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
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
I don't think we exactly know that at least one mind exists
No. Timeframes have no bearing on the truth of an idea.
If however evidence of a supernatural is found. Then fine.
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
All things being equal, we should prefer the theory with the least amount of assumptions. — RogueAI
So, it follows, that the only way you can prove "God-thing" is through a similar methodology? Do you disagree? — Dharmi
Are you assuming that materialism is "natural"? That's question begging (or circular reasoning, I always get those two mixed up). — RogueAI
Assume you know nothing about reality except that you exist and you have a conscious mind — RogueAI
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
Idealism should be the default starting position. — RogueAI
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. — 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. — Dharmi
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
So are you just an anti-Foundationalist Skeptic? I don't know at all where you're coming from. — Dharmi
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
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
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