Idealism is more Rational than Materialism

[Rational AKD]

It doesn't, if it did.... it would be difficult to explain why it was dead, and the other alive, don't you think? I guess the rest falls apart right there so I'll let it ride.

you can have a dead person with a perfectly in tact brain just like how you can have a dead person with perfectly in tact organs that are even viable for transplant. a dead person doesn't necessarily have brain damage or missing components from the brain. it is merely unable to function because the body system fails.

Strange, you keep speaking to me as though you do.

to say "we cannot get behind consciousness" is not to dissolve to solipsism. it dissolves to "mind is fundamental" which is general idealism which includes the many minds interpretation I stated in the OP.

Then perhaps you should retreat to it a little less?

way to redundantly beat your dead point by completely ignoring my reasons to reject solipsism and why idealism is more reasonable. you clearly have no intention of honestly addressing points of view outside your own.

Not even remotely what I asked, and I think we might want to make one silly claim at a time, rather than lumping them all together. But that's just me.

excuse me, I confused your pronouns. if I die will you cease to exist? as I said, in my view you and I are part of a greater consciousness that brought us into existence. so your existence is in no way contingent upon mine.

-undemonstrated.......two massive and extraneous assumptions. Meanwhile, I'm saying -machine-. I think you might have lost your shit, if you think that you're reducing assumptions by invoking ghosts, "multi consciousness" and a "super conscious". But whatevs, I'm game - this is the point that you demonstrate the existence of any of those things...right? I'm assuming, of course, that I don;t need to demonstrate to you that your brain exists (and if I do...I think I'd be more likely to agree with your doubts, in the case of your brain, particularly).

*sigh* if only you could listen without assuming I mean what you want me to mean... lets break down the steps I used to reject solipsism in favor of idealism.
1. if metaphysical solipsism is true, then all that exists is your mind and everything else is derived.
2. a consciousness that is truly fundamental would be in control of everything given 1.
3. "I" am not remotely in control of everything.
4. therefore my mind must be derived from something else.

after concluding this, you can postulate that your mind is in direct control of another mind, which would make your mind as well as the world you experience is emergent from it; or you can postulate a completely new and foreign substance of "non-consciousness" and believe that somehow a world of this non-conscious substance caused consciousness to emerge from it. which makes fewer assumptions? we already experience consciousness, so why postulate non-consciousness to explain it when this isn't parsimonious or verifiable? the only thing we can observe is consciousness and conscious experience. given the above argument solipsism has problems but it's a huge jump to go from that to materialism and less of a jump to go to idealism.

First off, I don't think we can ever know if we have free will or not.

that doesn't address the logical implications of materialism and idealism in regards to determinism or libertarianism. if your claim is "we cannot know this" then either it is because we cannot know if materialism or idealism is true or because they do not have these implications. which do you think it is?

I however think you are muddling individual consciousness with what you describe as some sort of grand consciousness.

well I do arrive at this "grand consciousness" at some point in my epistemology. but I do give reasons for doing so in my responses to rhythm in this post.

If I throw a ball, and myself and a friend watch it travel, neither of us can change the path of the ball by thought, and if one of us touches the ball the other will notice this. So we are still both bound by the laws of this consciousness, and our own individual consciousness can only affect the grand consciouness under these laws. So I'm not sure these circumstances are any different to a material universe.

well, the circumstances are not different... but that's the point. both are adequate at explaining what we observe. but materialism assumes there is a substance distinct from what we observe and our conscious experience is a model that tries to be descriptive of (though appears to place interpretations upon at the very least) the reality beyond our perception. but idealism only assumes there is another consciousness greater than your own that yours is derived from, and the world you experience is also derived from this greater consciousness. idealism makes fewer assumptions, so is more reasonable given Occam's Razor.