Why materialists are predominantly materialists

[Jesster]

call it that if you want.

philosophical rambling

[ApeNotKillApe]

Chomsky once said something like, 'Before you start asking questions about 'physical' and 'non-physical', you have to define what physical even means.'

It's a good question.  Did he provide an answer?

"As soon as we come to understand something, we call it physical."

[bennyboy]

It's a good question.  Did he provide an answer?

"As soon as we come to understand something, we call it physical."

Sounds like ideas to me.

[ApeNotKillApe]

My answer is that whatever is or isn't "out there," the human experience of it is purely experiential/idealistic.  In other words, the study of physics is a category of idea-- about the nature of and relationship among objects.  It doesn't really require a position on the underlying nature of reality.  But I'm happy defining "physical" as "whatever physicists are studying today," as I know what rich fields lay in that direction.

Experience is a phenomena of the mind, the mind is computational software that runs on the hardware of the brain, which autonomously operates the vital functions of the body and instructs the conscious mind.

[Jackalope]

Don't they take that 30 posts thing seriously?  I'm new to this forum stuff and don't want to be a "rule-breaker."

Sadly, you also need 30 days.

And yeah, we take it seriously.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Materialism is the ontology; science is the epistemology.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I'll weigh in here and agree with the OP that there's no evidence for material or anything like it. In fact, given double-slit experiments (quantum eraser) I'd say even a physical monism is on shaky ground, especially when idealism subsumes materialism and physicalism anyway. "Reality" is almost for sure unknowable; what we DO know is only what we experience, and relationships between the things we experience.

I propose we remove the unknown/unknowable from science altogether, and treat it for what it is-- a system of categorization and interaction with EXPERIENCES, with no need to cling to instinctive but unfounded assumptions about the nature of reality.

I take issue with the ideas that reality is 'unknowable' with some Kantian fence between us and the noumenal. Just because you cannot know everything about something doesn't mean you cannot know a little bit about it. If sometime was truly unknowable then you couldn't know anything at all about it.

[Neo-Scholastic]

... the mind is computational software that runs on the hardware of the brain, which autonomously operates the vital functions of the body and instructs the conscious mind.

No the mind is a steam engine...sorry, wrong century. Hopefully you realized you are speaking figuratively.

[Silver]

The irony in direct opposition to scripture is that theists are the most materialists of anyone on the planet. Those grand, fancy churches and the mansions in which holy leaders live when there are homeless who could better benefit from such an obvious display of unnecessary extravagance.

[bennyboy]

I take issue with the ideas that reality is 'unknowable' with some Kantian fence between us and the noumenal. Just because you cannot know everything about something doesn't mean you cannot know a little bit about it. If sometime was truly unknowable then you couldn't know anything at all about it.

I can know that there's an empty glass on my desk, because that knowledge is independent of anything under or behind my experience of glass-on-desk. I cannot know what framework really underlies my experience of the glass-- is there a mind/matter dualism, an idealistic monism, a material monism, the Mind of God, a brain in a jar, etc.?

EVEN IF I had ideas about reality, and they were 100% bang-on correct. . . how would I know this to be the case? How would I know there were not some additional layer, inscrutable to me, supporting all of that?