Seeing red

[bennyboy]

Is there anything that an idea cannot be?  Is there anything an idea must be?  It seems that under your view, an idea can be anything, so you haven't identified any parts which explain the composite.  That's a weakness, not a strength.  What are the practical limits on ideas in your Idealism?

I'd add another question here.  How do we determine the difference between an "imaginary" idea and a "real" idea....or, if you prefer, the difference between an idea of a bullet hitting the idea of brain that results in the idea of death...a bullet hitting,  and the idea of a bullet hitting the idea of a brain that doesn't.

When someone is hit with a bullet, their heart stops beating, and they stop calling people irrational.

[The Grand Nudger]

I know, strange isn't it, because people get hit by bullets to the head all day long in movies and yet they seem to survive to call people all sorts of things (I know I have a picture of Mel laying around here somewhere). One idea bullet does something the other idea bullet doesn't do. I've got all sorts of explanations for that....but they're insufficient...or so I've been told.

I guess it's just a mystery that neither of us will ever be able to work out?

[bennyboy]

How many times have I asked you how you think something works, and you've replied with "the same way you think it works, idealism subsumes all of that."?  

That's because you keep asking me questions in which your world view has an appropriate scope. As I said, if I want to build a bridge that will stand, I'll build it pretty much the same way you would.

Ask me about beauty or art, and we'll be in a world of ideas which is mostly out of scope of the material world view. Ask me what it's like to experience anything, and hang on my every word as I describe my ideas about drinking hot chocolate-- because as soon as the subjective perspective arrives, the scope of the material world view is useless.

You will inevitably argue about taste buds, chemistry, brain function, or evolved tastes. But you will not make any headway into qualia with your world view, because yours is a world view about objects, and is insufficient to deal with the subjective agent.

In short, if you ask me how a car works, I'll talk about gears and pistons. But this is not the only kind of question worth asking. If you ask me "What's it like to drive an early-model Ferrari?" then I'll have to attempt to notice and report the complex forms and patterns at play in my mind as I am having that experience.

[The Grand Nudger]

In short, if you ask me how a car works, I'll talk about gears and pistons.

Insufficient, or so I've been told. I hope idealism doesn't subsume this........

[bennyboy]

I know, strange isn't it, because people get hit by bullets to the head all day long in movies and yet they seem to survive to call people all sorts of things (I know I have a picture of Mel laying around here somewhere).  One idea bullet does something the other idea bullet doesn't do. I've got all sorts of explanations for that....but they're insufficient...or so I've been told.

I guess it's just a mystery that neither of us will ever be able to work out?

I didn't say your world view is insufficient to explain why bullets make holes in bodies.  I've repeatedly said it's sufficient if I want to have the experience of building a bridge that stands, and a bullet to someone's head is just another set of sights and sounds.

I said the material world view is insufficient to explain psychogony, the existence of mind rather than its lack of existence, and that it's insufficient in explaining and examining qualia.  However, and Idealistic world view is sufficient to explain the universe, because ALL our understanding of the universe is anyway. . . wait for it. . . a collection of ideas.

[bennyboy]

In short, if you ask me how a car works, I'll talk about gears and pistons.

Insufficient, or so I've been told.  I hope idealism doesn't subsume this........

Ask me what beauty is, and yes, it's insufficient.  Ask me why mind exists in so-called material, and yes, it's insufficient.  Ask me how an engine works, and it's sufficient, because that is the appropriate scope of your ideas.

[The Grand Nudger]

I didn't say your world view is insufficient to explain why bullets make holes in bodies.  I've repeatedly said it's sufficient if I want to have the experience of building a bridge that stands, and a bullet to someone's head is just another set of sights and sounds.

Materialism is sufficient for some things, some other "x" is required for others?  So, dualism or special pleading?   

I said the material world view is insufficient to explain psychogony, the existence of mind rather than its lack of existence, and that it's insufficient in explaining and examining qualia.  However, and Idealistic world view is sufficient to explain the universe, because ALL our understanding of the universe is anyway. . . wait for it. . . a collection of ideas.

I know you keep saying it.  If ideas work, in the case of the "idea of a car" just like materialism works (gears and pistons)..or as if materialism is true...and materialism is insufficient..then so is idealism.  Idealism can't explain the car any better than materialism, which it "subsumed". Apparently it -can- explain psychogony, though......in some mysterious way you've never even attempted to mention in all of the times we've had this conversation.

[bennyboy]

Materialism is sufficient for some things, some other "x" is required for others?  So, dualism or special pleading?

An "-ism" is a collection of ideas or beliefs. This is exactly what materialism is: a class collection of ideas. And in the context of building a bridge, then your ideas and beliefs will be sufficient for me to have the experience of successsfully building a bridge.

I know you keep saying it.  If ideas work, in the case of the "idea of a car" just like materialism works (gears and pistons)..or as if materialism is true...and materialism is insufficient..then so is idealism.  Idealism can't explain the car any better than materialism, which it "subsumed".  Apparently it -can- explain psychogony, though......in some mysterious way you've never even attempted to mention in all of the times we've had this conversation.

No, it can't explain psychogony, and must take mind as brute fact, as materialism must take the framework which allows the existence of stuff. The difference is that no sensible view of material is compatible with mind, as mind is not normally thought to be a material "thing," while the -ism to which you subscibe is ALREADY a set of ideas, and could not be thought to be otherwise.

This is the point you're not getting: Idealism is the simpler position, and materialism posits the extra underlying "reality"-- itself an idea.

[The Grand Nudger]

Materialism is sufficient for some things, some other "x" is required for others?  So, dualism or special pleading?

An "-ism" is a collection of ideas or beliefs.  This is exactly what materialism is: a class collection of ideas.  And in the context of building a bridge, then your ideas and beliefs will be sufficient for me to have the experience of successsfully building a bridge.

We're not having a discussion regarding the construction of a bridge, we're having a discussion regarding an explanation for the existence of the bridge, what it's built out of.  Your current use of the word sufficient is equivocation, and your chosen analogy changes the subject.

No, it can't explain psychogony, and must take mind as brute fact,

but it does not have to take minds composition as a brute fact.  "I think, therefore I am, and I know what I am."  Didn't we agree?

as materialism must take the framework which allows the existence of stuff.  The difference is that no sensible view of material is compatible with mind, as mind is not normally thought to be a material "thing," while the -ism to which you subscibe is ALREADY a set of ideas, and could not be thought to be otherwise.

You do not agree with any of the many sensible material views of mind.  Your status of agreement is not relevant to their status of existence.

This is the point you're not getting: Idealism is the simpler position, and materialism posits the extra underlying "reality"-- itself an idea.

Seems to me like your idealism is just materialism, "sub-sumed",and given a new name. Tell me how a car works, again, in this idealistic universe we live in?

[Angrboda]

What is your notion of what an idea is?   In the physicalist paradigm, ideas are things just as much as a desk or a glass is a physical thing.  If you're saying something different, you need to provide some defense of that instead of just handwaving it aside with the non-informative label 'idea'.  What is an idea in your framework?  You have a referent that doesn't seem to refer to anything.  A signifier without a significand.

You are demanding of a person who does not define the world in thing-ness to define ideas as a thing.  I will not.

So, in your world, an idea is no-thing, and reality is made up of no-things.  Very illuminating.

Materialism is a reduction of all phenomenon to a small set of mathematical principles, with some metaphysics thrown in for good measure.

That it turns out the universe is reducible only to ideas is an etymological problem for you.  You can call black white if you want, but unless you can represent your ideas of essential parts as things with volume, occupying space, and located in specific times, then you are abusing the word horribly.  Essentially, you are taking Idealism and saying "Nuh uh, that was us all along."  But let me say this, if you want to argue that reality consists of mathematical principles, then you're going to have a tough time explaining why mathematical principles have become aware of themselves.

I don't think you know what the word etymological means.  Our understanding of the world consists of ideas.  You are taking this brute fact and using it as a shield against knowledge.  But you do so at a cost, and that cost consists in making your model of the world a useless one.  I may have a tough time explaining self-awareness but so what?  A difficult problem does not equal an insolvable problem.  The evidence from science and medicine is that the mind behaves consistent with it being an object like any other.  Complex in its action, but material.  Your preference for the notion of a world of ideas is nothing more than a strategic retreat from the question of how your mind works.  That materialism explains phenomena outside of mind makes you willing to accept mechanistic explanations otherwise.  Because you personally can't comprehend how ideas can be things, you recoil into a position of epistemic insularity.  You can't solve the problem of consciousness, so you assert that it cannot be solved.  And you retreat into a nest of words that mean nothing, and explain less.

 It explains by breaking apart composite phenomena into parts that explain the composite.  Your breaking everything down into 'ideas' doesn't explain.  It merely leaves the nature of things undefined.  It subsumes, but doesn't reduce.  Is there anything that an idea cannot be?  Is there anything an idea must be?  It seems that under your view, an idea can be anything, so you haven't identified any parts which explain the composite.  That's a weakness, not a strength.  What are the practical limits on ideas in your Idealism?

An idea is an immaterial principle or pattern, either an experience or a principle which molds experience.

Well that's vague.  It's also the resort of the religious.  Ideas are immaterial.  So they really are no-thing. What makes you think ideas are immaterial?