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TheCultureCitizen t1_izlbz1x wrote

Reply to comment by InTheEndEntropyWins in The world and other minds | Idealism leads to solipsism. Coherentism, rather than foundationalism, has better chance of reconciling solipsism with the apparent existence of other minds. by IAI_Admin

You're just begging the question though. You're assuming materialism is correct even though that's exactly what's being contested. Your whole argument hinges on the promise of "we'll figure it out eventually". You barely have even an outline of a coherent theory of consciousness yet you act as if it's essentially solved.

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x3n0n89 t1_izmct41 wrote

>impossible

I agree with you. Even the deductive logic that is used to describe biological phenomena can't be described in biological terms to begin with. So why should consciousness?

Denying that Qualia exists would also mean, that there is no practical reasoning in checking if a programmed machine is doing something because of its programming or because it makes a conscious decision.

To me the claim that idealism is a fallacy in itself sounds like a reductionist view of the human experience and an outdated epistemological error that leads to a cartesian determinism of what it means and feels like to be a human and have a consciousness. Its reducing the whole question down to a primitive utilitarian sense of: If we can't do good predictions of it, therefore we categorically shouldn't bother.

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_izn5mwy wrote

>You're just begging the question though. You're assuming materialism is correct even though that's exactly what's being contested.

Yes, I'm assuming materialism is correct. It's an educated guess.

But what I do know is that all the alternatives I've looked into lead to are incoherent and lead to absurdities. They all seem to lead to consciousness being an epiphenomena or that the brain is different and doesn't obey the laws of physics.

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TheCultureCitizen t1_iznfkel wrote

> > > > > But what I do know is that all the alternatives I've looked into lead to are incoherent and lead to absurdities.

Materialism is incoherent and leads to absurdities and it's gonna remain that way until you find a coherent mathematical model of consciousness. Put up or shut up, your idea of consciousness is not the tiniest bit less handwavey than the idealist's. You have no clue what's actually going on, and hiding behind the successes of various physical sciences doesn't make your case stronger if you can't even model a single instance of what we call "quale". Even if it is all an illusion you have to show exactly how the illusion is constructed.

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_izoeleq wrote

>Materialism is incoherent and leads to absurdities and it's gonna remain that way until you find a coherent mathematical model of consciousness.

Sorry when I said incoherent I mean inconsistent.

If it's possible to provide a coherent mathematical model of consciousness, then that model isn't incoherent/inconsistent.

I'm saying non-materialist models are normally inconsistent hence impossible.

>Even if it is all an illusion you have to show exactly how the illusion is constructed.

I'm saying that materialism is the only possible option since you can rule out all alternatives though reductio ad absurdum.

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TheCultureCitizen t1_izpsisr wrote

How do you rule out idealism?

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_izpzft8 wrote

I guess it depends on what version.

In most versions you have the physical, whether it is created by the mind or whatever.

This physical including the brain acts solely due to the laws of physics. The brain which we can control and manipulate gives rise to changes in what people think, feel and experience.

Basically the mind reality can't actually change anything in the brain or anything physical beyond the laws of physics. This then leaves this mental layer as effectively an epiphenomena.

Anyway the main argument against idealism is just the absurdity of it's supporter, you have people bringing up how studies on LSD and past lives support idealism. Is it really worth arguing with people like Kastrup who referred to the effects of LSD in his dissertation to prove materialism wrong.

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TheCultureCitizen t1_izq376t wrote

> Is it really worth arguing with people like Kastrup who referred to the effects of LSD in his dissertation to prove materialism wrong.

And why was his argument faulty in your opinion?

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_izrmr7n wrote

>And why was his argument faulty in your opinion?

He claims the materialist position is that conscious activity is directly correlated to the amount of neural activity. I don't think any actually says or believes that, so it's a strawman.

A great deal of brain activity is repressive/controlling. So it's no surprise that if LSD reduces the overall level of neural activity that the conscious experience of a person might be greater(whatever that means).

Also it's not just a reduction in neural activity it's a change in neural activity with there being an increase level of activity around signals moving between different regions of the brain.

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TheCultureCitizen t1_izsrw5e wrote

>
> > > > He claims the materialist position is that conscious activity is directly correlated to the amount of neural activity. I don't think any actually says or believes that, so it's a strawman.

That's not true, proponents of IIT propose exactly that, or at least heavily hint at it, to them the richness of conscious experience is directly correlated with the amount of "integrated information", and it's not really an unresonable leap to assume more neural activity would lead to more integrated information, so no it's actually not true that physicalists don't believe this.

And again, if you don't believe it to be so you're supposed to show a concrete competing theory, not just gesture vaguely at a potential future theory. You don't really have much to stand on yet you keep pretending like you've basically figured it out.

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