Has anyone seen my neutral pointer?

[The Grand Nudger]

I got into a little – ahem - “trouble” over in the Atheists forum, so I’ll tip-toe into here and try to start again with something new – what, for me, is an essential philosophical idea – a conceptual tool, of sorts.  I find it especially useful when it comes to thinking about and understanding what I call “the sense story.”  "The sense story" is what I call that very familiar combination of a physical description and belief - the combination of -

--- physically describable processes in WHAT WE BELIEVE TO BE a material world with  -

--- the materialist belief that everything we experience happens in material brains. 

That is, these physically describable things happen (part one of the story) and then – ta-da – I see and feel a world (part two). 

That's not exactly a "materialist belief".  We all experience rocks as hard stuff.  We all experience locality.  The combination of the two make us not experience anything.  It's a compelling experience no matter what a person may think about the underlaying nature of the world or our experience.  

The concept, or perhaps it really is better to call it a conceptual tool, is what I call the “neutral pointer.”  A neutral pointer is a way of referring to something while saying as absolutely little of what you believe about it as possible. 

For example, I could say – talking about an apple I see – “that apple there that is made of matter existing in material world in which I am a material organism whose experiences happen in material brains” – or I could just point (and, using my neutral pointer) and say “that.”

Right, and I'd go with the latter.  It's easy to see why we don't communicate using phrases like the former.  

-"4 pages of elaborate underpinnings and conceptual position statements....look out for that lion!"- 

If you say "that" and point to an apple..Imma get it. If you think that it is or could be a spirit apple full of world peace (or that it;s useful, somehow, to leave that door open by pedantically describing a "neutral") then maybe, just maybe, it's your belief that needs elaboration rather than the materialistic underpinnings, as you see them, of everyday speech patterns.

For me, the most fundamental, and most important way of using the neutral pointer is to refer to this experience we learn to call “the world.”  My neutral pointer for what we, as children, learn to call “the world” is “THIS EXPERIENCE.”  The colors I experience, the sensations I experience, the spatial aspect of those experiences, etc. – that’s “this experience.” 

I don't know if that satisfies even in the case of children.  At some point, we ask ourselves "this experience" -of what?  At that point we have no choice but to consider the rocks and locality.  

Q and A time:

---

“is this experience a material world?”

-yes.

“Does this experience happen in a material brain?”

-yes

“Are the things I experience seeing made of atoms?”

-yes

“Does physical science describe events/happenings in this experience, or an underlying reality.”

-yes

"If there is an underlying reality, is it a material world or something else?"

-yes (and this one is my favorite, lol)

“is this experience something happening in a material brain?” 

-still yes.

“if such a brain actually exists – does it exist in this body?”

-still yes

“Is there light going into these eyes?”

-yes

 “Does my experience of thinking happen in this head?”

-still yes

---

For me, "physical world" is also a neutral pointer.  I use it to “point” to whatever reality physical models ACTUALLY DESCRIBE.  (I do not know what reality physical models describe.)  Maybe this experience is the physical world.  Maybe, if materialists are right, the physical world is a material world in which there exists a material brain in which this experience happens.  Maybe the physical world is something happening in “the mind of God” or in a “cosmic computer.”

There would be materialists who were "right" about your brain and experience (obviously the important part as you repeated many of the questions about it) even if it were "the mind of god" or a cosmic computer.  

Perhaps the most important role of the neutral pointer is that it doesn't carry the "I know what this world is" assumption that phrases like "the universe," "the material world," "the physical world" do.  These phrases carry ALL KINDS of ontological baggage.  There is, for me, an implicit "and what is this really" aspect to it.  It really helps me break out of the habitual materialist thinking we can't help but grow up with.

Why couldn't you help but grow up with it?  I doubt you knew what materialism was as a child...I think you may not now now, as we speak.