4 ms·

I 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 ago
The 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 ago
  No, it can't.
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Pray 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 ago
      It's on you to prove your claims. I'm not going to do your work for you.
      - marginalia_nu 4y ago
        But 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).
        kkoncevicius 4y ago
        > The experiences of different observers appears to be largely in agreement. This kind of argument has an unverifiable assumption that there are multiple other conscious observers besides yourself.
        marginalia_nu 4y ago
        Yeah sure. That's sort of where I'm getting at with all of this though. If you closely scrutinize the fundamental assumptions of almost any description of the world, there's inevitably some hand-wavy stuff that simply can't be verified. For all we can prove about the world, we might just be a single brain in a vat connected to a computer simulation.
        skissane 4y ago
        > 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. Why make that assumption? As a card-carrying idealist, I think language such as “creating the material world by observing it” is best avoided. Here’s what I would say instead: Minds and their conscious experiences are the most fundamental reality, to which everything else can be reduced and/or from which everything else emerges. Physical events, entities, processes, laws, etc, are simply particular types of patterns in the experiences of minds. The experiences of different minds are (partially) correlated-that correlation is itself another such a pattern. What causes that correlation? Well, causation is also just a pattern; causation is a type of explanation, but every search for explanations must eventually end in something accepted without explanation (the Münchhausen trilemma), so something things just are the way they are, some patterns just exist, without having any other pattern as their cause. It’s patterns all the way down, until we reach minds and their experiences at the bottom. That’s all we can ever know, and all there is to know. From that viewpoint, talk about “minds creating physical reality” is a rather imperfect metaphor, true in some ways, but also prone to leading to dubious assumptions (like the ones your quoted argument relies on) And if this is a “faith-based” position-well, no more than materialism is-it is just spinning the arrow of reduction/emergence 180 degrees
skissane 4y ago
If 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?

marginalia_nu 4y ago

The 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 ago
No, it can't.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Pray 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 ago
    It's on you to prove your claims. I'm not going to do your work for you.
    - marginalia_nu 4y ago
      But 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).
        kkoncevicius 4y ago
        > The experiences of different observers appears to be largely in agreement. This kind of argument has an unverifiable assumption that there are multiple other conscious observers besides yourself.
        marginalia_nu 4y ago
        Yeah sure. That's sort of where I'm getting at with all of this though. If you closely scrutinize the fundamental assumptions of almost any description of the world, there's inevitably some hand-wavy stuff that simply can't be verified. For all we can prove about the world, we might just be a single brain in a vat connected to a computer simulation.
        skissane 4y ago
        > 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. Why make that assumption? As a card-carrying idealist, I think language such as “creating the material world by observing it” is best avoided. Here’s what I would say instead: Minds and their conscious experiences are the most fundamental reality, to which everything else can be reduced and/or from which everything else emerges. Physical events, entities, processes, laws, etc, are simply particular types of patterns in the experiences of minds. The experiences of different minds are (partially) correlated-that correlation is itself another such a pattern. What causes that correlation? Well, causation is also just a pattern; causation is a type of explanation, but every search for explanations must eventually end in something accepted without explanation (the Münchhausen trilemma), so something things just are the way they are, some patterns just exist, without having any other pattern as their cause. It’s patterns all the way down, until we reach minds and their experiences at the bottom. That’s all we can ever know, and all there is to know. From that viewpoint, talk about “minds creating physical reality” is a rather imperfect metaphor, true in some ways, but also prone to leading to dubious assumptions (like the ones your quoted argument relies on) And if this is a “faith-based” position-well, no more than materialism is-it is just spinning the arrow of reduction/emergence 180 degrees

skissane 4y ago

If 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?