Proof Mind is Fundamental and Matter Doesn't Exist

[The Grand Nudger]

LOL, no, it was for AKD, who made a classic "What the Bleep" gaff.

Perception is a funny thing.  If we're talking about what might exist in our perceived reality were discussing whats in the field of view of a creature of our scale with instrumentation native to us, more than anything.  The ground is solid beneath our feet, in our experience - but we know that it's mostly empty space and we know that tiny little beasties pass through it like an ocean of life routinely.  Similarly, solipsism is an issue -not- with what the world is comprised of, but what our native instrumentation is capable of perceiving, and what our minds - working from that input, are capable of logically concluding.

IMO, considering our perceptions to be "made up of ideas" is passable, at least until we dial in the resolution.  Most comments or statements along that line would at least be functionally workable.  The elephant we see -is- made up of ideas, in one sense.  Those ideas may be made of matter, but it hardly matters to us in our everyday lives, since our native set isn't capable of perceiving that - even if the instruments we've developed to augment our native set are.  The trouble in all of this -as it applies to the point of contention- is now and has been from the beginning, that we are attempting to conclude that the whole is made of ideas if a part is or might be.  It just doesn't work.  Even if -our- perceptions, or our mind, was pure idea, pure info...that doesn't really tell us whether or not the universe is.

Now, the -reason- that we use this model of matter is that it can explain -how and why- our perceptions take the form that they do....and I've seen in this thread the notion that our explanations work fine in any worldview, and that;s true, but it says nothing about the accuracy of those worldviews. That gravity works regardless of whether or not a person thinks it;s made of fairy dust or gravitons does not make any statement about whether it's made of fairy dust or gravitons - it does not rule in fairy dust as a possibility or make it more acceptable as a contender. Explanations must explain, and the fact that shit falls down regardless of how a person believes that to be accomplished is a non-statement regarding whether or not it;s fairy dust or matter. I don't think I can let that ground leveling business go unopposed until someone explains how ideas do ideas to ideas -without- stealing concepts. Don't get me wrong, perhaps ideas do ideas to ideas and this -is- the nature of our universe...but it doesn't have any explanatory power at present. I wouldn't go so far as to call materialism proven, but it's -certainly- not on equal ground with all other worldviews until such time as people start pumping out explanations arising -from- those other worldviews. Hell, materialism wouldn't be so well represented if some of those other worldviews hadn't failed, completely, to provide those explanations in the first place - for thousands of years. That might change in the future, I don't expect it to change in this thread...but I'm ready to be dazzled, lol.