I have discovered the accessible, free, and superior online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It will wholly supplant Wikipedia in consultation, for it is more reputable, explanatory, succinct, and the writing is of a higher caliber. I find it very exciting; it discusses philosophical topics, movements, histories, and notable individuals. Please check it out for yourself.

Yesterday I went out on the back porch to find my 83 year old grandfather reclining in the shade on the rocking chair, gulping down some suds. We talked for a while about everything and nothing, some of my college courses, and interestingly he started asking some of the same fundamental questions that I am always asking myself, like whether thoughts are substantial or not. In the course of clarifying his question, he mentioned that thoughts occupy time, and I immediately realized that that affords a very good argument, in my opinion, against the immaterial nature of thought.

The reasoning is as follows:

Given the limitations of current science and the inability of deduction or other methods to convincingly demonstrate the immaterial nature of thought, questions of space or position, and causality pertaining to, cannot address the issue. However, no one would deny that thought occupies time; that is, thought processes inherently use the property of time. Because time and space are the same thing, thought must occupy space, and therefore must be material. Even if you think the idea of space and time the same fantastic, you can only fall as far back as Einstein, who indisputably (unless you reject science) revealed that space and time are related, that is, they affect each other, i.e., a change in one induces a change in the other. The changes are usually too small to notice in our humble worldframe, but nevertheless they do occur. Thus the most credible position an immaterialist could take is that thoughts are related to space, and that is very dubious and most unsatisfactory, indeed.

I came across these humorous Pearls of Wisdom today in Thoreau:

"One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown."

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."