[This is not a path which no-one has boldly trod before: many have, eg Descartes to name just one. These are well-trodden paths, to date all leading nowhere.]
What then, is belief? Knowledge? Planning? Goal-seeking? Visualisation? And where do they all reside?
[Ah, the frailty of telos--grasp it gently, for it shatters easily, crumbling to dust, which then crumbles to nothingness in a (to date unobserved) process called proton decay.]
To grant the existence of a non-material thing and/or a non-material domain is to tread a very slippery slope. Once you start you can’t stop. Once you admit the possibility that a non-material thing exists, you are forced to consider, grudgingly or otherwise, the possibility that other non-material things exist. The possibility, for instance, of the truth or partial truth of such things as souls, ghosts, 'psychic powers', and even---dare I utter the Word---God.
[But let's move away from a discussion involving the name or concept of God. It's too sensitive, too controversial, it prevents people from thinking clearly. We'll talk about this in great detail somewhen else.]
But for now let's just settle for the grudging admittance that non-material things exist, and that they can and do impact upon, influence or affect material things in material realities. For example, a recipe in the mind of a chef can result in a delicious material meal in a material world (no Madonna jokes please) in a material restaurant, yet recipes and minds are non-material. In one sense, the recipe can be said to be the cause of the meal. The recipe is the efficient cause and/or possibly the formal cause of the meal, to use Aristotle’s classification.
Now, all of the above is by no means proof or even strong argument that non-material things exist. The above simply clarifies an important principle re discussions between materialists and idealists. The principle is that if you admit the possibility that a particular member of a set has a particular attribute (eg existence) then you must at least consider the possibility that all of the other members of that set have the same attribute.
NIGHTMERRIES: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF DARKNESS This so-called "book" will chew you up, spit you out, and leave you twitching and frothing on the carpet. More than 60 dark and feculent fictions (read ‘em and weep) copiously illustrated by over 20 grotesque images you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.
AWAREWOLF & OTHER CRHYMES AGAINST HUMANITY (Vot could be Verse?) We all hate poetry, right? But we might make an exception for this sick and twisted stuff. This devil's banquet of adults-only offal features more than 50 satanic sonnets, vitriolic verses and odious odes.
MANIC MEMES & OTHER MINDSPACE INVADERS A disturbing repository of quotably quirky quotes, sayings, proverbs, maxims, ponderances, adages and aphorisms. This menagerie holds no fewer than 184 memes from eight meme-species perfectly adapted to their respective environments.
MASTRESS & OTHER TWISTED TAILS, ILLUSTRATED: an unholy corpus of oddities, strangelings, bizarritudes and peculiaritisms
FIENDS & FREAKS Adults-only Tales of Serpents, Dragons, Devils, Lobsters, Anguished Spirits, Gods, Anti-gods and Other Horse-thieves You Wouldn't Want to Meet in a Dark Kosmos: 4th Edition
HAGS TO HAGGIS Whiskey-soaked Tails of War-nags, Witches, Manticores and Escapegoats, Debottlenecking and Desilofication, Illustrated
rather strange if you ask me
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