Proof Mind is Fundamental and Matter Doesn't Exist

[bennyboy]

Mind is seeing things, and thinking and stuff.

Correction, having physical eyes that detect a specific wavelength of light due to their chemical and structural composition...is seeing things.  Is it just me, or is our material explanation of what it means for something to be "mental" just a tad bit more descriptive and demonstrable than what you've offered?  Regardless, you still don't seem to have been able to answer the question asked.  

Nobody is denying the existence of light or wavelengths as things we experience.  It is their ultimate nature that is up for debate.

We've gone a bit further than that, into things that -are not- experiences, things that we, as creatures of a particular scale and arrangement, -are not equipped- to experience, you've encountered that problem, in this thread, yourself...demanding a human visual analog of an electron, for example.  These things, as you've noticed, seem consistent.  If we have common experiences, and we're the only group discussing or considering those common experiences....this is the very essence of what "objective reality" is taken to mean...wtf are you quibbling over?  Their consistence and commonality is precisely -why- we consider them to be part of an objective reality as opposed to the things I see when I'm on shrooms.  

Here's the thing.  You can have objects in idealism, too.  There are still electrons and billiard balls, quarks and black holes. . . and, for us, all these things are things to discover and interact with through the agency of mind.  It doesn't matter if they are material, or a simulation in the Matrix, or the expression of abstract principles.  But your thesis is that the "buck stops here," that matter is fundamental to all that does or can exist, and I find this view much less compelling than the idea that matter is the expression of immaterial principles.

Or I can just keeping chanting "Qualia, qualia, qualia."  Because you have nothing for it.

....and -why- should that, then, make them unknowable, in an idealists world?  This is an incredibly important question that never seems to have occurred to you

That's strange to say, since we've already talked about it in many past posts.  But if you want to go on about brute facts, then why is there gravity?  Why are things arranged in space and time?  Why aren't photons little billiard balls after all?  You can chase the answers down a couple more levels, maybe.  But in the end the answer is always the same: just because.

....and if I had to guess, it's because you lazily chose the "subsumes" route....and so an idealists world is, to you, identical to this one regardless of how ridiculous that proposition actually is

Your world view doesn't include any sensible description or explanation for mind.  My view includes both mind and the things the mind contemplates, including the world you and I both share.  My view is that our shared experiences represent a CATEGORY of idea.  There's nothing about this that makes reality insofar as we can know it different than it is.

- and so subject to the same philosophical issues.  Why, though, would a world so very different from the one in which we appear to live be subject to issues which only present themselves as consequences of the circumstances of this world in which we live?  The reason that I can't know, from inside of a material black box...what's outside of the box (or VV) is a thoroughly material description of the structure and composition of the box, relative to my own material structure and composition.  If it were not made of that stuff, in that arrangement (or if I weren't)..then perhaps I could see outside (or inside) - and that's certainly true even of other animals with a different sensory package, some of which perfectly able to detect what is inside or outside of said box.  Similarly, my black box of self is a black box because it is local, and apparently dependent upon my material structure and composition.  So, the black box, even as metaphor, works for me, and it works, plainly, because of stuffs relationship to stuff...but I don;t think it works for you.

Believe it or not, I have experience with boxes, too.  I'm not sure why you think this is proof that reality is fundamentally material. In the end, we should both be honest and accept that in the statment, "I have experience with boxes," I'm focusing on the experience, and you're focusing on the boxes. But since my reality is made up exclusively of experiences, and not too much of boxes, I prefer my view.

You need to make your arguments -from- the idealist position...or at the very least, you need to arrange for criticism of the materialist position which does -not- require you to assume it's truth, or the truth of it's limitations and circumstances.  All material bets are off, I'm trying to engage you.  Why, in an idealists world, does the unknowable exist in the first place?  How does something come to be unknowable, in an idealists world..and finally, since you seem so fond of solipsism (I know, I know, you don't seem to think you are)..can -you- demonstrate that "most of the ideas are not of the self".......?

You already know that my criticism of the materialist position is summarizable in one word: qualia.  When it comes to psychogony, you've got zero.

As for things being unknowble. . . I don't understand why you think this is a slam dunk.  I don't know things because I seem to be a part of a greater whole, and that's how things are.  But I can do the same thing to you: since you are so confident about the materialist position, then tell me. . . why is there gravity, rather than a lack of it? You could qualify your ignorance with the famous physicalist claim that you don't know "yet," but in the end you're going to have a hard time arguing it's turtles all the way down.

Input coming in...sounds to me like you assume the objective reality you leveraged your initial comment -against-.  Here again we see the stolen concept, or is this just another metaphor?  Those are function descriptives.  They imply location, and relationship.  You're criticizing others for holding the same positions as you yourself very clearly hold, while stealing the concepts of those whom you disagree with, and providing no explanations of your own.  Are you -trying- to tank your own position?

Did I say that the physical world view is foreign to me?  No.  I said it represents a category of experiences-- those which seem to be sharable with others.  My experience of boxes, and of space and time, is similar to yours.  I don't need to borrow or steal anything, because this category of experience is part of my reality as much as it is yours.

You want to set this up as a black vs. white argument, but I've never done so.  I don't have to reject your understanding of how things in the world work.  I reject only that your view represents the foundation of all reality-- in fact it cannot. So between idealism and material objectivism, idealism is the better position.