(September 14, 2015 at 10:14 pm)mh.brewer Wrote: More questions.i'm presenting an argument for idealism, but I could easily build on that for an argument for God. as for your follow up, I think it's rather presumptuous to state how God should have made the world. maybe he has reasons for not making his existence evident enough to not be questioned.
Are you arguing god into existence? I would think that a god that simulated all of these minds would not need an argument. That would be one of the basic laws/givens of the mind simulation.
Or, are you arguing your belief system into existence and giving us your supporting argument? If you are, thanks, you're welcome to it, hope it works for you. I'll go my own way.
Tell me if I'm wrong but I hear you state that the mind is the only reality and is based on the minds ability to perceive, that matter does not exist except through the minds perception. Direct answer, yes, no, or correction.
Hypothetical: You come into the ER, the staff draws blood and tells you that you are having a hypoglycemic crisis and shows you the result of the lab test. They then tell you that if the condition is not corrected you'll die. The staff tells you that an IV drip of 50% glucose will correct your condition. They hook up the IV and leave. Because the contents/chemical make up of the IV depends on your minds perception (and this can only based on what you were told), do you recover no matter what is in the IV?
no, i'm not arguing my belief into existence. i'm providing reason via a sound argument that my belief is correct. my argument builds from the ground up, not from top to bottom.
do I think matter only exists in our perception? yes, that is correct. a good analogy I like to use is a sandbox game. in the game, you have a world to experience. the map you play on is consistent, but at the same time it's not all there at the same time. the game only loads a certain amount of the map at a time dependent on what you're viewing. sometimes you can even see parts of the map loading on your screen (of course you can't see that in reality). much is the same in an idealist world.
as for your hypothetical, it's an interesting scenario. it brings up a topic that I haven't discussed here yet. concerning contents of the world that are not observed, they are not there when you are not observing them. but their processes are still governed by determined probabilities. in the example, a hooked IV has a near 100% chance of performing its intended function given it was hooked up properly, thus when it is observed it will most likely be found performing as expected. this probability view comes mainly from evidence of quantum theory with many of it's principles and experiment findings. but it would go off topic to discuss those so I will not do so here.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.
-Galileo
-Galileo
