Proof Mind is Fundamental and Matter Doesn't Exist

[The Grand Nudger]

The difference is that I have direct access to the experience of ideas, and therefore choose idealism as the most sensible default position.  You do not have direct access to the material monism about which you have ideas, unless you pretend that the subjective experience of mind and the objective "reality" of the objects contemplated by mind are identical.

Your direct access might inform you about yourself, but how could it inform you about the universe?   The comments you've made don't lead to or imply idealism as a stance on the fundamental nature of our universe.  If they were more thoroughly argued, more adequately explained, and absolutely true....they only have the power to generate conclusions regarding yourself.

In essence, you are right.  I cannot prove that there is more than MY experiences.  However, my experiences of others is compelling enough for me to take that they exist-- somehow.  You go this far, and one step further-- declaring that not only do they exist, but they exist in a particular way, in a universe which is founded on material and the principles which arise out of that material (which you must claim since otherwise, matter arises out of immaterial principles, which obviously is antithetical to your position).  I don't find it necessary to take that one extra step; I default to the position that things are as they seem-- and they seem to be experiences.

Yet your experience of what we have labeled "material" is not compelling enough?  That things really do seem to behave in the manner described isn't compelling enough?  That we awarded a nobel prize this year to the gentlemen who established the mass of a nuetrino...isn't compelling to you? Meh, fuck all that anyway, holding to your "black box" metaphor...you cannot extend that conclusion further than yourself.  You've taken a massive step, right off the cliff and down into the chasm.  

I'm fine with being an agnostic idealist.  It is the gnostic stance of materialists that I find annoying, not so much the idea of materialism itself.  As I have said, the material view is of great utility when I want to have a bridge that doesn't collapse or to invent a new superadhesive polymer or something.

Are you fine with being an agnostic idealist whose reached that position..and who advocates -for- that position, with a composition fallacy?  Doesn't the position deserve better support?  Surely there's some other way......some other reason you find idealism compelling?  If it turned out that you were made of cheese....you'd think the universe was made of cheese, or that it was some use of occams razor to conclude that cheese was a likely or justifiable candidate for the fundamental nature of the universe?  

That's not how logic -or- parsimony work........what am I supposed to say to that?

Materialism -does- have that utility, those bridges standing, those polymers bound.   It explains, and it's explanations achieve work.  That's not the fault of the materialist......maybe you should be annoyed at the universe for appearing to behave as though they were correct?