An atheists guide to reality

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Value of ourselves. Well, it's in our lives for sure. And as it's objectively true as well and we all agree on that, what we are discussing is whether it's possible to not simply be imaginative without a reality to it or in fact, there is a real metaphysical reality to it.

I don't know what you mean by objectively true here. An objective truth is something that is independently true outside of being true subjectively. Now whether you speak of mind existing in the brain or our selves existing as spirit, in either case, that's not objectively true because it depends on the subjective experience of the mind or spirit. If it were objectively true, you could take it out and look at it, show it, and I get the impression that's not what you mean.

I want to make a distinction here, because many people, when it is suggested to them that say consciousness is an illusion believe that you are implying that it isn't real. Something that is not real is a fiction, not an illusion. An illusion is something that appears as one thing, but is actually something else. It's still very real, only the thing that it appears to be is not real; the thing it actually is would in fact be real. Dualists and other non-physicalists often trade on this ambiguity to imply that saying that consciousness or meaning is an illusion is saying that there isn't a real phenomenon there; that would be a fiction, not an illusion. There's still a phenomenon there, just not the phenomenon it appears to be on the surface.

To me, suggesting that value exists in my spirit, a) is invoking a dualist explanation of mind, b) suggests meaning is a thing or a property of a thing, which I deny, and c) is a non-explanation: it's just a shell game to shuttle the problem - meaning - from something you don't know how to explain it with - material - to an imaginary entity that just "magically" has the needed properties. That's not an explanation. That's no better than "Goddidit!" - it can be used to explain anything because it actually explains nothing. In speaking of desirable explanations, there are assorted properties that an explanation can have which determine whether it is a good explanation or a poor explanation. One of these is scope, how large a class of things the explanation covers. "It's magic!" and "Goddidit!" both have infinite scope; they can explain anything. Another property is explanatory power; how much better we understand the how of the phenomenon as a result of the explanation. These two have almost zero explanatory power; you don't understand things any better after the explanation than you did before it. A third characteristic of explanations is how much predictive power they have; if you can predict a lot of future results based on the how of an explanation, it's a good explanation. Again, these two fail miserably, as they yield basically no predictions.

Explanations such as yours, that meaning exists "in the spirit" are akin to the explanations "It's magic!" and "Goddidit!" They can explain anything because they are extremely poor quality explanations. They don't increase our understanding, and they don't yield predictions. It's just a way to pretend to have explained the phenomena without doing any actual explaining. It's hand-waving. It's meaningless. And as a form of dualism, it introduces more problems than it solves.

"It's a property of the spirit" is an explanation, but as an explanation, it's about as worthless as they come.

Very occasionally on this forum I wish we had a Super Kudos button or maybe a mega kudos button. Oh wait - a Nailed it button!