Idealism is more Rational than Materialism

[Rational AKD]

LOL, yeah, thats it, it's not like I could parse an easy handful of hidden assumptions in the way that you've expressed this (and this is still apparent after a very obvious attempt to state it as succinctly as possible on your part)

i'm afraid accusations aren't enough to show you're right. do tell what 'hidden assumptions' I have within that one assumption.

but it doesn't matter, because you make as few assumptions as possible, you don't get rid of what is in evidence or hide the fullest extent of your statement -just- so that you don't have to declare it

again... just accusations on your part and no evidence.

If you've concluded , through reason, that solipsism is incorrect - then any problem presented by solipsism is not an issue which requires a solution.

I don't use 'problems presented by solipsism' to substantiate idealism. I use Cartesian skepticism to show the external world can be doubted but consciousness can't. then I go through possible explanations for consciousness and show what has the least unnecessary assumptions and full explanatory power and by Occam's Razor that would be the most reasonable.
since the rest of your rant is based on your asserted accusations and still have no substantiation I noticed in an earlier post of yours I glossed over something I should address.

it doesn't assume anything. "I doubt" requires an I. you cannot doubt without being.

It assumes that there is an I....and then concludes that I exist. Again, nothing to do with any problem regarding materialism or idealism. Put another way, this "I" could be some free floating concept, or this "I" could be a set material thing. There's nothing in cogito that speaks to either.

yes, there is nothing about Cartesian skepticism that states the nature of your existence, merely you exist and you are conscious. I never stated it said anything different. you are the one who stated it's possible to conceptualize 'I think but I am not' which is blatantly false.

by doubting you are already assuming you are aware.

By assuming that there is an I thinking, you are already assuming that there is an existent "I".

exactly. to doubt is to think and to think is to be. the ability to doubt your consciousness implies you are consciousness making your doubt incoherent.

it's not that proving your consciousness assumes the conclusion. it's that doubting your consciousness assumes you are conscious. see the difference?

Nope...because there ain't one. All this tells us is that we are incapable of making such a statement sensibly. I would refer you to the necessity of assumption in computational systems, regardless of the accuracy of that assumption.

you do realize that if you don't consider incoherence proof of inaccuracy you are doubting the reliability of your cognitive faculties which implies epistemological nihilism. you cannot draw conclusions except by your cognitive faculties so to doubt them is to commit intellectual suicide.
to doubt your consciousness implies you are conscious. you cannot coherently doubt you are conscious while assuming you are. therefore you must be conscious. to deny this is to deny reason. to deny reason is intellectual suicide.

The goal is to get work done, whether or not that work is accurate is a bonus - and in no way a guarantee.

by denying our ability to reason accurately, you cannot claim this statement is accurate. so I have no reason to be convinced it is true.

Instead you've demonstrated the opposite, that you must conceive mind as a substance which has no relation to the real world

I never said that. I said the mind is the cause of the world we experience. this is not a disconnect.

namely that mind is not fundamentally tied to material brains, of which the only evidence we have contradicts your question begging.

this is not my assumption... you are straw manning... again. I've said that mind's and brains are fundamentally tied, being that brains are part of minds. their self localization in space.

It makes no difference. That's merely semantics.

material being emergent from information is semantics? because that is not materialism.

LOL. A correlation you have no reason to give precedence on your worldview. The rotation of the sun might as well be correlated to mind too

*Yawn* mocking is one of the signs that you have no rebuttal. is this your last ditch?

Non-local mind has absolutely no meaning

so mind necessitates locality? can you please show why this is instead of just asserting it.

Information always refers to matter or material processes.

is red a material? is the number 5 a material? they aren't a series of actions so they can't be a process...

There's literally no distinction, no ghost in the machine, as you desperately want there to be.

I actually agree there is no distinction between the ghost and the machine... not because there is no ghost, but because there is no machine. we're both monists remember.

You say, "I'm thinking of X. X is not non-material," and I say, "Your statement is just another description for the material processes Y and Z," to which you reply, "Yes, they correlate! But that's it!" Of course, you think mind correlates to literally EVERYTHING, so the fact that mind is especially altered in relation to neuron cells and not the feeding habits of seahorses, you can only rely on those working on the assumption of realism and physicalism to find out for you.

everything is derived from mind, but not particularly your mind. your brain has a correlation to your mental states, but not feeding habitats of sea horses... they are only part of your perception.

Lol. You haven't addressed anything. And materialists have addressed the so-called hard problem. That you're unaware or disagree doesn't justify your statement here.

they haven't been able to adequately explain how our mental states reduce to physical objects and processes. we conceptualize qualia, which is not material in nature and can be completely disassociated with material. the fact that you're unaware of the problem, or the severity it poses which has not been resolved by materialists doesn't mean it's not there.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/

irrelevant due to aforementioned mind-brain correlation.

that doesn't answer the problem of your analogy not being analogous.

In all of these fiat assertions, evasions, red herrings, and non-sequiturs, was there a point you wanted to make for your argument?

if you're gonna be so lazy as to say 'YOU'RE WRONG!' without any kind of substantiation or even clarification I don't see a point in addressing it... believe what you want, but you haven't proved a thing.

In your defense against solipsism, you said that if consciousness were truly fundamental (to all), that it would be in control of everything. My point is that we have conscious states that we aren't fully in control of. It would seem by your logic that this means consciousness isn't fundamental; there is something 'underneath' that at times is in control of our conscious states.

no, this only shows that 'our' consciousness is not fundamental. it doesn't eliminate the possibility *some of our conscious states are controlled by a greater consciousness.

If I were a physicalist, I'd say that something is hormones. Injecting alcohol induces drunkness; injecting lactic acid induces panic. It would seem from this that the physical body is primary.

you don't need to be a materialist to believe that. I believe that too, but I also think those material influences have predetermined properties due to their conscious source origin. but of course this conscious source is not our consciousness.

[FreeTony]

materialism makes 3 assumptions.
1. material objectively exists.
2. this material world is behind our consciousness.
3. our perception accurately represents this physical world.
idealism makes 1
1. a higher consciousness is behind our consciousness. that's it...

And you call this higher consciousness "God"? If so, essentially your 1 assumption is "because I exist, a God exists".

As I said in an earlier post, I would call what you call "the higher consicousness", a consciousness with set laws. Note I haven't said anything about it being material, nor does it have to be a being. Aserting that it is a being is another assumption.

I think that the material vs consciousness is a red herring. If we found out that idealism was true, we wouldn't suddenly abandon the laws of physics.


Putting all this aside, I'm sure this isn't the reason you believe in a God.

[robvalue]

I agree. Why do you really believe in God? And what makes that God Yahweh in particular?

[Mudhammam]

I never said that. I said the mind is the cause of the world we experience. this is not a disconnect.

Your mind is part of the process that amounts to an experience of the world... namely, yours. It's not the cause of the world. THAT is your actual claim here, and just an unsubstantiated one that you keep repeating, in spite of being forced into the desperate position of resorting to a cosmic, non-material mind when people point out the obvious absurdities your argument finds itself in. This is the last time I'll ask you to provide a sufficient basis for that assertion. Remember, I'm not asking you for pure speculation and hokey metaphysics.

this is not my assumption... you are straw manning... again. I've said that mind's and brains are fundamentally tied, being that brains are part of minds. their self localization in space.

You can say anything you like. But that's not how arguments work. You've provided no reason why minds should be fundamentally tied to material brains ON IDEALISM, when it explicitly states that ALL matter is created by minds, nor have you suggested where your cosmic material brain might be discovered.

material being emergent from information is semantics? because that is not materialism.

The way you were using it was exactly that. Everything you defined in terms of information was equally reducible to material phenomenon.

*Yawn* mocking is one of the signs that you have no rebuttal. is this your last ditch?

No, it's rather an indication that your ideas aren't very engaging and I'm quickly losing interest in this thread.

so mind necessitates locality? can you please show why this is instead of just asserting it.

Until evidence suggests otherwise, that's what observation would seem to correspond with: minds are private and, as you say, fundamentally tied to the material constituents that compose each individual brain.

is red a material? is the number 5 a material? they aren't a series of actions so they can't be a process...

They are concepts that describe material objects, such as the wavelength of light, the depth or width of objects, etc. Concepts arise as a result of brains processes. Brains are material.

I actually agree there is no distinction between the ghost and the machine... not because there is no ghost, but because there is no machine. we're both monists remember.

So your idea of theism is actually more like pantheism? You don't believe God is different from the substance that comprises the "physical" world?

everything is derived from mind, but not particularly your mind. your brain has a correlation to your mental states, but not feeding habitats of sea horses... they are only part of your perception.

Here your argument completely fails. Your entire justification for giving precedence to "mind" up to this point has been "Cartesian skepticism" ... but somehow you allow yourself to believe other objects exist outside of your mind, but only for your religious purposes. I do it, rather, for practical reasons, none of which poison the discussion with superstitious metaphysics. This is where the scientific method comes into the picture.

they haven't been able to adequately explain how our mental states reduce to physical objects and processes. we conceptualize qualia, which is not material in nature and can be completely disassociated with material. the fact that you're unaware of the problem, or the severity it poses which has not been resolved by materialists doesn't mean it's not there.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/

Maybe you should start with the Churchlands, Dennett, or the excellent symposium Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem, edited by Johnathan Shear. Remember, just because there are key questions left unresolved does not mean that your position offers any answers, or even any possibility for answers.

[Angrboda]

In your defense against solipsism, you said that if consciousness were truly fundamental (to all), that it would be in control of everything. My point is that we have conscious states that we aren't fully in control of. It would seem by your logic that this means consciousness isn't fundamental; there is something 'underneath' that at times is in control of our conscious states.

no, this only shows that 'our' consciousness is not fundamental. it doesn't eliminate the possibility *some of our conscious states are controlled by a greater consciousness.

Are you suggesting that if I feel sad or frightened or lonely, it's because God is causing me to feel that?

[Rational AKD]

And you call this higher consciousness "God"? If so, essentially your 1 assumption is "because I exist, a God exists".

and? what does it matter what the assumption is? materialism assumes there God. the point is the assumptions are fewer. it's more parsimonious to think consciousness is fundamental than to postulate an unverifiable material substance that's supposedly behind our perceptual states.

As I said in an earlier post, I would call what you call "the higher consicousness", a consciousness with set laws. Note I haven't said anything about it being material, nor does it have to be a being. Aserting that it is a being is another assumption.

consciousness implies it's conscious... and that makes it aware which makes it a being by definition...

I think that the material vs consciousness is a red herring. If we found out that idealism was true, we wouldn't suddenly abandon the laws of physics.

well of course we wouldn't abandon physics. materialism or idealism, the universe still has a defined structure we can study and understand. these metaphysical beliefs would change our views on philosophy and religion, but not natural sciences.

Putting all this aside, I'm sure this isn't the reason you believe in a God.

not the only reason.

Your mind is part of the process that amounts to an experience of the world... namely, yours. It's not the cause of the world. THAT is your actual claim here

actually yes. that is my claim. or at least everything you stated here is accurate to what I'm claiming. glad you're paying some attention.

and just an unsubstantiated one that you keep repeating[

*sigh* just when I thought you were understanding... none of the claims you summed up are controversial. 'your mind is part of the process that amounts to the experience of the world'-- this is the definition of mind. regardless of what you think the nature of mind is, you can't deny its function which this sums up. 'namely, yours'-- well I don't think my mind has anything to do with someone else's perception. do you? 'it's not the cause of the world'-- I don't think I need to tell you that you agree with this...

in spite of being forced into the desperate position of resorting to a cosmic, non-material mind when people point out the obvious absurdities your argument finds itself in.

forced? lol. anyone reading this thread can see for themselves if I shifted my position in the face of scrutiny here. I've stuck with my claims in the OP and haven't changed them one bit.

You can say anything you like. But that's not how arguments work.

straw manning isn't how arguments work either... try and argue against my claims instead of making up your own.

You've provided no reason why minds should be fundamentally tied to material brains ON IDEALISM

isn't it obvious? because brain states affect mental state... therefore there must be a correlation. didn't you bring this up earlier?

when it explicitly states that ALL matter is created by minds, nor have you suggested where your cosmic material brain might be discovered.

changes in brain state affect personal mental state... changes in natural habitat don't. see the difference?
and of course the fundamental 'immaterial mind' won't be found in space.

The way you were using it was exactly that. Everything you defined in terms of information was equally reducible to material phenomenon.

except if matter is derived from information, something had to act in order for matter, energy, and space-time to emerge. information can't act on its own... unless it's conscious.

Until evidence suggests otherwise, that's what observation would seem to correspond with

see that's your problem. you are convinced observation corresponds with materialism despite there being alternative explanation that equally or better explain observation. why do you prefer materialism over other metaphysical beliefs of reality?

They are concepts that describe material objects, such as the wavelength of light, the depth or width of objects, etc.

except they aren't necessarily associated with material objects or processes. they can be thought of in abstract terms. you don't need to conceive of 5 objects to conceive the number 5. the number 5 can be thought of without the need to associate it with anything else.

So your idea of theism is actually more like pantheism?

no, i'm actually describing panentheism. pantheism means 'all is God' and panentheism means 'all in God' or 'all dependent on God.' I don't think the universe, or our minds, are the same as God's essence. rather they are derived from his thoughts and sustained by them.

Here your argument completely fails. Your entire justification for giving precedence to "mind" up to this point has been "Cartesian skepticism" ... but somehow you allow yourself to believe other objects exist outside of your mind, but only for your religious purposes.

by now i'm sure you know my reasons for rejecting solipsism.
1. if solipsism is true, I should have control similar to that of a lucid dream.
2. I do not have this kind of control.
3. therefore my mind must be derived.
and from there making the least amount of unnecessary assumptions leads to idealism.

This is where the scientific method comes into the picture.

the methodology can only tell you how natural processes work... they can't be used for metaphysics. materialism is a metaphysical claim, and science can't confirm it.

Remember, just because there are key questions left unresolved does not mean that your position offers any answers

I never thought my position having answers was contingent on materialist's lack of answers. idealism has no problem explaining consciousness with respect to the world we experience regardless. materialism however, as you said, has some key problems unresolved.

Are you suggesting that if I feel sad or frightened or lonely, it's because God is causing me to feel that?

I already answered this... and you ignored it.

If I were a physicalist, I'd say that something is hormones. Injecting alcohol induces drunkness; injecting lactic acid induces panic. It would seem from this that the physical body is primary.

you don't need to be a materialist to believe that. I believe that too, but I also think those material influences have predetermined properties due to their conscious source origin. but of course this conscious source is not our consciousness.

[robvalue]

Step 1) Stuff happens
Step 2) Lots of stuff
Step 3) ???
Step 4) God
Step 5) ???
Step 6) Yahweh
Step 7) ???
Step 8) Profit

[FreeTony]

And you call this higher consciousness "God"? If so, essentially your 1 assumption is "because I exist, a God exists".

and? what does it matter what the assumption is? materialism assumes there God. the point is the assumptions are fewer. it's more parsimonious to think consciousness is fundamental than to postulate an unverifiable material substance that's supposedly behind our perceptual states.

So it's fine to postulate an unverifiable God that is responsible for your consciousness, but not an unverifiable material substance?

You are making more than one assumption. You are assuming that a God exists, it is a being and has a consciousness like you do, but this consciousness is somehow different to yours in that it can control yours, and that this consciousness is the reason that you have a consciousness.

All you have experienced is your own consciousness - this has few of the properties of what you call a "grand consciousness"/God.

[Whateverist]

Umm .. wow. Once again I am late to the party. I am astonished to find anyone seriously proposing idealism in this day and age. What I wonder is why? I could play the what-if game out too but I can't imagine talking myself into idealism as a viable alternative. Nothing wrong with it as an exercise of course but why would you want to live there, or do you?

[Mudhammam]

changes in brain state affect personal mental state... changes in natural habitat don't. see the difference?
and of course the fundamental 'immaterial mind' won't be found in space.

So, in other words, you're contradicting yourself from when you previously said mind is "fundamentally tied" to the brain. Gee, I wonder why your "logic" is hard to follow??? Is it because you keep changing it? Or, when you speak of "the mind of God," you mean nothing like mind in the sense anyone can conceive or experience. That might be my first reason why your proposal is so unpersuasive. It's also not falsifiable. So there's that.

except if matter is derived from information, something had to act in order for matter, energy, and space-time to emerge. information can't act on its own... unless it's conscious.

Once again, all your examples are material.

why do you prefer materialism over other metaphysical beliefs of reality?

It's the most practical, requiring the least amount of assumptions (whereas yours are quite extravagant) and best coincides with the KNOWN data.

except they aren't necessarily associated with material objects or processes. they can be thought of in abstract terms. you don't need to conceive of 5 objects to conceive the number 5. the number 5 can be thought of without the need to associate it with anything else.

So can the word "idiotic." We can think of any description separate from its application to the objects they're derived from. So what? For any word to actually mean anything---apart from being a purely logical structure made internally consistent, such as a statement---it must correlate to something in the world of experience... which matter does, "fundamental 'immaterial mind'" does not.

no, i'm actually describing panentheism. pantheism means 'all is God' and panentheism means 'all in God' or 'all dependent on God.' I don't think the universe, or our minds, are the same as God's essence. rather they are derived from his thoughts and sustained by them.

Did you or did you not say there is one substance, "mind"? Did you not say that is everything? Well, then God and world are one substance, yes?

by now i'm sure you know my reasons for rejecting solipsism.

Here comes the back peddling required by your argument.

the methodology can only tell you how natural processes work... they can't be used for metaphysics. materialism is a metaphysical claim, and science can't confirm it.

Science can and should inform it.

I never thought my position having answers was contingent on materialist's lack of answers. idealism has no problem explaining consciousness with respect to the world we experience regardless.

LOL. You would think by now you might have done so then. But you haven't. Because idealism makes everything inherently mysterious and out of reach. It solves nothing, whereas materialism can make sense of the data and allows us to pose specific hypotheses in our still very early understanding of the physical brain. Let me ask you, so, are you aware of any consciousness that exists separate from personality? Does that lead your "inquiry" to the suspicion that "cosmic mind" is a person?