Proof Mind is Fundamental and Matter Doesn't Exist

[Rational AKD]

Yes, yes, I know, when we're wedded to our arguments they always seem to follow, even when we make 90degree turns at full throttle.  But it doesn't matter much at this point.  We can go back and forth or you can rephrase.  Up to you.  You've made a grand claim which you only seem interested in defending by saying "no..no..it follows, I'm telling you it follows" - we disagree.  No amount of restating your position, that it follows, will change mine.  

then go ahead and invalidate the logic. the only criticism you have of the argument seems to be the wording of some of the claims, the boldness of the conclusion, and premise 5. you haven't tried to invalidate the logic, rather express your opinion on minor corrections and say premise 5 is false.

In this context, that "mind" -is- matter.  There's nothing contrary to that statement in context.

I disagree. if 'all is mind' then matter is conceptual but not the ontological equivalence of mind. I don't know of any context where mind and matter are indistinguishable... they do have different meanings. in materialism mind is emergent from matter but in idealism matter is emergent from mind.

We understand, as I've already explained, that the elephant we perceive is not, actually..an elephant inside of our skulls.  We have mental constructs, our entire world..everything we experience, all that is, so far as we can experience anything, is such a construct.  All, so far as we can tell, is mind, regardless.

to say all is mind is not to say all is identical to mind... it's to say all is either identical to mind or derived from it. but you can still distinguish mental constructs from mind itself.

The game is -also- the board.  Just how do you think that happens?  Magic?  No, machine states.  As I said, not arguing, informing.  Guess what the programming is?  An interface to machine language that arranges, wait for it.......the board.

as I said, it doesn't matter if the circuit board 'produces' the simulation, that doesn't make it the simulation itself. what is with you and equivocating the product from what it's derived from? is electricity equivalent to power plants?

The objects aren't actually "there" at all, unless by "there" you mean....on the board......the "mountain" continues to exist even when you exit, as physical pieces of machinery we call "memory" in state,

even so, it doesn't exist as the appearance of a 'mountain' as you see on your screen. this is most apparent when you see parts of it loaded on your screen. to say 'well it still exists in the memory' is irrelevant because it's not manifested as a mountain thus is not really a mountain in that state... it's just arbitrary code that are supposed to represent a mountain.

A very difficult position to argue, I don't envy you.  I hold an easier to argue position.  That our realities are simulations run by material minds. Alot of crossover between the two.  It's made easier in that we know how material objects can create simulations, and can demonstrate their ability to do so.  I'd hate to have to explain how the immaterial does that, and it would be rough to be the guy advancing that position in the absence of that explanation.

well nothing we know first hand is in terms of material anyways, so I don't see how your position is easier. if anything it's harder. every thought we have is in terms of information, and at best are descriptions of material though even if we believe they are descriptions we can't be sure how accurate of descriptions they are. so it seems easier to me to argue the most fundamental things that exist are in mental terms rather than some material that is separate from this. why postulate a substance we at best can at best come up with a description for that somewhat resembles it when you can explain everything with the concept of mind you are certainly familiar with?

What is there to address?

ok... let me try to break this down Barney style for you.
fundamental means most basic form possible. do you disagree?
2 different substances not identical have to be different somehow. do you disagree?
for 2 substances to interact, there must be similar properties for which they can interact. do you disagree?
2 substances can't share properties while being entirely separate substances. do you disagree?
if you did not disagree with the above, then it follows there cannot be 2 fundamental and separate substances that interact which falsifies dualism. if mind and matter interact, then either mind shares a physical property with matter, or matter shares a mental property with mind. I see no way around this, so now you most certainly have something to address.

[Rational AKD]

 I can say any damn thing I want about your premises, your definitions, and your whole argument without it being ad hominem. I can call them shitty. I can call them puerile. I can call their mother a two-bit whore. None of that is ad hominem. Regardless of what I actually say to you, it doesn't become ad hominem until I attack you and/or your credibility directly and then try to use that as rhetorical leverage against your argument, per the definition:

ok, perhaps I made interpretations of the fallacy that were not exactly accurate. nonetheless, calling my definition 'shitty' isn't any sort of disproof or invalidation thus not by any means a meaningful criticism as it's only an assertion on your part.

Occam's Razor, my friend. Solipsism/Monistic Idealism is neither the simplest nor the most easily testable explanation for how and why we experience the apparent existence of material reality, and until you rule out all simpler explanations and/or come up with a really good piece of observable evidence to prove your claim, Occam's Razor is going to keep cutting your infantile speculating to pieces.

first, this 'Occam's Razor' claim has nothing to do with the claim you made that the argument is more likely to be invalid than provide insight... second, Occam's razor doesn't cut out more complicated explanations... it cuts out unnecessary assumptions made in an explanation. for example, if I were to postulate we are in a world created by God, created by God's god, created by God's God's god... none of those intermediate gods add any further explanation and thus are unnecessary assertions to be cut out by Occam's Razor. it has nothing to do with the content being 'testable' which I still think you abuse. if 'testable' means can be shown by reason thus also invalidated or proven false by reason, then it is testable. if you mean 'can be shown by empirical demonstration' then you're presuming empiricism in a discussion about reason... you can't say Occam's Razor cuts out what can't be empirically demonstrated as that's certainly not what it means.

Evidence isn't what I arbitrarily claim it is, but it isn't what you arbitrarily claim it is either. Evidence is repeatable and observable. Simply put: if you can't show it, you can't claim to know it.

just as I thought... you are advocating empiricism in a discussion about reason. if that's your definition of reason, can you provide me with evidence that only things repeatable and observable count as evidence? can you show me how you know only things that can be shown can be known? there are more ways to show something is true than from what's repeatable and observable. to say otherwise is contradicting yourself.

It's not my fault you won't accept observable evidence from reality.

as I said, you can't use experience to explain why you experience. you can establish functional realism from experience, but not objective realism... so your evidence doesn't show brains produce minds...

The fact is that if you hook people's heads up to electrical nodes and use stimuli to elicit various emotional and intellectual responses, all different parts of their brains light up depending on what they're thinking and/or experiencing. Because the timing of these events is stimuli, then nerve impulses, then response, it's reasonable to draw a causative chain between these events, suggesting that stimuli from the objective world grants information to the senses, that information is relayed to the brain via nerve impulses, and the brain's nervous response is what we generally experience as thoughts, feelings, and "mind."

at best, you can conclude all those studies conclude brain affects the mind and thus there is a correlation... it's a leap so say ""mind" is a process, not a substance, and that this process is carried out by brains."

Why the fuck not? Because you say so?

I thought 30 times was enough for you to know why... because that would be question begging. you can't use experience to explain why we experience. the only part of what you said I agreed with was when you said we can learn things about how our bodies and minds behave by studying the world. we can certainly observe how our mind behaves, but that's not the same as observing the nature of what mind is. how mind behaves is observable, that which is behind our mental processes is not.

 No, I'm saying we can draw accurate conclusions about the material world because it behaves in measurably consistent ways. I am not conflating accuracy with consistence; I am stating that the possibility of accuracy is sourced by Universal constants.

the problem with this, however, is you're starting from the premise that the material world behaves in consistent ways. from this you can draw accurate conclusions only about the behavior of matter, not the nature of its existence. remember your premise is only concerning the behavior matter, thus you can only make conclusions from that premise concerning the behavior of matter. you need a different premise to draw a conclusion concerning the nature of matter's existence.

Ok, well...scientists of science acknowledge that natural phenomenon can be understood through material evidence, and that minds are a natural phenomenon.

they can understand how matter behaves... the philosophical model they take, be it realism or idealism, is apart from the evidence they find. you can acknowledge the behavior matter regardless of your metaphysical position on matter and mind. so i'm not saying their studies are useless, i'm saying their studies can't prove what's behind our conscious experience.

[bennyboy]

... because that would be question begging. you can't use experience to explain why we experience.

This ^

It doesn't prove the OP thesis, but it certainly proves that the opposite view cannot be supported through evidential means. You can't say, "I experience a bunch of stuff. . . therefore objective physical reality," no matter what it is you experience, or how deeply you think about it. And, unfortunately, we have no way of interacting with anything but through experience.

[Pyrrho]

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This kind of argument is different from my usual because I tend to be weary of using the term proof. but this argument has my full confidence so I'm going ahead and presenting it as a proof. by proof, I mean that it cannot be reasonably refuted or bypassed. this is not an argument of my own, but it is a reiteration of the Introspective Argument created by Johanan Raatz.

Definitions:
Mind- simply that which produces consciousness. you can think of it as a product of material interactions or its own substance, but either way it cannot be denied mind exists.
Metaphysical Solipsism- belief that a mind (presumably the believer's mind) is the only thing that exists.
Substance Dualism- belief there exist two fundamental substances, mind and matter.
Monistic idealism- belief that mind is a fundamental substance, and the only one that exists.

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Argument:
1. a metaphysically solipsist world (a world where only a mind exists) cannot be proven false due to epistemic limitations.
2. it is unreasonable to presume solipsism is impossible given 1, therefore it must be reasonably granted solipsism is possible.
3. given 2, it is possible for mind to exist in a solipsist (immaterial) world while it is not for matter.
4. there is therefore something that it true of mind but not of matter. this means they cannot be the same thing and mind is not reducible to matter.
5. substance dualism has been proven false due to the interaction problem (substances can only interact via shared properties and substances cannot be fundamental and share properties).
6. therefore, all is mind and monistic idealism entails.

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Overview:
basically, I put together this argument to answer criticisms from the ground up rather than trying to explain separate from the argument. it uses external world skepticism to substantiate P1, thus already answering criticism of those who think I'm merely asserting solipsism is possible. from there, it goes on to debunk materialism and dualism leaving only monistic idealism.

Objections:
1. the argument doesn't debunk property dualism. it's possible mind is a property or process of matter and thus doesn't reduce to matter yet is still derived from material interaction-- it doesn't directly debunk it, but it can easily be shown false deriving from P2. if metaphysical solipsism is possible, mind cannot be a property or a process because you cannot have a world with properties or processes without anything to attribute them to. you can't have a world with only a run or a feed, therefore mind must be an entity rather than a property or process.

I'll also be willing to address any questions concerning monistic idealism as presented. my last thread was also an argument for idealism, but a much weaker one. feel free to critique, but either by challenging the premises or invalidating the logic. I listen to reasons, not emotional outbursts.

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I confess I have not bothered to read the entire thread.  But has anyone pointed out the fact that statement 2 does not follow from the previous claims?  If I cannot prove that something is false, that does not mean that it is actually possible.

It is confusing an epistemological idea with a metaphysical idea.  I may not be able to prove something, but that is about my knowledge.  Whether it is actually possible or not does not depend on my knowledge.

Furthermore, 3 is introducing more that does not follow from what was stated previously, because a mind might be a material thing.  Maybe your mind is all that exists, but your mind is a material object.  Thus, 3 would be false.

So you have at least a couple of ridiculous leaps in your argument, and even if there were only one ridiculous leap, it would fail.  Your argument is crap.

[Rational AKD]

I confess I have not bothered to read the entire thread.  But has anyone pointed out the fact that statement 2 does not follow from the previous claims?  If I cannot prove that something is false, that does not mean that it is actually possible.

it has been brought up and I addressed it... but i'll go ahead and answer it again for you. basically what's behind premise 2 is our epistemic limitations. you can't use the contents of our conscious experience to explain what is behind them. so you can only use information not gathered from experience. but as there's no contradiction or inconsistency of a world that only has a mind, solipsism can't be proven false. this means for all we know and could possibly know, solipsism is possible. to put it another way, solipsism could be true given all epistemic knowledge. so given that, it would of course be unreasonable to presume solipsism is impossible. as for the agnostic position, it could only be maintained epistemic possibility doesn't establish actual possibility if we can't use epistemic knowledge to claim knowledge of what's actual... but this would be nihilism, the belief we cannot know what's actually true. but this position is also self refuting because it makes a claim of knowledge of what's actual by saying 'we cannot know what's actually true.' since nihilism is self refuting, it is not a reasonable belief. since being agnostic about the possibility of solipsism in light of our epistemic knowledge, that for all we know and could know it is possible, implies nihilism; being agnostic on about the possibility of solipsism is unreasonable.
in stark contrast, it seems reasonable to suggest epistemic knowledge is good evidence of what is actual. thus the only reasonable position you can maintain is that solipsism is possible. now, this still doesn't as you say mean solipsism is in fact possible. but then again premise 2 doesn't state that either. it states solipsism must be most reasonably granted possible. this again doesn't eliminate the impossibility of solipsism as a possibility, but rational people shouldn't be interested in just any possible answer. they should be interested in the most reasonable one.

Furthermore, 3 is introducing more that does not follow from what was stated previously, because a mind might be a material thing.  Maybe your mind is all that exists, but your mind is a material object.  Thus, 3 would be false.

3 is actually the premise that disproves that. it's all about Leibniz Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals. A and B are identical if and only if for everything that is true of A, B. if there is something that is true of A but not of B, then A and B are in fact not identical. so premise 3 states concerning mind, that it is possible for mind to exist in a solipsist (immaterial) world. this is shown true by the prior premises. it then states it is not possible for matter to exist in a solipsist (immaterial) world, which is true simply by definition. and from that we get to 4, that they are not the same and mind is not reducible to matter. so really you're objecting to 4, not 3. but I just explained why 4 follows from 3 and why 3 follows from 1 and 2.

[Rational AKD]

This ^

It doesn't prove the OP thesis, but it certainly proves that the opposite view cannot be supported through evidential means.  You can't say, "I experience a bunch of stuff. . . therefore objective physical reality," no matter what it is you experience, or how deeply you think about it.  And, unfortunately, we have no way of interacting with anything but through experience.

well no, of course I wouldn't say it proves the whole argument in the OP. though I would say it proves premise 2, that given solipsism could be true given all epistemic knowledge, that it's reasonable to believe it actually could be true.
though you have a point. everything that we experience apart from our mind or self is a mental construct. this is true regardless of whether you're materialist, dualist, or idealist. a materialist at best can claim we experience a mental construct that is an interpretation of a physical world. but there is no way to know the accuracy of this interpretation. furthermore, it seems an unnecessary leap to say there is a physical world apart from our experience when our experience can sufficiently be explained in purely mental terms. why postulate there is a substance beyond our experience when the postulation that our experience of mental constructs is just that is sufficient to explain our experience? though I argued this point on a different thread already:
http://atheistforums.org/thread-31365.html

[bennyboy]

I totally agree. All physicalist concepts: space, material, etc. work perfectly fine as a subset of an idealistic universe. You are then just describing those ideas which are consistent and useful enough that they are worth cataloguing and investigating. Whether a concrete bridge is really, really real in a physicalist sense, or is a composite of ideas about gravity, friction, tensile strength etc. doesn't matter anyway.

What does matter is that the existence of mind is a totally wash in any physical explanation without redefining terms to make it mean what it doesn't

[Pyrrho]

I confess I have not bothered to read the entire thread.  But has anyone pointed out the fact that statement 2 does not follow from the previous claims?  If I cannot prove that something is false, that does not mean that it is actually possible.

it has been brought up and I addressed it... but i'll go ahead and answer it again for you. basically what's behind premise 2 is our epistemic limitations. you can't use the contents of our conscious experience to explain what is behind them. so you can only use information not gathered from experience. but as there's no contradiction or inconsistency of a world that only has a mind, solipsism can't be proven false. this means for all we know and could possibly know, solipsism is possible. to put it another way, solipsism could be true given all epistemic knowledge. so given that, it would of course be unreasonable to presume solipsism is impossible. as for the agnostic position, it could only be maintained epistemic possibility doesn't establish actual possibility if we can't use epistemic knowledge to claim knowledge of what's actual... but this would be nihilism, the belief we cannot know what's actually true. but this position is also self refuting because it makes a claim of knowledge of what's actual by saying 'we cannot know what's actually true.' since nihilism is self refuting, it is not a reasonable belief. since being agnostic about the possibility of solipsism in light of our epistemic knowledge, that for all we know and could know it is possible, implies nihilism; being agnostic on about the possibility of solipsism is unreasonable.
in stark contrast, it seems reasonable to suggest epistemic knowledge is good evidence of what is actual. thus the only reasonable position you can maintain is that solipsism is possible. now, this still doesn't as you say mean solipsism is in fact possible. but then again premise 2 doesn't state that either. it states solipsism must be most reasonably granted possible. this again doesn't eliminate the impossibility of solipsism as a possibility, but rational people shouldn't be interested in just any possible answer. they should be interested in the most reasonable one.

Furthermore, 3 is introducing more that does not follow from what was stated previously, because a mind might be a material thing.  Maybe your mind is all that exists, but your mind is a material object.  Thus, 3 would be false.

3 is actually the premise that disproves that. it's all about Leibniz Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals. A and B are identical if and only if for everything that is true of A, B. if there is something that is true of A but not of B, then A and B are in fact not identical. so premise 3 states concerning mind, that it is possible for mind to exist in a solipsist (immaterial) world. this is shown true by the prior premises. it then states it is not possible for matter to exist in a solipsist (immaterial) world, which is true simply by definition. and from that we get to 4, that they are not the same and mind is not reducible to matter. so really you're objecting to 4, not 3. but I just explained why 4 follows from 3 and why 3 follows from 1 and 2.

That is the biggest load of crap I have read in a while.  You cannot know what I ate for breakfast this morning.  So, following your "reasoning," you cannot know I did not eat a brontosaurus for breakfast this morning.

It is idiocy to believe that you can know everything.  So it is idiocy to believe that you can know everything that is true.

I defy to you to tell us what I had for breakfast this morning.  Knowledge and what actually is the case are two very different things.  It is not "nihilism" to observe that you cannot know what I had for breakfast.  Your claim:  "this would be nihilism, the belief we cannot know what's actually true" is pure bullshit nonsense.

[Rational AKD]

That is the biggest load of crap I have read in a while.  You cannot know what I ate for breakfast this morning.  So, following your "reasoning," you cannot know I did not eat a brontosaurus for breakfast this morning.

that is not impossible to know due to epistemic limitations... so it can't be claimed by all epistemic knowledge it is possible you ate a brontosaurus this morning... worst parody by analogy ever...

It is not "nihilism" to observe that you cannot know what I had for breakfast.

and that makes sense... since you gave the worst parody by analogy ever... of course they don't have the same implications.

Your claim:  "this would be nihilism, the belief we cannot know what's actually true" is pure bullshit nonsense.

why don't you put what I said in context a little more... I said given all epistemic knowledge solipsism could be true, to conclude that knowledge can't reasonably establish solipsism actually could be true would imply nihilism. it's easier to try and show i'm using logical leaps when you only address part of what I say, isn't it?

since you didn't respond to my answer to your criticism of premise 3, i'm going to assume that's resolved until you say otherwise. so the only remaining dispute is premise 2, which I'm addressing.

[Cato]

This entire argument is bullshit. If an idealist was truly convinced, he would voluntarily separate his head from his neck and be able to gloat afterwards that he was right. The fact that none have nor will is all we need to understand about the confidence in their position. 

The warp speed backpeddling and excuse making to avoid a very simple demonstration may now commence.