An intro to my non-materialist view

[Edwardo Piet]

Whether consciousness is mental and/or physical, one thing we can be really sure of about our conscious experience is it's all entirely illusory and we're not really experiencing any of it.

The above paragraph was brought to you by Sarcasm incorporated™! have a nice day!

[brewer]

Are you going to take us thru all of your website lecture or are you willing to have a discussion?

Will our questions be answered by you? Or are you only going to give answers to questions that you pose?

[Bunburryist]

More or less. I still have a problem with your insinuation that what  you call the "This Experience" would be called "the material world" by a default materialist. From what you say, it appears to be something else since your definition alludes to experienceL:

You're real close.  You're right.  A default materialist might call This Experience  "a brain image" or "a subjective experience" or a "qualia world" or something else.  But those are loaded phrases that come right out of the materialist dictionary.  We need a neutral phrase.  That's why I use This Experience.  To me it's also very important that it's something the average non-philosopher can relate to.  Also, by using a new phrase, it carries along with it the idea that I'm trying to get at something different from the materialist-idealist debate.  Not even close.

As soon as you say "subjective experience," for example, you're up to your knees in the materialist paradigm.  The flood gates open and all the concepts, ideas, images, theories, etc. relating go "subjectivism" come flooding in.

I experience red there.  And an itch in my leg there.  And the sound of a siren over that way.  And if I lost my leg I might experience an itch or pain where my leg "used to be."  That's this experience.   Take everything I experience - colors, sensations, smells, tastes, sounds, along with their (apparent) spatial aspects - put 'em in a big box and label it "This Experience."

Imagine a ten year old.   He knows nothing about worldviews, paradigms, etc.  You wave your hands and say, "What is this."  He doesn't think, "Oh are you referring to a brain image ......" No.  He'd just say, "The world."  What he calls "the world" - that's This Experience.

The point is to find a way to refer to whatever this colorful, sensuous experience is (as free from any worldview as possible), to hold that idea in one hand, and then to hold in the other hand the abstract concept of a material world as a world of objective space, etc..  We've got to keep them separate to think about them clearly.  This is by no means a semantic game.  But the only way we can do it is with words.

[Bunburryist]

Are you going to take us thru all of your website lecture or are you willing to have a discussion?

Will our questions be answered by you? Or are you only going to give answers to questions that you pose?

You can't very well discuss something you don't understand.  If you don't find it interesting, you're free to go to other posts.

[The Grand Nudger]

More or less. I still have a problem with your insinuation that what  you call the "This Experience" would be called "the material world" by a default materialist. From what you say, it appears to be something else since your definition alludes to experienceL:

You're real close.  You're right.  A default materialist might call This Experience  "a brain image" or "a subjective experience" or a "qualia world" or something else.  But those are loaded phrases that come right out of the materialist dictionary.  We need a neutral phrase.  That's why I use This Experience.  To me it's also very important that it's something the average non-philosopher can relate to.  Also, by using a new phrase, it carries along with it the idea that I'm trying to get at something different from the materialist-idealist debate.  Not even close.

We do have a new-neutral phrase.  It's a representation.  


.....................................?

That representation could be made out of™ anything, it could be achieved in any, unspecified way. We -know- that thw experence is not "the material world." in that sense That the red ball of the material world is too big, for example, to fit in your head, even if the red ball of mind isn't.

[Edwardo Piet]

"Subjective experience" is not anything to do with the materialist paradigm. "Subjective experience" simply refers to subjective experience (and we already know what "subjective experience" means) regardless of if materialism is true or idealism is true or panpsychism is true or whatever.

Anyways I'm off to bed, goodnight.

[brewer]

Are you going to take us thru all of your website lecture or are you willing to have a discussion?

Will our questions be answered by you? Or are you only going to give answers to questions that you pose?

You can't very well discuss something you don't understand.  If you don't find it interesting, you're free to go to other posts.

I believe I understand it just fine. I just don't believe it's valid. Unless you're willing to discuss the validity of your belief, a little give and take, sounds to me like the issue might be on your end.

[Bunburryist]

You're real close.  You're right.  A default materialist might call This Experience  "a brain image" or "a subjective experience" or a "qualia world" or something else.  But those are loaded phrases that come right out of the materialist dictionary.  We need a neutral phrase.  That's why I use This Experience.  To me it's also very important that it's something the average non-philosopher can relate to.  Also, by using a new phrase, it carries along with it the idea that I'm trying to get at something different from the materialist-idealist debate.  Not even close.

We do have a new-neutral phrase.  It's a representation.  

That's not neutral.  It's right out of the materialist dictionary.  It Implies that This Experience IS a representation.  Your just assuming the materialist view by using that very word.  Using my cat analogy, that's like saying, when I suggest using "animal" for a neutral pointer, your responding - "We already have a neutral phrase - it's a feline.  I know my phraseology is different.  It's different for a reason.  I don't know if this will ever actually get that far, but when it gets to the point where materialism is questioned, we don't want to have materialist-laden terminology holding us back.  "This Experience" is about as neutral as one can get.  By the way, nothing I'm doing here, at this point, is in any way anti-materialist.  Just the opposite.  Stick we me and I think you'll see I'm actually playing hard-ball materialism.

[The Grand Nudger]

That's not neutral.  It's right out of the materialist dictionary.

?

Not at all (and representationalism predates materialism, by the by).  A representation could be made out of anything, and regardless of what anything is made out of our consciousness is demonstrably a representation.

Yes, I think that a material explanation is the simplest and most parsimonious explanation -for- that representation.....but if it wasn't true, the representation would still exist and require an explanation. That representation, regardless of what it;s made out of, makes the question "Is this experience the material world" moot point. OFC it's not. It's a version of the world, material or otherwise™.

[Bunburryist]

@ the OP

Interesting... you're not only an Immaterialist (a fact of the (im)matter that I find rather immaterial, to be honest )... but also, according to the "religious views" section of your AF profile you're also not an atheist you're an athiest. So I take it you don't believe in the existence of thighs. Either that or you believe your legs are made of soul-stuff

Bad spelling is depressing.

I have certain keyboard habits, and one is that I always spell atheist athiest and have to go back and change it!  I think it's probably because, to me, phonetically, athiest looks more like we pronounce it than atheist, which to me looks like it ought to be pronounced ay thay ist.  "Atheist" never looks right to me.

---

That's not neutral.  It's right out of the materialist dictionary.

?

Not at all (and representationalism predates materialism, by the by).  A representation could be made out of anything, and regardless of what anything is made out of our consciousness is demonstrably a representation.

Yes, I think that a material explanation is the simplest and most parsimonious explanation -for- that representation.....but if it wasn't true, the representation would still exist and require an explanation.  That representation, regardless of what it;s made out of, makes the question "Is this experience the material world" moot point.  OFC it's not.  It's a version of the world, material or otherwise™.

If you walk up to someone with a basic science background and ask them what "visual representations" in the brain represent, they will say something to the effect of "things it the world." To the average listener, it doesn't merely refer to This Experience, it says what it is and does, and implies a worldview. That's no neutral pointer. I don't think the neutral pointer concept is that complicated, nor is it in some way deceptive or vague.  It does exactly what it's supposed to do - no more, no less.  It refers, or "points to" to this experience we learn to call "the world," without implying a worldview.  Sometimes if we want to understand new ideas and perspectives we can't be rigid and insist on using old concepts from different paradigms - we need to accept and use new concepts.