Proof Mind is Fundamental and Matter Doesn't Exist

[Rational AKD]

This entire argument is bullshit. If an idealist was truly convinced, he would voluntarily separate his head from his neck and be able to gloat afterwards that he was right. The fact that none have nor will is all we need to understand about the confidence in their position. 

The warp speed backpeddling and excuse making to avoid a very simple demonstration may now commence.

confusing idealism with solipsism... the world we experience is functionally real, which is to say it operates on its own consistently and we don't determine these operations... but that doesn't mean it's objectively real containing a material substance that is independent of our experiences and perceptions. it can still be just a mental construct without being constructed from your mind.

and did you say very simple demonstration? tell me how I can demonstrate to you with empirical evidence you can only observe with your senses, what is behind those senses? we can only perceive the world through the lens of our senses, thus we cannot demonstrate using evidence from the world what is behind those senses. so what exactly is this 'simple demonstration' you're referring to?

[bennyboy]

This entire argument is bullshit. If an idealist was truly convinced, he would voluntarily separate his head from his neck and be able to gloat afterwards that he was right. The fact that none have nor will is all we need to understand about the confidence in their position. 

The warp speed backpeddling and excuse making to avoid a very simple demonstration may now commence.

No.

Separating your head from your neck is a bad idea. It will hurt a lot, and then you will die.

[The Grand Nudger]

then go ahead and invalidate the logic. the only criticism you have of the argument seems to be the wording of some of the claims, the boldness of the conclusion, and premise 5. you haven't tried to invalidate the logic, rather express your opinion on minor corrections and say premise 5 is false.

Been done to death...and I -did- already give you my thoughts...but, since you insist.

1. -useless, for your argument, but as I've said, I see nothing objectionable in the statement

2. -useless, for your argument, but as I've said, I see nothing objectionable in the statement

3. -I see no need for 2 or 3, since both are restatements of premise 1.  I would rephrase 1 through 3 as "If premise one were true, then premise one would be true".  In a metaphysically solipsist world, your premise 1, no argument need be given as all up to this point is contained within the parenthesis -in- that premise

4. -non sequitur, you -could- rephrase to make this statement follow, as I suggested, but since you haven't, tough shit.  Nothing in premise 1, restated however many times you like, makes any comment or implication regarding what either mind or matter are made of, specifically whether or not they are the "same stuff".  Good ole bait and switch.  


5. -You've been floundering on this count, and continue to do so in this post...so I'll address that later, specifically.

6. -So, three repetitions of premise 1, a non seq leading into a switch mid argument, and a bare assertion are what leads us to truth nowadays, eh?  Crackerjack logic.  Non seq, of course...for all of the reasons stated above.

I disagree. if 'all is mind' then matter is conceptual but not the ontological equivalence of mind. I don't know of any context where mind and matter are indistinguishable... they do have different meanings. in materialism mind is emergent from matter but in idealism matter is emergent from mind.

Mind and matter are indistinguishable in the context of physical reductivism.  All of your thoughts, all mind, -is- matter..not arising from matter, or emerging from matter. The subject of mind, particularly, is beset upon all sides by words whose meanings were decided when we considered mind magic. I wouldn't lean too heavily on that, it probably doesn't -mean- what you think it does. In that context (and others) the distinction between mind and matter is one of conversational shorthand, it's not a statement regarding the nature of either.

to say all is mind is not to say all is identical to mind... it's to say all is either identical to mind or derived from it. but you can still distinguish mental constructs from mind itself.

Can you...go ahead, distinguish some for me then?  I'm eager to see what means you have available with which to do so.  

as I said, it doesn't matter if the circuit board 'produces' the simulation, that doesn't make it the simulation itself. what is with you and equivocating the product from what it's derived from? is electricity equivalent to power plants?

Your poor understanding of the actual means by which a simulation is achieved is none of my concern at this point.  As I said, let wonder lead you to knowledge.  Every time you create a division...it will come right back down to the board. To machines in-state.

even so, it doesn't exist as the appearance of a 'mountain' as you see on your screen. this is most apparent when you see parts of it loaded on your screen. to say 'well it still exists in the memory' is irrelevant because it's not manifested as a mountain thus is not really a mountain in that state... it's just arbitrary code that are supposed to represent a mountain.

As I've mentioned twice already, it doesn't matter whether you see a mountain on the screen or not.  A mountain can be (and often is) simulated with no need of a visual representation.   Programs that assess mudslide and avalanche risks do this all day every day.  When you find yourself proven demonstrable wrong..you have a tendency to fly off to some other contention rather than reassess.  Now it's "manifestation" is it?  It's not really a mountain in -any- state...it's just a tiny little machine that exists, and persists.....on the board.   But why should that matter, when discussing sims...sims aren't required to actually -be- the thing they're simulating...otherwise I'd be an accomplished astronaut.......and they wouldn't be sims...they'd just be mountains.

The code...btw, not "just arbitrary code" - also little machines that exist and persist in-state.  There's nothing arbitrary about -any- of it.  

well nothing we know first hand is in terms of material anyways, so I don't see how your position is easier. if anything it's harder. every thought we have is in terms of information, and at best are descriptions of material though even if we believe they are descriptions we can't be sure how accurate of descriptions they are. so it seems easier to me to argue the most fundamental things that exist are in mental terms rather than some material that is separate from this. why postulate a substance we at best can at best come up with a description for that somewhat resembles it when you can explain everything with the concept of mind you are certainly familiar with?

-all is mind...glad to see you coming around. Ignoring the formal logical fallacy you've erected a shrine to in this comment, you seem to be confusing the nature of your perception with the nature of the cosmos...which is almost inexplicable...since you clearly understand, as stated in this very same comment...that the accuracy of our descriptions based upon those perceptions are perpetually suspect. In any case, my position is easier for the simple reason that you and I are likely to agree on every single item of our positions with the exception of the one bit. You likely think of your immaterial sim in terms of information theory, trouble is...you won't be able to explain how, and you certainly cant demonstrate the immaterial.....whereas I can not only explain how physical things "do information", I can arrange for a compelling demonstration.

ok... let me try to break this down Barney style for you.

I have a feeling you;re going to let me down as fantastically in this as you did in the OP "argument"..............

fundamental means most basic form possible. do you disagree?

-agreed.

2 different substances not identical have to be different somehow. do you disagree?

-agreed.

for 2 substances to interact, there must be similar properties for which they can interact. do you disagree?

-agreed.

2 substances can't share properties while being entirely separate substances. do you disagree?

Separate substances with a single shared property would seem to overcome your objection handily.  In fact, that is -the- response to this criticism of dualism, and always has been.  Ask a dualist this question..and they'll tell you theres a hook, none of them can explain what that hook is...but you can't deny it as a possibility - and remember that premise 1 of yours up above.......? Why is it that you believe this to be true anyway, that separate substances cannot share even a single property?

if you did not disagree with the above, then it follows there cannot be 2 fundamental and separate substances that interact which falsifies dualism. if mind and matter interact, then either mind shares a physical property with matter, or matter shares a mental property with mind. I see no way around this, so now you most certainly have something to address.

Still wasting quite a bit of time not disproving dualism, aren't you?  I've addressed that final number 5 from up above..in the same manner as I've been addressing it from the start; simply asking you to disprove what you claim can be or has been disproven.  Doing so won't salvage your argument.....but at least you'll have proven something. Besides, I'd love to be able to whip it out the next time I find myself in conversation with a dualist. They irritate me like you wouldn't believe.


Now...this one wasn;t addressed at me...but..

tell me how I can demonstrate to you with empirical evidence you can only observe with your senses, what is behind those senses? we can only perceive the world through the lens of our senses, thus we cannot demonstrate using evidence from the world what is behind those senses. so what exactly is this 'simple demonstration' you're referring to?

You misunderstand question begging and circularity. We can demonstrate with empirical evidence what is behind our senses with workmanlike regularity. It's how we figured out how to make eyeglasses, hearing aids, clever chemical confections that taste just like "real food", local anesthetics, synthetic perfumes, and a whole host of other things you use day in and day out (don't even get me started on mind altering drugs - hijacked the whole sense system on that count, wewt).

[Captain Scarlet]

Mind is the faculty of consciouness  ->  
Conciousness is the is the state of being aware of an external objects and oneself (but it is not the state only of self-awareness, otherwise you would be conscious only of your own consciousness) -> 
Awareness is gained through sense perception of the enviornment -> 
The senses are self authenticating given any attempt to inavlidate them requires their validity -> 
Thus as senses detect objective external reality, external objective reality is real.  Existence, exists.

Everything I experience is of an objective physical world and its causality (including self-awareness, ideas, etc).  The default position is that I do not need to add anything else, ie a world of make-believe where there is only mind, and a mind or minds controlling reality

I don't accept your definitions.

Mind is the arena in which experiences and ideas unfold.  Consciousness means that someone is subjectively aware of the process of experience.  Whether the "objects" of awareness are internal or external doesn't matter.

Nor does it even matter to the idealistic argument whether those objects ARE external to the self, since nobody here is arguing solipsism.  What matters with regards to establishing a default argument is whether they represent more than I experience them as-- specifically whether they are more than ideas with particular forms.  How, using your experiences, would you prove that your "objective" world is not, for example, the Mind of God, or the Matrix?  One cannot.  Therefore, the default position, since my interface with whatever-is-out-there is purely mental, is that whatever-is-out-there is a collection of concepts, ideas, and/or experiences.

And I do not accept your definitions.   My definitions are stock understanding of the terms from the English language. I am worried that you are relying too much on equivocation to model and re-model your perspective.

First, human knowledge begins with (sensory) awareness of the external world. It does not begin with awareness of one's own ideas. The reason is that ideas or states of consciousness are necessarily ideas about something, and that something is what one is aware of. One could not become aware of one's own consciousness, unless one first had some states of consciousness to be aware of; and one could not have states of consciousness, unless one first had something else that one was conscious of.  Imagine a being who had the ability to create a consciousness

Second, existence has a metaphysical primacy over consciousness: that is, the external world exists prior to, and is not dependent on, our minds. This also implies that the external world has its specific characteristics (identity) prior to, and independent of, the states of our minds. And this is for the same reason: in order to have states of consciousness, there must first be things for us to become conscious of (whereas the converse is not the case), because consciousness is consciousness of things. Consciousness, again, is a faculty of becoming aware of things, not of creating or altering them.

Ergo the primacy of existence is true, the primacy of consciousness is false, our world is objectively real and it cannot be the mind of a god.

[Losty]

"If premise 1 were true, then premise 1 would be true" ~Rhythm

That's pretty much the only part of the entire argument that makes any sense to me.

If your mind exists, but matter doesn't....how to physical things actually kill you? I get how in a simulation you could feel real pain from being repeatedly beaten in the head with a baseball bat, but if it's just a simulation....neither your head, nor the bat is real...then it cannot kill you. Right?

[The Grand Nudger]

Okay, I think we can both agree that we're pretty much stuck taking knowledge as it is right now in establishing world views.  If science is able to provide new ways of examining the world of the very small, so that things start seeming like things again, I reserve the right to become a physicalist.  You and I both know I'm not holding my breath on that one, but who knows?

Sure, we can agree to that, so long as you're okay with accepting that knowledge as it is right now states, explicitly, that your described default position is arrived at by means of a formal logical fallacy.   

Things stopped seeming like things in your house? Why haven't you invited me, you know that kind of shit is right up my alley. I pay good money for that......and here you are hogging all the free freaky shit for yourself. For shame...I thought we had something special.

[Captain Scarlet]

This appears to be the rather lazy and armchair line of reasoning employed by Deepak Chopra.  The essence of it is that Idealism is sppoky, mysterious and hard to understand, Quantum Theory (QT) is spooky, mysterious and hard to understand.  Therefore QT supports Idealism.  You have to work a lot harder to connect Idealism and QT.  From my rather limited understanding of QT it does nothing at all to validate Idealism, whatever strange and spooky physics exists, it is part of our natural world be it 4, 10 or 11 dimensions, be it packets of energy, strings and branes or solid particles.

I'm not saying "it's mysterious therefore God" or "it's mysterious therefore idealistic."  I'm saying "the fundamental elements of reality cannot be expressed except as ideas."  I'm not saying we don't know about reality, I'm saying the reality we DO know is more consistent with an idealistic world view than a physicalist one.  If I'm wrong, then show me what a photon looks like, or even what physicists think it MIGHT look like.  Your argument seems to be a strawman attempt to spin into woo a simple obvservation about the best the science can currently say about reality.

If I am straw-manning you I apologise, that was not my intention.  You said:

“[snip].…. it means that the fundamental nature of reality is an expression of universal concepts, rather than concepts being an approximation of some other reality.

I think current physics supports this view, by the way.  Try and define, in physical terms, what a photon is…[snip]...sounds like an idea to me…..”

I submit that is just false.  Physics does not have clarity on what the true nature of reality is.  They have concepts in the form of models which make predictions about reality.  They are testing those models.  None of those models leap from:

- we do not know what matter is, to
- reality could be a projection of minds and not really there

Any attempt to leap from one to the other is, in my opinion, woo-woo and I thought thats exactly what you attempted.  QT is spooky and hard to understand and drove some of its early collaborators at the turn of the previous century into mystical thinking (like idealism) primarily because of the problem of quantum indetreminancy.  However things have moved on and the illogical leaps made by those early pioneers have been debunked both by thought and actual experiments.  Modern physics still has a long way to go but most now working in this field do not, for example, think consciouness controls reality and do not lend support to Idealism.  Again I apologise if I have mis-interpreted your views.

[Rational AKD]

Been done to death...and I -did- already give you my thoughts...but, since you insist.

1. -useless, for your argument, but as I've said, I see nothing objectionable in the statement

2. -useless, for your argument, but as I've said, I see nothing objectionable in the statement

3. -I see no need for 2 or 3, since both are restatements of premise 1.  I would rephrase 1 through 3 as "If premise one were true, then premise one would be true".  In a metaphysically solipsist world, your premise 1, no argument need be given as all up to this point is contained within the parenthesis -in- that premise

well, at least you're ok with the first premises. it's a start. the reason I have premises 1 and 2 are because I anticipated the most common objection would be that I'm question begging by assuming solipsism is possible. I was correct, as even with those two premises it's still the most common objection. but they aren't the same statements. 1 is a statement of the epistemic possibility of solipsism. 2 is a claim that epistemic possibility of solipsism is evidence for its actual possibility and the belief that it is actually impossible is irrational given its epistemic possibility. perhaps I should have gone into detail on how the alternative of agnosticism is also irrational, but I didn't think of it at the time I made this thread. as for 3, it is important because it establishes there is something that is possible of mind but not matter which fits into the following premise.

4. -non sequitur, you -could- rephrase to make this statement follow, as I suggested, but since you haven't, tough shit.  Nothing in premise 1, restated however many times you like, makes any comment or implication regarding what either mind or matter are made of, specifically whether or not they are the "same stuff".

as I said, premise 3 is key to establishing this premise. given it is possible for mind to exist in a solipsist (immaterial) world but impossible for matter (by definition), then there is something that is true of mind but not matter. thus by Leibniz Law, they are not identical. since the difference is what is true of mind but not matter (or a property mind has that matter doesn't), that makes mind irreducible to matter.

so I guess your only problems then are with 4 and 5 since your only complaint about 6 is that there are problems with 4 and 5. at least now I have a good idea on what your objections are.

Mind and matter are indistinguishable in the context of physical reductivism.  All of your thoughts, all mind, -is- matter..not arising from matter, or emerging from matter.  That words have different meanings is no indication of the existence or accuracy -of- those meanings.

you may be using an alternate definition of matter, which you will have to define if that's the case. however, I wouldn't consider the apparent material constructs in our experience equivalent to mind. they are mental constructs. just because they aren't produced by your mind doesn't mean they aren't produced by any mind. my personal position is that they are produced by God's mind, though that is not the aim of the argument i'm presenting here.

Can you...go ahead, distinguish some for me then?  I'm eager to see what means you have available with which to do so.

you are not your imagination? you can come up with concepts in your mind, and those concepts are distinguishable from your own identity and mind. I mean, this is tautological stuff here...

Create as many divisions as you like, just understand that you're creating them as a matter of convenience in communication, they do not exist in this example.

then prove you're right and explain how my power plant analogy fails.

Programs that assess mudslide and avalanche risks do this all day every day

you can assess information without simulating a mountain... and those aren't the kinds of simulations i'm talking about. i'm talking about a simulation for an observer to experience. not an assessment program.

It's not really a mountain in -any- state...it's just a tiny little machine that exists, and persists.....on the board.

if it doesn't exhibit any qualities of a mountain, it isn't a mountain. I don't care if the code in the memory database means mountain, it's just an arbitrary code that is no more a mountain than the word itself I'm typing here.

sims aren;t required to actually -be- the thing they're simulating

no... that would be the 'simulator...' not the simulation... the circuit board would be the simulator while the game is the simulation.

The code...btw, not "just arbitrary code" - also little machines that exist and persist in-state.  There's nothing arbitrary about -any- of it.

all languages and codes are arbitrary... whether you're using binary, hex, or C++ it's all arbitrary.

-not at all, agreed.

at least the problem is isolated now... answer me this, do substances need to be tangible to tangibly interact? or do they not need to share that property?

Separate substances with a single shared property would seem to overcome your objection handily.

if they have a shared property, then there is a common substance between them. if they are fundamental, they cannot be broken down. if they are different, they have unique properties that make them different. if 2 substances share a property, that property is distinguished and taken from at least one of the substances. if they are both fundamental with fundamental properties, you wouldn't be able to take part of the substance's fundamental properties and distinguish it from that substance... or it wouldn't be its fundamental property now wouldn't it? it's like trying to distinguish materiality from matter. or mentality from mind. you simply can't because they're fundamental to it.

[Captain Scarlet]

So if mind (your mind or a gods mind etc) has been and will be here for eternity (because it is immaterial whatever that means). How has it transcended an infinite series of mental events to be present today or an eternity into the future? It is impossible.

why would it have to 'transcend' them? an infinite series of numbers can be expressed in finite functional terms... so why can't the same be true with future knowledge?

This seems straightforward to me.

1) minds are eternal if Idealism is true
2) eternity implies an infinite past and future
3) it is impossible to transcend an infinite series of events (by definition you cannot get to today if the causal precursor is in the infinite past)
4) minds operate through a series of mental events
5) we exist today experiencing mental events
6) Idealism is false from 1), 2), 3), 4) and 5)

[Rational AKD]

If your mind exists, but matter doesn't....how to physical things actually kill you? I get how in a simulation you could feel real pain from being repeatedly beaten in the head with a baseball bat, but if it's just a simulation....neither your head, nor the bat is real...then it cannot kill you. Right?

because the matter we experience is really a mental construct. the sensations you receive, such as pain, are all part of the simulation. and your physical body functions the same as all matter, thus can be broken like all matter. dying would be when your body/brain can't function, but as you say this would not kill your mind. though this would also be akin to the concept of an afterlife and an immortal soul.