Seeing red

[bennyboy]

I'm not ignoring your statements regarding what idealism subsumes as semantics.  I have been attempting to inform you, by way of the term used to describe this type of argumentation, that your statements do not provide a valid means of inference for your position.  They assume the truth of my own, contradictory position.  I did not choose to make them contradictory, you did..as you always do, with the notion that materialism -cannot- explain something.  From that point forward, you cannot use concepts arising from, comprised of , and dependent upon the materialists viewpoint.  The truth of your position is not being argued, nor is it being ignored.  You cannot -arrive- at your position in this manner, rationally.  Full stop.

Now, though, I think we may have a better version of the same statement, that I think might fit your position.  I'm interested to see if you would agree, and what elaboration (and perhaps even agreement) that might lead to.

I don't need to assume the truth of your position.  In fact, I must assume the commonality of your experiences with mine.  The problem is that you have so conflated your experiences with your position that you can't imagine that anyone could separate them.  I do.

When I see a brain, I see what you see (I'm willing to assume).  When I listen to a professor, I hear what you hear.  When I hit someone in the head with a bat, they are as KO'd in my reality as they are in yours.  The difference is that you have the idea that those experiences represent a fundamental truth, and that you know what that fundamental truth is: that there is a material universe and nothing else. I do not take this position, which I see as both extra and unsupportable by our observations. 

Now, you will immediately say, "Aha!  You said 'observations.'  That means you are stealing from my position, since I also make observations." I do not accept this assertion, nor should you make it. You seem to think that unless I see reality as a collection of fairies and rainbows, I'm stealing from you.  That's BS.  You don't get to take a monopoly on the perception of the class of ideas called "things" just because your world view is that only things exist.

If I was in the Matrix, and I KNEW I was in the Matrix, I'd still experience frying pans and call them that. If I was in the Mind of God, and knew it, I'd still call a rose a rose. If I was a BIJ, and knew it, I'd still call a brain a brain. That's because objects are ideas: red + fluttery leaf shapes + green prickly thing = "rose." I don't have to take your philosophical position to think in this way, because I have never asserted solipsism.