The transistors are at a deeper layer, but I wouldn't say that the transistors are "more real" than the tree. — Manuel
Are you unfamiliar with the late David M. Armstrong? He was a materialist metaphysician, and who's metaphysics is still widely discussed in the literature.Materialism - the view that all that exists is matter - hasn't had a place since Newton. — Banno
It goes against what he is saying, if he is giving evidence that our senses mislead us, why trust the evidence? It too is misleading. — Manuel
Unless it is coupled with an independent basis for confidence in reason, the evolutionary hypothesis is threatening rather than reassuring. It is consistent with continued confidence only if it amounts to the hypothesis that evolution has led to the existence of creatures, namely us, with a capacity for reasoning in whose validity we can have much stronger confidence than would be warranted merely from its having come into existence in that way. I have to be able to believe that the evolutionary explanation is consistent with the proposition that I follow the rules of logic because they are correct--not merely because I am biologically programmed to do so. But to believe that, I have to be justified independently in believing that they are correct. And this cannot be merely on the basis of my contingent psychological disposition, together with the hypothesis that it is the product of natural selection. I can have no justification for trusting a reasoning capacity I have as a consequence of natural selection, unless I am justified in trusting it simply in itself -- that is, believing what it tells me, in virtue of the content of the arguments it delivers.
If reason is in this way self-justifying, then it is open to us also to speculate that natural selection played a role in the evolution and survival of a species that is capable of understanding and engaging in it. But the recognition of logical arguments as independently valid is a precondition of the acceptability of an evolutionary story about the source of that recognition. This means that the evolutionary hypothesis is acceptable only if reason does not need its support. At most it may show why the existence of reason need not be biologically mysterious.
— Thomas Nagel
Are you unfamiliar with the late David M. Armstrong? — Relativist
Yes. As I understand the thesis, Hoffman is not saying there is no material reality out there, but that all we know about that presumptive*1 reality is the images in our minds. So we humans are somewhat insulated from harsh reality by our reason-enhanced imagination. Ontology is a theory.So, says Hoffman, the material world is a bunch of icons in spacetime, a headset, which we use to manipulate reality. Evolution has given us this headset because if we had to manipulate reality directly, we couldn’t. — Art48
The idea is that snakes and trains are like icons on a computer desktop. The icon for a Word document is really on the screen but it is not the Word document itself, so in that sense is somewhat unreal. The reality of the Word document is computer bits. Janus and Wayfarer make a similar point. — Art48
As long as the dark foundation of our nature, grim in its all-encompassing egoism, mad in its drive to make that egoism into reality, to devour everything and to define everything by itself, as long as that foundation is visible, as long as this truly original sin exists within us, we have no business here and there is no logical answer to our existence. Imagine a group of people who are all blind, deaf and slightly demented and suddenly someone in the crowd asks, "What are we to do?"... The only possible answer is "Look for a cure". Until you are cured, there is nothing you can do. And since you don't believe you are sick, there can be no cure. — Vladimir Solovyov (19th c philosopher, not current Russian TV propagandist of same name)
Agree. However, Hoffman is trying to model reality in terms of "conscious agents." So, while I don't think he specifically denies material reality, he is working on an alternative based on consciousness. He says the hard problem of consciousness was one of the things that motivated his search for an alternative to materialism.Hoffman is not saying there is no material reality out there, but that all we know about that presumptive*1 reality is the images in our minds — Gnomon
...to make idealism a respectable position in the sciences, which it should be. — Manuel
There's something the matter with how we see the world. I think it's a harsh truth, an inconvenient truth, and one that brings me no joy, but I feel compelled to acknowledge it. — Wayfarer
How can one reconcile the scientific view, say that the the universe is billions of years old or that natural selection functions on individuals, with the idealist view that nothing exists without a mind to believe it exists? — Banno
Just a suggestion. Let's call whatever it is that is behind the appearance of the rock, a "rock". — Banno
So, it very much depends on what "idealism" one defends. — Manuel
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