RE: Proof Mind is Fundamental and Matter Doesn't Exist
September 17, 2015 at 11:02 pm
(This post was last modified: September 17, 2015 at 11:05 pm by Rational AKD.)
(September 17, 2015 at 10:06 pm)bennyboy Wrote: This ^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.
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.
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
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