I'm starting to think we're bogged down on purely semantic differences, when we're actually talking about the same phenomenon.
My argument, in a materialist worldview, is that everything - even ideas - is reducible to the material. That's the essence, as I understand it, of the materialist worldview.
To an idealist, we live in a stop-gap, wall or whathaveyou where ideas, qualia, or whatchamacallit is what everything is reducible to - even the material - an idealist, abstract representation of the material. Because we can't separate an observer (mind) from what it observes (reality).
If you compare the 2 paragraphs above - "ideas", "qualia" is just placeholder words that are equal to "material", "reality".
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The only thing I can see & concede, is that we can't separate mind from the material. For there even to be ideas of "mind" and "material" there needs to be a mind to observe the material, just as there needs material to be around to even make up a mind (the mind is afterall I think we can obviously agree on part-and-parcel of constituent reality).
So, is it purely semantics we disagree on? Or is there something special about ideas that I'm missing?
My argument, in a materialist worldview, is that everything - even ideas - is reducible to the material. That's the essence, as I understand it, of the materialist worldview.
To an idealist, we live in a stop-gap, wall or whathaveyou where ideas, qualia, or whatchamacallit is what everything is reducible to - even the material - an idealist, abstract representation of the material. Because we can't separate an observer (mind) from what it observes (reality).
If you compare the 2 paragraphs above - "ideas", "qualia" is just placeholder words that are equal to "material", "reality".
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The only thing I can see & concede, is that we can't separate mind from the material. For there even to be ideas of "mind" and "material" there needs to be a mind to observe the material, just as there needs material to be around to even make up a mind (the mind is afterall I think we can obviously agree on part-and-parcel of constituent reality).
So, is it purely semantics we disagree on? Or is there something special about ideas that I'm missing?
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard P. Feynman
