Proof Mind is Fundamental and Matter Doesn't Exist

[bennyboy]

Neither of these things -are- but if you cannot provide an idealists explanation of mind - then why would it matter if there -were- no materialist explanation?  How important can this be to you?

I see physicalism as essentially exclusive, and idealism as essentially inclusive, and that's why the difference is important. "Show me the evidence or stfu" with regards to issues of mind, or philosophical issues like those of morality or of beauty, ignores an important facet of human experience-- that not all experiences are sharable or reproducible. To idealism, this is nothing at all: some ideas are sharable, some are personal, and so long as we agree which ideas those are, we're peachy.

Physicalists can not really explain why matter exists, any more than idealists can explain why mind exists; brute facts are a push for all. However, the issue of compatibility weighs in favor of idealism: given mind, it's easy to explain physicalism in those terms, since all our observations and inferences are made in mind. Given physicalism, it is very hard to explain mind: in fact it's not even possible to determine that any physical system, inclucing other people, IS mindful, without the question-begging acceptance of correlates as sufficient evidence.

As for IT, it seems to me that it does a better job of explaining how the brain, which seems to have no conscious "center," nevertheless allows for the sensation of a unified experience, than to explain why qualia exist rather than not. If you don't see it that way, maybe we should make a thread about IT, because it's deep enough to make it worth while.