Dr. J. Budziszewski

Okay.

Okay.

Well, if everything is matter then, and matter is that which has mass and takes up space, how about the meaning of the sentence, everything is matter?

That doesn't... It doesn't have mass, and it doesn't take up space.

Now, some materialists would say, oh, yes, it does.

Because you see, what that is, is that that sentence, its meaning is an activity of your brain.

And your brain has mass and takes up space, and this is a process of the brain.

Right.

Well, that's fudging.

Or somebody might say, the sentence, of course it has mass and takes up space because look, I'm writing it down with ink on this piece of paper.

It may not weigh a lot, but that ink weighs something.

It has mass.

The paper takes up space.

But of course, if that's all it is, if it's just matter, then if I represented it not by ink on paper, but by pixels on the glowing phosphor on a computer screen,

the meaning would have changed because the matter has changed and we say no no it has the same meaning well how can it have the same meaning if the matter is changed if meaning is matter the it this these kinds of paradoxes you don't even have to talk get to the point of talking about consciousness or what that is or anything like this you just you just you have things all around you or take the color red

interesting thing about red is that there's a reality outside me there's light of a certain frequency and there's a reality inside me i perceive that color red now on a purely materialistic theory there's no difficulty in inventing a machine with a photoelectric cell that's sensitive only to that frequency of light and it has a and it has a uh some sound reproduction machinery

And whenever I beam red light on the photo cell, the machine announces, red, red, red.

But does the machine understand red?

Does it experience red?

Does it have the sensation of red?