3 ms·

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism Materialism in this case just means that we have access to objective realit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism Materialism in this case just means that we have access to objective reality. Idealism is not necessarily supernatural, but it does claim that we do not have access to objective reality beyond our perception and interpretation. The definition of "matter" keeps shrinking the closer we look. It seems that we can never truly know what reality is made of at its lowest levels, and all we have is essentially our own subjective interpretations of what we perceive. > It could still be a natural world full of emergent phenomena such as consciousness. Maybe "naturalism" is a term I'd be more philosophically comfortable with for these sorts of discussions. Naturalism is just the idea that there is no supernatural process at work. I'm not talking about naturalism.

meowface 6y ago
>The definition of "matter" keeps shrinking the closer we look. True. >It seems that we can never truly know what reality is made of at its lowest levels, and all we have is essentially our own subjective interpretations of what we perceive. How can we say that with confidence, though? What if we're just still scratching at the surface of fundamental physics? What if in 3,000 years we have much more than our subjective interpretations and do pretty much understand what's going on? This feels like a little bit like a "God of the gaps" type argument. It's fair to say we likely don't truly understand the fabric of reality, the universe, and matter, but it doesn't necessarily mean we can't or never will. >Naturalism is just the idea that there is no supernatural process at work. I'm not talking about naturalism. I think many people interchange "materialism" and "naturalism", even if it may not be correct.
- beaconstudios 6y ago
  > How can we say that with confidence, though? What if we're just still scratching at the surface of fundamental physics? What if in 3,000 years we have much more than our subjective interpretations and do pretty much understand what's going on? > This feels like a little bit like a "God of the gaps" type argument. It's fair to say we likely don't truly understand the fabric of reality, the universe, and matter, but it doesn't necessarily mean we can't or never will. I'm just extrapolating the trend - of course I don't know what end-game physics looks like, but I'm basing my understanding over what's happened so far. All we have to build our interpretations on are what we know now. That's the reason we no longer believe in supernatural causes - we've figured out better explanations for enough phenomena that we can reasonably assume the rest are explained naturally too. From the models we have so far, we know that the universe is organised bottom-up and our understanding of what we consider "complete objects" like a cat or a solar system are just the emergent phenomena of collections of rules (or are engineered based on those rules in the case of manmade objects). So if objects don't actually exist in the way we perceive them, I'm not sure what credibility is left for materialism if the whole concept of 'object' only exists in my interpretation. > I think many people interchange "materialism" and "naturalism", even if it may not be correct. That may well be true, but I had to look 'naturalism' up because I hadn't heard the term before. It's probably the angle from which I've approached metaphysics that's to blame for that though.

meowface 6y ago

>The definition of "matter" keeps shrinking the closer we look. True. >It seems that we can never truly know what reality is made of at its lowest levels, and all we have is essentially our own subjective interpretations of what we perceive. How can we say that with confidence, though? What if we're just still scratching at the surface of fundamental physics? What if in 3,000 years we have much more than our subjective interpretations and do pretty much understand what's going on? This feels like a little bit like a "God of the gaps" type argument. It's fair to say we likely don't truly understand the fabric of reality, the universe, and matter, but it doesn't necessarily mean we can't or never will. >Naturalism is just the idea that there is no supernatural process at work. I'm not talking about naturalism. I think many people interchange "materialism" and "naturalism", even if it may not be correct.

beaconstudios 6y ago
> How can we say that with confidence, though? What if we're just still scratching at the surface of fundamental physics? What if in 3,000 years we have much more than our subjective interpretations and do pretty much understand what's going on? > This feels like a little bit like a "God of the gaps" type argument. It's fair to say we likely don't truly understand the fabric of reality, the universe, and matter, but it doesn't necessarily mean we can't or never will. I'm just extrapolating the trend - of course I don't know what end-game physics looks like, but I'm basing my understanding over what's happened so far. All we have to build our interpretations on are what we know now. That's the reason we no longer believe in supernatural causes - we've figured out better explanations for enough phenomena that we can reasonably assume the rest are explained naturally too. From the models we have so far, we know that the universe is organised bottom-up and our understanding of what we consider "complete objects" like a cat or a solar system are just the emergent phenomena of collections of rules (or are engineered based on those rules in the case of manmade objects). So if objects don't actually exist in the way we perceive them, I'm not sure what credibility is left for materialism if the whole concept of 'object' only exists in my interpretation. > I think many people interchange "materialism" and "naturalism", even if it may not be correct. That may well be true, but I had to look 'naturalism' up because I hadn't heard the term before. It's probably the angle from which I've approached metaphysics that's to blame for that though.