Occams Hatchet and Is Materialism "Special"

[bennyboy]

Benny, I'm okay with looking at materialism versus idealism as a philosophical choice but my question to you is: how do you suppose one should arrive at their choice?  I mean, by your own insistence we couldn't use reason to reach our conclusion because doing so would be appealing to the materialist assertion that such mental skills are a trustworthy method to arrive at truth, right?  If we can't trust our own innate capacity for reasoning in the first place, then the choice is completely arbitrary based on...I guess, which ever one you happen to prefer.  Yes?

Short version-- as an over-arching world view, yes, it's arbitrary, and substance agnosticism is one of my reasons for declaring as agnostic.

Long answer-- it depends on context.  I think a flexible and pragmatic person can switch perspective: choosing a material approach when building a bridge, an idealistic approach when dealing with say poetry, and an agnostic approach when dealing with the ultimate nature of reality.   

It's possible that reality is in what I'd call a modal superposition: it IS purely material, and it IS purely idealistic, and neither and both, depending on the way in which it's being interacted with.  Before I get wooed, let me say that I'm looking to QM for a clue that reality might be quite ambiguous and fluid, even in its "real" nature.

And this is a possibility that nobody here has discussed-- the possibility that due to paradox and trickery, reality might best be seen as being inclusive of options we consider mutually exclusive-- i.e. that we're all right in a sense, but wrong in that we lack the mental flexibility to really accept paradox as truth.