TheCultureCitizen t1_izpsisr wrote on December 10, 2022 at 10:55 PM

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

How do you rule out idealism?

InTheEndEntropyWins t1_izpzft8 wrote on December 10, 2022 at 11:48 PM

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.

[deleted] t1_izq3286 wrote on December 11, 2022 at 12:17 AM

[deleted]

TheCultureCitizen t1_izq376t wrote on December 11, 2022 at 12:18 AM

> 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?

InTheEndEntropyWins t1_izrmr7n wrote on December 11, 2022 at 9:17 AM

>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.

TheCultureCitizen t1_izsrw5e wrote on December 11, 2022 at 4:11 PM

>
> > > > 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.