How can we explain matter, when we know matter only through mind?

Question

Thank you so much philosophers to all your answers. Have a wonderful day!

Answer 1

We don't even know matter.... it may well have a mind of its own that perhaps operates on such a time frame as is beyond our reckoning!! Maybe that between one thought and another thought, the matter takes huge time and so we believe it doesn't think at all. Our knowledge about matter as understood by our mind is limited to the context and time frame limitations of our own mind and being. However we try to explain, it would remain subject to this flaw of being limited by our own boundaries. Great question!!

Answer 2

Pragmatically. That explanation that works, we adopt and christen as truth.

For the moment, this explanation involves quarks, neutrons that decay, and so forth. But no one has detected a decaying neutron yet, and the efforts to find one have been going on long enough that this is becoming a major problem for the standard theory.

A century now, or a decade from now, there may be a very different standard theory, one which works better for certain human purposes than the best available now.

Answer 3

This reminds me of the last question I posted.

Anyway, we are made of matter. Maybe not ONLY of matter but still we are material beings. Though the definition is simple, occupies space and has mass(which reminds me of another one of my past questions), we are still, I believe, quite far from explaining what it is and how it arose. And there are attempts, scientific ones, to explain the nature of matter and how it arose.

Answer 4

Ultimately it is impossible. We can however determine facts about it. That is not "explanation" in the way I guess you mean.

These questions may (or may not) be profound, many people have thought of them. Then they realised that whatever the "explanation" is, it is of no importance in mundane or even extraordinary life, so don't bother with it after a while. There are other questions that are likely to have answers.

Answer 5

If you accept as your first premise that you cannot know something, you will be proven correct.

On the other hand, if you accept as your first premise that it is possible to know something, you may fall short of this possibility, but then again you may not.

It is only those who do not accept darkness as a natural state of things who find the light switch, as it were.

Answer 6

Mind evolved from matter to the purpose of predicting its behavior.

Think of explainitive efforts as an exercise of self awareness.

Answer 7

matter is anything that occupies space and has mass. the definition is kept simple, because deep down we really do not completely understand what it is made of.

Answer 8

Yes we are human and humans need a start, a beginning, a genesis in time to meet the demand for cognitive concrete substance, but progress for material sciences have come through the use of higher cognitive process, formal cognitive operations and self criticism.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/berkeley.htm

'79. But, you will insist, what if I have no reason to believe the existence of Matter? what if I cannot assign any use to it or explain anything by it, or even conceive what is meant by that word? yet still it is no contradiction to say that Matter exists, and that this Matter is in general a substance, occasion of ideas; though indeed to go about to unfold the meaning or adhere to any particular explication of those words may be attended with great difficulties. I answer, when words are used without a meaning, you may put them together as you please without danger of running into a contradiction. You may say, for example, that twice two is equal to seven so long as you declare you do not take the words of that proposition in their usual acceptation but for marks of you know not what. And, by the same reason, you may say there is an inert thoughtless substance without accidents which is the occasion of our ideas. And we shall understand just as much by one proposition as the other.

80. In the last place, you will say, what if we give up the cause of material Substance, and stand to it that Matter is an unknown Somewhat - neither substance nor accident, spirit nor idea, inert, thoughtless, indivisible, immoveable, unextended, existing in no place ? I or, say you, whatever may be urged against substance or occasion, or any other positive or relative notion of Matter, hath no place at all, so long as this negative definition of Matter is adhered to - I answer, you may, if so it shall seem good, use the word 'Matter' in the same sense as other men use 'nothing', and so make those terms convertible in your style. For, after all, this is what appears to me to be the result of that definition - the parts whereof when I consider with attention, either collectively or separate from each other, I do not find that there is any kind of effect or impression made on my mind different from what is excited by the term nothing.

81. You will reply, perhaps, that in the aforesaid definition is included what doth sufficiently distinguish it from nothing - the positive abstract idea of quiddity, entity or existence I own, indeed, that those who pretend to the faculty of framing abstract general ideas do talk as if they had such an idea, which is, say they, the most abstract and general notion of all; that is, to me, the most incomprehensible of all others. That there are a great variety of spirits of different orders and capacities, whose faculties both in number and extent are far exceeding those the Author of my being has bestowed on me, I see no reason to deny. And for me to pretend to determine, by my own few, stinted, narrow inlets of perception, what ideas the inexhaustible power of the Supreme Spirit may imprint upon them were certainly the utmost folly and presumption - since there may be, for aught that I know, innumerable sorts of ideas or sensations, as different from one another, and from all that I have perceived, as colours are from sounds. But, how ready soever I may be to acknowledge the scantiness of my comprehension with regard to the endless variety of spirits and ideas that may possibly exist, yet for any one to pretend to a notion of Entity or Existence, abstracted from spirit and idea, from perceived and being perceived, is, I suspect, a downright repugnancy and trifling with words.'

Answer 9

It doesn't matter to me, does it really matter to you!?