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I challenge you: your best argument for materialism

annnnoid said:
…where…specifically, explicitly, and definitely…has any of this been established???

…oh yeah…I forgot.

N O W H E R E!

We don’t even ‘KNOW’ what consciousness even is (prove me wrong).

…once again…the epileptic on the nest of fire hands…hands a waving…hands a waving…hands a waving!

…but good for you. Once again you’re confirming your rightful status as high priest of the true believers.

Congratulations.
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Then why the crap are people supposing it under idealism? If we don't know what consciousness is as a formal matter (while some infer it as an epiphenomen from physical processes, iirc Tononi/Koch have argued that the integration of physical processing can measure consciousness as they qualify it) why are we so cavalier to suppose it? Just because we all agree we experience something which we call consciousness, no matter how much physics, interaction, and information that is observed?

When we have plenty of empirical data to suggest that our experiences are influenced physically we could just say "well that's just those experiences, that's not what consciousness is". Seems to me that consciousness can be as wishy-washy as we want it to. And that has nothing to do with materialism or idealism, though idealism needs a "mind" for reality.

It seems that consciousness, or the mind, is a schmoo term. It means everything you need it to mean when you want it to (using the "royal 'you'", not referring specifically to you Annnnnoid)
 
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annnnoid said:
…where…specifically, explicitly, and definitely…has any of this been established???

…oh yeah…I forgot.

N O W H E R E!

We don’t even ‘KNOW’ what consciousness even is (prove me wrong). …once again…the epileptic on the nest of fire hands…hands a waving…hands a waving…hands a waving!

…but good for you. Once again you’re confirming your rightful status as high priest of the true believers.

Congratulations.
Click to expand...

I doubt that is possible since I think it is impossible to plumb that deep a depth of ignorance.
 
annnnoid said:
…where…specifically, explicitly, and definitely…has any of this been established???
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There's this thing called science.

Have have five thousand years of recorded experiments on human brain function. We've been doing those experiments even longer, it's just that before that we weren't very good at recording them.

Apparently you missed every single one of those experiments, because every single one tells us the same thing: Consciousness is brain function.

And we know - we know - that there's nothing else to it, no new physics, because that has been ruled out by quantum field theory. If there were anything new, we would have found the relevant particles by now. Even if we didn't know what they did, we would know the existed. They don't.

Consciousness is brain function. No-one rational and informed has any doubt about it; it is the single most robustly tested scientific fact we have.
 
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As an aside, Tononi/Koch investigate consciousness using information integration theory. As I said before, if the physiology matches the model then the hard problem of consciousness is no longer tenable.
 
Lowpro said:
As an aside, Tononi/Koch investigate consciousness using information integration theory. As I said before, if the physiology matches the model then the hard problem of consciousness is no longer tenable.
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It already wasn't. Hard Problem Consciousness is only tenable at all if there is no plausible physical model of consciousness. Even if the model turns out not to match what happens in the brain, the mere existence of such a model falsifies HPC, because HPC asserts no such model can exist.

So Dennett and Hofstadter knocked that one on the head back in the 80s. Which does not detract anything from the work of Koch and Tononi and other researchers, of course, just that we already had everything we needed to reject HPC.
 
PixyMisa said:
It already wasn't. Hard Problem Consciousness is only tenable at all if there is no plausible physical model of consciousness. Even if the model turns out not to match what happens in the brain, the mere existence of such a model falsifies HPC, because HPC asserts no such model can exist.

So Dennett and Hofstadter knocked that one on the head back in the 80s. Which does not detract anything from the work of Koch and Tononi and other researchers, of course, just that we already had everything we needed to reject HPC.
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Well it's more than having a plausible physical model but having a model that predicts our physiology. Too wit, right now the ITT model does not have a discrete answer for consciousness (In fact Koch uses the model to promote panpsychism; the model unlike the NCC does not identify principle components), it is just able to identify and measure the integration of a system. It doesn't have to be a specific brain, and I suppose its application could be used to model more abstract ideas such as the p-zombie. All of that eliminates the HPC by its existence, but it may not necessarily be utilitarian.

I've considered similar models for measuring the survival of individual tissues within an organism which could infer carcinogenesis (not even my idea, but I remember when I first thought about it, I felt like I was about to rock the foundation of proteomics entirely...damn you UNC -.-) BUT that model wouldn't have any utility.

This doesn't matter for the philosophy of materialism or idealism ontologies. It may matter for the metaphysical principles of materialism but not for idealism.

As I said before though, there's something dirty about how we establish our axioms of consciousness. Many of them make consciousness a philosophical schmoo.
 
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marplots said:
So we need to check? The fact is we don't need to check to believe materialism is true. We assume Pluto has a back side and it doesn't concern us because there's no problem before us that it addresses.
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I'm not sure why you picked Pluto, seeing as how it has a rotational period of a bit less than 6.5 Earth days. We can observe Pluto's "back side" when it becomes Pluto's "front side".

And we don't have to keep checking for Pluto's "back side" (let alone it's mere existence) because, as adults, we possess an ability called "object permanence". If infants took up astronomy, they'd be constantly [re]discovering Pluto...
 
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Alright let's try this from a different angle.

The core argument seems to be can one provide evidence for a reality from within that reality?

Since we cannot, by definition, provide external evidence for reality, the argument seems to be that we cannot therefore assume it exists. Any evidence we provide for reality comes from our own framework within that reality and is therefore... tainted.

I find this logically faulty but it does seem to be the argument.
 
PixyMisa said:
No it's not. There is absolutely no reason for there to be anything material under idealism in the first place. There is absolutely no reason to expect material things to behave consistently if they do exist.
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This is a rather narrow interpretation of idealism. Anyway, you are mistaken, it would be an idealist universe in which the level of concretisation of the manifestation of events would be equivalent to that which we currently observe as matter. It is a fallacy to assert that anything in an idealist universe would be any different to the way it is currently experienced.

As I have already pointed out, our world is identical under either scenario. Unfortunately your entire argument is rendered impotent. You cannot address it without dealing with the philosophical caveats.
 
punshhh said:
This is a rather narrow interpretation of idealism.
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That's just another excuse, and raises the same problem: Idealism can be whatever you like, which means that there's no reason for it to be anything at all.

Anyway, you are mistaken, it would be an idealist universe in which the level of concretisation of the manifestation of events would be equivalent to that which we currently observe as matter.
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In other words, an infinite sequence of excuses for why your idealist reality is actually a materialist one.

As I have already pointed out, our world is identical under either scenario.
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The world is what it is. The scenario doesn't change reality. The world is material, so materialism is true and idealism is false.

Unfortunately your entire argument is rendered impotent. You cannot address it without dealing with the philosophical caveats.
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Sure I can. I just did.
 
Lowpro said:
Then why the crap are people supposing it under idealism? If we don't know what consciousness is as a formal matter (while some infer it as an epiphenomen from physical processes, iirc Tononi/Koch have argued that the integration of physical processing can measure consciousness as they qualify it) why are we so cavalier to suppose it? Just because we all agree we experience something which we call consciousness, no matter how much physics, interaction, and information that is observed?

When we have plenty of empirical data to suggest that our experiences are influenced physically we could just say "well that's just those experiences, that's not what consciousness is". Seems to me that consciousness can be as wishy-washy as we want it to. And that has nothing to do with materialism or idealism, though idealism needs a "mind" for reality.

It seems that consciousness, or the mind, is a schmoo term. It means everything you need it to mean when you want it to (using the "royal 'you'", not referring specifically to you Annnnnoid)
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I would suggest that using the word consciousness is too vague a concept and is treading too far on the materialist side, which may result in most of the sniping. Far better to use the word being, a being, a being is a living entity. This entity may have a mind, it may have some consciousness, but these are merely mechanisms exploited by the being, not to be confused with the being itself.
 
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