Think of it like solipsism with other consciousnesses. The analogy I always like is the jigsaw puzzle: there are individual unique pieces (our individual consciousnesses) and together they make a unified whole (the One Mind that we're all a part of and yes I know how new-agey that sounds, it doesn't make it not true). But there really is just one mind that exists, and "god" is a good label for it.

I understand where you're coming from. My reply before was kind of pompous sounding. You sound sympathetic to mysterianism.

The reason I don't think this is a language problem is that "mind" while hard to define for someone else is easy to define for one's self- we all know what our own mind is, even if we can't put into words just what it is. So, for any person who can think, they're going to realize it's impossible they can be mindless. They're also going to ask themselves how a bunch of non-conscious stuff can combine a certain way with some electricity and produce conscious awareness. I don't see a language problem anywhere there.

Yeah, I guess it would be: for any x, if x has a mind, x is not justified in doubting the existence of that mind.

They are just words as well, yes. But I’m not claiming they’re beyond question. As I went on to explain.

Before we decide if we’re mindless, tell us what mind means. Otherwise it’s like discussing God. Are you Godless?

But first, what do you mean by "means"? I don't care to go down this rabbit hole.

Sure it can. "Mind" and "ideas" are just words. Why not simply start where Descartes does, with conscious awareness?

"Conscious awareness" is words too. More to the point, do you seriously think you might be "mindless"?

If you think any set of philosophical ideas should be immediately readable by you in particular in a way that appears ‘simple and clear’ then I suggest what you really are looking for is a set of ideas that fit within a worldview that is already eminently familiar to you.

Good philosophy is clear and accessible, even to the novice: Mary's Room, Defense of Abortion, Trolley Car, Allegory of the Cave, Riddle of Induction, What is it like to be a Bat, Ship of Theseus, Transporter Problem, and so on.

Ok

So unpack that statement for me. Do you believe you're a physical animal with a brain that produces consciousness?

That we're not not programmed with the means to do so? Why would assume we are? We're just animals evolved to behave in a certain way. Why would you assume our programming just maps 1-to-1 onto the way the world "is"?

Did you mean for there to be a period there?

I think you have me confused with someone else. I've never read Hegel. Maybe someone quoted him here and I agreed?

Well, that's we're discussing: which "ism" has the strongest foundation?

Any "ism" should have a strong foundation, regardless of whether the adherents think it necessary or not.

This really isn't a language problem, though. I know full well what I mean by "it hurts to stub my toe" and I also know full well the meaning of "how does matter produce my subjective experiences?" There's no vagueness there. Even if I can't communicate to someone else what my subjective experiences are like, I certainly know what they're like for me. So the question "how does matter cause subjective experiences?", for anyone who has subjective experiences, is a meaningful question that needs to be answered.

Kidney function: people talked about their pees, but they could not talk about their kidneys producing the pees.

Well, peeing isn't identical to kidney function, but I can anticipate your response: peeing is identical to biological functions XYZ, so when ancient people meaningfully talk of peeing, they must be meaningfully talking about biological functions XYZ, but of course they didn't know about such functions.

I ran my argument about ancient people talking about mental states by David Chalmers and he said that water=H2O, and that if ancient people meaningfully were talking about water, they have to also be meaningfully talking about H2O, but of course they had no idea what H2O is.

That stumped me for a long time. However, I think I know what's bugging me: it's not obvious that water=H2O. I think Kant would say there's an unjustified move there in going from "water", which is a collection of perceptions of a thing to an ontological claim about the actual thing itself: H2O exists and it's what water actually is. When you unpack the claim water=H2O (or peeing=biological functions XYZ), it's not just a case of label switching, like bachelors=unmarried men. You're going to have to argue that peeing is a set of biological functions XYZ, and I think you're going to end up in a circular argument because you're going to end up assuming materialism is the case by asserting the material existence of organs and biological processes in order to address an objection to materialism being the case.

That probably wasn't the clearest thing in the world.

"Consider the following: two people from thousands of years ago can meaningfully talk about their minds, agreed? They can exchange meaningful information with each other about their mental states. Now, if minds and brains are the same thing, then two people in ancient times exchanging meaningful information about their minds must also be exchanging meaningful information about their brains. But of course, ancient peoples had no idea how the brain worked. They thought it cooled the blood. It's an absurdity to claim ancient peoples were meaningfully exchanging information about their brains, so the claim mind=brain entails an absurdity."

In this thread.

If we can't rely on our senses to prove the physical world; can we rely on our senses to know that the mind is not physical?

I don't need my senses to know that my mind is not physical, in the sense that materialists/physicalists use the word. It's simply not in that category of things, because it's missing physical characteristics. You're saying it could have those physical characteristics, except my senses could be fooling me, but I don't need my senses to know my mind isn't a physical object. I don't need to try and smell it to know it doesn't have an odor, or try and look at it to know it doesn't have a shape.

You're proposing the mind might be a physical thing that's not the brain (I assume you're not talking simulation theory or Boltzmann Brains). If you say that the mind is some physical thing we have no conception of I have a feeling your physicalism is going to turn into idealism. In any case, if the materialist has to claim the mind might be a physical non-brain non-computer thing... I don't think that's very convincing.

I wish you would address my thought experiment about the two ancient people talking meaningfully about their mental states. If you believe the mind is identical some physical thing, your position commits you to claiming they are also talking meaningfully about some physical thing they know nothing of. You would be on much firmer ground claiming the mind is not a physical thing but is caused by a physical thing.

No, it's a claim that the mind is not a physical thing. It has no physical characteristics. The contents of the mind (various subjective experiences) are also not physical things.

By the way, the discussion moves along nicely when no one talks about qualia.

Mind and thought exists for sure. But why are you so absolutely certain that they both are matters of idealism? Mind could be matter, from where we sit, we don't know if it is or not; and conversely, we don't know if mind is idealism stuff or not. You say it is obvious that mind is idealism stuff. To me it's not obvious.

So, my reply is that it is so obvious to me that my mind is not a physical thing with physical characteristics, like size, shape, weight, volume, etc. that I'm not making an assumption when I say my mind is not a physical thing. It's clearly not. It makes sense to ask what a (supposedly) physical thing like a flower smells like, but it's incoherent to ask what my mind smells like, or looks like, or tastes like. To say minds and brains are identical is to make a fundamental category error. I think a materialist who asserts that has lost the game in the same way as a materialist who starts questioning whether minds/consciousness even exist.

Consider the following: two people from thousands of years ago can meaningfully talk about their minds, agreed? They can exchange meaningful information with each other about their mental states. Now, if minds and brains are the same thing, then two people in ancient times exchanging meaningful information about their minds must also be exchanging meaningful information about their brains. But of course, ancient peoples had no idea how the brain worked. They thought it cooled the blood. It's an absurdity to claim ancient peoples were meaningfully exchanging information about their brains, so the claim mind=brain entails an absurdity.

Good discussion!

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.)

I'm not asserting the existence of just one mind. I'm claiming that we know for certain that at least one mind exists. There might be one, there might be billions of minds, but there can't be zero minds. That's powerful. We don't have that kind of certainty about the existence of anything else, except logical/mathematical truths.

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.)

I don't agree. I don't think our situation is that hopeless.

I'll ask you the question I suppose in 5,000 years, when spirituality has explained pretty much everything it is mandated to, except how matter arises from consciousness.

You can't turn it around on me, that's the advantage of idealism. When you say "how matter arises from consciousness", you're assuming matter is real. My position, on the other hand, doesn't depend on an assumption that consciousness exists. We know, irrefutably, that consciousness exists. I don't have to assume anything.

Or are you talking about the idea of the physical world? If idealism is true, why did we come up with the idea of matter? Is that what you're asking?

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?

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).

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.

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?

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.

Yes, this is a robust and familiar argument against materialism. Bertrand Russell described this one well decades ago in the History of Western Philosophy. John Searle has a series of rebuttals to this argument which I will try to dig up.

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

My epistemic state is not one of "reliable knowledge". I can't even justify my belief in the existence of other minds. I take it on faith. 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"

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

So, you're introducing dreaming into my a priori world, eh? That's fine. Suppose the person knows they dream. Wouldn't that give idealism an even bigger boost? After all, I create worlds populated by real-seeming people in my dreams, so isn't it entirely possible I'm still doing all that even when I think I'm awake? I think the knowledge of dreaming strengthens the idealist position. If world-building during sleep is a thing, than world-building during non-sleep (or what we think is non-sleep) is definitely on the table.

And what is mind stuff anyway?

That's a good question, but you can ask it about materialism too: and just what is this physical stuff anyway? A bunch of fields in a superposition that collapses when someone's looking? That's very bizarre. QM is extremely counter-intuitive. Why should a reality made of independent-existing physical stuff be dependent on observers?

But again, this is where idealism has an advantage. We can ask "what is matter," we can ask "what is mind," but in the end, we know mind exists. We can't be wrong about that. We know that the stuff the idealist says reality is made of exists. I think that's a big advantage for idealism

I think the default will come from the culture you were born into. The destination is realizing that you don't have a vantage point to confirm either one, so ontological anti-realism.

Yes, but I'm talking about what *should* be the case. Idealism *should* be the default position, even if it's not.

"This doesn't explain how his experiments challenge one kind of intention and not another. So, I form the intention to flex my wrist. Somehow his experiments are supposed to challenge the free will of that. I form an intention to buy a house. Well, they'd challenge that just as much. And if the latter was preceded by lots of other intention-formings, well, the same would apply to all of those. So I just fail to see on what rational basis one could say 'ah, but more complex intentions are immune"."

So the claim is then that a complex decision is a bunch of sub-decisions, which could be monitored for this "readiness potential"? Maybe. It's a good point. I never got into the free-will debate much, so I don't have a lot of background knowledge with which to talk competently on it.

"I mean, he could just run the same experiments for extremely complex decisions, presumably."

They couldn't even do this experiment without controversy (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-a-flawed-experiment-proved-that-free-will-doesnt-exist/). How are they going to set up an experiment that involves me talking to multiple people, collecting huge amounts of data, and then making a final decision? That's a process that can take months.

But let's say they did and they saw some "readiness potential" before the actual final decision was made. That's OK. I'll just claim 90% of the decision was me consciously counting up the costs/benefits over a matter of weeks, and the final 10% was my subconscious nudging me towards a final decision (the "readiness potential" that the EEG shows). I'm OK with ceding some of my autonomy to my subconscious.

But let's say that they somehow do, becuause - as some seem to think (bizarrely) - they show our conscious decision making processes to be causally intert by-products of brain processes. Okay, well if that's what they show - and they don't - then free will would be undermined for all decisions, no matter how complex.

I don't believe free-will is compatible with materialism.

Even if it did disprove free-will, the experiment would only apply to a narrow set of "simple" decisions, like raising your hand. The decision whether to buy a new house, say, is much more complicated, and that kind of decision making isn't addressed by the experiment.

I am not a dis-believer, only that when you bring The Absolute (God) into the conversation, what can one say?

That's it's possible there's a god that's massively interfering in the world when we're not looking. You can also substitute that with "the simulation is being changed when we're not looking".

One can say a lot of things about that.

Well, I can say absolutely that I'm conscious and have a mind and certain subjective experiences. Everything else is pretty much taken on faith.

God intervenes in reality on a massive level when we're not looking to inconspicuously prevent as many accidents as possible without revealing its existence. Or "simulation programmers" if you like. The funny thing is, it's impossible to prove or disprove that. You would need to establish the accident rate when things are truly random, and of course we don't know that things are truly random.

You're welcome.

Philosophy has enriched my inner world. I think that's true of anyone that puts any thought into the subject.

Did you not read the second paragraph of my OP?

"However, what if the puddle explores the boundaries of the hole and find's it's a perfect square. Then, the puddle is going to wonder if the hole happened by accident or not. Or, what if the hole has the shape "2 + 2 = 4" (picture some little canals connecting the symbols). Then, the puddle would know for sure the hole is artificial."

Also, "This tiny value is the crux of the flatness problem. If the initial density of the universe could take any value, it would seem extremely surprising to find it so 'finely tuned' to the critical value {\displaystyle \rho _{c}}\rho _{c}. Indeed, a very small departure of Ω from 1 in the early universe would have been magnified during billions of years of expansion to create a current density very far from critical. In the case of an overdensity ({\displaystyle \rho >\rho _{c}}\rho > \rho_c) this would lead to a universe so dense it would cease expanding and collapse into a Big Crunch (an opposite to the Big Bang in which all matter and energy falls back into an extremely dense state) in a few years or less; in the case of an underdensity ({\displaystyle \rho <\rho _{c}}\rho < \rho_c) it would expand so quickly and become so sparse it would soon seem essentially empty, and gravity would not be strong enough by comparison to cause matter to collapse and form galaxies. In either case the universe would contain no complex structures such as galaxies, stars, planets and any form of life."

From Wiki

but you cannot draw a conclusion based on how well suited you are to the environment.

In the puddle analogy, that's not what's going on. The conclusion is based on the hole having a mathematically significant shape that implies a designer.

This universe also has a mathematically significant shape in that it is flat (or as flat as we can tell) and the odds of it being flat by chance are so vanishingly small, it's called the "flatness problem". So, is being flat a significant fact about the universe, like a hole shaped like Pi? I will grant you that in the case of the universe, it's not so clear. I think you can make a good argument that since flatness is necessary for complexity, and complexity is what you would expect from a designer, the existence of a highly improbable attribute (flatness) that is exactly what we would expect to see had the universe been designed is strong evidence for either a designer or a sufficiently large and variable multiverse.

Dingo, even if you find yourself in an environment that has to be a certain way in order for you to exist, you can still question whether that environment came about by design or not. If lifeform x explores environment y and discovers environment y is shaped in a way that spells out the first ten digits of Pi (in a form x is familiar with), x will correctly conclude environment y is artificial. Or there's a random process and a whole lot of other environments...(the multiverse, in other words).