Proof Mind is Fundamental and Matter Doesn't Exist

[Cato]

If I walked up behind an idealist and crushed his junk with a rapidly accelerating foot, is the first assumption some random mind-induced ball ache or like normal people will he conclude he got racked?

[Kingpin]

If I walked up behind an idealist and crushed his junk with a rapidly accelerating foot, is the first assumption some random mind-induced ball ache or like normal people will he conclude he got racked?

Same principle I tried to point out in my first response to him with me throwing a dictionary at his face.  The point I was trying to make is that if he honestly believes monistic idealism, he lives contrary to that belief.  If matter does not exist and this is all part of a greater mindset, why look both ways when you cross the street?  That bus coming is not real matter and though it may "destroy" you perceived physical body, the greater mind should be unaffected.

[Rational AKD]

Same principle I tried to point out in my first response to him with me throwing a dictionary at his face.  The point I was trying to make is that if he honestly believes monistic idealism, he lives contrary to that belief.  If matter does not exist and this is all part of a greater mindset, why look both ways when you cross the street?  That bus coming is not real matter and though it may "destroy" you perceived physical body, the greater mind should be unaffected.

the exact same thing could be said for anyone who simply believes in an afterlife. since you put Christian as your religious views, i'm assuming that is your belief. so why are you worried about your physical body if you have an immortal soul? your body may die, but your mind and soul lives on so what's the worry when crossing the street? you seem to not live up to your beliefs...

[brewer]

Nice non answer to who/what made the god/other simulation/mind. Where did the "necessary mind" come from? How did it come into being?

No direct answer again to the hypothetical, off on another tangent. Now your stating that it's not being observed so it doesn't exist. I think your last tangent was IV not functioning.

Lets try one last time. Add the following to the past hypothetical description: You are in the room, you are conscious and can see the IV. You are observing the IV fluid drip and can see it flow into your vein. You can feel your heart beating and know that your circulatory system is functioning and the fluid is being dispersed through your body. The question again, "Because the contents/chemical make up of the IV depends on your minds perception (and this can only based on what you were told), do you recover no matter what is in the IV?"

by necessary I mean there was never a point where it did not exist. it didn't 'come' from anywhere, it's always been.

I really don't know how you think i'm being indirect with the IV hypothetical... I told you exactly what is going on with the IV when you're not observing it. is that not what you asked?

no, you don't recover no matter what's in the IV. physical interactions still have a consistent behavior, the contents of materials doesn't change because the person observing it is unaware what those contents are. so if someone puts the wrong stuff in the IV and leaves you in the room, it will still have the predictable effects of putting that substance into the patients system with an IV. the contents don't depend on your perception, rather their materialistic behavior depends on your perception. and that's only to the extent of whether the matter is being observed or not

"It's always been" sounds like the same old god argument to me. Your putting forward the concept, now it's up to you to prove.

"no, you don't recover no matter what's in the IV". Not true. You still recover is it's glucose, that one of the no matter what's.

"physical interactions still have a consistent behavior" Physical interactions are an action of matter, not an action of the mind perceiving matter. Therefore matter exists outside the minds perception.

You can continue with the rest here, I'm through. I find your logic flawed.

[Rational AKD]

"It's always been" sounds like the same old god argument to me. Your putting forward the concept, now it's up to you to prove.

"no, you don't recover no matter what's in the IV". Not true. You still recover is it's glucose, that one of the no matter what's.

"physical interactions still have a consistent behavior" Physical interactions are an action of matter, not an action of the mind perceiving matter. Therefore matter exists outside the minds perception.

You can continue with the rest here, I'm through. I find your logic flawed.

how it 'sounds' is irrelevant. what matters is whether it's consistent and explains the concept. my proof is the argument which you haven't addressed. instead you asked questions on what an idealist world would look like. I answered your questions, if you want to question the evidence for the concept look at the argument.

really? 'you don't recover no matter what's in the IV' means you can't put just anything in the IV and you'll recover regardless...

your counter there is question begging... you're presuming what 'material interaction' is based on a materialistic view rather than evidence.

if you find my logic flawed, why don't you address the argument?

[Rational AKD]

I guess the way I worded that statement 'you don't recover no matter what's in the IV' was a little ambiguous... but I was using the same wording as your question in the answer when you asked 'do you recover no matter what is in the IV?'

[bennyboy]

If I walked up behind an idealist and crushed his junk with a rapidly accelerating foot, is the first assumption some random mind-induced ball ache or like normal people will he conclude he got racked?

Same principle I tried to point out in my first response to him with me throwing a dictionary at his face.  The point I was trying to make is that if he honestly believes monistic idealism, he lives contrary to that belief.  If matter does not exist and this is all part of a greater mindset, why look both ways when you cross the street?  That bus coming is not real matter and though it may "destroy" you perceived physical body, the greater mind should be unaffected.

This is a common reponse to idealism, but it doesn't work.  Idealism isn't solipsism, and nobody claiming it's a dream.

As for matter "existing," let me ask you this: what's the size, position or shape of a subatomic particle?  I'd say a good physical definition of something existing is that it must be locatable, at least in theory, in time and space.  When you can describe the fundamental building blocks (i.e. quantum particles) of the universe only as mathematical ideas, then I'd argue that you may be looking at an idealistic universe.

This doesn't mean that our everyday lives aren't real, that pain isn't real, or that a truck idea won't smush a person idea in a crash.  The everyday realities of life are what they are, whether you're in a physical monist universe, or the Matrix, or the mind of God.

[Redbeard The Pink]

the statement can't be proven false because the existence of our own mind is evident. but that doesn't make the statement itself invalid, you can use evident claims in premises. and just because the truth of the premise is evident doesn't mean it's shifting burden of proof.

Minds are evident, but so are the processes that cause them (electricity and chemistry existing within the brain and/or nervous system, depending on how broad you want to be with which nerve impulses factor into the mind). There is no evidence, on the other hand, that a mind can exist without some kind of material component.


I'm not saying you're shifting the burden of proof because the "truth of the premise is evident." You're shifting the burden of proof because your'e demanding proof that something doesn't exist and then pretending it's proof of your claim when this doesn't happen.

which is why I defined it in the OP.

Yeah, but your definition is shitty, and it includes the caveat that I'm allowed to think of minds as the product of matter, which I do think because that's what they are according to every shred of evidence we have on them.

except you have the presumption built in your definition that the mind is material, which is the only reason you come to that conclusion thus you're question begging. this is why I specifically choose a definition of mind that doesn't presume it's material or immaterial.

I never really said the mind was material; the mind is a product of material objects, but the mind itself is just a series of nerve impulses mostly when you get down to the science. At any rate, the "presumption" that minds depend on the existence of brains is at least borne out by the available evidence, whereas you're not even pretending to offer evidence of anything you say.

so why can't the first premise be accepted as fact exactly?

Because a mind without matter could be an impossible object (you have failed to prove otherwise), and even if it isn't the statement is logically irrelevant because it misplaces the burden of proof concerning a "metaphysically solipsistic world." It's either not true, or it's a non-argument; there is no discussion arena where your first premise matters in the least.

tell me, what premise was that?

Premise #1. It's the one we've been talking about pretty much this whole time.

right. the only reason I call it a simulation is because it is a world that acts physical but is truly not. it's merely a distinctive word because if I merely said he 'produces a material world' people would get confused. it is a simulation by function, meaning the world doesn't have it's own objective existence. it only exists as part of our subjective experience.

For something to "act physical"  there has to be a "physical" for it to act like. Otherwise there is no basis for this likeness. If physical reality does not materially exist, then nothing can act like it or simulate it.

lets see... you say you're skeptical I lead with an argument. that my 'premise is designed to avoid being testable or verifiable whatever that means. there's no proof for mind substance. the simulation doesn't explain irrelevant questions. and finally, what is it simulating. other than quibbles of words used, which of these actually address the premises?

All of them. Your premise is false at worst and non-explanatory at best. There is no rhetorically gainful reason to assert that the non-existence of a thing cannot be proven, and anything that follows from that premise is problematic from the get-go.

tell me, how exactly can words be put together in premises that makes them impossible to prove false but are false nonetheless? what exactly does the structure of an argument do to make it impossible to invalidate even though it's not valid?

It's not so much that your words are definitely false so much as there's no reason to believe what you say due to lack of evidence. Even if the premises you present were correct, they still would only indicate that your conclusion is possible, not that it's true. Sure, the world could be all dreamed up in the mind of a god-thing somewhere, but there's zero evidence for that and a whole boatload of evidence that the universe behaves in physically consistent ways that appear to function without anyone tending to them.

[Rational AKD]

Minds are evident, but so are the processes that cause them (electricity and chemistry existing within the brain and/or nervous system, depending on how broad you want to be with which nerve impulses factor into the mind). There is no evidence, on the other hand, that a mind can exist without some kind of material component.

the material processes are not evident, they had to be studied and observed. any information you need to learn from studying the world is not evident... plus you're again using information from experience to explain what causes experience which is question begging. the evidence used in the argument is evidence of introspection, thus it is not question begging.

I'm not saying you're shifting the burden of proof because the "truth of the premise is evident." You're shifting the burden of proof because your'e demanding proof that something doesn't exist and then pretending it's proof of your claim when this doesn't happen.

that's not at all what i'm doing... i'm providing reason (our epistemic limitations) that it is impossible to prove solipsism is false. then concluding it's unreasonable to claim it's impossible given that.

Yeah, but your definition is shitty, and it includes the caveat that I'm allowed to think of minds as the product of matter...

so are you going to give a reason why the definition is invalid? or are you just going to give me ad hominem?

I never really said the mind was material; the mind is a product of material objects, but the mind itself is just a series of nerve impulses mostly when you get down to the science.

you missed the point... the reason for your conclusion is what's gathered by scientific research... but the scientific research is gathered from our experience and we cannot use our experience as an explanation for why and how we experience because that would be question begging. you're presenting fallacious reasoning and calling it evidence.

Because a mind without matter could be an impossible object (you have failed to prove otherwise)

now that is shifting the burden of proof. X is true because you haven't proved not X (X being the prospect that immaterial mind is impossible).

Premise #1. It's the one we've been talking about pretty much this whole time.

that's funny... because I don't recall 'all of reality is dreamed by an all encompassing mind' being in that premise... I didn't say that in any of my premises.

For something to "act physical"  there has to be a "physical" for it to act like. Otherwise there is no basis for this likeness.

oh stop... that's like objecting to the neutrino being called the 'ghost particle' because in order for it to act 'ghost like' there have to be actual ghosts for it to act like... something can have likeness to an idea without the requirement of its existence.

All of them.

objecting to my using an argument isn't addressing the premises of the argument... raising questions and objecting the conclusion doesn't answer them isn't addressing the premises... objecting a mind needs a model to be simulating isn't addressing the premises... that leaves one of those at best that addressed premise one... that's far from all of them.

There is no rhetorically gainful reason to assert that the non-existence of a thing cannot be proven

triple negative! but it seems you fail to grasp the reason behind my asserting solipsism cannot be proven false. it's simply to show in the argument the evident fact that for all we know and all we can possibly know solipsism is possible. the phrasing there is equivalent to making a claim of epistemic knowledge and yet it is also evidently true; and that is what the argument is based off of.

It's not so much that your words are definitely false so much as there's no reason to believe what you say due to lack of evidence.

so do you deny that we can't use information from our experience to explain how and why we are able to experience? that is like using the contents of the bible to explain why the bible is the word of God.
or perhaps you think there is reason we can use besides experience to disprove solipsism. but you haven't claimed you have any such reason.
well, that's really the only options you have. if experience can't be used to disprove solipsism (because that's begging the question) and there is no reason outside experience, then the first premise is true. it is impossible to prove solipsism is false.

[bennyboy]

so do you deny that we can't use information from our experience to explain how and why we are able to experience?

^

This is the essence of the problem of addressing mind in a physicalist world view.  100% of things we know about, including the physical universe, are known only through mind.  And so physicalists have three choices:

1) select question-begging assumptions (I have a mind, so that thing with 2 legs, 2 arms, 2 eyes and a brain, named "John," must have a mind too; therefore brain study = mind study);
2) fail due to circularity (I know the mind comes from the brain, because we've messed with brains and it changes mental function.  I know brains are real because I can see them and think about them. . . with my mind)
3) completely redefine non-physicalist terms in physicalist terminology: ("Mind is the ability for a system to interact with the environment," for example, and then ask for "evidence" that it is anything else-- the caveat being that descriptions of subjective experience, not being sharable, do not count as evidence. This appeal to evidence therefore amounts to "physically show me the thing that you are arguing is not physical")