On naturalism and consciousness

[bennyboy]

So we are using different definitions of mind. It's funny how you define the mind that only makes sense in your world view, and not in any world view like my definition. No wonder we're arguing in circles.

I find physicalists strangely jealous of the duelist or idealist vocabulary. We already have sufficient words to describe the physicalist model: brain function, interaction, data processing, input/output, etc. Why is it that the physical position so eagerly attempts to make words objective that are specifically intended to talk about the subjectve?

A physical brain? I wonder why you felt the need to qualify the word "brain" in this way?

Fine, a physical(-like) brain. Happy now.

No, I still don't understand what the qualifier is for. Just say "brain." I think any honest idealist will understand that by brain you refer to the pink stuff in one's head which is so intimately connected to experience.

What you haven't asked, and should have, is this: is the framework in which the brain resides really a physical monism, or is this view of things a symbolic representation? Do the neurons in the brain exist as more than an idea? How about the atoms? How about the QM particles?

I'm not sure why your asking me these questions. You already know what I'm going to say. The framework is really represents physical monism. Yes. Yes. And yes.

Okay. So let me ask: is a desk a solid surface, or is it a gazillion particles, each unobservable by the senses, vibrating in 99.99999% space? (with the .00001% probably being pretty generous)

I noticed that you didn't provide a better answer to my question on falsifiability. I provided the observations that would disprove mine. Where is yours?

You did no such thing. You rolled out a bunch of fanciful baloney which is not coherent in any educated person's experience, and said that if that baloney were found true, you would accept it as evidence.

You also ignored my reponse by discarding it as not answering your question. So I'll repeat it: you can falsify idealism by showing that physical monism can adequately handle the fact of subjective experience, since my argument for idealism is that it is the simplest view which encompasses all of human experience. If you can do the following, you are the hands-down winner:
-establish criteria which allow one to determine whether a given system does/does not experience qualia
-demonstrate a plausible mechanism for the existence of subjective qualia in an objective physical framework
-include the fact of mind in the mechanical calculus which is supposed to encompass all of reality

---

Just to make sure. this is my definition of reality: "the world or the state of things as they actually exist." Please provide yours.

The conformity of an idea with the source of the experiences from which the idea was drawn or inferred.

I can even provide a definition of physical reality to assist you with YOUR model: "Locatable, at least theoretically, in time and space." Want to guess what % of QM particles meet this definition?