4 Steps to the Immaterial

More on Platonism

Immaterial things are hard to understand, and taking their existence seriously has been unfashionable for centuries. Modern materialists have gotten comfortable simply defining them or laughing them out of existence.

But since my philosophical conversion to Platonism, I now think that immaterial stuff is way more important than material stuff—and there’s even a meaningful sense in which an immaterial world is above the physical world—but it’s not an easy argument to make.

Rhetorically, it’s hard for a Platonist to get his foot in the door. We can’t point to immaterial things, and we can’t Science them, so… what exactly are we talking about?

Here’s four steps to intellectually grasp the immaterial:

Step 1. Reduce the physical world down to geometry.

Here’s what I mean: what are the essential components of the physical world? Atoms? Energy? Space?

For our purposes, let’s say that the essential property of physical stuff is geometric—that is, spatial. Everything in the physical world happens within space or is a state of space.

Step 2. Note that entities are related.

The objects in space behave in particular ways. Their behavior is relational—the behavior of the electron is related to the nucleus. The behavior of one atom depends on neighboring atoms.

Gravity is a thing.

Matter-over-here affects matter-over-there.

Step 3. Note that these relationships are not themselves geometric.

What are—and where are—these “relationships”?

Atoms are related to each other. The atoms are geometric entities, but the relationships between them are not. These relationships are most easily discovered by observing how the world changes over time.

If we try to explain the universe as a purely geometric structure—maybe a big ol’ cube—we are left without explanation for why atoms behave the way they do. Pure geometry only gives us a static description.

We can imagine a world which contains exactly the same amount of atoms, standing in exactly the same positions, without the universe progressing the way it does. Why do atoms interact with each other at all?

Or to put it another way: why should the mere fact that entities stand in a particular geometric relationship to one another affect how they behave?

Gliders in Conway’s Game of Life

The natural answer is to say, “Oh, well there are laws of physics which determine how atoms behave in relation to each other.”

This is correct, but it’s an admission of the immaterial—the laws of physics are themselves not physical. They are not composed of anything geometric. If you’re familiar with cellular automata, the rules that govern those systems are not found within the cells.

Both the relationships among the atoms and the rules which govern their behavior are abstract, immaterial things.

Step 4. Note these relationships would continue to exist without our minds.

The final piece of the Platonic puzzle comes when accepting that these relationships would continue to exist even without our minds—that is to say, the universe would continue operating as a relational system. Physical objects wouldn’t suddenly blow apart and become ontologically-independent things, disconnected from each other.

For many years, I thought all abstract stuff was mental. Relationships, I thought, were indeed non-physical but only exist within our minds.

The problem with that position is that relationships exist in the world. Atoms don’t stop interacting with each other because we stop thinking about them. Even if Earth was destroyed by an asteroid, the laws of physics would still continue to bind the universe together into a connected system.

There you have it. We’ve kicked down the materialist door and are now staring at the immaterial. The implications are vast, and there’s much more to be said.

---

To reiterate in four easy steps:

Step 1. Reduce the physical world down to geometry.¹
Step 2. Note that entities are related.
Step 3. Note that these relationships are not themselves geometric.
Step 4. Note these relationships would continue to exist without our minds.

1. Perhaps you object to Step 1. Fine, but please do not end up making my point by claiming, “But the physical world is more than just geometry! There’s all kind of non-geometric, non-spatial stuff happening too!” That’s another way of acknowledging immaterial aspects of the world.