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Old 13th May 2018, 10:27 AM   #41
MikeG
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Originally Posted by Scorpion View Post
Thought ultimately remains under control of the thinker. Chemical imbalance and brain damage can influence changes in our behaviour. But the brain does not have the last word, we do.

It is my consistent view that I am the thinker, not my brain, and I retain spiritual beliefs precisely because I have battled with schizophrenia for fifty years.


Did you not understand the analogy?
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Old 13th May 2018, 10:45 AM   #42
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Originally Posted by MikeG View Post


Did you not understand the analogy?
According to materialism, the brain is made of some physical stuff, and through some magical process, consciousness emerges. Materialists have been contorting themselves like crazy over the years trying to explain that. No progress has been made. If you drill down into materialist beliefs, you get some rather odd claims:
- a system of conscious flushing toilets
- a man pushing rocks around simulating a universe of conscious beings
- panpsychism
- a blind person learning what seeing is like just by studying the brain
- a consciousness field that permeates the universe
- and what's currently en vouge, Integrated Information Theory: if you process enough information, somehow consciousness arises.

The whole thing would be a lot easier if we just dropped this assumption that physical stuff exists.
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Old 13th May 2018, 11:12 AM   #43
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And there comes the stonking stupid stuff, as expected. If you don't 100% understand how a clock works, better throw away all you've learned about its working, and verily pretend that the physical part doesn't even exist. There's only THE TICKING, man.

Well, the first of many problems with that is that it's a textbook Nirvana fallacy.
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Old 13th May 2018, 11:13 AM   #44
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Originally Posted by Scorpion View Post
Thought ultimately remains under control of the thinker. Chemical imbalance and brain damage can influence changes in our behaviour. But the brain does not have the last word, we do.

It is my consistent view that I am the thinker, not my brain, and I retain spiritual beliefs precisely because I have battled with schizophrenia for fifty years.
Right, that settles it. We can discard all those years of research because some guy just BELIEVES otherwise
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Old 13th May 2018, 12:36 PM   #45
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Originally Posted by arthwollipot View Post
Because the forum would be very boring if we all agreed with one another all the time.
This hasn't been my experience here. I would say that public demonstration of belonging to a group is often the most important thing.
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Old 13th May 2018, 01:09 PM   #46
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
According to materialism, the brain is made of some physical stuff, and through some magical process.......
Nobody, but nobody, read further than that. That claim is so stupid that there is literally nothing you could say after that which could make up for it.
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Old 13th May 2018, 01:41 PM   #47
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Sure he can. In the other thread he managed in consecutive paragraphs to (A) concede that there's no way to detect evidence for God even with data mining, yet (B) there's a good reason to believe in him, because personal experiences and other twaddle. Never mind the other problems with B, but point A was a priori saying that any experiences in point B can't add up to make such an argument SOUND. I mean, you can find people making silly arguments from feelings and unspecified personal experiences, but you can't make up someone making that argument the next paragraph after conceding that they can't add up to actual evidence, so the argument can't be sound.

Fast forward a day and a page in that thread, and he actually claims that he shot down the opposing argument that way.

So, yeah, sure he can make up for it, if just in sheer entertainment value
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Old 13th May 2018, 02:17 PM   #48
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
According to materialism, the brain is made of some physical stuff, and through some magical process
Originally Posted by MikeG View Post
Nobody, but nobody, read further than that. That claim is so stupid that there is literally nothing you could say after that which could make up for it.
Well someone followed it with this additional “pearl of wisdom”.
Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
The whole thing would be a lot easier if we just dropped this assumption that physical stuff exists.
Would like to not-see the non-physical person that typed this crap on a non-physical keyboard of a non-physical computer, and sent it to lots of other non-physical computers so other non-physical people could read it and laugh their non-physical heads off.

I guess - "The whole thing would be a lot easier if we just dropped this assumption that fantasy stuff doesn't exist."
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Old 13th May 2018, 03:13 PM   #49
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
The whole thing would be a lot easier if we just dropped this assumption that physical stuff exists.

I've tried that. Seriously.

The problem is, as nice as the mental idea of water can be, I still feel subjectively thirsty even after carefully ideating drinking it. Whereas, physically drinking physical water is actually helpful in alleviating said subjective idea of thirst. Go figure.

The problem is even more acute when it concerns physical versus non-physical air.
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Old 13th May 2018, 10:30 PM   #50
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There are many reasons why people adopt dualistic beliefs. Most of them are irrational. But there is one that is not so irrational.

The reduction of the mind activity to strict material concepts is nowadays factually impossible. If you are familiar with psychology journals —including those that work with brain localisations— you will know that certain mental concepts —specially those concerning feelings, motivations, volitions or intentionality— cannot be replaced by terms referring to electrochemical impulses in the brain. Psychology needs mental concepts, at least for the time being. Beliefs in a physicalist -like natural sciences- language in psychology are only a project without end date. The belief that someday what we call “problems of mind” would be solved in a scientific way is legitimate but it is only a project. Turning it into a certainty is a philosophical dogma. The dogma of positivism.

The failure of the positivist dogma is one cause favouring the dualist dogma.

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Old 13th May 2018, 11:28 PM   #51
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Originally Posted by Myriad View Post
I've tried that. Seriously.

The problem is, as nice as the mental idea of water can be, I still feel subjectively thirsty even after carefully ideating drinking it. Whereas, physically drinking physical water is actually helpful in alleviating said subjective idea of thirst. Go figure.

The problem is even more acute when it concerns physical versus non-physical air.
And yet, dreams are surprisingly realistic. As are mirages. There's a lesson to be learned there: things are not always as they seem.
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Old 13th May 2018, 11:30 PM   #52
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Originally Posted by David Mo View Post
There are many reasons why people adopt dualistic beliefs. Most of them are irrational. But there is one that is not so irrational.

The reduction of the mind activity to strict material concepts is nowadays factually impossible. If you are familiar with psychology journals —including those that work with brain localisations— you will know that certain mental concepts —specially those concerning feelings, motivations, volitions or intentionality— cannot be replaced by terms referring to electrochemical impulses in the brain. Psychology needs mental concepts, at least for the time being. Beliefs in a physicalist -like natural sciences- language in psychology are only a project without end date. The belief that someday what we call “problems of mind” would be solved in a scientific way is legitimate but it is only a project. Turning it into a certainty is a philosophical dogma. The dogma of positivism.

The failure of the positivist dogma is one cause favouring the dualist dogma.
Not only dualism. When materialism takes a hit, idealism benefits too.
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Old 14th May 2018, 12:02 AM   #53
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Not only dualism. When materialism takes a hit, idealism benefits too.
Materialism is not positivist dogma. What fails is strict physicalism. And I don't understand "to take a hit" in this context. What hit are you thinking about?

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Old 14th May 2018, 12:06 AM   #54
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Originally Posted by David Mo View Post
Materialism is not positivist dogma. What fails is strict physicalism. And I don't understand "to take a hit" in this context.
There are essentially three different types of reality we can choose from: physicalism, dualism, and idealism. If one were unsure about how reality really is, one would assign a 1/3 chance to each one. If one of those types (e.g., materialism/physicalism) were discredited, the other two types would both benefit, epistemologically speaking.
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Old 14th May 2018, 12:24 AM   #55
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The problem is that it still violates Occam.

Even if you don't fully understand how the grandfather clock works, once there is amply clear that the cogs, springs and levers are clearly involved in how it works, there is no reason to postulate some EXTRA "The Ticking" entity for which the clock is only some kind of radio. Even if you don't fully understand how a computer works (e.g., pfft, try to explain Spectre or Meltdown or botnets STRICTLY by what charge is in what transistor), there is no reason to make up some EXTRA immaterial entity that drives it.

Same thing for brain activity.

The problem is that you're adding not just one entity, but two, since you also need SOME kind of transmission between the two, for no actual extra explained data. You have exactly ZERO extra explained stuff -- as in, actual testable predictions -- with that extra entity. Not the least, because you still don't really know anything extra with that entity, that you didn't know without it. You can't actually write a formula for those extra entities.

Basically making up extra BS for stuff you don't understand, still doesn't change the fact that you don't understand how it works.

And frankly, we've tried it too many times before, to not have much reason for faith in the power of making up divine stuff. E.g., once we believed that it was the power of some god or another that made the Sun rise every morning. Now we know it's just Earth rotation. E.g., once we thought it was the power of Osiris that made the Nile flood. Now we know it's simple meteorology. E.g., once Aquinas needed an "unmoved mover" (which he called God) to explain why the planets move. Now we know it's just physics.

Hell, at one point the Divine Logos (which is mis-translated as Word in John: it's more like reason) was the divine power that kept EVERYTHING, the whole universe, working as God intended. Now, again, we just call it "physics".

Making up some extra nebulous immaterial BS behind it all never helped us understand anything. There was no point where you could put a number or formula on how much Logos causes the orbit of Mercury to wobble. The divine BS was on the contrary just an excuse to stop thinking.

Which, frankly, isn't very productive.
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Old 14th May 2018, 12:42 AM   #56
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
And yet, dreams are surprisingly realistic. As are mirages. There's a lesson to be learned there: things are not always as they seem.
Unless you can actually control the dream or simulation -- i.e., if it actually goes by RULES instead of magical thinking -- it's actually irrelevant whether it is one. E.g., if in this dream or simulation arsenic stuffs your pyruvate dehydrogenase enzyme and causes oxidative shock to the cells, then that's reason enough to know that and avoid it. E.g., if in this dream the same mass always causes the same space-time curvature, then you still need to learn GR for a GPS that actually works. E.g., if in the dream or simulation the same QM uncertainty is enforced, you still need it to design a Zener diode, which is why and how your computer's power supply works, so you can write your drivel.

Or for a simpler example, if gravity and bone resistance work by RULES, you still can't jump from over a certain height without injuring yourself. It may be a simulated injury, but it'll still be simulated well enough to hurt like hell.

It doesn't actually MATTER if that's happening in a dream, or simulation, or whatever. For all purposes, then that dream or simulation or whatever IS your physical world, because it is dreaming or simulating a physical world with physical rules.

You either learn those rules and apply them anyway, or you're a dumbass, even if a simulated one.

The only way you could justify going into gaga land with ignoring the physical world in favour of mystical idiocies, is if you can show that you can actually bypass those rules. Otherwise it doesn't matter whether it's a dream or simulation, those are still what explains how everything around you works.

And if you actually think that you CAN actually change the rules by refusing to acknowledge them... well... then I propose the following experiment:

Stand in front of a wall, toes almost touching it. Close your eyes. Imagine the whole universe disappearing, including walls. It's just you in an endless void. There's nothing to stop you in any direction. Now headbang vigorously

Yep, that's why you can't ignore physics, regardless of whether it's simulated or not
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Old 14th May 2018, 01:45 AM   #57
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
There are essentially three different types of reality we can choose from: physicalism, dualism, and idealism. If one were unsure about how reality really is, one would assign a 1/3 chance to each one. If one of those types (e.g., materialism/physicalism) were discredited, the other two types would both benefit, epistemologically speaking.
Physicalism, in the widest sense of the term, materialism applied to the question of the nature of mind. So construed, physicalism is the thesis – call it ontological physicalism – that whatever exists or occurs is ultimately constituted out of physical entities. But sometimes ‘physicalism’ is used to refer to the thesis that whatever exists or occurs can be completely described in the vocabulary of physics. (Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy)
I was using the word "physicalist" in the second sense above. I suppose you were using it as synonymous with "materialism". I will use "materialism" because it produces less confusion.
Materialism is a very broad concept that offers many alternatives.
On the issue of brain, I defend materialism because I believe it is sufficiently demonstrated that mental phenomena do not occur without movement in the brain and that many mental acts can be caused by brain alterations. It seems to me more than reasonable to think that there is a causal relationship between brain and mind globally and that is under this assumption how neuroscience and experimental psychology progress.

Another thing is to pretend that each mental act can be explained by its corresponding cerebral alteration. This is what physicalist positivism is all about, but it is what has failed so far.
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Old 14th May 2018, 05:28 AM   #58
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I subscribe to a couple of neuroscience blogs, and though a mere layman I try to keep up with the ongoing research. The above ending statement “has failed so far” reminds me of the arguments Creationists put forward about Cosmology.
“You don’t know what caused the Singularity...So, God.”

“We don’t know...Yet.”

If you’re going to invoke some unspecified, non-physical (if such a thing is possible) “something” to explain consciousness...How about a model, at least? Or better, some evidence.
All the evidence points to the “emergent property” of the complex interactions of the brain.
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Old 14th May 2018, 06:40 AM   #59
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
And yet, dreams are surprisingly realistic. As are mirages. There's a lesson to be learned there: things are not always as they seem.

The subjective experience of drinking dream water while in a dream doesn't alleviate my subjective experience of thirst. Not even within the dream, let alone after I've woken up. The subjective experience of drinking mirage water is even less effective at alleviating my subjective experience of thirst, because no subjective experience of actually reaching close enough to the mirage water to drink it ever happens.

So, let's recap my (and I'm pretty certain yours as well) experiences here:

The experience of drinking water that I concentrate intently upon visualizing in my mind -- does not alleviate my experience of thirst
The experience of drinking water that appears to be present in a mirage -- does not happen, hence does not alleviate my experience of thirst
The experience of drinking water that I dream about -- does not alleviate my experience of thirst
The experience of drinking water that I experience as coming out of a faucet or from a bottle at hand whilst awake -- does alleviate my experience of thirst

What special quality does the fourth kind of water have, that the other three lack? I say that it's because it's actual physical stuff, thirst is the experience of lacking that actual physical stuff, and providing said actual physical stuff (and only that) alleviates it. That seems a really really good and well-founded explanation to me.

Your hypothesis that physical stuff doesn't exist is incompatible with that explanation. So what alternative explanation do you offer for the differences in the experiences I've described?
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Old 14th May 2018, 06:51 AM   #60
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Originally Posted by HansMustermann View Post
Right, that settles it. We can discard all those years of research because some guy just BELIEVES otherwise
As far as I know, all the years of research have not yet shown how we are conscious. So the question of whether the mind is caused by the brain ,or if the mind simply uses the brain is still up for grabs.
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Old 14th May 2018, 07:03 AM   #61
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Originally Posted by Bikewer View Post
I subscribe to a couple of neuroscience blogs, and though a mere layman I try to keep up with the ongoing research. The above ending statement “has failed so far” reminds me of the arguments Creationists put forward about Cosmology.
“You don’t know what caused the Singularity...So, God.”

“We don’t know...Yet.”

If you’re going to invoke some unspecified, non-physical (if such a thing is possible) “something” to explain consciousness...How about a model, at least? Or better, some evidence.
All the evidence points to the “emergent property” of the complex interactions of the brain.
"On the issue of brain, I defend materialism because I believe it is sufficiently demonstrated that mental phenomena do not occur without movement in the brain and that many mental acts can be caused by brain alterations. It seems to me more than reasonable to think that there is a causal relationship between brain and mind globally and that is under this assumption how neuroscience and experimental psychology progress".

Does this sound like creationism to you? I don't think so. No way.

From time to time I also read articles about how the brain works Do you know of any article that can explain a complex behavioral trait in terms of physics and chemistry alone? I'm not.
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Old 14th May 2018, 07:22 AM   #62
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Originally Posted by Scorpion View Post
As far as I know, all the years of research have not yet shown how we are conscious. So the question of whether the mind is caused by the brain ,or if the mind simply uses the brain is still up for grabs.
My brain is a radio....whoa a oh....

(Sung to the tune of I'm on a Mexican radio)
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Old 14th May 2018, 07:41 AM   #63
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
There are essentially three different types of reality we can choose from: physicalism, dualism, and idealism. If one were unsure about how reality really is, one would assign a 1/3 chance to each one. If one of those types (e.g., materialism/physicalism) were discredited, the other two types would both benefit, epistemologically speaking.
Odd logic!

I have a jar full of marbles, each colored red, green or blue. I draw one out. Is the probably of it being each color 1/3 or have I not given you sufficient information to make that determination?
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Old 14th May 2018, 08:08 AM   #64
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Let's see: has anyone mentioned the corpus callosum and split brains yet? You sever the connecting material between the two halves of the brain and you get 2 separate people.

As regards the need to have a separate vocabulary of psychology, of course we do. Just like we have separate vocabularies for software and hardware. I am not discussing with my colleague why address location xyz is populated with the bits 0101000111... I am discussing why we may be using the wrong garbage collector for this hashmap.
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Old 14th May 2018, 09:10 AM   #65
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
And yet, dreams are surprisingly realistic. As are mirages. There's a lesson to be learned there: things are not always as they seem.
Er... Excuse me but can I remind you that for some of us dreams are not realistic at all never mind surprisingly so! Remember I do not "see" anything in my minds eye, I can't conjure up an "image" of my loved ones when I close my eyes, I only "experience" red when I am looking at something that is red.
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Old 14th May 2018, 09:11 AM   #66
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
There are essentially three different types of reality we can choose from: physicalism, dualism, and idealism. If one were unsure about how reality really is, one would assign a 1/3 chance to each one. If one of those types (e.g., materialism/physicalism) were discredited, the other two types would both benefit, epistemologically speaking.
Why is reality beholden to your understanding?
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Old 14th May 2018, 10:27 AM   #67
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Originally Posted by Myriad View Post
The subjective experience of drinking dream water while in a dream doesn't alleviate my subjective experience of thirst. Not even within the dream, let alone after I've woken up. The subjective experience of drinking mirage water is even less effective at alleviating my subjective experience of thirst, because no subjective experience of actually reaching close enough to the mirage water to drink it ever happens.

So, let's recap my (and I'm pretty certain yours as well) experiences here:

The experience of drinking water that I concentrate intently upon visualizing in my mind -- does not alleviate my experience of thirst
The experience of drinking water that appears to be present in a mirage -- does not happen, hence does not alleviate my experience of thirst
The experience of drinking water that I dream about -- does not alleviate my experience of thirst
The experience of drinking water that I experience as coming out of a faucet or from a bottle at hand whilst awake -- does alleviate my experience of thirst

What special quality does the fourth kind of water have, that the other three lack? I say that it's because it's actual physical stuff, thirst is the experience of lacking that actual physical stuff, and providing said actual physical stuff (and only that) alleviates it. That seems a really really good and well-founded explanation to me.

Your hypothesis that physical stuff doesn't exist is incompatible with that explanation. So what alternative explanation do you offer for the differences in the experiences I've described?
Your first 3 'waters' are the idea of water, the 4th kind of water is the actual experience of water. Idealism does not deny the significance of experience - the exact opposite, it enforces the consequences of occurrences in consciousness. Your examples add credence to Idealism not Physicalism.
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Old 14th May 2018, 10:48 AM   #68
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Well, might as well go to the root of the whole nonsense.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
There are essentially three different types of reality we can choose from: physicalism, dualism, and idealism. If one were unsure about how reality really is, one would assign a 1/3 chance to each one. If one of those types (e.g., materialism/physicalism) were discredited, the other two types would both benefit, epistemologically speaking.
One would assume 1/3 chance only if one is stonking stupid. Either by nature, or wilfully because of religion.

The problem is that one explanation being so far incomplete, doesn't mean that the nonsense that doesn't explain ANYTHING (again, as in make any testable predictions) is even equally likely an explanation, much less become the MORE likely explanation.

E.g., if I were to not FULLY understand how a fridge works, but still had some indication that the motor and pipes are involved (e.g., if I reduce the current to the motor, it cools less), that is still indication that that explanation is the most promising. It's the one that explains something AT ALL. It being incomplete doesn't mean, yep, now the explanations with respectively fridge elves or fridge gnomes became MORE likely to be the current one. It needs a special kind of brain damage to even give elves and gnomes the same 1/3 chances as the theory that actually has any evidence at all, and doubly to claim that nah, if one doesn't explain EVERYTHING then it just became more likely that it's one of those that explain NOTHING.

At the end of the day the explanations based on fridge elves or gnomes doesn't explain ANYTHING. There are no equations I can write that say how much more elves do I need space for, if I want to turn it into a freezer. The ONLY real explanations I have, incomplete as they may or may not be, are STILL from the engineering explanation. The elves or gnomes are just extra entities that doesn't bring any extra actual understanding to the table.

Ditto for the brain, or anything else. No matter the domain, the very idea that if one explanation doesn't explain EVERYTHING to you, then somehow the dumbassery that adds exactly NOTHING to that becomes more likely, is just amazingly stupid.
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Old 14th May 2018, 11:08 AM   #69
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
Your first 3 'waters' are the idea of water, the 4th kind of water is the actual experience of water. Idealism does not deny the significance of experience - the exact opposite, it enforces the consequences of occurrences in consciousness. Your examples add credence to Idealism not Physicalism.
(highlight added)

All four of my examples are subjective experiences of water.

If there is no physical stuff as Fudbucker hypothesizes, then all four of my examples of experiences of water must be experiences of some nonphysical idea of water.

The modifier "actual" that you snuck in there as highlighted above cannot have its typical meaning in idealism. "Actual" typically means physically real rather than just subjectively experienced, but idealism explicitly denies any such distinction. As an explanation of why some experiences of water alleviate my experience of thirst and others do not, within the postulates of idealism, your "actual" begs the question. We can rephrase the question as: what's the difference between "actual" and otherwise, when they're clearly all experiences, and if no physical stuff exists?

The original question itself still stands as well. How does idealism explain why the experience of drinking water in a dream does not diminish the experience of thirst (even in the dream), but the experience of drinking water when awake does?
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Old 14th May 2018, 11:17 AM   #70
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
There are essentially three different types of reality we can choose from: physicalism, dualism, and idealism. If one were unsure about how reality really is, one would assign a 1/3 chance to each one. If one of those types (e.g., materialism/physicalism) were discredited, the other two types would both benefit, epistemologically speaking.
That sort of leaves out naturalism
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Old 14th May 2018, 01:26 PM   #71
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Originally Posted by jrhowell View Post
Odd logic!

I have a jar full of marbles, each colored red, green or blue. I draw one out. Is the probably of it being each color 1/3 or have I not given you sufficient information to make that determination?
Not the correct analogy: You have a jar with one marble. You know it can be red, blue or green. Without knowing anything else about the marble, the odds of it being any of those specific colors are 1/3. If you learn that it can't be red, the odds of it being, say, blue jump to 1/2.
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Old 14th May 2018, 01:28 PM   #72
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Originally Posted by Dancing David View Post
That sort of leaves out naturalism
How are you using the term? Without looking it up, I believe it's epistemological, not metaphysical.
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Old 14th May 2018, 01:37 PM   #73
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Not the correct analogy: You have a jar with one marble. You know it can be red, blue or green. Without knowing anything else about the marble, the odds of it being any of those specific colors are 1/3. If you learn that it can't be red, the odds of it being, say, blue jump to 1/2.
Here is a refinement of your analogy. There is only one marble in the jar: red, green, or blue. The only marble factory actually known to exist produces only blue marbles. What is the probability of each color?


Added: Here is another example. When you die you either go to Heaven, go to Hell, go to Valhalla, are reincarnated or cease to exist. Does that mean the probability of an afterlife is 4/5?

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Old 14th May 2018, 01:39 PM   #74
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Indeed. The whole notion that you could just randomly pick any explan... err... marble, is nuts.
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Old 14th May 2018, 02:07 PM   #75
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Originally Posted by Myriad View Post
(highlight added)

All four of my examples are subjective experiences of water.
No they are not, the first three are experiences of the idea of water . . . enjoying the memory of your Grandmother is not the same as actually seeing your Grandmother, it's not a subjective experience of your Grandmother.
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Old 14th May 2018, 02:43 PM   #76
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Originally Posted by barehl View Post
This hasn't been my experience here. I would say that public demonstration of belonging to a group is often the most important thing.
Then I'm afraid you've kind of missed the point. Check any gun thread - we disagree with each other more often than you realise.
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Old 14th May 2018, 03:09 PM   #77
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
No they are not, the first three are experiences of the idea of water . . . enjoying the memory of your Grandmother is not the same as actually seeing your Grandmother, it's not a subjective experience of your Grandmother.

Again, we're talking about idealism as advocated by Fudbucker, which holds that there is no material water, and hence, ideas of water are the only water that exists.

Please explain the difference between experiencing an idea of water that seems like actual water and causes the experience of making one less thirsty after experiencing drinking it, and experiencing an idea of water that does not. If we admit materialism or dualism, we can say that the former is real material water and the latter is not, which seems like a very good explanation. But under idealism, we can't say that. So how do we explain the difference then?
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Old 14th May 2018, 03:16 PM   #78
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
No they are not, the first three are experiences of the idea of water . . . enjoying the memory of your Grandmother is not the same as actually seeing your Grandmother, it's not a subjective experience of your Grandmother.

If no physical stuff exists, then what am I seeing when I see my grandmother? I think I'm seeing her skin, her hair, her clothes, her glasses... but that's because I'm just a naive deluded materialist making the assumption that Fudbucker rejects, that such physical stuff exists.

What is "actual" about seeing that physical stuff if it doesn't actually exist?
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Old 14th May 2018, 04:56 PM   #79
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Originally Posted by Myriad View Post
If no physical stuff exists, then what am I seeing when I see my grandmother? I think I'm seeing her skin, her hair, her clothes, her glasses... but that's because I'm just a naive deluded materialist making the assumption that Fudbucker rejects, that such physical stuff exists.

What is "actual" about seeing that physical stuff if it doesn't actually exist?
There is sensory-input (the information that your senses convey to you) and there is also the thing causing the input. The two are not the same. The sensory input of seeing your grandma can be caused countless way: you could be in a simulation, your grandmother could physically exist, you could be a brain-in-a-vat being "fed" experience, you could be in a dream, you could be hallucinating a person that doesn't even exist, an evil demon can be messing with your mind, etc.

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Old 14th May 2018, 05:41 PM   #80
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
There is sensory-input (the information that your senses convey to you) and there is also the thing causing the input. The two are not the same. The sensory input of seeing your grandma can be caused countless way: you could be in a simulation, your grandmother could physically exist, you could be a brain-in-a-vat being "fed" experience, you could be in a dream, you could be hallucinating a person that doesn't even exist, an evil demon can be messing with your mind, etc.

LarryS mentioned "actually seeing [my] grandmother" in contrast to enjoying the memory of my grandmother that in his opinion did not constitute such. Can you enumerate which of the possibilities listed above constitute "actually seeing [my] grandmother" and which do not?

You and he seem to be in profound disagreement about this. Please answer my questions about water, if you wish to help clarify both your positions.
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