There's no objective morality. You set a logical fallacy. One can be both a materialist and acknowledge morals don't come from matter. Morals are constructed acceptable behaviors.
The Beef With Science
- Thread starter EthanT
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Sciborg_S_Patel
Oh? What's the fallacy?
There are many fields of study, like sociology, etc. some of which are and can be more, or less scientific in how they go about their studies.
Brain chemistry responding? Being more or less thin-skinned is just an individual's make-up.
The right to join a group? I think it's intrinsic for free people, and in societies that are not too free, they should lighten up and allow it.
Morality/materialism? Your're making a false assumption there. I also reject the term 'materialist' as useless, because we've determined that you spiritual guys are also materialist, and immaterialists at the same time. As long as you admit you're using a computer to send your messages, you have to admit in materialism. It's just that many of you guys also believe in super-natural stuff, like ghosts, etc.
It's a false assumption that if a guy is a materialist he doesn't also go by other things that are not material. I've just given the example of you spiritual guys, and then too, guys like me who are not into any super-natural stuff, also admit to things that are not material, and here are some examples; human emotions like love, hate, envy, etc. No problem re human emotions/psychological stuff, it's all just a fuction of being human. If no body exists, there is no body to love or hate, etc.
In fact I have a higher moral code than most religious people I meet. I subscribe to the NAP(non-aggression principle), which precludes initiating force/violence/harm, and that it's a universal. No religion I've seen has a moral compass that high.
I did not.
Straw man.
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Sciborg_S_Patel
It's amusing how so many of your posts are self-congratulatory.
Not if you go by the definition of the word as used in metaphysical discussions.
Anyway, what term do you think would be an unbiased, useful way to designate someone who believes that everything in reality can be accounted for by matter & energy. There's also the term naturalism.
What do you men love, hate, etc are not "material"?
How do you know it's "higher"? Is there an objective scale?
I'm still not seeing it. Can you quote the part you think presents a straw man?
Or, you could say I just used descriptive terms for make-believe things.
No, I don't expect you to conform to anything, but do expect you not to be able to rebut any of my positions, nor even defend your own.
I also expect you to say irrational things like that you believe in ghosts EVEN THOUGH who admit you don't know what they are, and have to admit that none have ever been proven to exist. You can't call something a 'natural phenomenon' that exist only in some people's minds.
If you don't recognize the difference between the natural world, and all the super-natural ones, then there's nothing to talk about, it can only be your opinion that something exists.
Faith-based? Sure, all religious notions of the super-natural are faith based, just like your faith that ghosts exist.
Self congratulatory? You asked some questions of me, and I just answered them.
Materialism/naturalism? I don't mind if anybody calls things in the real world, the material world, or the natural world. I use them synonomously.
So things like ghosts, and astral planes are NOT part of the real world or natural world, but the computer you have to admit you're using today IS.
If you drive a car, that is too. If you eat food, that is too. If you're not sure what is, I don't mind if you ask me. I realize that some people have a big problem distinguishing what is real from what is not. For example, just today another guy claimed that ghosts were 'natural phenomena', and said he believed in them even though isn't never been proven that any exist. It could be you have the same problem.
Love, hate, etc. are functions of our mind, psychological things, not matter like the plastic and glass in your computer. In the same manner, I wouldn't consider a thought or dream as material/matter.
'higher'' I consider the NAP(non-aggression principle) a higher moral standard because it's universal unlike most religious moral compasses I've seen, like the ten commandments for example; they're not universal.
It's funny that you claim emotions are non-material despite the fact that there are plenty of biochemicals linked to different emotional states. Pretty sure that makes them material under your definition.
Also, anything supernatural, if proven to be true and real, would then fall into the realm of natural.
Also, anything supernatural, if proven to be true and real, would then fall into the realm of natural.
You're living up to my expectations of you, and your previous stance. What about the truth conditions of my statement about how some studies can be more or less scientific. For example, if a guy has a predetermined conclusion in mind, and just is looking for confirmation bias, then his study wouldn't be too scientific, another guy might just look at the data or results and admit he was wrong, etc.
Do you agree with just that specific point? Forget the other points in my last message, just focus on this one.
No problem, no contradiction. I admit that a guy must have an actual body in the real world, or else he probably won't feel too much love.
My heart only knows how to pump blood, but my brain can feel stuff, make up really crazy shit, and yes, feel the pleasures of wine, women and song.
Some people might THINK that a person can feel emotions if he has no body, but that would just be some of the crazy shit I was just talking about that people can make up. This may seem incredible to you too, as it was to me, but some guys around here even believe in ghosts even though none have ever been shown to exist.
Re your last sentence, I agree with that, and if anything super-natural ever gets to be proven true, then I too, will accept it as part of the natural world. It just hasn't happened yet. But I've been busy here today, and there could be some new discovery that I haven't heard about yet. Do you have some news? Perhaps incubuses or sucubus have been proven.
Michael Larkin
Member
Mel: I think you'd benefit by reading Bernardo Kastrup's Why Materialism is Baloney. You probably wouldn't agree with it, but if you had the forbearance to read it, you might at least see how Idealists like him (and me) see the universe. Here's a few short videos for you: Bernardo has many more on YouTube.
Materialists claim not to believe in miracles, but the whole edifice of their ontological model depends on accepting the most stupendous miracle imaginable without being able to adduce the required hard evidence for it: that consciousness arises from the non-conscious (which is why some materialists do in fact think in terms of panpsychism: of consciousness being a property of matter like mass, charge and spin). They think non-materialists don't notice that they're driven by an emotional desire for things to be the way they believe, despite their claim to be objective. There's no such thing as objectivity: everything is subjective, including their belief in Materialism and mine in Idealism.
I'll reiterate that the only thing you or I or anyone knows for sure exists is consciousness: it's the one thing that can't be dismissed. Take it away from any of us, and we don't have any thoughts or perceptions or theories, and there's no reason to argue the toss about the nature of reality; no reason to be passionate about Materialism or Idealism or any other -ism.
Plainly, if reality is generated by consciousness, rather than consciousness being generated by a reality external to consciousness, then everything can be integrated into a parsimonious whole. If each of us views reality from a localised viewpoint which obfuscates certain aspects of consciousness as a whole, then a "declenching" of that viewpoint would allow us to experience more of that which is currently obfuscated. What may currently be viewed as objectively outside consciousness may come to be seen as subjectively inside it.
It helps if one has had an experience of being less "clenched" or localised. It is then that certain phenomena may be experienced that exist all the time but are currently obfuscated like the stars in the day sky. Simply because one hasn't experienced any of them personally, and is able to locate people who haven't either, doesn't provide proof that they don't exist. There are some phenomena which I myself am sceptical of, but I don't pronounce that they definitely don't exist; rather, I adopt an agnostic stance, and agnosticism is the bedrock of the scientific approach to examining that which happens to be the case.
Agnosticism is the way to keep the mind open to the possibility of something that confounds current understanding. Materialism is a way of keeping the mind closed to possibilities that might actually be quite real, just as religions can keep the mind closed to possibilities like heliocentrism. In fact, I can't see a lot of difference between Materialism and religion; and as we are often told, civil wars tend to be the most acrimonious. Materialists tend to cast their opponents as religionists: for example, disagree with Darwinian explanations of the evolution that has undoubtedly occurred, and one is cast as a creationist. And in quite a few contentious areas of science, the epithet of "denier" (the new "heretic") is applied to those who contest consensus opinion. This despite the fact that it is the heretics of the past who changed our scientific understandings most profoundly.
That materialists can't see their own religiosity often bemuses me. But Materialism isn't the same thing as science, right? Science is the set of methods with which to investigate the nature of that which happens to be the case, and it has no necessary linkage with Materialism, but Materialists want to assert that the two are coterminous, which is completely unwarranted: an ideological stance without firm foundation.
Materialists claim not to believe in miracles, but the whole edifice of their ontological model depends on accepting the most stupendous miracle imaginable without being able to adduce the required hard evidence for it: that consciousness arises from the non-conscious (which is why some materialists do in fact think in terms of panpsychism: of consciousness being a property of matter like mass, charge and spin). They think non-materialists don't notice that they're driven by an emotional desire for things to be the way they believe, despite their claim to be objective. There's no such thing as objectivity: everything is subjective, including their belief in Materialism and mine in Idealism.
I'll reiterate that the only thing you or I or anyone knows for sure exists is consciousness: it's the one thing that can't be dismissed. Take it away from any of us, and we don't have any thoughts or perceptions or theories, and there's no reason to argue the toss about the nature of reality; no reason to be passionate about Materialism or Idealism or any other -ism.
Plainly, if reality is generated by consciousness, rather than consciousness being generated by a reality external to consciousness, then everything can be integrated into a parsimonious whole. If each of us views reality from a localised viewpoint which obfuscates certain aspects of consciousness as a whole, then a "declenching" of that viewpoint would allow us to experience more of that which is currently obfuscated. What may currently be viewed as objectively outside consciousness may come to be seen as subjectively inside it.
It helps if one has had an experience of being less "clenched" or localised. It is then that certain phenomena may be experienced that exist all the time but are currently obfuscated like the stars in the day sky. Simply because one hasn't experienced any of them personally, and is able to locate people who haven't either, doesn't provide proof that they don't exist. There are some phenomena which I myself am sceptical of, but I don't pronounce that they definitely don't exist; rather, I adopt an agnostic stance, and agnosticism is the bedrock of the scientific approach to examining that which happens to be the case.
Agnosticism is the way to keep the mind open to the possibility of something that confounds current understanding. Materialism is a way of keeping the mind closed to possibilities that might actually be quite real, just as religions can keep the mind closed to possibilities like heliocentrism. In fact, I can't see a lot of difference between Materialism and religion; and as we are often told, civil wars tend to be the most acrimonious. Materialists tend to cast their opponents as religionists: for example, disagree with Darwinian explanations of the evolution that has undoubtedly occurred, and one is cast as a creationist. And in quite a few contentious areas of science, the epithet of "denier" (the new "heretic") is applied to those who contest consensus opinion. This despite the fact that it is the heretics of the past who changed our scientific understandings most profoundly.
That materialists can't see their own religiosity often bemuses me. But Materialism isn't the same thing as science, right? Science is the set of methods with which to investigate the nature of that which happens to be the case, and it has no necessary linkage with Materialism, but Materialists want to assert that the two are coterminous, which is completely unwarranted: an ideological stance without firm foundation.
Max_B
Member
Depends what you mean by 'ghost' or 'exist', if you mean whether I believe people very occasionally recall visual hallucinatory phenomena (apparitions), then yes, I certainly believe that people experience such phenomena. There is plenty of evidence (not scientific evidence), that people have experienced similar phenomena for hundreds of years.
I will indeed go for it if it does something like I suggested, show something super-natural exists.
Also the way some of you guys phrase things, or term things is weird. For example above you say that 'materialists don't believe in micracle'. But I don't have that position, but rather just say that no miracles have ever been proven true'. If there is evidence, then I'll accept the evidence, so it's not a matter of belief. I don't accept your allegation that the biggest miracle is that consciousness arose from the unconscious. That's just your OPINION, not any miracle. People use the word miracle for all sorts of stuff that was never considered a miracle; maybe you team won the game, or it's a miracle my car started, etc. To me a miracle is something like changing water into wine, or curing the ebola outbreak in africa by baptising them, or having them drink more beer, etc.
Nor do I even accept your odd use of the term materialist. We've determined that you guys also are materialist in that you accept that you need matter, like your computer to send your messages. It's just that you in addition to accepting that there is matter all around you, you also accept, or believe in unproven things. One other guy here is adamant that ghosts exist and are part of 'natural phenomena'. That's just his crazy opinion too.
I also can't pin them down on what sort of ghosts they believe in. One guy even admitted he didn't know what they were like, and that they've never been proven, but he'll just believe anyway. But re your examples, I too admit that people can have all sorts of hallucinations, delusions, dreams, hysterical freak-outs, etc. and the mind can make up all sorts of weird shit and people believe in without evidence. That's just what the mind is like.
Hundreds of years? Why not millenia, the ancients wrote about all sorts of crazy stuff too, like interactions with gods, devils, forest nymphs, etc.
And apparently the Irish have believed in leprachauns for millenia too!
What I mean by exist, are things like the computer all these guys are writing on. Nobody so far has send in any messages telepathically.
gabriel
New
It depends what you mean by scientific. You appear to want to abstract reality into anything you can touch, hear, see, smell, but drag in a few other "more or less scientific" traits like feel for good measure. In that moment you have added a measure of complexity - if you weren't aware of one in the hear, see, smell business - that materialism has no tool kit for dealing with. Lack of suitable test tubes is no reason to deny they exist. Your preference for wine, women and song only reinforce the qualia that underlies your presuppositions.
Miracles can be viewed in two ways, the traditional one is an event that creates faith, a contemporary version is anything that defies explanation. The birth of the universe and unavoidable consciousness are two self evident facts that are ignored by materialism in all but the most superficial ways. They may not interest you personally, but until science has an answer for them, you have no intellectual basis for pronouncing on their true nature. Ghosts, which encompass a range of perceivable phenomena from unaccountable movements of physical objects, through to communicating apparitions, are incredibly common and have occurred across history and culture. That no one has a conclusive handle on what ghosts "are" does not have a bearing on their continued perception by ordinary people, including scientists.
Max_B
Member
There you go then, it seems perfectly rational to me to believe that ghosts are real phenomena (as per the definition of 'ghosts' I gave above).
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Sciborg_S_Patel
Sorry to spoil the show but Mel Smith == D.Shropshire?