Differnet approaches to the oncept of "matter"

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My apologies for this. I have had troubles making a new thread so I was just testing if that problem was resolved. The thread title is horribly wrong.

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It appears I am unable to make another thread, so I'll post it in here anyway.

Actual Title: Matter: Different Approaches

I think there are at least different approaches to the concept of "matter".
1) Atomistic-cum-mechanistic
2) Aristotelian
3) Panpsychist.

Atomistic-cum-mechanistic matter

The atomistic approach can be summed up to the view that there are two fundamental principles, atoms (Greek = átomos) and the void. Atoms according to this view are indestructible and immutable with the possibility of an infinite variety of shapes and sizes (wiki). These atoms move through the void and the constant mechanical collision, arrangement and rearrangement of these átomos are what gives rise to the macroscopic elements we observe in reality. The atomistic view of matter gained popularity in the 16th century and gave rise to the "mechanical philosophy" which tried to explain all phenomena entirely in terms of the motion and collision of material bodies.

The mechanistic-cum-atomistic view of matter is probably the best known and most popular view of matter today and can basically be summed as follows:
1) Matter, including the fundamental particles of substances are homogeneous and of the same nature. They are distinguished only by a quantitative difference of size, shape, mass, spin and motion.
2) All material/physical properties are reducible to modes of local motion.
3) Motion is described to have three fundamental attributes;
I) Motion is the principle of all material/physical activity. It is a force and cause capable of producing an effect. All change (the beginning and end of things) is described in terms of motion.
II) All the forces of nature are said to be modes of movement that are capable of being transformed into one another. In other words, heat, magnetism, electricity, light and weight can be described in terms of motion.
III) Motion is transmissible from one body to another.
4) Matter has no intrinsic finality or or natural ends or goal-directedness. In other words matter has no final causes and wholly non-teleological.


Aristotelian matter

For Aristotle and the Scholastics matter was the underlying principle of change and change was the reduction of potentiality to actuality. The concepts of potentiality and actuality together with prime matter and substantial form are central to Aristotle's view. Substances according to this view are composites of potentiality and actuality, prime matter and substantial form. One way of trying to make sense of it is by comparing it to the atomistic view of matter and substance with the aid of distinguishing between contingent and necessary being. Contingent beings are things or stuff or substances etc. that exist but could have failed to exist. Necessary being(s) are things or stuff or substances etc. that could not have failed to exist (Stanford Philosophy).

From an atomistic view substances are arrangements of átomos (whatever they are, be it elementary particles, points, strings etc.). The átomos of atomism are necessary beings while the different arrangements of them are not. From a Scholastic point of view substances are also contingent beings. The prime matter and substantial form are contingent components of a substance and these components are combined and held together by something else whenever a particular substances exists.

Another way of understanding it is by looking at an example such as water (H2O). From an atomistic view, water is contingent and is nothing but an arrangement of átomos (whatever they may be). Now for arguments sake let's assume that protons, electrons and neutrons are different kinds of átomos (they obviously are not since they are destructible and capable of changing i.e. they are not immutable and not eternal). Water thus just is an arrangements of electrons, protons and neutrons. From a Scholastic view, water is just a composite of prime matter and substantial form (which in this case might be H2O).There are also different modes of being and substances and accidents are two. Intrinsic accidents "inhere in" substances. Thus, the neutrons, protons and electrons in the example are intrinsic accidents inhering water (the substance). The neutrons, protons and electrons in the example are substances on their own with their own substantial form when they are not part of water (for example a free electron). However, when they are accidents "inhering in" a substance, their form is present in the substance only virtually and not formally. This can be better understood when we look at the concept of change at a later stage. While substances from an atomistic view are reduced (in a reductionistic manner) and analysed in terms of átomos (again, whatever they may be, quanta, strings etc.), the Aristotelian-Scholastic approach is holistic whereby a substance is "analyzed into its components and the components in turn cannot properly be understood apart from the whole".



Panpsychist matter

The Panpsychist view can be argued to be compatible with either of the above two views with at least one feature that differs and it is related to the conscious activity of matter. For the panpsychist, at the fundamental level, matter has some sort of mental activity or the underlying something that makes up "matter" has a mental element or a conscious element to it. One view that is compatible with panpsychism is the view supported by Stuart Hamerhoff and his model for what consciousness exactly is. See for example the "Orch OR" model for consciousness".

Which view of "matter" do you support?

 

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The one corresponding most to contemporary elemental physics would likely be the most useful view of the three, although utility by itself doesn't confirm any non-revisable ontological dogmas. Humans have employed a variety of effective schemes over the centuries without them touching upon a supposed "Truth" of existence at a microphysical substrate. For instance, it's far more efficient for a bricklayer to be thinking of bricks as bricks in his framework for construction than weird quantum stuff, etc., or calculations involving it.

As for panpsychism, an activity of a particle which indicates detection of charge or other properties in its immediate environment seems indistinguishable from "lawful" nonconscious interreactions and/or statistical outcomes. As those microphysical interactions accumulate and integrate at the stratum of biological bodies, it still doesn't necessarily depart from what can be expected by the order of natural regulation.

Thus, the only items left for subsuming under a "mental" or "subjective" class would seem to be the manifestations exhibited in perception and introspection, attributed to higher level neural patterns. If those manifestations are treated as having no return causal effect upon the brain, or are treated as only an alternative inner appearance of the neural activity itself, then attributing primitive manifestations to matter in general -- such as the atoms composing rocks having flashes of color, etc. -- seems irrelevant to philosophical physicalism and the science of physics. As the atoms wouldn't be organized into a complex system with memory that could even recognize that it was having such stochastic flashes of qualia.

The exception might be if the physical sciences suddenly took an interest in wanting to avoid the apparent "magical-like" emergence of phenomenal manifestations in connection to certain brain activities, by positing primitive proto-experiences already being a fundamental and global aspect of matter/energy. But how that would ever be worked out theorectically and represented in the relations of technical and mathematical formulations...

In terms of metaphysics babble rather than convenience or utility, none of the three choices. I'd tend instead toward Leopold Stubenberg's corrected, broader account of neutral monism. Where both theorectical/experimental examples of matter and the experiences/perceptions that manifest such content as phenomena emerge from a circumstance, principle, substance. etc., that is more fundamental than both.

 

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I'll reverse the order of things and answer the concluding question first, then address some of the ideas in the original post in a subsequent reply.

The view of matter that I support is that of common sense. Matter is all this... stuff... that's around me. The tables and the chairs of everyday experience. The ground I walk on. The ocean. My own and other people's bodies.

Of course we don't leave it there, nor should we. We ask questions. What is all this stuff? What is it composed of? What explains it?

So we generate philosophical and more recently scientific theories. Aristotle's physics and metaphysics, along with ancient and modern atomism, are examples of those kind of theories.

So a second question might be -- What conceptual and at times more speculative extension do I favor as a deeper description and hopefully at least a partial explanation of the matter of common sense? My answer to that one would be the accounts provided by modern physics and chemistry, I guess.

 

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