Why materialists are predominantly materialists

[The Grand Nudger]

This is where I think the "common sense" concept of materialism becomes very, very important.  It is our education as children (in which we learned in early childhood to think in a simplistic materialism) that we learn to believe that "science describes the material world." 

Science, again, is based upon methodological materialism.  Science can't describe anything else, it self limits by definition.

That is, we learn to believe "this experience" is a material world, and learn to think in language that fits hand in glove with it, then we learn scientific ideas and believe they "describe the material world."

The majority do -not- learn to believe that, at any point in their lives...in this country.  

 It is this society-wide materialist worldview foundation that has so much intellectual inertia.  Various types of materialists can argue all day long between their ivory towers, but below them lies a public who believe, implicitly, unthinkingly, and almost universally that they are "human beings," that they are "made of atoms," ad that they "think with their brains."

Those three questions at the end there sound like something that comes out of the mouth of the machine before it launches a global nuclear assault on all of humanity, lol.

[LastPoet]

Those three questions at the end there sound like something that comes out of the mouth of the machine before it launches a global nuclear assault, lol.

I think I saw that movie.

[Angrboda]

Horse hockey.  We know from studies of brain trauma that there are modular components to our experience.

Really?  And how, pray tell, did we manage to study brain trauma without collecting our knowledge exclusively by way of subjective experience?

Your objection does nothing to disarm the point that we know experience has multiple components which can be separated in certain circumstances.

 Tell me how you know that you actually experience anything, as opposed to just believing that you experience things?  It could just as easily be the latter rather than the former.  You don't know.  You're just so enamored with the appearance of consciousness that you can't see straight.  I think consciousness is just an illusion.  Do you have any actual evidence that it isn't?

The act of believing IS an experience-- the knowledge of what it's like to believe.

As for evidence-- my own consciousness is self-evident.  

So consciousness, which may be an illusion, is the sole testifying witness to the question of whether or not it's an illusion? That's circular as all hell. You might as well say, "because I believe." Your own consciousness, which may be lying to you, is not lying to you, "because your consciousness tells you it's not lying." Well you've persuaded me that your consciousness isn't lying to itself; how could I doubt you? That's stupid, Benny. Saying that it's self-evident is simply wrong. There is no such thing as self-evidence at that level. Something* must be making it evident, and that something is this consciousness thing that you say is not an illusion, why? Because it's obvious? That's a stupid, thoughtless response.

[Simon Moon]

We NEVER experience the same thing as other people.  No one experiences the red I experience.   (I'll put on my materialist hat now and say that, since everything I experience happens in MY material brain, and since everything they experience happens in THEIR material brains, we can't possibly, EVER experience the same thing.  I really wonder if materialists, on the whole, really understand their own "theory of the senses," carry it to its logical conclusion, and, most importantly, INCORPORATE IT INTO THEIR THINKING.)   No one ever experiences anything anyone else experiences.  I don't even know that the "space" in my experiences is something other "people" experience anything "in."

Rubbish!

How many people experience a falling from a building at terminal velocity and hitting the ground, differently?

Fact is, there are some things about material reality that are the same for everyone.

[Bunburryist]

The number of atheist I know of who present materialism as an alternative to religious belief: 0. This includes public atheists, atheists I've ineracted with online and atheists I know personally. The whole materialism as a substitute for religion thing is a fundie slander, as they associate materialism with want for things.

People are asked to accept that they are material things because the evidence is increasingly saying that that is the case. For example neurology has pretty much shown that the brain does everything ascribed to souls. We should no more accept the validity of belief in souls than we do the validity of belief in phlogiston.

Perhaps that's not how they present it, or even intend to present it, but o the believer the "arguing atheist" is presenting, not some logically derived worldview, but rather an alternative reality and an alternative conception of what one is.  You and I may think of materialism as having a kind of rational basis, but to many believers it is just another worldview - one that flies in the face of one they believe in . 

I don't know that science can account for any one, single thing I experience.  Since no aspect of anything I experience - thoughts, color, sensation, etc. - can even be described in physical terms - mass, distance, time, charge, spin - there can be no physical theory of anything I experience.  Materialists like to believe that (what they believe to be) material brains can "do everything ascribed to souls," but that's just a belief.  (I won't even bring up the fact that, if materialism is right, I can't even FIND the material brain my experiences supposedly happen in, or the world such a brain would exist in - if it even existed.)

[emjay]

I feel like I'm at a bit of an impasse now... so much so that I don't know whether I should downgrade myself from an atheist to an agnostic.

You can be both you know.

And frankly under different assumptions you can be both gnostic and agnostic about your atheism. For example when people talk to me about yhwh (or any other human created god for that matter), I'm a gnostic atheist. But when people talk to me about a generic god, or some sort of pantheist "oversoul" I'm an agnostic atheist.

Yeah maybe, but maybe it's a bit generous at the moment. My current position is basically existential crisis/don't know what to think anymore/back to the drawing board/everything I took for granted now seems to me as if it rests on very shaky foundations. But that said, I would have a similar position to you on the god point... a generic god is one thing... and something I could be agnostic about... but a specific god doesn't follow from it, specially since the current offerings have nothing to say on these sorts of questions anyway. So even if I concluded I thought there was or could be a god, that would be as far as it went.

[The Grand Nudger]

Things seem different to believers. Believers imagine alot of things.  Not exactly news.

Since no aspect of anything I experience - thoughts, color, sensation, etc. - can even be described in physical terms - mass, distance, time, charge, spin - there can be no physical theory of anything I experience.

b-mine
OFC they can....you're doing it right now...........

Materialists like to believe that (what they believe to be) material brains can "do everything ascribed to souls," but that's just a belief. (I won't even bring up the fact that, if materialism is right, I can't even FIND the material brain my experiences supposedly happen in, or the world such a brain would exist in - if it even existed.)

IDK...souls are supposed to be able to fly around and go cool places and whatnot. I haven't met many materialists that think our brains can actually do that. Whoever it is that believes that (likely, you....right?) doesn't sound representative.

[Angrboda]

@Bunnburryist

Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed (seen, heard, touched, smelled or sensed in any way). This is a fundamental concept studied in the field of developmental psychology, the subfield of psychology that addresses the development of infants' and children's social and mental capacities. There is not yet scientific consensus on when the understanding of object permanence emerges in human development.
. . . .
In animals
Experiments in non-human primates suggest that monkeys can track the displacement of invisible targets,[14][15] that invisible displacement is represented in the prefrontal cortex,[16][17][18] and that development of the frontal cortex is linked to the acquisition of object permanence.[19] Various evidence from human infants is consistent with this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence

There may not be consensus on when the change occurs, but the evidence is clear that an infant goes from not knowing that an object has independent existence to a time when all objects are seen as persisting even when out of sight. This is strong evidence that the belief in independently existing external matter is not learned, so much as it is a part of normal development of the brain. My view is that just as consciousness is structured along lines of physical dimension and time, ala Kantian Idealism, it is also structured in that we perceive objects as having permanence. The simplest explanation of the experience is that things are composed of material. It's not something we learn. It's something that's programmed into us by evolution.

[emjay]

I feel like I'm at a bit of an impasse now... so much so that I don't know whether I should downgrade myself from an atheist to an agnostic.

There is no such thing as "downgrading from atheist to agnostic". Both positions are not on the same line. Agnosticism is not some happy middle ground between theism and atheism.

Agnosticism concerns positions about knowledge, and what is unknown and/or unknowable. Atheism concerns belief, or lack thereof.

Yeah, I did it! I opened that can of worms...

Yeah sorry, my understanding of the terminology's not great. What I took agnostic to mean was simply 'I don't know'. But using your definitions I guess I am still an atheist because I do not positively believe in a god. So agnostic atheist would probably be the best term.

I'm currently reading a book about consciousness and it's mainly a summary of existing positions, rather than a new theory being posited, and it contains a lot of philosophical questioning of those ideas, along with the author's own opinions. But it's really making me think on lines I've never really thought before. It describes the terminology so though I've always held my position strongly, I've never really known what it was called until now; 'functionalist epiphenomenalism'... vs zombic materialism and non-zombic materialism. So my view is that phenomenal consciousness is an impotent by-product of psychological consciousness (i.e. the physical) and that what binds them together, as it were, is this idea of functionalism... the system that is the brain. But it's just feeling harder and harder to hold that view, given that the system is defined/interpreted in some abstract way/space... there's no way to know where it begins and ends, whether it includes the environment as well as the brain etc... those sorts of questions that this book is bringing up and which Benny routinely brings up . In the past it's always been more than enough for me; the correlation between brain and mind and function and mind, but these philosophical questions are making me question whether correlation is enough... because this functionalist level or plane between them is something a lot more slippery. So I'm not a hugely happy bunny because it feels like my worldview has taken a severe beating. Just out of interest Rhythm or Jorm, do you identify with any of the above terms; functionalist epiphenomenalist, zombic materialist, or non-zombic materialist?

All interesting stuff. What's the name of the book? I love reading that kind of stuff.

But that leads to a question. What does science's current questions about consciousness, have to do with whether or not you accept the claim that a god or gods exist, is true or not?

The book is called Stuff and Consciousness: Connecting Matter and Mind, by Toby Pereira. It's an easy read and something that appeals to me particularly... a philosophical novice, if that... because it presents these philosophical ideas in a very simple, bitesize way, along with the summaries of the salient points of the different theories. It basically cuts to the meat of the matters without having to fully read and fully understand all these different positions on consciousness.

The reason why god comes into it for me now... but only as a very tentative possibility and not one I'm ready to even look at yet but might in future... is basically because functionalist epiphenomenism is a dualist position according to this book. I'm not entirely sure what the difference between that and non-zombic materialism is... I've never been quite sure which one of those I was but on balance I think it's the epiphenomenalism. I think, though I'm not sure, that non-zombic materialism has consciousness as some sort of property of matter, but that's not how I view it... I see it relying on the system and the system is ultimately abstract. So that being the case... physical world >>> abstract functional layer >>> phenomenal consciousness... means to me that the only thing tying the two together is this shaky abstract functional layer and without it they may as well be two separate planes that could just happen to correlate but not actually be causally connected in any way. A very long shot that, but nonetheless using your terms, that's a can of worms that I've opened for myself.

[Arkilogue]

We NEVER experience the same thing as other people.  No one experiences the red I experience.   (I'll put on my materialist hat now and say that, since everything I experience happens in MY material brain, and since everything they experience happens in THEIR material brains, we can't possibly, EVER experience the same thing.  I really wonder if materialists, on the whole, really understand their own "theory of the senses," carry it to its logical conclusion, and, most importantly, INCORPORATE IT INTO THEIR THINKING.)   No one ever experiences anything anyone else experiences.  I don't even know that the "space" in my experiences is something other "people" experience anything "in."

Rubbish!

How many people experience a falling from a building at terminal velocity and hitting the ground, differently?

Fact is, there are some things about material reality that are the same for everyone.

None of them actually hit the ground. They are stopped by the power of electromagnetic repulsion between atoms and the sudden deceleration causes all injury. ;P

I do think red is generally the same experience for everyone, barring actual physical defects in the structure of the eyes or brain. But think of the different experiences of a roller coaster rider: One is elated and the body produces de-stressing hormones....another is terrified and the body produces stress hormones. The objective experience, what is actually going on in the external world is identical.