Proof Mind is Fundamental and Matter Doesn't Exist

[Redbeard The Pink]

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.

Except where I went on to state what I meant by "shitty."


Behold, the power of reading.

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.

I see...unnecessary explanation...ok, so let me use an example to see if I understand correctly. Let's say I lived in a world that appeared to be filled with evidence that the Universe is natural and material and that it exists because of phenomenon that have physical explanations, and in which there is no evidence of anything supernatural or metaphysical, ok? Let's say I live in such a world, and all the evidence points to things in that world existing because of natural phenomenon that have been ongoing for billions of years, and I then assert that all of that is happening because a metaphysical super-mind is dreaming it all up, and that this metaphysical super-mind is the only thing that actually exists at all because the rest of reality is a pile of dream objects that have no true, physical substance. The "metaphysical super-mind" and the dream world it generates would be classified as "unnecessary explanations," right? Right?


Occam's razor is designed to lend us toward testing and considering explanations which can easily be proven or disproven before moving on to more difficult explanations that would require more sophisticated evidence. Because the premise "The Universe exists because of natural processes involving physical objects and energy" has been overwhelmingly borne out by evidence, that seems to be the position most rational people take. It's defensible, it's demonstrable, and it contains nothing unnecessary. If you want to add something else to that, you need evidence, starting with some evidence that metaphysics is something other than abstract, theoretical talk with no basis in reality.

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.

More like you're trying to use reason to demonstrate things that have to be addressed with empiricism. You cannot use reason to prove things about physical reality unless you're using premises that are based on physically observable facts. Reason alone is not evidence, and it especially isn't proof.

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...

Yeah, it pretty well does. Even if there's a metaphysical super-mind generating a dream and that's what we live in, the evidence in that dream world indicates that our dream brains generate our dream minds by using our dream senses to interact with our dream world. Even if your assertions were correct, they'd have no impact really on the facts of our reality. It explains nothing and only raises questions about the nature of this mind-thing, why it exists, where it came from, etc.

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."

"Correlation does not indicate Causation" does not bend that far, my friend. Reactivity does indicate causation, and with nervous response you don't just have correlation, but also reactivity. We can observe the stimuli contacting the senses. We can watch the neurons fire from the nerves into the brain. We can watch the neurons bounce around inside the brain. We can watch them travel back out to the body to activate a response, and we can see the body's other systems act according to those impulses. That is a direct chain of causation. Brain activity isn't just "correlated with" mental activity, it is mental activity. All the thinking happens while the brain is lighting up. All the believing and understanding happens while the brain is lighting up. Stimuli causes sensory input, input causes mental response, mental response causes physical response. In that order. Every time. Science, bitch.

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.

Ok, you're going to have to define what you mean when you use the word "why." All this crap about "using experience to explain why we experience" is starting to sound like part of your word salad. We can answer so many different versions of that question that I don't even know where to start. Observable evidence from the physical Universe suggests that we "experience" because we are alive and we possess bodies that can gain environmental input and respond to it. Even though we have to "experience" that evidence to know anything about it, we can still draw conclusions from the evidence. You seem to be using some deeper, metaphysical sense of the word "why" here, and in that sense there doesn't appear to be any deeper meaning to the Universe. It just is what it is, and your time in it is what you make of it.

the problem with this, however, is you're starting from the premise that the material world behaves in consistent ways.

Because it does.

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, according to you, how much would we need to know about a subject before we get to the "nature of its existence?" This is what I'm talking about when I say "word salad." We don't just understand how matter behaves, we also understand what it's made of, what that stuff is made of, what that stuff is made of, and we're getting damn close to observing the fundamental particle that everything is made of. What question are you trying to answer? Do you want to know what the meaning of life is? It's 42. I thought we knew this already.

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.

More word salad. Evidence indicates that objective stimuli and our perceptions of and reactions to those stimuli are "what's behind our conscious experience." What do you mean by that phrase, exactly? You seem to be working from the presupposition that reality is just a curtain behind which is "what's really going on." From everything we can tell, the physical world is what's really going on. If you want to claim anything else, you need evidence. You cannot use mere reason to prove a positive claim about the existence of a real thing.