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How would you respond to someone who flips the argument and says the material world is an emergent property of being experienced (I'll refrain from using the wo
by marginalia_nu 4y ago
How would you respond to someone who flips the argument and says the material world is an emergent property of being experienced (I'll refrain from using the word conscience)?
By definition we can't construct an experiment that verifies the existence of matter not at least indirectly experienced, because such an experiment would contradict its own findings. If you find such materials, you're experiencing them. We take the existence of non-observed materials entirely on faith.
In the manner of the new atheists we could dismiss the idea of an independent physical world. There is no proof, occam's razor, etc. I've never seen it, nobody has, it can't falsified, the unexperienced material world is nothing but unscientific superstition.
We could then go on to argue that experience appears necessary for the physical world to exist, in an analogous fashion to how the book is can be argued to be more real than the meaning of the words printed in it.
- beebmam 4y agoI would ask them: what could I do to test your claim? And if it is unfalsifiable (which is almost certainly is) I'll disregard it as a waste of time.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoThe central claim is that the claim that the existence of an un-observed material world is unverifiable. This in itself can be easily verified, and in fact, was demonstrated through a proof by contradiction. What follows is the logical conclusion from agreeing with your reasoning, that such claims are a waste of time, and we should focus on what we can verify, our experiences.
- beebmam 4y agoNo, it can't.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoPray tell why not? To be fair, I admit this is unabashed sophistry, the point isn't to actually argue for this viewpoint, but to illustrate by analogy the weaknesses in the materialistic view, which hinges tenuously on certain articles of faith.
- beebmam 4y agoIt's on you to prove your claims. I'm not going to do your work for you.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoBut I did! To re-iterate the proof I've submitted: Any attempt to demonstrate the existence of the material world in existence, independent on any conscious experience however indirect, such a proof would in itself constitute an indirect conscious experience of the material world. Thus, we cannot demonstrate the material world exists outside of at least indirect conscious experience. If such a proof exists, it contradicts itself and is not a proof of what it claims to be. In other words, the independent existence of a material world is utterly unverifiable! It is an article of faith, not a scientific fact.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago(Fine, I'll argue against my own argument for the sake of having an interesting discussion.) That may be, but it hinges on a single-observer perspective. The experiences of different observers appears to be largely in agreement. If they were each creating the material world by observing it, surely they wouldn't be in such concord and we may not expect it to persist over time. Even though we can't strictly prove it, we have strong indications that the material world is independent of being experienced. Against that claim one may argue that conscience may be something we share even though our memories are independent, something like Neoplatonism, the mind of god, Spinozism etc. A rough argument for this is that we all share the same capacity for reason (this essentially mirrors the argument for an independent physical reality).
- skissane 4y agoIf idealism is unfalsifiable-so is materialism. If being unfalsifiable makes the former a waste of time, why isn’t the same true for the later?
- Ste_Evans 4y ago[dead]
- tasty_freeze 4y agoI don't agree with your blanket statement that new atheists dismiss the idea of an independent world. I don't doubt that some people (atheist or not) hold that view, but I don't connect it at all with atheism. One counter to the claim that consciousness constructs the world, we could have some event witnessed by two independent observers. If the observers agree on what they witnessed, what explanation would there be that they just happened to construct the same event? Personally, I feel the physical world exists independent of conscious observation. On the other hand, what we think we are observing clearly is affected by our flawed perceptions and our flawed consciousness.