That's just not the case. The vast majority of premodern societies were idealistic, spiritistic, animistic. It's just plainly false that physicalism is the default. It's a culturally, socially constructed deviation from the vast majority of people in the vast majority of historical time.

To say nothing about modern idealism, like British Platonism, Berkley's Idealism, German Idealism etc.

Western monistic idealism recognizes matter and thought. Matter is supposedly an emergent property of mind per Plotinus. — frank

Yes.

This clearly shows a dualistic frame in which one side has been declared illusive as I described. — frank

And? It seems like you're confusing word-concept here. Ontologically, there's no distinction. If you're talking epistemologically, yes. Obviously. The whole point of philosophy is trying to relate the individual with the world, in one way or another.

I don't deny materiality exists, but I obviously believe it's derived from mind. My system is Vedantism: Qualified non-dualism.

It wasn't the default for the vast majority of people in history. Dualism was created after Descartes couldn't reconcile his Dark Age Christian conception of the soul with the new scientific mechanical philosophy.

So you can assert that, but in the history of philosophy it's plainly untrue.

No. That's just plainly false. The world is entirely mental. In a dream world, it's 100% mental. It's no different in the other case.

There's no need for a mind-independent world, if the world itself is mentation.

Because nobody does. All things are experienced from the first person subjective experience. Unless you're claiming you do, in which case, that's something that carries a burden of proof.

Which is just another assumption. Cartesian Dualism comes from mechanical philosophy. Already assuming materialism. You have access to nothing whatsoever outside of your own mentation.

Because the people who believe in it haven't thought through how facile it is. Not because it's some sort of neutral position. There's no neutrality. Even a neutral position in a debate between people for genocide and against genocide (or anything else, just an example) is a position. Neutrality is a position.

Lol nobody acts like a materialist. Materialism hasn't been proved.

But is it intuitive that the trees and birds around you are made of mind stuff as if we're in a dream? — frank

Absolutely. It isn't to you? What made you believe reality is just what you see?

ontological anti-realism. — frank

Discussed above. Emphasis added.

The real question is: are these qualities true, and real? And that's the problem of universals. If these qualities aren't genuine,nothing is. Because reality exists only in relation to qualities in experience juxtaposed to other qualities. Hence, nominalism is nihilism. Only Platonism (in the broad sense) can make sense of our qualities of experience. — Dharmi

I said somewhere else that materialism means nothing. In the Wittgensteinian and Derridean sense, but also just in terms of empirical reality.

What we empirically experience is not 'material stuff' but merely qualities of experience. Someone, somewhere, sometime, decided to call these qualities 'material' but there's no actual reason to do so. And as far as I know, nobody has ever given a reason to do so.

Qualities exist, what they are called is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant. The real question is: are these qualities true, and real? And that's the problem of universals. If these qualities aren't genuine, nothing is. Because reality exists only in relation to qualities in experience juxtaposed to other qualities. Hence, nominalism is nihilism. Only Platonism (in the broad sense) can make sense of our qualities of experience.

The 'string' upon which these 'pearls' rest.

That's fine. But what does it mean to 'assume' a law of nature that isn't actually real?

That's the crux of the problem of induction and the problem of universals as well. We certainly observe that the natural world works uniformly and regularly, but we can't 'prove' that, 'justify' it. It's not like we 'see' the law of nature that indicates that uniformity and regularity.

Justify it? No. Not in the philosophical sense of the word justify.

But you could justify it to yourself, and I don't know if most people really need a philosophical justification to do good things anyway.

All nominalistic philosophies, to my mind, all lead to absolute skepticism, nihilism and basically Postmodernism.

So I share this sentiment, that formalism is "not that interesting" philosophically. Except that I apply that to nominalism in toto.

Let us not pervert art into decadence. One must separate their hedonistic ethical practices from art.

I share this sentiment, but let me explain why it doesn't matter, whether you believe that or not. If you're not an aesthetic realist, if you are an anti-realist that believes "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" then there is no true or actual conception of 'decedence' vs. art. There just isn't.

You have to be a Platonist (in the broad sense) in order to justify that there is such a thing as "true art" otherwise, there's no justification.

A crazy woman screaming hysterically is just as beautiful as the moonlight sonata unless there's an actual standard of beauty.

I like your idea, but I am an Idealist. Materiality has never been proven or demonstrated, just claimed. The only thing we have true access to in the world is qualia via our own consciousness.

That is to say, we've only shown that qualities exist. People have done a parlor trick where they call the qualities "material" and somehow it "proves" materiality. That is not the case.

The only thing we have access to is qualitative sensory data. That's all.

I am a qualified non-dualist. What that means is that there is, at once, both difference and nondifference. Duality and nonduality.

How this can be explained is not logically, only experientially through yogic meditation.

That's my position. Maybe it's one you've never heard, or maybe you think it's ludicrous.

Share it with your friends.

It's definitely possible. There are two extremes.

• All positions are equally true and only seemingly different. (sort-of perennialism, universalism, pantheism etc.)
• Or, all positions are equally false, and truth doesn't exist. (Postmodernist, Post-Structuralist, Anti-Foundationalist, Deflationist, historicist, cultural relativist etc. view)

I prefer to hold the view that Premodern philosophers, Greco-Roman, Chinese and Indian -and my least favorite, the medieval Jewish, Christian and Muslim philosophers- all held, that there is a truth out there, and the difficulty is discovering, describing, finding, figuring out that truth. That's the difficulty.

But the view that there are only interpretations, is a view many anti-Foundationialists and Postmodernists like Nietzsche, Stirner, Foucault, Derrida, Wittgenstein, Rorty, Stanley Fish and others share.

There are many of those kinds of views in philosophy.

However, if I may be bold, I consider Postmodern philosophy to be the abolition of philosophy. Philosophy traditionally is about, the Real, the True and the Good. Postmodernism rejects the possibility that any of those can be found. Hence, I see it as the antithesis of true philosophy. What Plato called philodoxy, rather than philosophy.

If there is a philosophy, there is a truth, then let's discover what it is. If there isn't, then just as Fish, Rorty, Wittgenstein and Hume say, let's do something else with our time. Philosophy is simply a waste of time if there is no truth or good or reality we're trying to discuss or discover.

Interesting. Well, I know emotivism because I once held that view. I don't know prescriptivism. If I did, that might shed some light on the answer. But I don't, so I don't know.

Sorry.

Alright, science deals with particular sets of phenomena. Right? So, it deals with particular objects or things I see or perceive. For example, the phone, the bits and pieces of the phone, the weight, mass, charge, spin of the particles of the phone etc. etc.

Okay, there is no "universal" law that is holding these particular bits and pieces together. There are just the bits and pieces. The "whole" phone is just the sum total of the bits and pieces.

That's the problem of induction.

We don't have any experience of the universe in it's sum total, just the bits and pieces. We only assume we have a coherent picture of the universe in it's sum total, because of the regularity of those events. So every day we see that we can walk in a straight direction, so we assume that we can continue to do so. But there is no "thread" connecting the "pearls" of those bits and pieces, those events, all in-and-of-themselves. That's our inference.

Unless, you believe, like I do, that universals, natural laws, etc. exist. But the Modernist tradition is basically unanimously nominalistic. For reasons that are understandable, but nevertheless.

In other words, the problem is that we need to assume a "universal" constancy of a kind to be able to do science or live in the world at all, yet in pure empirical terms, no such universal can be known to exist. Because, by definition, empiricism only deals with particular objects and not universals.

Dunno if that made sense or not, but I tried.

Peace.

" that my consciousness springs forth from and is contained within a deteriorating mass of biological complexity."

Which is just an unproved assertion. Just as materiality is itself an unproved assertion.

Anyway, to the point. I agree with the Stoics, where suicide is preferable to absolute misery, torture and pain for which there is no escape. But only that. Only in the most grave of circumstances. Otherwise, live to die, die to live. :)

Well, in our tradition, there's no penultimate end to the world. Neither was there any true beginning to the world. It's just a cycle of things moving from one point to the next. Creation, preservation, deterioration, destruction and recreation.

But I definitely see the problems with the doomsday terror that ideologies like Christianity promote as a difficult issue. It makes life into a rush, where you have to rush to be saved, rush to save others, rush to do the right things, get the right theology etc. before the end, either your death after which you will be judged eternally as saved or damned, or before the end in the apocalyptic sense. It's a very dark, drab, gloomy and pessimistic view of the world.

Cheers. :cool:

Nope. I have thoughts on the position, but not the paper. :)

I don't see why. If there's no moral thing-in-itself than the number of positions you have on it are merely descriptions of a non-thing anyway.

I'll put it this way, if you're claiming there is a "thing" there, then your position toward it ought to be accurate. But non-cognitivism claims there is no "thing" to morality, so what matters it?