On naturalism and consciousness

[bennyboy]

No, contradictions show that something is wrong. Red-flags, load-sirens wrong. A model (in this case of reality) has to be internally consistent to be a good model. If it has contradictions, it is not internally consistent.

Okay, try this one. Qualia (the experience of what things are like to a subjective experiencer) are said by you to be physical. And yet you cannot see them, measure them, or establish any criteria by which you can be sure they even exist in a given physical system. This is a logical inconsistency-- to claim that something exists which cannot be reasonably inferred without already assuming that it exists.

Or this. For something to be said to exist in a physical framework, it must be locatable in both time and space. Something cannot both be a particle and a wave, because those things are substantively different in nature. We cannot therefore draw an image of a photon as it moves through space. So in what sense does a photon exist?

Thats nice that you think that, but where is your reasoning for this belief?

Because we can talk about them, and even accept the ambiguity and embed it into a system of thought. But we cannot directly observe things like photons, or make a spatial model of them.

There is some framework? Made out of what, concepts? The interactions of the concepts? How does it prevent any other concept from existing in it? How does it prevent the all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent God concept from existing in it?

I don't know any more about how an idealistic universe works than you know about a physicalist one.

Yes, I do think all idealism is a kind of Buddhist "not-being," because I can't picture how a concept(s) can produce a physical(-like) universe.

Have you never dreamed? Or read fantasy or sci-fi?

What? What "atomic pot of gold"?

Atomic means "indivisible," i.e. that you have reduced reality down to its most fundamental possible element/s. If, in the process of reduction, you find yourself resorting exclusively to math, and unable to visualize or spatialize a model of things, then you have discovered that the universe is composed of concept rather than things and their interactions.