Regariding the evidence for materialism

[Fred]

Sure it's a belief, but it's also tentative.

Good to hear. That's the most honest answer I've seen so far. To be clear, my "you" in all this should be understood as the collective unless otherwise noted. You may be an agnostic personally, but there's a raft of comments that are soaking in a certainty that is not at all backed up by anything more than repetition.

If pressed I assume most people who appeared gnostic about materialism would turn out to be agnostic and it would rather be a case of them not being careful with their terms. Gnostic materialism is an entirely unsubstantiated position in my view so in that regard we would agree.

Cool. That's no small agreement, so let's celebrate with a virtual beer here. <clink>

Btw, I've been reading about stuff on these topics for a long time but I've never seen this gnostic bit anywhere else but here. What's that about? Has "hard" and "strong" been replaced or is this an idiosyncracy only practiced here?

The teapot analogy is inapplicable, Russell's teapot deals with things that are neither demonstrable nor falisfiable, the existence of the 'material' is demonstrable and the claim that "nature is all we have good reason to believe exists" is entirely falsifiable, it just hasn't been falsified to the best of my knowledge.

It was a quip, not an analogy. As to the falsifiability of the claim, it's problematic. I know the materialistic argument has been hammered from myriad directions but nobody seems much worried about that. Instead, it's instant dismissal. But, hey, here's just one paper slogging through the shortcomings. I posted it in another thread, but it's good to spread it around. http://bit.ly/oZS6vc If that doesn't seem adequate, here's more than you or anyone could ever wade through dealing with the subject of consciousness: http://bit.ly/Byecw

They're both longer than the amount of time I have to read them at the moment, I'll bookmark them for later but would you be willing to summarise the arguments in the mean time?

The second link is an archive of papers, hundreds of them, so I wasn't suggesting you read them all. My point was that this isn't at all as settled a question as the Certainists amongst us insist it is. As for the Pinocchio paper, the short version works like this: Materialism is inherently flawed up and down the line.

Bottom line is that the notion that materialism is on firm ground seems to be a fantasy shared only by those who hold it. And much as they delight in ripping other fantastical thinkers, it seems to really piss off many materialists when any challenge beyond bible verse hurling comes their way.

As long as the arguments against materialism aren't in the form of "materialism can't account for x therefore ¬materialism" then I tend to agree, however, as far as materialism not being on firm ground is concerned I would disagree - given the wealth of empirical demonstrations we have about (a significant number of the phenomena of) mind being contingent upon the brain due to various experiments where manipulation of the brain (either via experiment, chemicals or trauma) alters mental experience, including the experience of self, I would say there are very good reasons to believe that the mind is entirely the product of the brain, or more succinctly perhaps we have no good reason to believe any mental phenomena cannot be accounted for by some yet-undetermined material function.

There's no question that the brain directly effects mental experience, but there is no way that it is a given that it's a one-way street and that the mind cannot effect the brain. There are scads of studies about this, so go poke around. But right off the top, as often as it is used to dismiss this or that, the Placebo Effect also demonstrates how the mind can effect matter.

In that sense the claim that there are aspects of mind that aren't products of the brain is one that would need to be demonstrated and until such time as that is done the case for materialism is on substantially more firm ground than the case for ¬materialism.

No, sir. That's not the problem. The problem is that materialists have been shown over and over again to excel at the classic "heads I win/tails you lose" gambit when it comes to evidence that threatens their faith. These aspects have been demonstrated over and again, but nothing is ever enough and everything is instantly dismissed. Poke around and you won't have any trouble finding things to challenge the position from different angles. Here's a place to start: http://bit.ly/6HU9qj. Mind, you, I'm not making any claims for any of that stuff, as it's not my interest, but the point is that the notion that there's no contrary evidence to the material pov is pure dogma perpetuated by the choir. It's right up there with "evolution is just a theory" as far as eye-rollers go.