Occams Hatchet and Is Materialism "Special"

[bennyboy]

Directly to the contention, again, that all we have are ideas.  I have an experience of cold weather.  I feel the cold.  I see the thermostat drop.  I see the ground freeze.  I can quantify the differences between frozen and thawed ground.  My own subjective exprience of things does not seem to be involved in what a sensor array out in a field 500 miles from me is up to, or to another person who experiences and records the same things with the same and different instruments.   It very much seems that the temperature, and not an idea, and certainly not my experience,  is dropping.  The sheer, overwhelming weight of what I accept as evidence that there is indeed something called a temperature, which can drop, which exists apart from me and independent of my experience or even -any- human beings experience of it, is undeniable.

"seem" is the key word in that paragraph. It's already pretty well established that things are not as they seem to us.

This, to me, is compelling.  I'm satisfied.  You may not be.  You're offering the know-nothings objection to everything, including idealism..which, while in itself is a perfectly valid objection to everything, the specific instances and manners in which you support it are nothing other than a refutation of the very objection itself.  If you can't accept that the universe exists, then what it's made of..be it material or ideas, is moot point.

There are useful ideas, many of which involve pragmatic assumptions. The idea of material is useful when you're making a bridge. It's also useful in studying brain chemistry, and altering the nature of experience through the administration of drugs. It's not so useful in establishing the ultimate nature of reality; and it's piss-poor at explaining why there are actual subjective minds, rather than only philosophical zombies.

But as I've said maybe 6 times now, if you are such a champion of the material view, in particular of science, then let's bring in the science of qualia and see where it leads us. It's my belief that any mind scientist worth his salt will address the same philosophical issues that I have, then shrug and say, "but we choose to move on."