RE: Why materialists are predominantly materialists
September 18, 2016 at 7:27 pm
(This post was last modified: September 18, 2016 at 7:29 pm by bennyboy.)
(September 18, 2016 at 6:17 pm)Rhythm Wrote:I'm not an idealist. I'm purely agnostic. I'm arguing that materialism requires at least one extra assumption, and that the benefits of holding a material world view are insufficient to merit the extra assumption. If you need a monism, start at the source for a default position: experience itself as reality. After that, walk very carefully in determining what additional assumptions you need to make, and the degree to which they are really necessary.(September 18, 2016 at 6:14 pm)bennyboy Wrote: 1) Since there's no way to know where experiences come from, or if they come from anything, the default position should start with experience-- not something else.If there's no way to know...stop right there, Stop attempting to leverage a way of knowing, there's no application for reason or evidence here, after that. We're done, you've scuttled us. There's no sense in talking about default positions or the burden of assumptions, the pregnancy of axioms, the percentages of certainty, rational this that or the others, how a photon works or whether or not a table is really there and made of stuff after all...none of it. It's all uninformative...if we cannot know.
We get that you'll be an idealist until proven wrong, and we also get that it doesn't matter how many times any single component of your idealism -is- proven wrong or shown, as a whole, to be fundamentally vacuous. That's why it's so persistent.
Quote:Just a minor correction...you're not an agnostic...you're an ignostic. It's not that you don't know, you do not think that it can -be- known. Subtle but important. It also assumes a burden, if such things interest you, as a positive position. It does not receive the general immunity people perceive as a boon of an agnostic position. I don't expect you to provide anything, just food for thought.You can call it ignostic if you want. But I think it's pretty safe to say that someone who thinks certain things CAN'T be known will also claim not to know them-- i.e. also be agnostic. But wait. . . if you think I'm an ignostic, why did you just call me an idealist?
