Has anyone seen my neutral pointer?

[LastPoet]

How about this. . . I'll drop ALL the talk about trolls and appropriate comments, and respond in more detail to the OP, which I think was interesting, and I'll politely request that people who aren't interested in the OP please just not respond to the thread at all?

Does this work?

No. You do not get to dictate who can or cannot post in the thread, and what the terms for such speech to be. what are you on?

[brewer]

OP, all I got from that is you consider the world/existence a mysterious place and that you are unwilling to make judgements about it. A bunch of "I'm not sure's", "what if's" and "how can I ever really know".

If you consider me incorrect then please provide some more concrete examples. Until then you're welcome to your belief but don't expect me to buy into it.

Edit: Just saw your website. Don't bother responding unless you think you can provide something more convincing.

[Angrboda]

The "that" is ontology. The "what" is metaphysics.

We have an experience that the what is material. It's only when we doubt is it raised to the level of possibility that it is something else.

[bennyboy]

The "that" is ontology.  The "what" is metaphysics.

We have an experience that the what is material.  It's only when we doubt is it raised to the level of possibility that it is something else.

I dunno, man.  The thing you experience, and the thing science says is "out there," are pretty different, don't you think?  Unless, that is, you experience reality as 99.999999% empty space and .00000001% wave functions.  Shouldn't that provide sufficient doubt?

[bennyboy]

If you say "that" and point to an apple..Imma get it.  If you think that it is or could be a spirit apple full of world peace (or that it;s useful, somehow, to leave that door open by pedantically describing a "neutral") then maybe, just maybe, it's your belief that needs elaboration rather than the materialistic underpinnings, as you see them, of everyday speech patterns.  

I don't think he's saying reality is neutral. I think he's saying the right position to take on things whose underlying framework you can't really know is a neutral position. So maybe you see an apple and say it's material stuff. I see an apple and say it's a collection of ideas: a particular shape, color, glossiness etc. He seems (unless I'm reading it wrong) to think both those positions are pointless. He'd rather dump the guesses and just say, "Nah. . . just an apple."

[Angrboda]

The "that" is ontology.  The "what" is metaphysics.

We have an experience that the what is material.  It's only when we doubt is it raised to the level of possibility that it is something else.

I dunno, man.  The thing you experience, and the thing science says is "out there," are pretty different, don't you think?  Unless, that is, you experience reality as 99.999999% empty space and .00000001% wave functions.  Shouldn't that provide sufficient doubt?

You're conflating a description of the micro world with the result of having macro-level granularity of senses. "The quantum world is spooky" doesn't undermine that our experiences are built upon sensory apparatus with a macro granularity, and the macro experience is fully reducible to the micro world. You're just confusing levels and talking a bunch of bollocks.

[bennyboy]

If you want to say "material" is "things as we experience them," that's fine. I experience stuff in dreams, and in that context, I suppose you could say that apples "exist." But I don't think you'd call those apples "material," since in fact your world view goes beyond merely labeling experiences in this way.

A cosmogonic or cosmologic "-ism" probably is about more than that-- it's more likely to be a position on the true nature of reality. And the nature of reality according to science is that what we experience doesn't exist objectively such as we experience it: there really isn't redness "out there" anywhere, for example, or even form. Show me how the experience of redness "reduces down" to QM, and I'll give you a free apple.

[Edwardo Piet]

Dreams are imaginary and the imagination is made up of brain chemistry which is wholly physical and material.

For fuck's sake it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work that one out.

[The Grand Nudger]

 So maybe you see an apple and say it's material stuff.  I see an apple and say it's a collection of ideas 

-stuff describing stuff.

[bennyboy]

Dreams are imaginary and the imagination is made up of brain chemistry which is wholly physical and material.

For fuck's sake it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work that one out.

It EXACTLY takes a scientist to work that one out, actually.

What you've just done is stated your position as a fact.  You don't get to do that-- you have to demonstrate that your position IS a fact.  Go ahead.  Show that there's a material world, and that the imagination is nothing more than brain chemistry.  Demonstrate the truth of your assertion.