4 ms·
Materialist or skeptical views are also comfort food for the mind, though. It's just comfort for a mind that's differently tuned. These beliefs project a very
by risk000 6y ago
Materialist or skeptical views are also comfort food for the mind, though. It's just comfort for a mind that's differently tuned.
These beliefs project a very basic, easily understood view of reality - discount vast amounts of difficult or inconvenient experiential data which has been with mankind since the beginning (ETs, visions, dreams, ghosts, the paranormal, faith healing, synchronicities, etc.) - and papers over a variety of huge and fundamental questions (origins, purpose, life after death, etc) with a very solid, tangible, and pat answer.
People who are deep into materialism will also see materialism everywhere, so the effect also happens that you mentioned with your grandmother.
- paulryanrogers 6y agoMaterialism has its flaws yet has more physical evidence than any form of mysticism.
- skissane 6y agoMaterialism is a theory in the philosophy of the mind. Its main competitors are idealism, dualism, and neutral monism, not "mysticism". And, materialism has no more physical evidence than its competitors do. Whatever observations materialists claim as "evidence" for materialism, advocates of competing theories will say that those observations are just as compatible with their own theory as with materialism. If competing theories can explain these observations just as well as materialism can, then those observations turn out not to be evidence for materialism at all.