What reliable knowledge do you think methodological naturalism has provided us? That is to say, how do you know this sentence is false: "methodological naturalism does a great job of describing the dream world I've created" — RogueAI

There is no end of games we can play with language and ideas. I can't, for instance refute the problem of hard solipsism. The question for me is this: do I have a good reason to deny the physical world? Can I just walk out in front of a bus or drink acid? 'No' seems the most reliable answer - I would even venture to call this knowledge. Now I am not 100% certain of this knowledge, but I think it is a reasonable position that can be justified. Knowledge is never about ultimate truth, it is about what we can justify with reasonable confidence. What is the alternative?

True. Materialism is a theory, and as such, it can't be proven. Nothing can be proven. The only thing we know (not via proof, but via the mechanism of the structure) is cogito ergo sum.

Is this equivalent to "Does Materialism Have an a Priori Problem?" A problem...? You mean it is self-contradictory? No it is not. Is it a paradox (meaning switching between "yes" and "no" states depending on the state, which immediately brings us to its opposite state)? No. The problem, if you wish, is that it is not proven, it is not given. It is an assumption.

Are assumptions problems? That's a value judgment, not a given. If I want, it's a problem, if I no want, it is not a problem.

All things being equal, we should prefer the theory with the least amount of assumptions. Materialism makes two fundamental unjustified assumptions, and has (I believe) a catastrophic explanatory gap:
- non-conscious stuff exists
- non-conscious stuff can produce consciousness, but it's unknown how that happens.

Idealism does not need to make an assumption about the existence of the stuff that reality is made of, since we know with certainty that mind and thoughts exist. Also, idealism's lack of explanation for certain phenomena isn't as catastrophic as not being to explain how consciousness arises from matter. That's become an acute problem in science.

So, I would say all things exist in the Mind of God. The only things I in particular have access to is the things in my personal mentation. But I'm not a Solipsist. God's Mind is what underlies the energetic flux of reality we experience.

I think the best we can do is say this - as soon as someone can find a way to acquire reliable knowledge outside of what we call methodological naturalism, let's hear it. Until then we have no choice but to assume that physicalism is all we have access to and can measure. It serves us well. — Tom Storm

The Vedic Scriptures give us a method.

We prove logical things via logic. Empirical things via empiricism. Consciousness "things" (i.e., God, gods, spirits, demons, whatever) via consciousness.

If we follow the yoga system, and have proper predisposition, then one can "know" God, and other entities too theoretically. But you have to do the experiment. That's the requirement.

s ‘reliable knowledge’ a pragmatic construction that is simply useful in relation to human goals or an attempt to make knowledge
correspond to an independently existing external
world? Is science simply a relation between propositions or the relation between a proposition and ‘the way the world really is’? — Joshs

I don't know. Good questions. I do think an element of pragmatism ( a presupposition, if you like) is involved in as much as none of us can prove that we are not all simulations living in the laboratory of an extra terrestrial, who has created the illusion of our universe, complete with the illusion of physical laws.

Are you going to take up smoking and heroin use on the basis that we can't demonstrate to 100% that materialism is what our perceptions tell us it is?

The point for me is economical. It is not about endless parsing of the questions; Is all this a dream? What is perception? etc. It's that I fail to see how we have a choice but to accept that we live in a reality that we all share (despite the shades of grey in the word 'reality'). We need an epistemology in order to survive and make plans. What else can we use but methodological naturalism?

I fail to see how, for instance, mysticism, faith, religious visions, necromancy, astrology - insert alternative reality of your choice - can assist us in any way. The results are not demonstrable.

Is this lack of explanation a detriment to materialism? Obviously. We want to know how and why things happen. A theory that can't explain a fundamental aspect of reality like conscious awareness is a theory that's already in trouble. The longer the explanatory gap remains, the further in trouble the theory gets.

Idealism and dualism suffer too from explanatory gaps. However, in an a priori state of knowledge, we know that ideas and at least one mind exists, so to claim reality is made of mind(s)/thoughts begs a lot of interesting questions that don't have answers, but it has one crucial advantage over materialism: the existence of mind and ideas can't be doubted. The existence of external physical stuff can be. Idealism should be the default starting position.

Thoughts? — RogueAI

I don't think we exactly know that at least one mind exists or that matter exists. Both positions are tangled up in the same language. Concepts often come in interdependent pairs. Mind is only intelligible in the context of non-mind. Personally I think the metaphysical quest is hopeless.

Another opinion: smart materialism is more of an attitude than a crisp metaphysics. For instance:

The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.

This method of approach is not devoid of premises. It starts out from the real premises and does not abandon them for a moment. Its premises are men, not in any fantastic isolation and rigidity, but in their actual, empirically perceptible process of development under definite conditions. As soon as this active life-process is described, history ceases to be a collection of dead facts as it is with the empiricists (themselves still abstract), or an imagined activity of imagined subjects, as with the idealists. — Marx

One of the key things that I'd say I've learned from philosophy is the sociality of reason. Language is NOT the possession of an individual mind. Indeed, the individual mind is in a peculiar sense the founding fiction of modern philosophy. That does not mean that we have no intuitions of the single mind, that ordinary language on the topic is absurd. All I'm saying is that it's apparent feasibility as some absolute starting point has been demolished by (for instance) Wittgenstein & Heidegger. (Or one can look at some linguistics like Saussure or various sociology texts for a similar point.)

*I don't do this for a living, so I speak not as an expert but simply as someone who's read some books I've found convincing on this issue.

The question for me is this: do I have a good reason to deny the physical world? Can I just walk out in front of a bus or drink acid? 'No' seems the most reliable answer - I would even venture to call this knowledge.

Two points: what we're experiencing is equally consistent with many different models of reality. There's no reason that getting hit by a bus in a simulation (or a dream) should be any different than in a materialistic reality. The other point is you do have a good reason to deny physicalism/materialism: it makes too many assumptions and can't explain a crucial aspect of reality (consciousness), nor is this explanatory gap a new problem.

So let me ask you, suppose we jump forward in time 5,000 years and amazing technological progress has been made, but scientists are still stumped about how matter produces consciousness. Wouldn't you question materialism at that point?

If we follow the yoga system, and have proper predisposition, then one can "know" God, and other entities too theoretically. But you have to do the experiment. That's the requirement. — Dharmi

That seems unverifiable. And Scientologists, say, would argue the same point. What method do we use to determine which occult system is true? If someone doubts matter on epistemological grounds, how can they accept 'knowledge of God' as a sound premise.

So let me ask you, suppose we jump forward in time 5,000 years and amazing technological progress has been made, but scientists are still stumped about how matter produces consciousness. Wouldn't you question materialism at that point? — RogueAI

No. Timeframes have no bearing on the truth of an idea. If however evidence of a supernatural is found. Then fine.

That seems unverifiable. And Scientologists, say, would argue the same point. What method do we use to determine which occult system is true? If someone doubts matter on epistemological grounds, how can they accept 'knowledge of God' as a sound premise. — Tom Storm

You have to do the experiment. That's the only way. Scientologists would not argue the same premise. All of these fools and rascals of other religions would say "because my Scripture says so" and when it comes to Scientology, it's founder was an admitted fraud. So that's a very tenuous thing to claim.

Our system is an epistemology. Not based on authority or hearsay.

Empiricism is about verifying empirical things via empirical means.
Rationalism is about verifying rational things through rational means.
So, it follows, that the only way you can prove "God-thing" is through a similar methodology? Do you disagree?

I don't think we exactly know that at least one mind exists

The argument that some materialists make that consciousness doesn't exist (or is an illusion) is not convincing (I don't know of any philosophers who doubt their own mind exists). If a materialist is forced to respond to a given point, "well, I don't know for sure if I have a mind", they've lost the game. That's not going to convince anyone, and certainly not myself.

No. Timeframes have no bearing on the truth of an idea.

Timeframes have a bearing on whether we should stick with a certain theory or not. Eventually, after progress hasn't been made, the theory itself will be questioned. Any theory that, after 5,000 years of study, purports to say what reality is made of yet can't explain how and why we're conscious is a failed theory. Wouldn't you agree? Wouldn't you have started looking for new tools to explain consciousness well before that point?

If however evidence of a supernatural is found. Then fine.

Are you assuming that materialism is "natural"? That's question begging (or circular reasoning, I always get those two mixed up).

Objects" in the world incite and elicit responses from us, but the world can't teach us what a tree is or what danger is nor what a book is. We have the concept book, tree and we apply it to certain objects in the world. A dog does not have the concept tree, nor does a wolf or an owl. In fact, most of the exotic animals we know of, we don't even encounter ever. We might get the idea from another person describing it, or from a book. Yet we've never experienced it. — Manuel

One could say that the world is a constantly changing flow of events that never repeats itself identically or doubles back on itself. Our challenge to construe stabilities and patterns in that constantly changing flow. Our constructs attempt to find order in events via the ways in which aspects of the world replicate themselves.
In this way a chaos of visual, auditory and tactile sensations which constantly bombard us becomes sorted into stable objects. Other animals must also construe perceptual order out of constantly changing sensory stimulation. So we invent constructs but the world teaches us whether those constructs are useful or not are by either validating or invalidating our constructed patterns that we attempt to impose on the world in order to make sense of it’s changes.
When we use a concept like ‘tree’ we have certain expectations of how that concept will allow us to interact with an aspect of the world. If in a particular context of its use the concept of tree no longer applies to some piece of the world we will have to adjust it.
Many concepts that we use ( book, chair, democracy) are created via our interaction with the human world and so describe social objects. They still need to be validated by the flow of events, just as does a concept like ‘tree’ but in this case they will be validated or invalidated by the interpersonal world rather than events in the world of ‘nature’. Other animals also have concepts for nature as well as social interchanges in their communities. They don’t have the complex verbal language that we do but they do have simpler gestural and auditory language. When your dog responds to a command , or anticipates your next behavior( taking him for a walk) based on your currents actions (bringing him his leash)he has formed a concept. Animals, like us, don’t have to ever have encountered a particular object in order to recognize it as familiar based on its resemblance to something they know. This is due to use of concepts.

All things being equal, we should prefer the theory with the least amount of assumptions. — RogueAI

True, but only if two different theories explain the one and same thing.

But Idealism does not explain the material world. whereas materialism explains the material world. In your line of thinking, idealism stops at the end of "cogito ergo sum". It needs not to do anything more, I guess you surmise, because matter is not proven, so it needs no explanation. Or matter does not play a role in "cogito ergo sum", which is the only a priori proven proof of empirical truth. You simply dismiss that matter has to be explained by idealism.

Well, in case of a belief of solipsism, yes, you are right. But we can't decide if we live in a soliptical world. Precisely because matter is not explained let alone proved by idealism. Therefore if you take the assumption by idealism that matter exist, then and only then idealism inherits all the assumptions of the materialist explanations, and adds one more, which is, like I said, "matter exists".

So, it follows, that the only way you can prove "God-thing" is through a similar methodology? Do you disagree? — Dharmi

Yes, I disagree but I certainly understand the thinking and have often heard it before. For starters no one has established what a 'God-thing' even is to any agreement. It is unknowable how a phenomenological/personal experience type method of verifying something can work.

It's not unknowable. That's what I am saying. It's very knowable, you just need to do the experiment. What you're saying is like what people would argue about quantum particles and atoms in the ancient world. "We can't see them, we don't know they're there, they're unknowable, there's no known method to know about them, we have to raise our hands up and just give up!" This is the type of reasoning you're using. And I'm telling you the method.

To put it simply, the foundation of idealism is stuff that *has* to exist: mind and thought. The foundation of materialism is stuff that *might* exist. I think it obvious idealism clearly has an a priori advantage. If idealism has to make certain assumptions to avoid solipsism (the existence of other minds), those assumptions are at least based on a certainty: mind and thought exist.

And I'll ask you the same question I asked another person: suppose in 5,000 years, science has explained pretty much everything except how consciousness arises from matter. What would you think about materialism? I would consider it an utter failure. What could be more important than an explanation for how and why we're conscious?

Are you assuming that materialism is "natural"? That's question begging (or circular reasoning, I always get those two mixed up). — RogueAI

I'm comfortable with saying materialism is the natural world or physicalism.

I'm also comfortable with saying reason works as the most reliable tool we have to explore ideas. But I recognise that I am using reason to justify reason and that too is question begging. There are presuppositions we have to make and these have been addressed several times.

Assume you know nothing about reality except that you exist and you have a conscious mind — RogueAI

I don't think words such as "conscious", "mind" and "exist" would be meaningful to you if you otherwise knew nothing about reality.

Idealism and dualism suffer too from explanatory gaps. However, in an a priori state of knowledge, we know that ideas and at least one mind exists, so to claim reality is made of mind(s)/thoughts begs a lot of interesting questions that don't have answers, but it has one crucial advantage over materialism: the existence of mind and ideas can't be doubted. The existence of external physical stuff can be. — RogueAI

By the time we begin to think philosophically, we have a vast amount of knowledge, language and experience that underpins our philosophical thoughts. The point of philosophy just is to develop a framework for bringing order to what we know. What can or can't be doubted depends itself on one's philosophical assumptions (which may be implicit). Materialists do doubt mind (at least in the Cartesian sense), just as idealists do doubt external physical stuff. Which leads to your final comment...

Idealism should be the default starting position. — RogueAI

I think ordinary language should be the default starting position. J.L.Austin explains why:

Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing. It embodies, indeed, something better than the metaphysics of the Stone Age, namely… the inherited experience and acumen of many generations of men. But then, that acumen has been concentrated primarily upon the practical business of life. If a distinction works well for practical purposes in ordinary life (no mean feat, for even ordinary life is full of hard cases), it will not mark nothing: yet this is likely enough to be not the best way of arranging things if our interests are more extensive or intellectual than the ordinary… Certainly, then, ordinary language is not the last word: in principle it can everywhere be supplemented and improved upon and superseded. Only remember, it is the first word. (And forget, for once and for a while, that other curious question “Is it true?” May we?) (1956, pp. 185 and fn 2 in parentheses) — J.L. Austin - A plea for excuses (via Ordinary Language Philosophy - IEP)

t's not unknowable. That's what I am saying. It's very knowable, you just need to do the experiment. What you're saying is like what people would argue about quantum particles and atoms in the ancient world. "We can't see them, we don't know they're there, they're unknowable, there's no known method to know about them, we have to raise our hands up and just give up!" This is the type of reasoning you're using. And I'm telling you the method. — Dharmi

You have given me no useful information about method or experiment or even what it is that is being tested. Just claims. By the way, ancient people would have been correct in not accepting something until it can be demonstrated. The bit about raising hands and giving up is not really related and seems to be surplus, emotive dramatisation. Main point: once we can reliably test for it then we know it is likely to be true.

You have given me no useful information about method or experiment or even what it is that is being tested. Just claims. By the way, ancient people would have been correct in not accepting something until it can be demonstrated. The bit about raising hands and giving up is not really related and seems to be surplus, emotive dramatisation. Main point: once we can reliably test for it then we know it is likely to be true. — Tom Storm

Like I said, the demonstration is through the third form of epistemology, which is consciousness. Through consciousness, we can know the Supreme Consciousness. This is what yoga aims to do. Yoga in Sanskrit means "unification" with ourselves, then the Divine. You have to do the proper yoga system under the guidance of a proper guru, that's the experiment.

Like I said, the demonstration is through the third form of epistemology, which is consciousness. Through consciousness, we can know the Supreme Consciousness. This is what yoga aims to do. Yoga in Sanskrit means "unification" with ourselves, then the Divine. You have to do the proper yoga system under the guidance of a proper guru, that's the experiment. — Dharmi

Thank you, I thought you might have more detail. But this is fine for now.

I have no reason to accept that there is supreme consciousness - this needs to be demonstrated. The fact that Yoga means unification is understood, but so what? Sikh, for instance, means 'seeker of truth', is there evidence Sikhism has access to the truth? No. The notion that you have to do a proper Yoga system is exactly the kind of thing every cult, religion and belief system would maintain. How could they not? By what criteria do you tell genuine claims like this from phoney ones?

I have no reason to accept that there is supreme consciousness - this needs to be demonstrated. The fact that Yoga means unification is understood, but so what? Sikh, for instance, means 'seeker of truth', is there evidence Sikhism has access to the truth? No. The notion that you have to do a proper Yoga system is exactly the kind of thing every cult, religion and belief system would maintain. How could they not? By what criteria do you tell genuine claims like this from phoney ones? — Tom Storm

That's fine, but I'm asking you, what do you consider genuine epistemology? You can't have this double standard where I have to provide my epistemology but you don't have to provide yours.

More than that, I don't really care if you accept my epistemology or not. It's what it is, if you reject it, that's up to you.

That's fine, but I'm asking you, what do you consider genuine epistemology? You can't have this double standard where I have to provide my epistemology but you don't have to provide yours. — Dharmi

I have provided it numerous times. No point repeating myself.

Uh, I haven't seen it a single time. Are you an empiricist? You disagreed with my analysis of empiricism. You also disagreed with my analysis of rationalism.

So are you just an anti-Foundationalist Skeptic? I don't know at all where you're coming from.

So are you just an anti-Foundationalist Skeptic? I don't know at all where you're coming from. — Dharmi

I am not a philosopher. I practice critical thinking with a philosophical bent. I'm not into labels. I have spelled out what I consider to be reliable and non reliable pathways to knowledge. I do privilege empiricism and methodological naturalism but I don't think we can be 100% certain of anything. To be called an anti foundational skeptic is thematically close, but way too grand and extreme. I am still working out what I am. Sorry if that sounds inadequate.

The argument that some materialists make that consciousness doesn't exist (or is an illusion) is not convincing (I don't know of any philosophers who doubt their own mind exists). If a materialist is forced to respond to a given point, "well, I don't know for sure if I have a mind", they've lost the game. That's not going to convince anyone, and certainly not myself. — RogueAI

I think you misunderstand where I'm coming from. It's not a denial of mind but a 'denial' of the individual mind, of the single mind. This is a hyberbolic attack on the Cartesian starting point. 'I' is a piece of language that only exists socially. Obviously, in an everyday sense, we can hide in the closet and murmur to ourselves. But we've already absorbed the language from social interaction. Even if I were to somehow persuade you to my view, it wouldn't change you life much. You'd just be more bored with mind/matter talk (yet here I am, at least for the moment.)

Where I'm coming from, it's not about 'go mind !' or 'go matter!' but about seeing the futility of trying to make one the foundation of the other. All of our words are caught up in a system. Our practical distinctions of inner and outer are fine but way too flexible and leaky to take seriously for the construction of metaphysical castles in the air. (Mind-matter battles are like flower arrangement to me, and not like some grand science of the foundations. If anything is a foundation, I vote for practical life in all its ambiguity.)

Yoo hoo.

Jeepers creepers, where'd you get those peepers?

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. — Dharmi

I was talking about child development - as I thought should have been clear. The cultural affectations that adults later see value in appropriating are irrelevant.

No child acts as if the world were one of ideas, or all in their mind. They act as if there is a physical outside world which obeys rules that can be discovered by repeated testing. They are surprised when things behave outside of those rules (even at six months), they test objects in a deliberate fashion to establish these rules... they treat the world in every way as if it were external to them and obeyed the same rules for them as it does for others.