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Old 14th May 2018, 06:50 PM   #81
LarryS
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Originally Posted by Myriad View Post
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.
I will discontinue use of ‘actual’ and differentiate them as experiencing an idea of a tree, or a memory of a tree, vs, the perception of a tree. You seem to be claiming that idealism means content does not matter, or there’s no difference between experiencing an idea of a tree and the perception of a tree. I’m not aware of any such branch of idealism (Plato’s cave?). I would agree with Fudbucker that adding the speculation of a physical world does not solve more problems than it creates.
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Old 15th May 2018, 12:05 AM   #82
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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.
Isn't this supporting Myriad? You seem to be saying there is no way to distinguish between the extended and unextended (to use Cartesian terms) which is rather his question.

Ultimately idealist philosophies tend to fall apart for me when we come to what I think of as the "transactional mechanism" (please tell me if there's an established term). For example K throws me a ball, I see the ball and catch it. I have the experience of seeing the throw, the ball, feeling the catch. K feels the throw, sees the ball and the catch. What is the mechanism that carries the "idea of the ball" (for want of a better term) between us?
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Old 15th May 2018, 12:08 AM   #83
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Originally Posted by Wudang View Post
(for want of a better term)
Qualia. The term you are looking for is qualia.
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Old 15th May 2018, 12:24 AM   #84
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I will also reiterate my point that if it works by rules that you can't bend, it's ultimately irrelevant to go "but it could be just a dream or a hallucination".

If in this idealism wonderland instead of throwing a baseball at you, I throw a boomerang at your head, it will still hurt like hell and possibly put you in the hospital if you don't get out of the way.

If in this idealism wonderland I buy shoes based on just random guess instead of doing the scientific thing of testing my prediction by trying them on, they still might hurt like hell and limit my mobility.

If in this idealism wonderland you get AIDS, you are still reliant on the science of medicine and organic chemistry to survive. And the explanation for all practical purposes is still that certain molecules interact in predictable ways with other molecules.

If in this dream gravity always is F=GMm/r2 and centripetal force is F=mv2/r, then that's what you must calculate to put a satellite up in geostationary orbit. That is what explains the orbit. (As in, makes testable predictions.)

That is your "reality." It doesn't matter if happens because it's actual physics, or your brain is really OCD and constantly calculates the forces according to rules when you sleep, or an OCD demon is messing with you, or it's a simulation, or whatever other red herring. As long as you can't actually prove that you can bend the rules, then those rules apply and are the explanation for any particular phenomenon or interaction.

Basically the only epistemology that works is the same, regardless of whether what we call reality is simulated or a dream or what.

Using the idealism as an excuse to believe magical BS is still bloody stupid, unless one can show that one can actually do such magic. Idealism is not an excuse for anti-intellectualism dumbassery.
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Old 15th May 2018, 01:17 AM   #85
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Originally Posted by arthwollipot View Post
Qualia. The term you are looking for is qualia.
I may not have been clear. Unless I have misunderstood qualia refers to an individuals experience. What I'm referring to is the sharing of timebound experience. Someone throws a ball at the back of my head. What is the mechanism that links his (perceived) throwing of a (perceived) ball at the back of my head to my experiencing a whack on the back of my head? Why do I have no perception of the ball until it hits?
Given such a mechanism why does this mechanism display all the characteristics of the physical? Why is it bound by time and space?

This usually leads off into solipsism or on one occasion "Electron as atman. That's as well as I can put it."
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Old 15th May 2018, 07:35 AM   #86
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
I will discontinue use of ‘actual’ and differentiate them as experiencing an idea of a tree, or a memory of a tree, vs, the perception of a tree. You seem to be claiming that idealism means content does not matter, or there’s no difference between experiencing an idea of a tree and the perception of a tree. I’m not aware of any such branch of idealism (Plato’s cave?). I would agree with Fudbucker that adding the speculation of a physical world does not solve more problems than it creates.

You and Fudbucker also appear to agree that neither of you want to talk about water. "Hey, let's talk about your grandmother instead. Or a tree." No, thank you.

That's because neither of you can offer a coherent explanation of why the experience of drinking water, but only water that is experienced as having some additional unexplained special status that you want to call "actual" but don't want to call "physical," reliably affects ones subsequent experience of thirst.

If we were talking about a simulation, we could perhaps distinguish between "water that the simulation has flagged as thirst-quenching" and water that is not. On further examination we also find that the very same water that's flagged as thirst-quenching is invariably also flagged as making-your-hair-wet and dissolving-salt and never-suddenly-turning-into-your-grandmother and a million other properties that the water experienced in memory and the water experienced in dreams and the water experienced in hallucinations doesn't have. So there's some general quality involved.

So even if nothing exists except experiences in the mind, we experience that some things in some experiences in the mind are distinctly more "actual" than others. (We can call this "actuality" or "content instead of non-content" or perhaps "fixed in the mind of God," as long as we don't call it "physical.")

There are ideas that are memory-experienced, hallucination-experienced, dream-experienced, imagination-experienced, and so forth. But actual-experienced ideas are fundamentally different from all of those. Actual-experienced drinking of actual-experienced water has effects on subsequent experience of thirst that other kinds of experienced ideas of water do not.

Actual-experienced ideas and non-actual-experienced ideas.

Your idealism has turned out to be dualism.
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Old 15th May 2018, 08:19 AM   #87
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Whatever the actual reality is, we experience things directly as purely materialistic. There is no evidence that there is a "thinking" entity that is separate from the "acting" entity. Now, for sure, it's possible that I have a soul that is separate from my body, but practically speaking, I have no access to that separate soul whatsoever. Nobody in history has ever demonstrated that they have access to their soul or that the concept is even remotely true. So if the concept of a soul cannot be demonstrated and has no practical effect on my interaction with reality, of what use is the concept?

Everything we know about the human mind shows us how easily our thinking and emotions can be changed by chemically and physically altering the brain. Give me more dopamine; I think, feel and act X. Give me more serotonin; I think feel and act Y. Give me lysergic acid diethylamide; whoo boy . . .

I am only concerned with what creates actual change in the reality I am experiencing; when I'm thirsty, I want something that quenches that thirst. The concept of duality does not help me create change in the reality I am perceiving; therefore, it seems irrelevant. What do I gain by having a dualistic philosophy?
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Old 15th May 2018, 09:57 AM   #88
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Originally Posted by HansMustermann View Post
I will also reiterate my point that if it works by rules that you can't bend, it's ultimately irrelevant to go "but it could be just a dream or a hallucination".

If in this idealism wonderland instead of throwing a baseball at you, I throw a boomerang at your head, it will still hurt like hell and possibly put you in the hospital if you don't get out of the way.

If in this idealism wonderland I buy shoes based on just random guess instead of doing the scientific thing of testing my prediction by trying them on, they still might hurt like hell and limit my mobility.

If in this idealism wonderland you get AIDS, you are still reliant on the science of medicine and organic chemistry to survive. And the explanation for all practical purposes is still that certain molecules interact in predictable ways with other molecules.

If in this dream gravity always is F=GMm/r2 and centripetal force is F=mv2/r, then that's what you must calculate to put a satellite up in geostationary orbit. That is what explains the orbit. (As in, makes testable predictions.)

That is your "reality." It doesn't matter if happens because it's actual physics, or your brain is really OCD and constantly calculates the forces according to rules when you sleep, or an OCD demon is messing with you, or it's a simulation, or whatever other red herring. As long as you can't actually prove that you can bend the rules, then those rules apply and are the explanation for any particular phenomenon or interaction.

Basically the only epistemology that works is the same, regardless of whether what we call reality is simulated or a dream or what.

Using the idealism as an excuse to believe magical BS is still bloody stupid, unless one can show that one can actually do such magic. Idealism is not an excuse for anti-intellectualism dumbassery.
Again, your boomerang and other examples reinforce / support Idealism: what we know we know from experience, and experience occurs in the mind. Sitting where you are right now, there is nothing you can see, touch, taste, etc. that is outside your mind.
And to claim there is a physical material world is a belief - there is no evidence for such a belief.
You can not, nor can any one produce one single morsel of this stuff called matter.
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Old 15th May 2018, 10:17 AM   #89
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Originally Posted by Wudang View Post
Isn't this supporting Myriad? You seem to be saying there is no way to distinguish between the extended and unextended (to use Cartesian terms) which is rather his question.

Ultimately idealist philosophies tend to fall apart for me when we come to what I think of as the "transactional mechanism" (please tell me if there's an established term). For example K throws me a ball, I see the ball and catch it. I have the experience of seeing the throw, the ball, feeling the catch. K feels the throw, sees the ball and the catch. What is the mechanism that carries the "idea of the ball" (for want of a better term) between us?
Right. There's the rub with idealism: what keeps everything coherent between all of us? If this is a dream, it's extremely orderly and regular- it seems to behave by certain natural laws, objects when thrown continue on, things don't seem to disappear when we're not looking, etc.

There are a couple ways people have answered that: Berkeley thought we were all ideas in God's mind and He kept things nice and orderly. Other belief systems posit some unconscious coordination between everyone so we're all experiencing the same dream, and of course there's good old-fashioned solipsism: you're the only person in existence, dreaming all this up.
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Old 15th May 2018, 10:49 AM   #90
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
Again, your boomerang and other examples reinforce / support Idealism: what we know we know from experience, and experience occurs in the mind. Sitting where you are right now, there is nothing you can see, touch, taste, etc. that is outside your mind.
And to claim there is a physical material world is a belief - there is no evidence for such a belief.
You can not, nor can any one produce one single morsel of this stuff called matter.
What I was saying is more like I do not need to. In fact, I don't even need to know if it's really real or a really consistent hallucination or what.

In fact, in case someone missed me saying that several times before, I work by rather simplified definition of reality. And it might sound pithy, but I take it very seriously: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." (Cf, Philip K Dick)

In the end the same applies anyway. Whether you're the one guy dreaming it up, or it's a shared dream, or God dreaming it up, or we're all Sims in a simulation, or what, the same applies:

There are entities, properties, effects and interactions that don't actually go away if you stop believing in them. If you close your eyes while running at a wall, and disbelieve real hard that the wall is there, you still hit it. If you fall into a lake and disbelieve in the water or in your need for air, you still drown. If you drink a glass of hemlock like Socrates and disbelieve really hard, you still die.

It doesn't actually MATTER if it's all in your head or not. Just that some parts in your head behave according to rules that you can't influence, and some don't. That's the only difference that I need.

I don't even know why you can't influence them. For all I care, your brain could just be OCD about simulating and enforcing some rules about this dream you're dreaming. Or whatever. But the fact is that you can't change some rules.

If you drop a lead ball from 9.8m (about 32ft or so), it will still hit the ground in 2 seconds or so. If you make a cube with 1m sides, if it's lighter than a ton, it floats in (pure) water, if it's heavier, it sinks. Water still freezes at 0C and boils at 100C. Etc. There's a part of the dream that has RULES. Again, I don't care WHY it has them. For this exercise, I care only that it does.

What matters is: it doesn't matter if you really believe in those rules or not. They continue to apply in this hallucination of yours anyway.

And that is what I call the "real" part of it. You can consider "real" and "imaginary" here in the same sense as in complex numbers, if it makes easier to swallow. Just things along one axis behave different from things on the other one.

Can we agree on the premise for this exercise so far?

Well, then I put it to you that if that part exists, that is driven by rules, you'd still be wise to learn those rules.

I put it to you, that if you can't influence that gravity is F=GMm/r2 and centripetal force is F=mω2r, then you still have to calculate those if you want to put a satellite into geosynchronous orbit. By substituting ω with the same 7.2*10-5 rad/s value.

And you'd be smart to learn and TEST those rules, so you can do stuff like that.

And that within that part of the dream that works according to rules, those rules are what explains sufficiently why stuff happens. E.g., if a satellite stays in a geosynchronous orbit, the sufficient explanation is that F=GMm/r2 and centripetal force is F=mω2r, and they're equal for ω=7.2*10-5 rad/s

Going, "yeah, but it could be a dream" is just a red herring, if you can't influence that dream. Essentially, even if you take it to extremes like solipsism, taking it as an excuse for anti-intellectualism and magical thinking -- which, sadly, a lot of people seem to do -- is still stupid.
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Old 15th May 2018, 12:45 PM   #91
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
Again, your boomerang and other examples reinforce / support Idealism: what we know we know from experience, and experience occurs in the mind. Sitting where you are right now, there is nothing you can see, touch, taste, etc. that is outside your mind.

And to claim there is a physical material world is a belief - there is no evidence for such a belief.
You can not, nor can any one produce one single morsel of this stuff called matter.

All completely wrong and untrue, as has been shown to you and explained to you in many threads here before (where you made exactly the same word-for-word claims).

First you say "Sitting where you are right now, there is nothing you can see, touch, taste, etc. that is outside your mind" - that is a statement presented as absolute fact claiming that everything IS definitely only in your mind. You are not for example saying "perhaps all of that is just in your mind and perhaps there are actually no such things outside of your mind" ... on the contrary, you are presenting it as a statement of absolute incontrovertible fact claiming that "nothing is outside of your mind" ... OK, well how do you know that is a fact? ...

... please prove what you just said; please prove that "nothing exists outside of your mind".


Once you provide that absolute proof, then we can go on to your next two completely untrue erroneous claims where you just claimed (2) "And to claim there is a physical material world is a belief - there is no evidence for such a belief", and (3) "You can not, nor can any one produce one single morsel of this stuff called matter". You will have to show absolute proof for those two claims as well ("matter" is just a word used to describe certain things ... such as the Moon ... you are claiming that there is no evidence of the moon existing … how did you prove that the Moon does not exist?).

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Old 15th May 2018, 01:40 PM   #92
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If you don't accept reality as real you revoke your right to argue with any part of it, which includes other people.
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Old 15th May 2018, 01:43 PM   #93
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"I am a solipsist. Why aren't more people?"
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Old 15th May 2018, 01:55 PM   #94
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Originally Posted by Wudang View Post
"I am a solipsist. Why aren't more people?"
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Old 15th May 2018, 01:55 PM   #95
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I mean seriously you don't get to call somebody else nothing but a shadow on the wall of Plato's cave and then get huffy that they don't see you as worth talking to at that point.
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Old 15th May 2018, 02:14 PM   #96
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Originally Posted by JoeMorgue View Post
I mean seriously you don't get to call somebody else nothing but the a shadow on the wall of Plato's cave and then get huffy that they don't see you as worth talking to at that point.
Very true, I can't count the number of fights that have kicked off that way in my local.
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Old 15th May 2018, 04:10 PM   #97
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Pfft, some of my best debates are with figments of my own imagination
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Old 15th May 2018, 11:50 PM   #98
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
Sitting where you are right now, there is nothing you can see, touch, taste, etc. that is outside your mind.
Everything that we experience (save for our own thoughts, et cetera) is "outside the mind" in every coherent sense of the term. The external world does not behave in any respect as though it is internal. Attempting to assert "well it still could be" is just semantic nonsense.

At absolute best, your position boils down to playing word games.

This has been explained to you many times in many threads.

Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
And to claim there is a physical material world is a belief - there is no evidence for such a belief.
Save for everything ever experienced by anyone, ever.
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Old 16th May 2018, 01:56 AM   #99
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Out of body experiences are canditates for evidence for the separation between mind and body.
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'Where' is the image in the mind? What 'space' is the image in your mind in? Where is the dream? Where is your inner voice? It's not the same spacetime then where the electrical and chemical pulses are in the brain, causing this image or the dream. The image you see in your mind's eye is in a completely different dimension than where the chemistry in the brain is. (Maarten Vergucht)
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Old 16th May 2018, 02:05 AM   #100
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Originally Posted by Maartenn100 View Post
Out of body experiences are canditates for evidence for the separation between mind and body.
Objection. Assumes facts, not in evidence
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Old 16th May 2018, 02:07 AM   #101
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Originally Posted by Maartenn100 View Post
Out of body experiences are canditates for evidence for the separation between mind and body.
Of course they would be, if there was any evidence for actual "out of body experiences".
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Old 16th May 2018, 02:54 AM   #102
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Originally Posted by Wudang View Post
Isn't this supporting Myriad? You seem to be saying there is no way to distinguish between the extended and unextended (to use Cartesian terms) which is rather his question.

Ultimately idealist philosophies tend to fall apart for me when we come to what I think of as the "transactional mechanism" (please tell me if there's an established term). For example K throws me a ball, I see the ball and catch it. I have the experience of seeing the throw, the ball, feeling the catch. K feels the throw, sees the ball and the catch. What is the mechanism that carries the "idea of the ball" (for want of a better term) between us?
And does this mean that professional baseball players are just better at imagining that they're throwing or catching a ball?
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Old 16th May 2018, 09:23 AM   #103
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Originally Posted by IanS View Post
All completely wrong and untrue, as has been shown to you and explained to you in many threads here before (where you made exactly the same word-for-word claims).

First you say "Sitting where you are right now, there is nothing you can see, touch, taste, etc. that is outside your mind" - that is a statement presented as absolute fact claiming that everything IS definitely only in your mind. You are not for example saying "perhaps all of that is just in your mind and perhaps there are actually no such things outside of your mind" ... on the contrary, you are presenting it as a statement of absolute incontrovertible fact claiming that "nothing is outside of your mind" ... OK, well how do you know that is a fact? ...

... please prove what you just said; please prove that "nothing exists outside of your mind".


Once you provide that absolute proof, then we can go on to your next two completely untrue erroneous claims where you just claimed (2) "And to claim there is a physical material world is a belief - there is no evidence for such a belief", and (3) "You can not, nor can any one produce one single morsel of this stuff called matter". You will have to show absolute proof for those two claims as well ("matter" is just a word used to describe certain things ... such as the Moon ... you are claiming that there is no evidence of the moon existing … how did you prove that the Moon does not exist?).
this is something you can easily prove to yourself right now: touch or point to anything outside your mind.
You can't do it - because everything you see, touch, etc. lies within your experience. You can't see, touch, etc. anything outside of experience.
This is what is meant by: Materialism is a belief.
I'm not suggesting that Materialism is an unjustified or incorrect belief, but it is a belief.
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Old 16th May 2018, 09:32 AM   #104
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And this is what "Materialism" has turned into. An attempt to paint a base acceptance of an objective reality as "just another way of looking at the world" that a person has to defend whenever somebody demands it and it always manifest as an escape clause for Woo.

If you think you are your own personal Lathe of Heaven for whom the entire universe exists within their head, fine. It's a pointless, unfalsifiable, distinction without difference but fine it is as unprovable as the alternative.

But this isn't opinion you can only invoke when one of the big mean skeptics asks for some evidence or wants to have discuss your cherished Woo in an objective format.
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Old 16th May 2018, 09:48 AM   #105
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
this is something you can easily prove to yourself right now: touch or point to anything outside your mind.
You can't do it - because everything you see, touch, etc. lies within your experience. You can't see, touch, etc. anything outside of experience.
This is what is meant by: Materialism is a belief.
I'm not suggesting that Materialism is an unjustified or incorrect belief, but it is a belief.
If it is a belief, then it is the most well-supported belief in the history of beliefs. It is how everyone of us actually experiences the world, regardless of whether or not our experience reflects the Ultimate Reality.

But I wouldn't call it a belief, I would call it a theory on a par with relativity, evolution, etc. Sure, we don't have all the answers, but given the evidence, the theory is well-supported.
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Old 16th May 2018, 10:14 AM   #106
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Originally Posted by xjx388 View Post
If it is a belief, then it is the most well-supported belief in the history of beliefs. It is how everyone of us actually experiences the world, regardless of whether or not our experience reflects the Ultimate Reality.

But I wouldn't call it a belief, I would call it a theory on a par with relativity, evolution, etc. Sure, we don't have all the answers, but given the evidence, the theory is well-supported.
Agreed, it works. The belief in a flat-earth also works for 99.999% of what we do as human beings.
BTW, I doubt that most folks who believe and accept Materialism as their belief, actually live that way. It's not much fun to live as a separate unit of consciousness, as a running calculation inside one's skull. Most live and strive for intimate experience and being connected.
Materialism & Idealism, these are beliefs, which we can try on and see what fits, depending on the task or situation.
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Old 16th May 2018, 10:27 AM   #107
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
this is something you can easily prove to yourself right now: touch or point to anything outside your mind.
You can't do it - because everything you see, touch, etc. lies within your experience. You can't see, touch, etc. anything outside of experience.
This is what is meant by: Materialism is a belief.
I'm not suggesting that Materialism is an unjustified or incorrect belief, but it is a belief.

But I don't have to point to anything outside my mind for evidence of materialism.

I experience using a key to unlock my front door, which I then open and can pass through. I experience that if the door is locked and I don't have the key, I cannot unlock, open, or pass through the door, no matter how much I want to. I experience the key being in one place only at a given time, and if the place I experience the key being in (perhaps by seeing it through a window, or by remembering where I carelessly left it) is not the place I'm experiencing being in myself outside my locked front door, I cannot experience using the key to experience unlocking the door. I experience all attempts to wish the key into my hand or wish the door to be unlocked or wish myself to the other side of the door using the vast experience-shaping powers of my mind as failing utterly.

I experience talking to others who tell me of experiencing the very same things.

This is a consistent pattern in my experience, which is reinforced by myriad other patterns of equal or greater consistency and equal or greater import to the content of my experience. This pattern is strong and sufficient evidence that the key, the lock, the door, and myself exist under constraints such as ontological inertia and location-specificity. So far, the best explanation of those well-evidenced patterns and constraints is material existence. That physical stuff exists is not an assumption I'm starting with; it's a conclusion I'm led to by my experiences.

Note that the patterns in my experiences are also experiences within my own mind, so no my evidence for materialism is not coming from outside my own mind at all! That's a mistaken conjecture on your part, which I hope you'll retract.

"Belief" in the overwhelmingly best available explanation for my experiences is justified. You have made no effort to offer a better one.
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Old 16th May 2018, 11:48 AM   #108
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Originally Posted by Wudang View Post
Objection. Assumes facts, not in evidence
There is no debate that people experience the feeling of being out of their bodies (and a whole host of other experiences near death). The question (which Larry and I have been trying to explain) is whether those experiences, which occur in the mind (where, necessarily, every experience occurs), are reflective of reality.

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Old 16th May 2018, 11:49 AM   #109
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
this is something you can easily prove to yourself right now: touch or point to anything outside your mind.
You can't do it - because everything you see, touch, etc. lies within your experience. You can't see, touch, etc. anything outside of experience.
This is what is meant by: Materialism is a belief.
I'm not suggesting that Materialism is an unjustified or incorrect belief, but it is a belief.
This is, of course, an elementary point, and the fact that people aren't getting it...
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Old 16th May 2018, 12:01 PM   #110
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Originally Posted by Maartenn100 View Post
Out of body experiences are canditates for evidence for the separation between mind and body.
No.

Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
this is something you can easily prove to yourself right now: touch or point to anything outside your mind.
I can point to literally any object currently in my field of vision and accomplish this task, as these objects possess no traits which fit the definition of "inside my mind" and all of the traits that fit the definition of "outside my mind".

Again, your entire argument boils down to word games.

Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
This is what is meant by: Materialism is a belief.
True.

It also happens to be a demonstrably correct one.

Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
I'm not suggesting that Materialism is an unjustified or incorrect belief, but it is a belief.
Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
And to claim there is a physical material world is a belief - there is no evidence for such a belief.
Bolding mine. You are very much arguing that materialism is an unjustified position. You are also failing to prove this.

Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
BTW, I doubt that most folks who believe and accept Materialism as their belief, actually live that way.
Live what way? As though they are an entity in a material universe that actually possesses external existence? Everyone lives that way. What do you think materialism is?

Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
Materialism & Idealism, these are beliefs, which we can try on and see what fits, depending on the task or situation.
There is no situation that fits idealism, because idealism is incoherent.
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Old 16th May 2018, 12:04 PM   #111
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
There is no debate that people experience the feeling of being out of their bodies (and a whole host of other experiences near death). The question (which Larry and I have been trying to explain) is whether those experiences, which occur in the mind (where, necessarily, every experience occurs), are reflective of reality.
And the answer is no.
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Old 16th May 2018, 12:32 PM   #112
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Originally Posted by LarryS View Post
this is something you can easily prove to yourself right now: touch or point to anything outside your mind.
You can't do it - because everything you see, touch, etc. lies within your experience. You can't see, touch, etc. anything outside of experience.

This is what is meant by: Materialism is a belief.
I'm not suggesting that Materialism is an unjustified or incorrect belief, but it is a belief.

No! You are entirely wrong when you say "you cannot do it, you can't touch anything outside your mind" ... when you have the impression of touching any object, that may indeed be a real object outside of your "mind" ... whereas your statements are claiming that no such objects actually exist!

If you actually mean anything at all sensible by what you are saying, then the most you can actually say is "perhaps these things only exist in my mind". But what you certainly cannot say, is exactly what you just said (for the 50th time in various threads here), that no such object can have any existence except as a thought in your mind ... i.e. your statements are repeatedly claiming that no objects of any external reality actually exist! (that is a claim of "hard solipsism" by the way).

Your last sentence about beliefs in "materialism" is something very different, and not at all what you keep repeating in your other statement which I just addressed above (and in my previous reply/explanation).

If you insist on claiming "everything you see and touch lies within your experience mind", then you must produce an absolute proof showing that no real objects actually exist outside of your "mind"....

... where is your proof that objects only exist within the "experience" that you are calling the "mind"?
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Old 16th May 2018, 02:23 PM   #113
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Originally Posted by IanS View Post
If you insist on claiming "everything you see and touch lies within your experience mind", then you must produce an absolute proof showing that no real objects actually exist outside of your "mind"....

... where is your proof that objects only exist within the "experience" that you are calling the "mind"?
To be fair to Larry, I do think that this is a bit backwards. The initial burden of proof does, in fact, lie upon the materialist position. It's just that it meets that burden.

I've mentioned several times now that Larry's position comes down to nothing but word games, and I meant it. The materialist position is, at its core, extremely simple: something exists outside of our minds.

This is an assertion, and like all such assertions, it must meet the burden of proof. It just happens that the burden of proof is, in this case, trivially easy to meet.

Look around you at any object. Interact with it in any way that you see fit. Notice that, while you can touch, hear, taste, smell, and otherwise interact with that object, it doesn't have any direct means of interacting with your mind except through these senses. Likewise, it is not affected by mere thought, and its existence apparently persists when you stop thinking about it, as you can see by leaving the room for a while and then coming back.

"Internal with respect to the mind" and "external with respect to the mind" are not just labels that can be slapped onto objects without justification. They have meanings, and definitions, and requirements to meet those definitions.

Objects like your keyboard and mouse do not behave as though they are part of your mind. They do not meet the definition of "internal", because they do not behave in any respect as though they are internal. Therefore, they are labeled external, and materialism meets its burden of proof. It is no longer an assertion, but a conclusion, and one which is supported by literally everything that you experience.

Larry's brand of idealism relies on the idea that he can simply apply the label of "internal" to these objects anyway, and that this is sufficient to not only make idealism viable but to make materialism untenable. This is, of course, complete nonsense, since words have meanings and you can't just change them around like that.

At best, all Larry's position results in is the idea that "Okay, there are a bunch of things that act as though they're external, but we can't call them external because... because. So now we have to come up with a new word, but nothing about the objects and their behavior has actually changed."

It is semantic nonsense in its purest form.
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Old 16th May 2018, 04:03 PM   #114
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Originally Posted by Nonpareil View Post
To be fair to Larry, I do think that this is a bit backwards. The initial burden of proof does, in fact, lie upon the materialist position. It's just that it meets that burden.

I've mentioned several times now that Larry's position comes down to nothing but word games, and I meant it. The materialist position is, at its core, extremely simple: something exists outside of our minds.

This is an assertion, and like all such assertions, it must meet the burden of proof. It just happens that the burden of proof is, in this case, trivially easy to meet.

Look around you at any object. Interact with it in any way that you see fit. Notice that, while you can touch, hear, taste, smell, and otherwise interact with that object, it doesn't have any direct means of interacting with your mind except through these senses. Likewise, it is not affected by mere thought, and its existence apparently persists when you stop thinking about it, as you can see by leaving the room for a while and then coming back.

"Internal with respect to the mind" and "external with respect to the mind" are not just labels that can be slapped onto objects without justification. They have meanings, and definitions, and requirements to meet those definitions.

Objects like your keyboard and mouse do not behave as though they are part of your mind. They do not meet the definition of "internal", because they do not behave in any respect as though they are internal. Therefore, they are labeled external, and materialism meets its burden of proof. It is no longer an assertion, but a conclusion, and one which is supported by literally everything that you experience.

Larry's brand of idealism relies on the idea that he can simply apply the label of "internal" to these objects anyway, and that this is sufficient to not only make idealism viable but to make materialism untenable. This is, of course, complete nonsense, since words have meanings and you can't just change them around like that.

At best, all Larry's position results in is the idea that "Okay, there are a bunch of things that act as though they're external, but we can't call them external because... because. So now we have to come up with a new word, but nothing about the objects and their behavior has actually changed."

It is semantic nonsense in its purest form.
Putting that aside, materialism suffers from a catastrophic defect: it can't explain how consciousness arises from matter. Not only has it made no progress on this, the explanations that have been put forward collapse into absurdity: conscious collections of toilets, a guy moving rocks around simulating a universe of conscious beings, panpsychism, consciousness is an illusion, people who think they're actual p-zombies... and those are just the ones that come to mind. They all have their materialist adherents here (or used to) and elsewhere.

The idea that a collection of flushing toilets could be conscious is about the best reducto absurdum I've ever heard. Nobody in their right mind would entertain it, unless they were totally invested in materialism.
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Old 16th May 2018, 04:05 PM   #115
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Putting that aside, materialism suffers from a catastrophic defect: it can't explain how consciousness arises from matter.
Well that's not even close to be true.
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Old 16th May 2018, 04:39 PM   #116
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
The idea that a collection of flushing toilets could be conscious is about the best reducto absurdum I've ever heard. Nobody in their right mind would entertain it, unless they were totally invested in materialism.
Why the obsession with flushing toilets?

The basic idea is that consciousness is a complex process that can be carried out by a vast number of entities working together, each not conscious in their own right.

That doesn't seem absurd to me. No more than thinking that a huge number of individual transistors that can each only switch between off and on could be combined to form the computer I am using to type this.
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Old 16th May 2018, 04:42 PM   #117
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Originally Posted by JoeMorgue View Post
Well that's not even close to be true.
It is the truth, no one has even a wild guess how matter becomes conscious, how matter generates the first person experience. I don’t see this as a catastrophe or even a problem.
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Old 16th May 2018, 05:16 PM   #118
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Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
Putting that aside
Let's not, since it is rather important.

Originally Posted by Fudbucker View Post
materialism suffers from a catastrophic defect: it can't explain how consciousness arises from matter. Not only has it made no progress on this <snip>
This is factually incorrect. Even if it weren't, it would be irrelevant; materialism does not have to be able to explain the precise mechanism through which consciousness arises from matter in order to be demonstrably true.
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Old 16th May 2018, 07:47 PM   #119
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Originally Posted by Nonpareil View Post
This is factually incorrect. Even if it weren't, it would be irrelevant; materialism does not have to be able to explain the precise mechanism through which consciousness arises from matter in order to be demonstrably true.
Can you provide a link - or any reference to anyone with even a foggiest idea of how the brain generates consciousness?
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Old 16th May 2018, 07:49 PM   #120
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Originally Posted by Nonpareil View Post
Let's not, since it is rather important.
Not really. See the oft-repeated claim: "things are not always what they seem". The Earth is not flat, the sun does not revolve around the earth, etc. Assuming that something exists external to you because it seems that way is the same kind of shaky reasoning.


Quote:
This is factually incorrect.
Ah then, so you will provide some explanation as to how matter becomes conscious? I can't wait.

Quote:
Even if it weren't, it would be irrelevant; materialism does not have to be able to explain the precise mechanism through which consciousness arises from matter in order to be demonstrably true.
This would be true, except for the fact that proponents of materialism regale us with claims about how it explains so much! But in this one crucial area, it has consistently come up short.

And a system of conscious toilets? Seriously? Who's the woo peddler now?

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