I challenge you: your best argument for materialism

[Bernardo]

And, incidentally, "monistic Idealism" is a tautology. Idealism is, by definition, monistic.

I tend to agree, but since others didn't, I opted for potential redundancy.

I'd like to invite you to join my forum at:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!forum/metaphysical-speculations

 

[Bernardo]

From the blog:

So what we are dealing with here is the usual claim that everything is consciousness, but that some consciousness is not conscious and that non-conscious consciousness is observed by conscious consciousness.

You may also like this:

http://www.bernardokastrup.com/2014/09/in-defence-of-theology-reply-to-jerry.html

It is intentionally provocative (and it worked, for Jerry Coyne was all over it) by using the G-word, but it does address the specific point you refer to above.

 

[George]

Potential redundancy

Jesus Christ don't let Jabba see this.

 

[Bernardo]

Look, its pretty simple. I think everyone here has already agreed that it's impossible to prove that the universe is purely materialistic. We could exist in a universe that is actively trying to deceive us.

Was the Earth actively trying to deceive us by pretending to be flat?

Was the Sun actively trying to deceive us by pretending to move around the Earth?

Your statement is incredibly anthropocentric. It conflates nature with our own interpretations of nature.

 

[Spindrift]

How's this for your list?

The assumption that "Consciousness is the only carrier of reality anyone can ever know for sure; it is the one undeniable, empirical fact of existence." is false and has never been proven.

Any chance you'll address this?

 

[dlorde]

... My goal isn't to prove anything (that's for naive positivists), but to show that, as far as logic and empirical evidence go, monistic idealism is a far BETTER ontology than materialism.

Carry on, then. A little less procrastination, a little more action.

 

[Brian-M]

As some of you know, I think materialism is baloney.

Are you talking about philosophical materialism (also known as physicalism) or methodological materialism (also known as scientific materialism)?

From the context of the rest of your post, I assume you're referring to philosophical materialism.

I subscribe to the much more parsimonious and skeptical notion that reality is in a trans-personal form of consciousness, of which we are localizations -- like whirlpools in a stream. This ontology is often called monistic idealism.

I'm not sure you understand the concept of skeptisism. The actual skeptical notion would be to reject claims such as that "reality is in a trans-personal form of consciousness, of which we are localizations" without objectively verifiable evidence to support them.

can you come up with other, better arguments for materialism, beyond the ones I list below?

Yes. The complete and utter absence of verified objectively testable evidence that any aspect of reality exists without a material basis.

Nothing more is needed.

 

[PixyMisa]

Was the Earth actively trying to deceive us by pretending to be flat?

Was the Sun actively trying to deceive us by pretending to move around the Earth?

Your statement is incredibly anthropocentric. It conflates nature with our own interpretations of nature.

No.

 

[Brian-M]

The actual skeptical notion would be to reject claims such as that there is an entire universe (or multi-verse) fundamentally outside the only carrier of reality anyone can ever know for sure, which is conscious experience.

Can you define the phrase "carrier of reality" for us?
That term means nothing to me.

You're very mixed up. There is zero empirical evidence for anything fundamentally outside consciousness.

Possibly you could define consciousness for as too, because I'm pretty sure that you're using the term to mean somthing different from the way I use it.

As I understand it, consciousness is a state of awareness. Are you claiming that there's zero evidence that things exist during the times that we aren't aware of their existence?

A world outside consciousness is a logical inference, not an observation.

An inference based on observation.

The way to try to defeat idealism is by undermining its explanatory power, not by making claims about proof which materialism itself cannot live up to. If idealism has the same explanatory power as materialism, it wins on grounds of parsimony alone.

So, does your idealism provide an equivalent explanation for the apparent existence of physical particles of matter that seem to exist independantly of us that is more parsimonious than the materialistic explaination that there actually are physical particles of matter that actually do exist independantly of us?

 

[ufology]

As some of you know, I think materialism is baloney. I subscribe to the much more parsimonious and skeptical notion that reality is in a trans-personal form of consciousness, of which we are localizations -- like whirlpools in a stream. This ontology is often called monistic idealism ...

Any philosophical position, including Idealism, that asserts that reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, is accurate to the extent that we have no other way of knowing anything. So your argument is coherent within the context in which it is formed, which is entirely subjective. For convenience we'll call this situation "subjective reality". As a consequence, contrary to what your challenge seems to suggest, the idealist cannot possibly form any refutation for the state existence that applies to things that exist beyond one's mind. We'll call that situation "objective reality".

The best any idealist can do is deny that objective reality exists, and that position wears very thin when we begin asking questions like, "How old is the universe?" and, "When did we humans first appear?" because for those realities to have happened in accordance with Idealism, our minds must have existed before Earth formed and life ( including us ) evolved, and frankly, that idea is just nonsense.

 

[Craig4]

Yes or no, did you self publish your book? Did you self publish your other books?

 

[PixyMisa]

The actual skeptical notion would be to reject claims such as that there is an entire universe (or multi-verse) fundamentally outside the only carrier of reality anyone can ever know for sure, which is conscious experience. Such an inference, unless absolutely needed to make sense of the facts of reality, is akin to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

There you go. The Universe makes no sense whatsoever except in a materialist (physicalist, naturalist) paradigm.

Such an inference is not only reasonable, but required.

The actual skeptical notion is to reject claims that are not supported by evidence. Your notion is to reject the concept of evidence. That's not skepticism. That's delusion.

There is zero empirical evidence for anything fundamentally outside consciousness. A world outside consciousness is a logical inference, not an observation.

You're very mixed up. Observations are of things outside consciousness, by definition. Empirical evidence is evidence of things outside consciousness, by definition.

 

[Dessi]

So can you come up with anything else? What's your best argument in defense of materialism?

Not sure what "materialism" means, but I think "made of atoms" is a pretty good starting point. Apologies if I've misunderstand your definition of the word.

If atoms didn't exist, we'd have a pretty hard time explaining electronic microscopy:

If atoms didn't exist, we'd also have a hard time accounting for photoionization microcopy which captures their orbital structure:

The predictive nature and success of chemistry, particle physics, quantum mechanics, optics, electromagnetism, superconductivity, relativity, crystallography, nuclear engineering -- essentially the entirety of the natural sciences -- provides persuasive evidence of atoms. It's not clear how these sciences would hold together if they weren't unified by a solid theory of atoms.

Identifying, categorizing, and classifying each into discrete elements; then identifying the isotopes of these elements; then identifying their sub-atomic parts; then identifying the orbital shells of electrons; then identifying even smaller more elementary particles; etc seems to provide persuasive evidence that atoms exist.

Mendeleev classifying elements, and making accurate predictions about the properties of undiscovered elements, provides evidence that atoms exist, have tangible properties, and can be known.

Predictions of the existence of sub-atomic particles and their properties, such as the Higg's boson in 2013 (theorized in 1964) and the recently discovered Majorana fermion (theorized in 1937) provides evidence that atoms and more elementary particles exist, and more importantly that we can determine their properties before we ever detect them directly.

The existence of machines which we can use to literally take pictures of atoms, fission reactors which split heavy isotopes, super conducting super colliders crashing particles together and bursting them into more elementary particles, cannot and does not make sense without the existence of atoms.

Projects like folding@home construct models of proteins and simulate their behavior atom-by-atom, and are able to make useful prediction. Discovery of the helical nature of DNA only makes sense if the helical structure refers to a specific arrangement of atoms. I can go on if you like. The point is that atoms aren't some kind of weird, conceptual, convenient fiction; they exist concretely.

The best argument for a material universe is that it looks, acts, and behaves like a material universe.

The best argument against a material universe is that it looks and acts nothing like material universe. This ring of atoms produces a quantum mirage, in that there appears to be an atom in the center of the ring when here is not, a result of the wave-like nature of atoms. Even large molecules behave like waves, similar to this animation. And for some reason, at very small levels, waves don't even behave like infinitely smooth curves, but more like discrete, fundamentally digital states, like a universe-sized cellular automata. What the hell, physics?

What's your best argument against monistic idealism?

It neither adds nor subtracts from any information or facts in the universe. It communicates precisely nothing which one could use to derive new or novel information.

I'm at a loss here trying to understand how your ontology is useful, and in what way. In what sense does your ontology add to the understand of anything, when it apparently does not add to anyone's understand of anything?

For what its worth, you make an interesting comment in your OP: "I subscribe to the much more parsimonious and skeptical notion that reality is in a trans-personal form of consciousness, of which we are localizations -- like whirlpools in a stream."

I think your position is skeptical in the same way that "my mind and mine alone exists" is skeptical; skeptical, sure, but not at all a good explanation of anything. That aside, I rather like your 'whirlpools of consciousness' imagery. You might be interested to see what the whirlpools actually look like (or at least a good simulation ^_^). You will need a browser which supports HTML5+OpenGL, such as Chrome or an up-to-date version of IE to see this 3-dimensional model of a biological neural net:
http://nxxcxx.github.io/Neural-Network/

The algorithm behind this simulation is extremely simples. Each neuron has a weighted-random chance of activating its neighbors, which in turn randomly activate their neighbors, and so on in a cascade activity. This neural net does not appear to have dynamically weighted edges, so it cannot be trained, but it serves the purpose of being pretty very well.

In our lifetimes, we can expect to see more sophisticated simulations, similar to this:

A team of Japanese and German researchers have carried out the largest-ever simulation of neural activity in the human brain, and the numbers are both amazing and humbling.

The hardware necessary to simulate the activity of 1.73 billion nerve cells connected by 10.4 trillion synapses (just 1 percent of a brain’s total neural network) for 1 biological second: 82,944 processors on the K supercomputer and 1 petabyte of memory (24 bytes per synapse). That 1 second of biological time took 40 minutes, on one of the world’s most-powerful systems, to compute.

Compare to the human brain, which appears easily capable of operating 100 billion neurons in real time, using around 20 watts of energy. Obviously our computer simulations have a long way to go, but this is an emerging and exciting area of research for computer scientists. I predict seeing more and more simulations of this nature, modeling more neurons in shorter intervals of time, for the next few decades.

Perhaps I'm biased, being computer science geek, but the brain is very sophisticated, physical implementation of a neural network. There's no clear reason why the neural net implementation is limited to a medium of physical brains and neurons. A computer simulation of brain activity should behave as if it actually has physical brain activity, analogous to its meatspace counterparts. I don't believe it's even necessary to simulate a brain atom-by-atom, which would be overkill in the extreme. As a programmer, I would be more interested in an artificial neural net with the statistical properties, clusters of specialized computation, and dynamically weighted edges similar to a biological neural net.

In my lifetime, I believe there is a high likelihood that neurologists will discover the minimum set of neurological structure which correlates with consciousness. And almost immediately, computer scientists will set out to model the structure, 3D printing consciousness into a computer chip.

I believe this would sufficiently falsify the view that conscious experience uniquely escapes description in a material universe.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I have nothing to add to what Dessi said.

But, if Bernardo is correct, then we are all a product of his consciousness.

Perhaps Charles Dodgson understood it best:

"He's dreaming now," said Tweedledee: "and what do you think he's dreaming about?"
Alice said "Nobody can guess that."
"Why, about you!" Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. "And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?"
"Where I am now, of course," said Alice.
"Not you!" Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. "You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!"
"If that there King was to wake," added Tweedledum, "you'd go out — bang! — just like a candle!"
"I shouldn't!" Alice exclaimed indignantly. "Besides, if I'm only a sort of thing in his dream, what are you, I should like to know?"
"Ditto" said Tweedledum.
"Ditto, ditto!" cried Tweedledee.
He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn't help saying, "Hush! You'll be waking him, I'm afraid, if you make so much noise."
"Well, it no use your talking about waking him," said Tweedledum, "when you're only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you're not real."
"I am real!" said Alice and began to cry.
"You won't make yourself a bit realler by crying," Tweedledee remarked: "there's nothing to cry about."
"If I wasn't real," Alice said — half-laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous — "I shouldn't be able to cry."
"I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?" Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt.
"I know they're talking nonsense," Alice thought to herself: "and it's foolish to cry about it." So she brushed away her tears, and went on as cheerfully as she could.

Emphasis mine. ?

 

[bruto]

If, as the argument seems to be, experience is the only reality, then experience is not actually the experience it claims to be, which does not seem very parsimonious. The world is much simpler if stuff is really stuff.

 

[Robin]

No. I am claiming that something is going on of which we are not lucidly aware, but indeed conscious at a deep, obfuscated level below self-reflectiveness.

Again, it comes down to a claim that I am aware of something, but not aware of being aware of it.

Many plants grow in my garden but I am not aware or conscious of their genome or how that genome is expressed to make the shapes I see.

Again we are getting away from any sort of definition of awareness or consciousness that we can make sense of.

All I know of consciousness or awareness is that which is ostensively and privately defined in my own experience.

If you are talking of consciousness that has properties and behaviours beyond that of which I am aware of being aware, then you are using the word to refer to something else - some "stuff" which you may as well call "matter", or "shrdlu" (or just "stuff").

 

[Astreja]

At a personal level, there may be a subjective realm in which material things are assigned meaning.

At an interpersonal level, however, where accurate communication requires common ground, ironically we cannot communicate our subjective impressions without resorting to the material -- Physical bodies with vocal cords causing vibrations in the air; physical communication devices such as TV, radio, books, telephones, and the internet; physical representations of language in the form of alphabets.

I think the material and the non-material are interdependent.

 

[RussDill]

Look, its pretty simple. I think everyone here has already agreed that it's impossible to prove that the universe is purely materialistic. We could exist in a universe that is actively trying to deceive us.

Was the Earth actively trying to deceive us by pretending to be flat?

Was the Sun actively trying to deceive us by pretending to move around the Earth?

Your statement is incredibly anthropocentric. It conflates nature with our own interpretations of nature.

I'm confused, if reality is made up of human consciousness, why wouldn't that be anthropocentric? It would seem to be the most anthropocentric statement one could make.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I still have not got a proper response to my airtight argument against all forms of reality denial.

If a throw a rock at your head, you're still gonna duck. Until then you're just being hypocrite by questioning reality in order to promote Woo.

And yes I already know there's soom Woo to be had somewhere. There's always Woo behind this argument.

 

[marplots]

I still have not got a proper response to my airtight argument against all forms of reality denial.

If a throw a rock at your head, you're still gonna duck. Until then you're just being hypocrite by questioning reality in order to promote Woo.

And yes I already know there's soom Woo to be had somewhere. There's always Woo behind this argument.

Why does that matter? If I duck, does that mean materialism is correct? If I don't duck, is it wrong?

Someone who questions reality might still very much believe in reality. But worse than that, if it's all happening in your head, they'd duck or not depending on your expectations, not theirs.