I challenge you: your best argument for materialism

[tsig]

Color illusions

It's possible to confuse the senses, so what? What do illusions mean to you?

 

[Belz...]

The brain is responding to an outside stimuli. It is not creating that stimuli. The reason we call it red is that we have learned that that is what you call that stimuli.

Different stimulus gives rise to different responses, we call this experiencing reality.

However the brain can create its own stimuli during dreams or hallucinations, for instance, and recreate some of those experiences.

 

[ehcks]

It's possible to confuse the senses, so what? What do illusions mean to you?

If it's possible to confuse the senses, than that must mean that the brain doesn't actually see reality as reality is. For illusions to exist, the brain can not be the source of reality, and idealism must be false.

So why is he bringing those up?

 

[mijopaalmc]

It's possible to confuse the senses, so what? What do illusions mean to you?

You are missing the point that the perception of color involves more that the reception of a specified wavelength of light.

 

[Dancing David]

Look to post #1263, I'm trying to start with a simple premise to make sure we (including myself) are all on the same page.

Sorry you quoting yourself just referring back to the post I quoted is sort of circular logic. That is not a common conception of materialism.

 

[Dancing David]

If I state the following: Following the full ramifications of Materialism, the apparent distinct edge of a rock, it's tawny color, it's rough surface - these are fabrications of the brain. Reality is tasteless, colorless, odorless quantities of inert matter.

Are you saying my above assertion is wrong? If so, how is it wrong?

The perceptions are generated by the brain, where does materialism say that objects don't have properties in and of themselves?

Such as an edge that might be perceived as a sharp visual boundary?

Just for emphasis

 

[Brian-M]

LarryS, from your recent posts, I take it that if asked the question "if a tree falls in a forest and there's nobody around to hear it, does it actually make any sound", your answer would be a plain and simple "no"?

 

[LarryS]

LarryS, from your recent posts, I take it that if asked the question "if a tree falls in a forest and there's nobody around to hear it, does it actually make any sound", your answer would be a plain and simple "no"?

From materialism . . . a forest, a tree, falling, etc . . . these concepts are a result of a bundle of observations, without these observations, without consciousness, all there is a transfer of a quantity of matter. Functionally it's the same as if a mind were present except the distinctions of an object, of falling, or of a sound are not inherent to matter/energy fields. This all got started because someone stated 'rocks don't think', of which I agree. I got all smarty-pants and went so far as to state the rock doesn't even exist - except as a quantity of density of matter. The distinction of the rock as an object, the apparent solid edge, the tawny color, these are the result of a bundle of observations.

 

[tsig]

You are missing the point that the perception of color involves more that the reception of a specified wavelength of light.

The eye sends a signal to the brain that the brain recognizes as red because it previously learned that that signal was red. Is there more?

 

[Belz...]

From materialism . . . a forest, a tree, falling, etc . . . these concepts are a result of a bundle of observations, without these observations, without consciousness, all there is a transfer of a quantity of matter.

You are creating an artificial, philosophical distinction. Science deals in facts, not ideas.

 

[PixyMisa]

From materialism . . . a forest, a tree, falling, etc . . . these concepts are a result of a bundle of observations, without these observations, without consciousness, all there is a transfer of a quantity of matter.

And that's all consciousness is too. You can't criticise materialism while ascribing magical properties to consciousness.

 

[angrysoba]

Science deals in facts, not ideas.

Does this mean that ideas don't exist?

 

[PixyMisa]

Does this mean that ideas don't exist?

Instantiations of ideas exist. Or rather, instantiations of ideas happen. Representations of ideas exist.

 

[bruto]

The realist said, this looks much like a tree.
Tall leafy and wooden, what else could it be?
I surmise if I left and forgot to return,
Another would still find some firewood to burn.

Not so, said the nominalist in reply.
We might just as well call it a cat or the sky.
We know that it's there, but all stuff is the same
Until we can sort it and give it a name.

You're both wrong of course, the idealist said.
The only thing certain is what's in your head!
You think that you know what you think that you see,
but all that's for sure is you think it's a tree.

Oh stuff it, said God, you're disturbing my slumber.
If I'd seen what was coming I'd have left out the lumber.
And closing his eyes, he extinguished creation.
"It was fun while it lasted, but too much vexation."

I had nodded off briefly, and fell from my chair.
"What a terrible dream, I remarked; what a scare."
But now as I tumble, I cannot be sure
What the universe does when my head hits the floor.

 

[PixyMisa]

The realist said, this looks much like a tree.
Tall leafy and wooden, what else could it be?
I surmise if I left and forgot to return,
Another would still find some firewood to burn.

Not so, said the nominalist in reply.
We might just as well call it a cat or the sky.
We know that it's there, but all stuff is the same
Until we can sort it and give it a name.

You're both wrong of course, the idealist said.
The only thing certain is what's in your head!
You think that you know what you think that you see,
but all that's for sure is you think it's a tree.

Oh stuff it, said God, you're disturbing my slumber.
If I'd seen what was coming I'd have left out the lumber.
And closing his eyes, he extinguished creation.
"It was fun while it lasted, but too much vexation."

I had nodded off briefly, and fell from my chair.
"What a terrible dream, I remarked; what a scare."
But now as I tumble, I cannot be sure
What the universe does when my head hits the floor.

But what of the tree, does it have no opinion?
Did God grant Man that as his sole dominion?
Roots seek for water and leaves clean the air,
But without integration it's not self aware.

 

[SusanB-M1]

Thank you, Bruto and PixyMisa - a to start the day!!

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Sometimes for the claim, that materialsim is wrong, what the "woo-believer" seems to "know" is this:
Reality(materialism), therefore cognitive/moral/ethical relativism/subjectivism; but not materialism/science/logic/rationality, therefore moral/ethical objectivism.

This is not the tl;dr, because we always in part end up playing: "I am right, you are wrong!"; "You don't know, how reality Works!", "I am rational, you are not!" and as long as we are not honest about the meaning of this qoute, we will be runing in circles:

“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Somebody else is there, because the Universe doesn't care for us AND there is no strong We in evolution. It is replication of the fittest genome all the way to you versus the rest of the Universe in the absurd sense.

With regards

 

[Belz...]

Does this mean that ideas don't exist?

No, it means exactly what it says.

 

[marplots]

We definitely see wavelengths as color. You can shine two different wavelengths of light directly into my eye (no intervening surface or medium required) with no other differences between the beams, and if the wavelengths are in the visual range, I'll see them as two different colors.

It doesn't go the other way. We don't experience color as wavelengths. It took millennia of literate civilization to figure out that color relates to the wavelength of something. Without science education (or very skillful and fortunate personal experimentation), we would never know that red is "longer" or "lower frequency" than blue. (That's why in art tradition, which goes back farther than knowledge of the electromagnetic spectrum, green and blue are "cool tones" and red and yellow "warm tones," a usage that can trip up physics majors in art classes.)

But that's true of everything. We don't experience musical notes as frequencies of pressure waves, but as perceived pitches. We don't experience heat as kinetic energy distributions of molecules, but as sensations of hot and cold. We don't experience hunger as depleted sugars in the bloodstream and liver, but as a desire for food. We don't experience consciousness as neural computation clarifying the role of self in narrative history, but as awareness. We don't experience any of those things as nerve impulses, but as all those various things.

The differences are very interesting. I think it may be that experiencing reality as "real" doesn't help us much. For example, when I read the letters and words in your post, I don't experience the translation that must occur, I only get the higher level of stimulus - there's meaning attached at some step outside of my awareness.

If I had to do all the hidden work consciously, I don't think language could be as fluid, vibrant or immediate as it is. The situation now, for me, is nearly equivalent to hearing spoken words. I read what you wrote just as fast (or so it seems) and gain some added ingredient because of the lack of barriers.

So, in a sense, it seems important that colors could be "warm" or "cool" instead of 450 nm at X intensity.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

The differences are very interesting. I think it may be that experiencing reality as "real" doesn't help us much. For example, when I read the letters and words in your post, I don't experience the translation that must occur, I only get the higher level of stimulus - there's meaning attached at some step outside of my awareness.

If I had to do all the hidden work consciously, I don't think language could be as fluid, vibrant or immediate as it is. The situation now, for me, is nearly equivalent to hearing spoken words. I read what you wrote just as fast (or so it seems) and gain some added ingredient because of the lack of barriers.

So, in a sense, it seems important that colors could be "warm" or "cool" instead of 450 nm at X intensity.

Well, it is so that everything is material, but everything is not experienced as "things" or even as properties of "things". Matter in the metaphysical sense still allows for "I am not a thing, I am someone!"