(October 1, 2016 at 10:17 am)Mathilda Wrote:(September 30, 2016 at 1:08 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Strong belief in that, but little actual proof, methinks.
What do you mean by proof?
How about enough scientific evidence that the chances of being wrong are negligible? Would that do?
Try drinking alcohol, or taking a paracetamol tablet when you have a headache, or drinking too much coffee, taking illegal drugs, or visiting a hospice where someone is suffering from a neurodegenerative disease.
Now to balance it out, tell me some way to demonstrate that who we are and how we think is a result of something immaterial. Make it reproducible and falsifiable so that you can convince others.
You're circling around to a begging of the question, methinks. The OP is about materialism, and the issue of mind is one of the cases we're talking about. But the way you frame your descriptions and your ideas about mind are couched in purely material terms.
Tell me how you know ANYONE experiences anything subjectively, i.e. can experience qualia. It seems to me if you are really going to take such a strong position on mind, you'll have at least be able to determine unambiguously what physical systems do or don't have it. Are you able to do this?
