(September 16, 2015 at 6:43 pm)Rational AKD Wrote: I never said nothing exists... I said mind is fundamental, ie, it exists but matter does not. I see no reason why you can't be conscious of concepts. after all, when I dream i'm not conscious of the physical world. i'm conscious of the contents of my dream. you can claim the dream is caused by material interactions, but the contents nonetheless are immaterial and I am conscious of them.
our minds do not affect this reality. but if you have a lucid dream, your mind can affect that. all that tells you, however, is our mind is not dreaming up the world. it comes from something external to our mind, which could be a different mind...
if by real you mean the world is outside my mind; then yes, I consider the world real. but that doesn't mean the world isn't derived from a mind external to my own. in other words, I consider the world functionally real but not objectively real. the world doesn't exist beyond perception, but you can use it to interact with other minds who are all experiencing the same world just as you are.
Firstly thank you for offering this clarification, it helps my understanding of your position.
"I said mind is fundamental, ie, it exists but matter does not". I think you are trying to take us down a false dichotomy here ie mind or matter. I am agnostic on materalism (depending on your definition of it). Yes I think minds are dependent on brains and physical causal processes. Do I know what the nature of matter is below the brain, molecule, atom, sub-atomic particles - no I do not and neither does anyone else. The best explanation I have heard is quantum field theory, but until I have a better understanding (which I may never have) I have suspend judgement on materialism. However, I have never heard anyone need to invoke magic, mysticism, supernaturalism, the immaterial to explain the true nature of reality. It could be that matter is "condensed energy" from fields, but they are still part of nature and have a physically measurable existence. To state matter does not exist, goes beyond our knowledge and is contrary to everything we currently know.
"I see no reason why you can't be conscious of concepts. after all, when I dream i'm not conscious of the physical world. i'm conscious of the contents of my dream....but the contents nonetheless are immaterial and I am conscious of them." I agree you can be conscious of concepts and I would go further to assert that those concepts can be objective. When you dream you are not conscious (it is the very definition of dreaming). Your sub-conscious is aware of the contents of your dream of course and is able to pick up sensory input from its environment, access and replay memories and create new memories and connections. I would claim that these are well understood by medical science and are not mysterious. Labelling the contents as immaterial adds nothing to this. What do you mean? What is immaterial? If you mean not material then you only define what it is not, and not what it is. It is therefore meaningless. Matter however can be shown to exist (even though we do not know what its true nature really is at the smallest scale). Here I think you may be trying the wrongly sever the link between things with no independent physical existence (dreams) and things with independent physical existence (brains), and then concrete out abstractions (like contents of dreams) as real existents, which they are not. The contents of your dream may "exist" but only as an emergent property of physical processes. Alter those physical processes and the "existence" of those contents change or disappear.
"it comes from something external to our mind, which could be a different mind...". This is special pleading and mystical thinking. Minds are minds if one mind can control reality then so can any other. I think you are arguing towards the extra special mind of a god and nothing you have said can remotely get us to that without special pleading. If you are arguing minds can control reality then of course you are now entering the realm of make-believe and mysticism, which for me I'm afriad is woo-woo.
"I consider the world functionally real but not objectively real". This is just false, infact it is not even false but meaninglessness. Reality is real or it is not. It is objectively real or not. There is no "functionally real". This is the same as saying I live in a fantasy of either my creation or someone elses.
So again I return to the same topics. Under idealism is:
- "apparently" blowing your brains out detrimental to your existence?
- "apparently" deliberately driving a car into a crowd immoral?"
- if you are Xtian and idealist, does that not deny Xtian theology and is thus self refuting (given its realiance on bodily death and ressurection as atonement and hope)
"I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence"...Doug McLeod.
