I'm A Materialist, Change My Mind

[Simon Adams]

I'm not saying that it's an argument against idealism necessarily, I'm just saying that we understand physics as real and observable, and even if we don't fully understand it yet, I think I should trust my perception. I grant that if Idealism is correct, then physics is not an issue for it, since the laws of physics are just processes in consciousness. They only disprove Idealism if you assume Materialism, so it all comes down to exactly what Scott said, what is the most rational leap to make? I think I've made the case above why to me, the rational leap is materialism. To quote Sean Carroll again, "We know how the laws of quantum mechanics help explain how electrons move in the brain for example. As far as I can tell, just because Quantum Mechanics is confusing, and consciousness is confusing, maybe they're the same?"

I don’t think logical arguments ever make people change their worldview the 180 degrees you need. At best they show there is a different door that has four corners and a handle.

Our worldview is built up of many different parts, which each refer back to each other, and the brain can only really examine and think about one part at a time. That is usually why the change happens after an experience, maybe tragedy, maybe an NDE, that forces you to step back and look at all of them at the same time, from a ‘stepped back’ perspective.

[Josephhparkk]

I've been through plenty of these arguments in the old forum and find it is pretty much fruitless trying to persuade anybody out of what they already believe.

In most cases I’d agree, where people debate to be right. I am debating to be wrong, (fingers crossed) and I’m slowly becoming more skeptical of the materialist worldview, where Nihlism really seems to be the ultimate fate. If the arguments I’ve put out are flawed, I really want to know

[AshvinP]

Have you every played a VR game with other players? If so, you no doubt would have been "sharing the same" VR, where player avatars can run into the same obstacles and interact with each other in many ways similar to real life. Yet you would still know none of that 'physical' interaction is really "shared" and all of it will simply disappear once you take the headset off. So perhaps you are making an erroneous assumption about the 'real world' just as someone would be making an erroneous assumption about the VR world if they naively took their perceptions within it at 'face value'.

Really I just think this helps to make the case I made above, you can attach any non falsifiable story and it fits. That's a flaw, not a feature.

Can you elaborate on how it helps make the case for materialism?

[ScottRoberts]

It is a leap, but is it any smaller a leap than that which the materialist takes, namely, how purely non-conscious activity can somehow produce conscious activity? So the question becomes: which leap is the more rational to make?

Well I would argue the leap to materialism is not that large. It's not difficult to believe that my brain is generating a copy of something that it's actually perceiving, given what we know about the way Neurons work.

Then what perceives the copy? (This is the old homunculus problem).

Now the world could look very different in reality, but why should I think it's not there at all?

It is there. It just is not made up of mindless matter. It is made up of perceptions.

Shouldn't I just trust my experience?

Sure, but you have never experienced mindlessness.

Materialism does not seem all that irrational, and of course we still have the hard problem, along with plenty of other things we don't fully understand yet.

What makes you think it can ever be understood? Here is how I would argue that in principle the hard problem has no solution: We are aware of time passing. But all the events in a spatiotemporal object like the brain are separated each from all others (by space and/or time). What is it that combines these micro-events into the macro events we actually perceive that take up time? How is that we can experience anything larger than one synapse firing? Or even the difference between it not firing and firing? It can't be some combination of micro-events "observing" the separated events, since that just regresses the problem. So one must concede that consciousness has the ability to span these separate micro-events, which no spatiotemporal object can. So a spatiotemporal object like the brain cannot produce consciousness.

I can never falsify any other theory, but it seems to me like the easier assumption to make when you compare it to the idea of mind at large, simulation theory, or the idea that maybe I'm actually just wearing a VR headset and I forgot how to logout. You can pretty much attach any story and it could be plausible, that's a flaw, not a feature. How does Idealism separate itself from any of these other non falsifiable claims? Where do we draw the line to say, "okay, now we're just making sh**t up." To be super clear, I agree that we cannot ever claim for certain what is outside of our experience, but, it feels to me like once we cross that line, we just pick our favorite story. It is rational to trust my senses.

I trust my senses. I just don't add the assumption that there is something mindless that causes me to have the sense contents I have. Making that assumption creates either the intractable hard problem or the intractable interaction problem. Not doing so does not create any intractable problem. Those stories that idealists tell are conceivable solutions to the tractable problems of idealism. The intractable problems are intractable because they have no conceivable solutions. That is why I consider the idealist leap to be smaller than the materialist leap.

Perhaps without any senses, I just think. So that would be a different way of being conscious. I fail to see why this raises a problem for idealism.

What would you think of?

Pure mathematics. Take Max Tegmark's Our Mathematical Universe hypothesis (that all that is are mathematical objects), add a Mathematician that thinks up these objects (otherwise one is faced with the hard problem) and you have a version of idealism.

[Jim Cross]

In most cases I’d agree, where people debate to be right. I am debating to be wrong, (fingers crossed) and I’m slowly becoming more skeptical of the materialist worldview, where Nihlism really seems to be the ultimate fate. If the arguments I’ve put out are flawed, I really want to know

I would argue both materialism and idealism are likely wrong but certainly unprovable.

Many equate a materialist worldview with no life after death, no real supernatural phenomena, etc. This is understandable since materialism seems linked with science and science has a skeptical eye towards such things. So sometimes there are calls for an idealistic science or such. In my view, science doesn't require any metaphysical underpinning. It consists in performing objective measurements about which a consensus can be reached then developing theories. If measurements and theories result in evidence of life after death or ESP so be it but that wouldn't demonstrate anything about the ultimate substance of reality.

[Starbuck]

If measurements and theories result in evidence of life after death or ESP so be it but that wouldn't demonstrate anything about the ultimate substance of reality.

As I've argued in another thread, as well as ESP you can have ETP (Extra temporal perception). Now, materialism is founded on the belief that lumps or quanta of matter/energy bump into and affect each other within a succession of causality - if the claim is that consciousness is a product of the brain/nervous system, then consciousness is confined to constantly 'looking back' to whatever physical processes converged to create its being. Surely one instance of precognition (in a dream or vision) undermines that entire premise?

[Martin_]

I for one welcome this post, and II think we should have a ready-made package to present in these cases.

“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The point of the above quote: You see that puff of logic there? That is in my experience not how a transition happens. @Joseph, if you expected that we'd be able to provide you with that singular piece or reasoning, that you were (perhaps) hoping for, so that you in "good conscience" could switch (once and for all) to a primarilly Idealist worldview, you might get disappointed. (I'm second guessing your motives here a bit, apologies if i'm wrong)

For me, it's more about being backed by a worldview with a higher degree of consistency and explanatory power when trying to understand your daily life. Stuff fits better.

One example:
Maybe we have all been right all along. https://www.essentiafoundation.org/read ... s-of-self/

[AshvinP]

In most cases I’d agree, where people debate to be right. I am debating to be wrong, (fingers crossed) and I’m slowly becoming more skeptical of the materialist worldview, where Nihlism really seems to be the ultimate fate. If the arguments I’ve put out are flawed, I really want to know

I would argue both materialism and idealism are likely wrong but certainly unprovable.

Many equate a materialist worldview with no life after death, no real supernatural phenomena, etc. This is understandable since materialism seems linked with science and science has a skeptical eye towards such things. So sometimes there are calls for an idealistic science or such. In my view, science doesn't require any metaphysical underpinning. It consists in performing objective measurements about which a consensus can be reached then developing theories. If measurements and theories result in evidence of life after death or ESP so be it but that wouldn't demonstrate anything about the ultimate substance of reality.

It may not demonstrate the "substance of reality", but it would certainly demonstrate materialism is false.

[Jim Cross]

Surely one instance of precognition (in a dream or vision) undermines that entire premise?

That would depend the exact nature of the evidence and what theories arose from it. Retrocausation as an explanation for precognition could be compatible with materialism, for example. Survival of self after death or in a disembodied state in a Universal EM field could be an explanation for "life after death", NDE, or OBE and also compatible with materialism.

[Jim Cross]

It may not demonstrate the "substance of reality", but it would certainly demonstrate materialism is false.

Anything that doesn't demonstrate whatever the "substance of reality" is cannot demonstrate idealism or materialism to be either true or false. That is why the entire debate is meaningless.