely the principle of life (which makes that entity an animal) to be achieved through reason (which makes that animal a man). You will never find "life" and "reason" inside particles of matter, but their metaphysical significance will become clear once you consider what we differentiate them from when forming the concept of "matter."

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The relationship between percepts, concepts, entities and reality.

Unless we can precisely define the fundamental concepts of a philosophy, all conclusions based thereon become progressively fuzzy.

Am I wrong is claiming that "entity" is a fundamental concept?

Okay; I just thought you had something more specific in mind. Instead of this abstract objection, is there some particular conclusion you see as becoming shaky if the concept of entity is fuzzy? Also, when you say fuzzy, are you referring to the borderline problem, where one knows clearly many things that one wishes to include in the concept and also many things that one wishes to exclude, but there are also some things that one is not sure about, around the border?

Definitions are secondary to the underlying decision of what one wishes to conceptualize. Is there some slightly different way of conceptualizing "entity" that you think leads to different conclusions about philosophy?

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Matter matters because the failure to grasp the exact meaning of the concept has allowed the ideology known as materialism to wreak endless amounts of havoc.

...

The fundamental fallacy behind materialism is that matter is all there is to the Universe; in other words, that the only metaphysically relevant attribute of an entity is the set of material particles it is made of.

Your definition of "matter" is, from what I can tell, equal to "ordinary matter plus energy", i.e. the constituent stuff of all entities. I have no particular problem with calling that "matter", but (1) can you show me at least two (or one) example of a materialist claiming that all that matters (ugh) is "matter", and I don't mean "essentially says", I mean "actually uses the word matter", (2) suppose (I know, a hypothetical) that we agree that "matter" is the mass-having stuff plus energy, the irreducible physical constituents of all entities (indeed, existents) -- then what word describes the ordinary sense of matter, the stuff with mass, the particles, (3) how should we objectively resolve the dispute over the two views of matter (the essential difference being the disposition of energy).

It's clear why materialism is nutsy cuckoo (it equates the $6 Million Man with the $.06 Reduced Pile of Lepton-Baryon Slag), but this doesn't explain why it's right to say that energy is a kind of matter.

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It's clear why materialism is nutsy cuckoo (it equates the $6 Million Man with the $.06 Reduced Pile of Lepton-Baryon Slag), but this doesn't explain why it's right to say that energy is a kind of matter.

Isn't that an issue to be decided by Physics?

The way I understand modern physics matter and energy are equivalent, and they both can be converted to the other.

One bit of proof lies in Mercury's orbit. The full story is long and requires some explanation, but the essence is that the Sun's gravitaional field (a kind of energy) as produced by its mass (a kind of matter), is massive enough to generate a gravitational field of its own. Unless the secondary field is taken into account, Newton's theories predict the wrong orbit for Mercury.

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Okay; I just thought you had something more specific in mind. Instead of this abstract objection, is there some particular conclusion you see as becoming shaky if the concept of entity is fuzzy? Also, when you say fuzzy, are you referring to the borderline problem, where one knows clearly many things that one wishes to include in the concept and also many things that one wishes to exclude, but there are also some things that one is not sure about, around the border?

Definitions are secondary to the underlying decision of what one wishes to conceptualize. Is there some slightly different way of conceptualizing "entity" that you think leads to different conclusions about philosophy?

Yes.

I'm a philosophy dilettante, so bear with me if this seems unsophisticated, but I am struggling with Objectivism and I think I see light...

The attempts at exemplary definition of "entity" do not seem to bear up to close scrutiny, and certainly do not meet with universal agreement (even among those who think they hold the same philosophy). This leads me to believe that entity is a subjective concept, open to interpretation by the individual. Is a forest an entity, is a gravitational field, is air, is reason, is God? Ask a dozen Objectivists and you'll get a dozen answers (well, maybe not to all of those).

The same seems to hold true for "perception" which we tie closely to entities, although there is disagreement over whether an illusion or a pattern (e.g., a constellation) is an entity, a perception, both, or neither.

Concept seems to be pretty universal, if I read correctly, and refers to pretty much anything you can "get" via sensation, reason, imagination, or any combination (that's probably a weak statement, but let it go unless it's critical).

Reality is the place where percepts, concepts and entities tie together to either define (as in Objectivism) or muddy (as in existentialism) the concept (and even the possibility).

The problem I have is in the assertions that automatically equate perception to reality in the absence of [something else].

Here's why: I dream. (ok, let me know when you're finished rolling your eyes and groaning...)

Every night I have vivid dreams with "real" people, places, situations, etc., and I can't tell, while I'm having them, that they are not "real." Hypothetically, what if (I know... but just go through this), every night, while I slept, someone spirited me to a strange location with strange situations and strange people, so that every morning when I woke up, "things" were different. Further, suppose, that for whatever reason (or none) my dreams, while I was sleeping, maintained a causal constancy during the night and from one night to the next. I "dream" up this scenario, not to argue as children and bad poets (& philosophers) do, that "reality" might be a dream, and what we think are dreams, reality. I enter this scenario only to explore the relationships between percepts, concepts, entities and reality.

Don't get me wrong: I know which is reality and which is dreams. But, I know which is real, not through direct, automatic perception, but through rational processing of my perceptions. In the scenario given, if my dreams were consistent and causal, and my waking experience was random and fragmented, I believe I would have a hard time making the distinction; in fact, I believe I might get it wrong. That's not an argument that there's a possibility that we do get it wrong and that we can't fully trust our senses. It's simply an argument that our rational faculties are what we use to interpret the concept of "reality" from our perceptions.

When I say "reality" I guess I mean our rational understanding of reality and its nature, not the strictly automatic causal reality that creates response from instinctive beings. In other words I guess I'm redefining "reality" as our rational cognition that reality is "real" as opposed to a non-thinking approach that governs an irrational creature's response to its perceptions, which it cannot conceptualize as reality (or can it?).

Reason, in this point of view, is the glue that holds percepts, concepts and entities into a consistent, logical whole which we call "reality" and which provides us with a wholly consistent (and thus "true") model of reality. It is the constancy, consistency and causality of reality that clue us in to its true nature.

Of course, I suppose one could argue that I've just transformed a trivial distinction of the definition of fundamentals into a trivial distinction of the definition of reality. I think my ultimate question is whether we come to a cognition of reality (including its nature) through perception or through rational processing of perception. And if the latter, is that consistent with Objectivism? (I think there's enough leeway, but I'm not an expert)

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Isn't that an issue to be decided by Physics?
I don't see how physics can decide this. Modern physics doesn't say that matter and energy are equivalent, it just provides an interchangeability and model-theoretic equational equivalence, which isn't the same as saying that matter and energy are indistinguishable. Mercury don't enter into it.
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I think my ultimate question is whether we come to a cognition of reality (including its nature) through perception or through rational processing of perception.
The latter.

Of course, that's a deceptive answer, because we could not have the latter if we had no type of sensation and no percepts to work with in the first place. Still, that's assumed in your question.

We might perceive a rainbow, but without rational processing of all sorts of information, we would never have been able to figure out what it was.

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I am struggling to grasp what matter is, but with no luck so far. In philosophic dictionary, I found the following definition: "Matter is the philosophic category for sensory, material world". It is an obvious tautology. Also, under this definition, a pen does not consist of matter, but matter consists of pens, as well as other objects.

I have developed several possible hypothesa myself:

1) Matter is hypothetical substance from which all physical objects are made of.

2) Matter is ontologically erroneous. Material object is a concept for existents existing by themselves, not as faculties. Matter was merely a result of naive ontologizing by Ancient Greeks, just like Aristotle's forms were.

In the history of philosophy, and in Objectivism, the term matter is taken to mean that which you can sense with perception, as opposed to one's consciousness that one is aware of that is not made of that same stuff you can hold in your hands.

So in philosophy, it's not really an issue of whether or not your pen is composed of matter, but rather it is something distinct from your consciousness (sometimes referred to as spirit or soul). Aristotle actually made a big mistake in postulating that there is some sort of prime matter, the stuff of which everything is made. It is not the province of philosophy to try to figure out what everything is made of or even try to determine if everything is made of the same stuff or not -- that is a job for the special sciences. It is also up to the special sciences to decide if light is matter or not. I tend to think that physicists use the term "matter" to include everything that can be perceived or detected. Or sometimes they use matter and energy, though with Relativity, these are all interconnected.

In philosophy, one deals with what everyone can grasp using perception, reason, and no special instruments. So, under that type of groundwork, matter is that which you can hold in your hand; whereas one cannot hold one's consciousness in one's hand. It must all be traced back to the perceptually self-evident and the introspectively self-evident -- that is the province of philosophy. In that sense, I think one can make a case that light is matter, in the sense that it reflects off of one's skin or makes one's skin visible.

In other words, "matter" is a higher-level abstraction that comes after one has conceptualized entity. So, once again, you have to grasp what an entity is in order to understand matter. The entity is made of something, and philosopher's call that something matter (without necessarily implying that all entities are made of the same stuff), but only that it is something material as opposed to spiritual (or having to do with consciousness).

Aristotle did have a conception of being as an activity, but that was because he thought, erroneously, that there was an active Form inside matter making it be what it is. There is no such thing; though his term for the Form being at work in the matter was energaia or at-work-ness, which I think is where we get the term "energy" (energy as activity).

To put it as simply as I can, matter is everything out there (that you can perceive); spiritual or consciousness is everything in here ("in" your mind, or what your mind is doing).

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Your definition of "matter" is, from what I can tell, equal to "ordinary matter plus energy"

Not quite. Energy is an attribute of a certain class of entities--much like color or temperature--while matter is the sum of the smaller entities they are composed of. When I ask you, "What is your car made of?" you say "steel"--you don't say "steel plus fast," just like you wouldn't say your car is made of "steel plus red" or "steel plus hot."

(1) can you show me at least two (or one) example of a materialist claiming that all that matters (ugh) is "matter", and I don't mean "essentially says", I mean "actually uses the word matter"

You mean an example of a materialist using the verb "matter" in relation to matter--alongside the word "only" ? They probably never put it that way--but that's irrelevant (or if you like: doesn't matter...) as my purpose has been to identify the essential nature of the ideology, and there is no reason to restrict my identification to statements explicitly made by exponents of the ideology. That would be like restricting my definition of "fish" to sounds actually made by fish. Kant never explicitly stated that his philosophy was an attack on reason and on man's life on Earth, but should that keep us from identifying that fact?

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You mean an example of a materialist using the verb [FN] "matter" in relation to matter--alongside the word "only" ? They probably never put it that way--but that's irrelevant (or if you like: doesn't matter...) as my purpose has been to identify the essential nature of the ideology, and there is no reason to restrict my identification to statements explicitly made by exponents of the ideology.
It does in fact matter, if the question is "what difference does it make how you define 'matter'?" and the answer is "the materialists / physicalists have screwed up philosophy because they don't understand the nature of 'matter'.". Their error, as you identified, is the failure to see that the nature of existents is a result of not just the minimal physical entities, but also the organization. Assuming that I'm right about matter (I assume that because I generally am right), and given that the materialists don't actually invoke the specific concept 'matter' in their argument, then my being right about matter doesn't affect your being right about materialists. I don't care which personal definition of "matter" you use and if you or anyone else uses "matter" in an unclear way, I know how to ask for clarification.

[FN: No, not the verb 'matter', the noun]

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