Why materialists are predominantly materialists

[emjay]

I feel like I'm at a bit of an impasse now... so much so that I don't know whether I should downgrade myself from an atheist to an agnostic.

There is no such thing as "downgrading from atheist to agnostic". Both positions are not on the same line. Agnosticism is not some happy middle ground between theism and atheism.

Agnosticism concerns positions about knowledge, and what is unknown and/or unknowable. Atheism concerns belief, or lack thereof.

Yeah, I did it! I opened that can of worms...

Yeah sorry, my understanding of the terminology's not great. What I took agnostic to mean was simply 'I don't know'. But using your definitions I guess I am still an atheist because I do not positively believe in a god. So agnostic atheist would probably be the best term.

I'm currently reading a book about consciousness and it's mainly a summary of existing positions, rather than a new theory being posited, and it contains a lot of philosophical questioning of those ideas, along with the author's own opinions. But it's really making me think on lines I've never really thought before. It describes the terminology so though I've always held my position strongly, I've never really known what it was called until now; 'functionalist epiphenomenalism'... vs zombic materialism and non-zombic materialism. So my view is that phenomenal consciousness is an impotent by-product of psychological consciousness (i.e. the physical) and that what binds them together, as it were, is this idea of functionalism... the system that is the brain. But it's just feeling harder and harder to hold that view, given that the system is defined/interpreted in some abstract way/space... there's no way to know where it begins and ends, whether it includes the environment as well as the brain etc... those sorts of questions that this book is bringing up and which Benny routinely brings up . In the past it's always been more than enough for me; the correlation between brain and mind and function and mind, but these philosophical questions are making me question whether correlation is enough... because this functionalist level or plane between them is something a lot more slippery. So I'm not a hugely happy bunny because it feels like my worldview has taken a severe beating. Just out of interest Rhythm or Jorm, do you identify with any of the above terms; functionalist epiphenomenalist, zombic materialist, or non-zombic materialist?

All interesting stuff. What's the name of the book? I love reading that kind of stuff.

But that leads to a question. What does science's current questions about consciousness, have to do with whether or not you accept the claim that a god or gods exist, is true or not?

The book is called Stuff and Consciousness: Connecting Matter and Mind, by Toby Pereira. It's an easy read and something that appeals to me particularly... a philosophical novice, if that... because it presents these philosophical ideas in a very simple, bitesize way, along with the summaries of the salient points of the different theories. It basically cuts to the meat of the matters without having to fully read and fully understand all these different positions on consciousness.

The reason why god comes into it for me now... but only as a very tentative possibility and not one I'm ready to even look at yet but might in future... is basically because functionalist epiphenomenism is a dualist position according to this book. I'm not entirely sure what the difference between that and non-zombic materialism is... I've never been quite sure which one of those I was but on balance I think it's the epiphenomenalism. I think, though I'm not sure, that non-zombic materialism has consciousness as some sort of property of matter, but that's not how I view it... I see it relying on the system and the system is ultimately abstract. So that being the case... physical world >>> abstract functional layer >>> phenomenal consciousness... means to me that the only thing tying the two together is this shaky abstract functional layer and without it they may as well be two separate planes that could just happen to correlate but not actually be causally connected in any way. A very long shot that, but nonetheless using your terms, that's a can of worms that I've opened for myself.