Atheist arguments for God

[Mithrae]

Inspired by the thread 'The Ten Best Apologetic Arguments,' I've recently remembered a thread I started in November last year. They're not really apologetic arguments, so with any luck I'm not violating any forum rules by starting a thread with a clean slate.

Across eleven days I had the pleasure of encountering some very intelligent discussion last year. However only three of my five arguments were debated, and on re-reading the thread I have to say that I don't think my arguments were defeated (or even particularly damaged) in any case. Maybe that's just arrogance talking But I think it's worth opening the floor again to challenge myself and other atheists to consider whether there might not be some genuinely good reasons for believing in a god after all.

Some italicized comments in [square brackets] will be comments/insights gleaned from the original debate or other more recent ideas, and I've added two new arguments to the original five. A few small changes have been made to my original wording also.

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I'm bored and a little drunk, so I figured I'd give this a shot. I don't believe in a god, but I always find it quite stimulating to think of the pro and con arguments. Limited by belief in biblical infallibility, conservative Christians are easy prey for atheists. But weighing both sides of a position, I've been known to change my own mind on occasion, so if nothing else that might make it an interesting endeavour to see how convincingly I might argue for the existence of a god.

'God' is here defined as an infinite personal Creator of everything. I won't argue (and don't believe) that concepts like 'good' and 'evil' have any true meaning with or without such a being's existence; with a God, he calls the shots, and without they're meaningless. I won't argue for biblical infallibility or even that the monotheistic faiths are the only ones with experience of this god; though some arguments will come from Judaism/Christianity if I get 'round to it.

I'll try to be relatively brief in my initial post, hoping to start debate rather than win it, but since the responses will probably be considerable it may take time to cover all points. For the sake of convenience, I'll broadly number my arguments and hopefully those responding will follow suit.



1 - Berkeley's immaterialism
This is based essentially on the problem of epistemology (the theory of 'knowing'). All science and a great deal of other human knowledge is based, ultimately, on observation; yet 'observation' for any individual amounts ultimately to nothing more than perceptions in the mind. If you've seen The Matrix, it's obvious that anyone plugged in has no way of knowing that what they see, feel, hear etc. isn't real. The difference in Berkeley's argument is that there's no real physical world with machines running the Matrix.

Berkeley agreed with the emerging sciences of his day that what we observe is real, and also with the philosophers that what we observe occurs in the mind. Reality, therefore, is a thing of the mind, not of some ultimately unprovable material world. Thus either I am the only mind in existence, and everything and everyone I've perceived is a figment of my imagination, or there are indeed other minds whose generally shared perceptions must necessarily be part of a greater Mind. The problem of epistemology is a significant one regarding the reliability of the sciences - observations occur only in the mind - but a wholly immaterial universe can be both largely consistent and largely comprehensible. There's genuine evidence for the phenomenon of perception (and less certainly, for shared perception between minds), but there's no genuine evidence for a material world - so why postulate one?


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2 - Consciousness
Quite briefly, it's obvious that I possess a quality which I call consciousness, and it's equally obvious that a rock does not. There is no evidence for any theory suggesting that physical molecules grouping together in a complex enough fashion could give rise to this non-physical phenomenon known as consciousness. Related to and compatible with the above, but ultimately distinct, each person has genuine evidence for consciousness, but no genuine evidence regarding a physical basis for it. Pure immaterialism may or may not be the best explanation for this phenomenon, though an alternative is the existence of some non-material aspect of the universe somehow linked to the material.

[In discussion with Bernee51 and AkiThePirate, I suggested a working definition for consciousness as:
"Awareness - the difference between someone in a coma and someone awake."
"I'm just theorising here of course, but probably the most basic indicators of awareness are reaction to pain and movement/exploration to acquire more sensory data. While it's true that different species have different means of acquiring sensory data, and different levels in their capacity to evaluate, remember and extrapolate from it, those would seem more like faculties in addition to 'consciousness,' not differing types or levels of consciousness itself."

I couldn't think of anything outside the kingdom animalia which fit this working definition. We infer consciousness in other humans by constant observation and very strong analogy, and in dogs or the like by similar but weaker means; however without a degree in marine biology, I was unable to answer whether a jellyfish possesses consciousness. I argued that lack of complete certainty (or even a final, conclusive and unchangeable definition) about consciousness in all cases is not a weakness in the argument, any more than it is in the sciences; we work from observation, refining our hypotheses to reach the best conclusion.

Neither Bernee nor Aki was able to provide an example of component parts producing a whole or side-effect which was qualitatively different from those parts. Towards the end of the discussion Aki suggested that consciousness isn't non-physical, because everything that exists that isn't space or time is physical (matter or energy). I don't believe that he proved that contention, the particular counter-example we ended with being the fractals which he'd mentioned earlier in the discussion.]


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3 - First cause and contigency
Everyone's probably familiar with the 'first cause' cosmological argument. Logically, the universe must be attributed either to an infinite regress of prior universes or some precedences (which seems unlikely) or it is self-caused or uncaused (equally unlikely). The same applies to the concept of God, of course. But there's a distinction which non-theists often don't seem to grasp; since long before the birth of Christ, the monotheistic concept of God has consistently been that of a timeless, uncaused Creator. The concept of material reality by contrast has consistently been that of a contingent existent, each aspect relying on previous aspects for its existence and nature. Whether it's a combination of the cosmological and ontological arguments, or Aquinas' first three arguments (I'm not enough of a philosopher to make the point clearly), the outcome is the same. An ultimate self-causation, non-causality or infinite regress in a contingent universe seems absurd compared to the possibility that a non-contingent entity caused all else.

[Responses (from memory) mostly pointed out that this falls far short of proving the 'personal, infinite' God I set out to. However I believe that at the least, the argument might lay a good foundation for the theists' additional arguments. In fact, CalvinsBulldog has made some interesting points about a personal nature for the first cause in the Ten Best Apologetic Arguments thread.]


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4 - Evolution
Paleo-biology is an even weaker point for me than philosophy, but it's my understanding that there's virtually no evidence in the fossil record for transitional forms between major classes, let alone phyla. This contrasts severely with the expected findings of the phyletic gradualism theory of evolution initially envisaged by Darwin, giving rise eventually to the punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution - suggesting, if memory serves, that significant major phases of evolution occured in restricted environments under greater selective pressure, before the resultant changes spread more widely and became visible in the fossil record. I don't know whether there's other theories around, nor how many scientists still adhere to the idea of phyletic gradualism.

However in the absense of any real evidence, the theory of punctuated equilibrium seems a tacit admission that the mere factors of genetic variation, random mutation and natural selection are not borne out by the available data as the sole cause of the earth's biodiversity. A confined ecosystem and greater selective pressure cannot, to my understanding, exessively increase the range nor rate of possible available genetic variants; so what we're left with is a theory which seems somewhat to rely on an inexplicable jump in mutations in those supposed confined spaces with high selective pressure.

If any biologists can correct me on any mistakes made above, it would be welcome. However from a layman's point of view, it seems that phyletic gradualism is grossly unevidenced in the fossil record, while punctuated equilibrium seems an intelligent but not particularly persuasive effort to explain the discrepancies. Is there any reason to go for an 'inexplicably increased rate in mutations and evolution'-of-the-gaps theory, rather than god-of-the-gaps?


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5 - Prophecy of Daniel
The biblical book of Daniel was written partly in Hebrew (ch 1 and 8-12) and partly in Aramaic (2-7). I contend that there's no compelling reason to believe that the Hebrew portion is not genuine 6th century BCE material. Based mostly on the 11th chapter, secular scholars argue that such knowledge of the long interactions between the 'king of the north' (Seleucid Greeks) and 'king of the south' (Ptolemaic Greeks) could only be the product of a later author and, based on 11:36ff suppose that it was written shortly before Antiochus IV Epiphanes failed to do those things.

Besides the presupposition that the chapter must be naturalistic in origin, there are two major flaws with this view. Firstly the idea that a king (Antiochus IV) who'd spent much effort attempting to Hellenize the Jews would suddenly "show no regard for the gods of his ancestors" (11:37) and instead exalt a foreign god (38-39). Such an idea would be virtually inconceivable to a Jewish author living under Antiochus' reign. Secondly, the fact that the 'abomination of desolation' from v. 31 was prophecied at a specific time - Daniel 9:25-27 says it will occur roughly 70 sevens after the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. Depending on the starting date, to a later Jew that could have meant anywhere from c53 BCE to c42 CE - either way, it's clear that Daniel 11:31 does not refer to anything which happened under the reign of Antiochus IV Ephiphanes (c167 BCE).

Above all, Daniel 8 refers to 'king' Belshazzar, a figure unknown to historians until a few cuneiform inscriptions were found in the last century. He was actually son to the last king of Babylon, Nabonidus, but ruled in his stead while Nabonidus resided elsewhere (memory fails me at this point, but pending confirmation I believe that one inscription mentions the name Belshazzar, while a different one clarifies his co-regency). Belshazzar is a name unknown in any Greek history - so while it would have been natural for a 6th century Jew to refer to 'king' Belshazzar, it's a mystery how a 2nd century BCE Jew would even know the name, let alone that he was crown prince and co-regent to Babylon's last king.

The balance of evidence suggests that Hebrew Daniel was written in the 6th century BCE, containing remarkable prophecy regarding the Greeks - and, even more intriguingly, arguably that it prophecies a messiah who would be 'cut off' sometime in the 30s CE (9:26).

[I should note that I use the term 'prophet' and 'prophecy' for Daniel. But by biblical standards he wasn't a prophet; he recorded visions of the future, but he didn't pass on the 'word of the Lord' as the other prophets did (cf Deuteronomy 18:14ff). The arguments about Daniel are a little more specialist and harder to summarize than for consciousness, but I invite interested folk to browse the discussion I had with Goat on the topic.]


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6 - Jeremiah's Gematria
The concept and implied validity of this argument was actually shown to me by another atheist (Goat). I'm assuming my research last November was accurate, though that may be worth double-checking. However.

In Daniel 1:1 'Nebuchadnezzar' is written in Hebrew with a particular variation in spelling, one of several different spellings found throughout the standard Masoretic text of the Tanakh. The earliest biblical use of this particular spelling is found in the work of the prophet Jeremiah; in 27:6, from around 593 BCE, while Ezekiel 26 uses the same spelling around 7 years later. Jeremiah was a source of inspiration for Daniel, with his 70 years of Babylonian domination being the spring-board from which Daniel predicted his 70 'sevens' (Daniel 9). Whereas a major theme of Daniel's visions was the ravaging and persecution of the Jews by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a major theme in Jeremiah's prophecy is the ravaging and persecution of the Jews by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. In chapter 27, Jeremiah speaks not just to Judah but to all the surrounding nations, declaring God's supreme power and warning them to submit to the rule of his servant Nebuchadnezzar.

That said, one can't help but consider it extremely intriguing that the precise manner in which Jeremiah spelled 'Nebuchadnezzar' while telling all nations of God's supreme power just happens to be a perfect match in Hebrew gematria for Antiochus Epiphanes! Goat, citing Wikipedia, initially advanced this as an argument that the author of Daniel must have been writing in the 2nd century. But having advanced it as a meaningful point, the fact that undisputed 6th century works use the same spelling means that on the contrary, not only does it suggest Daniel as a 6th century work but it's a remarkable indication of the hidden foreknowledge which even God's prophets may not have recognised themselves!

In Hebrew, as in many other ancient languages, names and words often have numerical value (see Gematria). Nebuchadnezzar's name in cuneiform is Nabû-kudurri-uṣur which should be transliterated into Hebrew as נבוכדנ�צר or Nebuwkadne'tstsar (as it is in Jer. 46:2, 39:11). It is unlikely to be a coincidence that when the numbers represented by "Nebuwkadne'tstsar" are added up, they come exactly the same figure (423) as the numbers of the name "Antiochus Epiphanes".
~ Wikipedia

Wikipedia and Goat may not be authoritative sources on the subject of 'unlikely to be coincidence' or the like. Nevertheless, on face value it seems that any but the most intractable sceptic must admit that it's a rather remarkable phenomenon. See here for my detailed and impeccably expert analysis of the Hebrew language in the relevant passages


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7 - Origin of life
Since it's related to argument #4, I figured I'd throw this in here too. But it deserves its own point because if my rather uneducated guess is correct that evolutionary theory still has major gaps to fill before being truly plausible as a naturalistic explanation, that is even more obviously and certainly the case regarding the origin of life itself.

• Since life exists, if it wasn't created then it must have arisen spontaneously. However that has never been observed by humans, all experimental efforts to recreate the right conditions in which it could occur have so far failed and there's not even any accepted model as to how it occurred (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis). Since it is essentially unprovable, as you've noted it's quite rare to see atheists making that claim in a debate context despite being a logical consequence of atheism.

I won't add more on this point for now (partly 'cos I don't have much more to add), but I think it's definitely worth considering. Particularly when considering arguments like the above in gestalt, rather than taken separately: Is it strange that we find it so hard to explain the origins of life, evolution between kingdoms, phyla and classes, and the phenomenon of consciousness? Or does the presence of 'consciousness' only in living things, and only in one kingdom (and perhaps only some phyla) suggest that all of these questions may be linked within the over-arching mystery of divinity? To simply overlook arguments like #4 and #7 with a trite 'god-of-the-gaps' dismissal - particularly without having truly grappled with other powerful arguments - is perhaps an example of the overweening pride which many of the most revered teachers through history have warned as one of the greatest causes of mankind's spiritual void.



*sigh* I was trying to wax poetical for a dramatic conclusion there, but I think I failed. Anyways, that's about all I've got for now - enjoy

[ThatGirlAgain]

A passing thought before bed (and an early early rise)...


...Eliminative Materialism does not exist. It is at best a brain state. But until someone can demonstrate the neurological processes involved, it should not even be granted that much status.

[Mithrae]

A passing thought before bed (and an early early rise)...

...Eliminative Materialism does not exist. It is at best a brain state. But until someone can demonstrate the neurological processes involved, it should not even be granted that much status.

I actually LOLed

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No worries, I just signed up for netflix and was pleasantly surpised to discover that all 7 seasons of Star Trek the next generation were added to their collection (yea....I'm THAT guy). I was a bit distracted myself...needless to say.

Irony - ST next generation was next on my buying list (thanks to Big Bang Theory and childhood memories), but odds are I've missed the special deal by now.

Thought without objects
It's an important point to make, but as I see it there's three fundamental problems with the argument that the two of you are advancing. Firstly there's the fact that we have no experience (or indeed conception, as Ionian has pointed out) of having no external objects of thought. Our whole lives consist of a barrage of external stimuli, so it's obviously true that most if not all of our thoughts can be traced back ultimately to external stimuli. But this observation doesn't prove a truism that thought can only be based on externals.

Perhaps not, but proof was never a requirement here. If I recall, our endeavor was to determine which worldview ("materialism" or "idealism") was the most RATIONAL position to hold. If our acceptance of idealism is ultimately predicated upon abstruse, unfalsifiable , and fundamentally conjectural notions pertaining to what the mind MIGHT be capable of, how can we say that our conclusion is rooted in the most reasoned assessment of the available data? What you postulate is certainly not unproven, but it also hasn't been demonstrated to be the most plausible explanation of thought. If rationality is our goal, it is far more rational to relegate our assumptions regarding the nature of thought to that which can be demonstrated and which does not require the extrapolation of elements beyond necessity...Parsimony does not seem to favor your position.

I know it's a cheap shot, but since on fourth reading I finally noticed it I couldn't help bolding that comment

I previously replied to Ragna that:

• A single Mind is just that; a mind, with the capacity for thought, change, innovation and imagination. A "whole material reality" is not (at least by the usual theories) an innovative or creative thing. You seem to agree that there are a number of aspects of the external world which can't be broken down or explained in any simpler terms - space, time, fundamental particles and forces. I'm no physicist, so let's go with your choices and even allow your musing that space and time may exist only as functions relative to objects and change.
  
  Damnit, I wish I hadn't written that. But I'll follow the train of thought, in the spirit of honesty
  That would mean that the truly fundamental nature of a physical external world is the fundamental particles and the way they behave. The downside is that this is comparable to a fundamental reality consisting of a Mind and the way it behaves.

Obviously with my limited knowledge, that's all up in the air still. But regarding your comments, my point is that we can no more explain the behaviour (or nature) of fundamental physical substance beyond the range of our observation than we can further explain the behaviour/nature of fundamental mental substance beyond the range of our observation. Our observation on 'thoughts,' as I've pointed out, consist largely of response to external stimuli and are likely hard to grasp and definitely impossible to communicate without reference to external stimuli. Our observation on 'matter' is likewise severely hampered by perspective; we've come a long way in recent centuries, and no doubt have plenty more to learn, but there's no more reason to believe that ultimately the behaviour of 'matter' will prove more explicable than the behaviour of 'mind.'

Like I say, your point about our observations concerning the common origin of thoughts is a valid one. But change, innovation and imagination are also well-observed functions of the mind. Granted these are usually based on prior concepts, and indeed often merely extrapolations from them; but I think I'd be safe in saying that there was more than merely deduction going on in the composition of Bach's Toccata and Fugue or the depth of appreciation and beauty we might get from a lovely sunset. It's impossible to demonstrate creativity from nothing in our minds, but it seems clear that some measure of creativity does occur and there's no reason to believe (to appropriate an infamous phrase) that it can't be ex nihilo.

[Ragna]

I was, and yes; that's why it's called Atheist arguments for God

Heh... apparently I'm not the only one with contradictions .

An interesting tangent of thought occurs however; you have the ignostic tag (question what's meant by 'God'), the atheist tag (reject belief in God, or non-belief in God) and the non-theist tag (non-belief in God). Seems to me two of them have to be either inconsistent or redundant .

Well, ignostic represents my a priori consideration in every discussion. I need to know what is being discussed. Meaningfulness is key.

I consider atheist a social tag; which basically means not religious. It can be largely synonymous with non-theist, which means that, until now, after all I've considered, thought and talked with people, I'm not a theist. I'm in no way a strong atheist; I don't deny the existence of God.

Intriguingly, unless I've missed something there's no usergroup for those who question what's meant by 'belief.'

Try philosophers . Those question everything!

I've got on my laptop a fictional piece I wrote (last modified July 28th 2007) questioning what it is that makes a meaningful concept of 'god.' Maybe 'ignostic' is the best term to describe me. But I've also got a journal entry from February 16th of 2007 musing that perhaps the myths used by our forebears are an essential part of being truly human. Maybe I'm more of a liberal Christian with a mytho-poetical hermeneutic at heart. Of course, if we use the term 'meta-narrative' instead of 'myths' and throw in a little of my scepticism about the knowability of absolute truth, I'm almost a postmodernist. But I appreciate gospel music as much as the next man; at work I sometimes get positive reactions when my iRiver plays the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah, or God will #### you up by John Butler.

To be honest, when I first talked to you I felt like talking to a theist.

Thought without objects

It's an important point to make, but as I see it there's three fundamental problems with the argument that the two of you are advancing. Firstly there's the fact that we have no experience (or indeed conception, as Ionian has pointed out) of having no external objects of thought. Our whole lives consist of a barrage of external stimuli, so it's obviously true that most if not all of our thoughts can be traced back ultimately to external stimuli. But this observation doesn't prove a truism that thought can only be based on externals.

As a counter-argument to this objection, I propose a thought experiment: an entirely healthy person; a blind person; a person who is deaf and blind; a person who is deaf, blind and tasteless, a person who can only smell (feels nothing when touching); and a person without any of the 5 senses. All these have these conditions from birth.

Do you imagine any correlation between the people's number of fully-working senses and the amount, variety and nature of their thoughts? Can we even consider the last person a person? What can it feel? What does it think?

Secondly, if a person does conceive of a truly novel thing, with no ultimate basis in the external world, it would obviously be impossible to communicate that thought to others. The whole basis of communication and language is the commonalities between people which permit a shared understanding - precisely the opposite of communicating an entirely novel concept.

I think this point is flawed. The nature of thoughts, which is key in the discussion, is about the genesis of thoughts, which is being interpreted as the understanding and translation of external stimuli into internal representations we call ideas. So how can a "totally novel" thought be conceived, if it has to be understood to be a thought; but it cannot be understood, by definition, in the same way it cannot be communicated? Your objection is like saying: "there cannot be novel thoughts, but if there were you wouldn't disprove them." Well, if there cannot be... !

And related to this, the third point is that it's likely impossible for us to hold a single thought in complete isolation. We habitually order and interpret concepts new to our minds in light of everything that's already in there, in our efforts to understand. Any truly novel thought would, by its very nature, be vague and indistinct unless interpreted in light of concepts we already hold.

This is what I was saying. Vague is an euphemism; it's not understandable, in any possible way. So how can it be called a thought in the first place? How can it be represented in the mind, how can it get to be an idea, if ideas are the result of understanding? It's a plain contradiction.

So while I don't believe we have reason to state categorically that without external stimulation all thought is always impossible, it seems that the way our minds work and the nature of communication would make it impossible to provide a counter-example. However I would argue, for example, that a mind which could conceive a concept of 'one' could eventually (indeed, perhaps inevitably) reach the concept of 'two' or 'none' - and from there nothing more than contemplating the relationship between them could provide the foundation for a substantial conception of numbers, arithmetic, integers and fractions, indices, negatives and so on.

I have heard about birds which, after long training, understood the concepts of 2, 1 and even null. I don't imagine them doing well with fractions, though. You're extrapolating a list of arbitrary things we know we can do, and saying we could do them. Well, certainly, we have! But our mind has evolved, and probably because of the external world.

It's not an invalid point you're making, but I believe all it proves is that without external objects thought would necessarily be much less complicated at first.

How much less complicated? Like for the person without any of the 5 senses, who had never received any stimulus? How do you think he would think?

I hope you'll agree with me that it's entirely different having somebody who loses their 5 senses, to having somebody who has never had them. If somebody suddenly lost their 5 senses, I think they should still be able to talk, right?

Materialism vs. Idealism

I see what you're saying better now, thanks. And I'm not saying that position is demonstrably incorrect (certainly I couldn't demonstrate it). But given my limited philosophical understanding, I still believe that idealism makes more sense. I suggested in my last post that from childhood it comes naturally to consider our mind as quite different from the stuff around us, and even as adults we don't readily identify our 'self' with a brain.

Why would we? That's a scientific discovery, not something natural selection should have us feel or know. It's entirely natural. Would you make an argument using the fact that children don't identify breathing with their lungs? They don't even know they have lungs!

That said, I should point out that the perception of external objects as being substantially different from our minds is really the foundation for the concept of matter in the first place. Remove that childhood differentiation and I'd question why the notion is invoked at all.

But this distinction is not so much about the nature as it is about external/self. We also include in the external things which we presumably believe to have minds, like other people.

The position you describe suggests that things in the 'mind' are material. That consciousness is material. That the colour we see in our minds and the sound we hear in our minds are material. Or temperature; the cold of a hand in ice water is material, the heat of the other in hot water is material, and if we then put them both in lukewarm water we're perceiving both material heat and cold. Pain of course is a material thing, pleasure presumably likewise. Beauty? I can't speak for a position I don't hold, but I can't see how beauty could be anything but material also. But, on the face of it at least, to me it seems almost absurd that one's appreciation of a sunset or a mountain view can be not only explained by, but identified as the activity of neurons in the grey matter evolved from rodents over a few thousand millenia.

Right. Shocking to dualism, yet, in-the-framework, it doesn't mean anything. A sunset is still a sunset, and has always been a sunset, and sensations are just sensations. That a rock has the same nature as, say, love should be as shocking from materialists as it should be from idealists. They are saying the same thing!

Just reading up a little on some varieties of materialism on Wikipedia, two things become apparent: Firstly that it'd take months of research even to understand the various theories folk have put forward on the subject, and secondly that even with that knowledge base it's obvious there's no clear contender for a 'correct' theory. One example sprang out quite poignantly to me:

• Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism)

To be honest, I don't know much on the subject either, I didn't have one special materialism in mind when I offered the counter-example.

While not all materialists so readily dismiss our consistent daily observations of our minds, to my mind this does serve to highlight one of the problems inherent in a materialist position.

Ultimately, it seems a view whose basic concept relies on a (presumed) false dichotomy of mind and 'matter' in the first place, which we thus intuitively reject in our conception of self, which seems prima facie absurd when taken to a logical conclusion and which therefore requires at best a radical reinterpretation of what we observe of our minds in every single day. I question how much credibility such a position holds on its own merits, let alone compared with a plausible alternative.

The plausible alternative has the same "dichotomy" which you presumably think takes away the credibility; it's just disguised. Idealism also has to explain the fact that sunsets and rocks have the same nature. We just don't get so shocked because we're in a cultural and philosophical framework that has us interpret our minds as inherently ideal. So when saying that rocks are ideas; it seems like just moving them to our place. But when saying that minds are matter, it seems that we "change" places. This feeling on the subject is absurd within the framework, and is what gives idealism advantage; nevertheless, it's purely a matter of our background with no validity.

[Mithrae]

I was, and yes; that's why it's called Atheist arguments for God An interesting tangent of thought occurs however; you have the ignostic tag (question what's meant by 'God'), the atheist tag (reject belief in God, or non-belief in God) and the non-theist tag (non-belief in God). Seems to me two of them have to be either inconsistent or redundant .

Heh... apparently I'm not the only one with contradictions .

Well, ignostic represents my a priori consideration in every discussion. I need to know what is being discussed. Meaningfulness is key.

I consider atheist a social tag; which basically means not religious. It can be largely synonymous with non-theist, which means that, until now, after all I've considered, thought and talked with people, I'm not a theist. I'm in no way a strong atheist; I don't deny the existence of God.

Sounds like we're about on the same page. Agnostic, skeptic, 'questions everything' or 'philosophers' can all mean pretty much the same thing, as far as social tags go (and let's face it, that's all most of them are). Atheist, non-theist and 'ignostic' are about the same too. 'Til a few weeks ago I figured a blasphemous sense of humour and former Christian should be ample introduction to anyone reading my posts, but when even the 'atheist' tag didn't clue someone in I added 'existentialist' - probably my most meaningful tag, though I'm not certain I know what it means.

To be honest, when I first talked to you I felt like talking to a theist.

Generic theists probably are easier to talk to than Pastafarians, but I can't help but feel a little rejected

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Thought without objects
It's an important point to make, but as I see it there's three fundamental problems with the argument that the two of you are advancing. Firstly there's the fact that we have no experience (or indeed conception, as Ionian has pointed out) of having no external objects of thought. Our whole lives consist of a barrage of external stimuli, so it's obviously true that most if not all of our thoughts can be traced back ultimately to external stimuli. But this observation doesn't prove a truism that thought can only be based on externals.

As a counter-argument to this objection, I propose a thought experiment: an entirely healthy person; a blind person; a person who is deaf and blind; a person who is deaf, blind and tasteless, a person who can only smell (feels nothing when touching); and a person without any of the 5 senses. All these have these conditions from birth.

Do you imagine any correlation between the people's number of fully-working senses and the amount, variety and nature of their thoughts? Can we even consider the last person a person? What can it feel? What does it think?

Person-hood isn't the issue; a rat no doubt has 'thoughts' even though it's not a person, I wouldn't consider a 9-month fetus a 'person,' and (as a non-parent) I'd consider a 1-day baby with all senses a grey area. Without any senses whatsoever, I think you know what the last individual in your examples could feel. And I agreed back in post 36 that there would be a "likely scarcity of thoughts without any objects of thought" - call that a correlation if you will.

Regarding an individual without any of our five senses from birth - and presumably, for the sake of your analogy, without any of those senses in the womb either - what does such an individual think? I don't know. Do you? Frankly I'd be surprised if s/he didn't at least feel some kind of survival or even reproductive instinct, however vague and (obviously) incommunicable that may be. Nevertheless, I do see what you're getting at in terms of communicating your ideas; I'm not sure there's much for me to add in terms of argument on top of my last three posts though.

Secondly, if a person does conceive of a truly novel thing, with no ultimate basis in the external world, it would obviously be impossible to communicate that thought to others. The whole basis of communication and language is the commonalities between people which permit a shared understanding - precisely the opposite of communicating an entirely novel concept.

I think this point is flawed. The nature of thoughts, which is key in the discussion, is about the genesis of thoughts, which is being interpreted as the understanding and translation of external stimuli into internal representations we call ideas. So how can a "totally novel" thought be conceived, if it has to be understood to be a thought; but it cannot be understood, by definition, in the same way it cannot be communicated? Your objection is like saying: "there cannot be novel thoughts, but if there were you wouldn't disprove them." Well, if there cannot be... !

Unless I've misunderstood you, I think our problem lies in the bold area. I agree that often our observations of thought are "the understanding and translation of external stimuli into internal representations we call ideas." But even this definition is manifestly flawed since many thoughts are 'the understanding and translation of existing thoughts into other internal representations we call more complex ideas' - no direct external stimuli at all, and as I suggested in my most recent post there in fact seems to be a likely element of genuine creativity at times.

Be that as it may, again back in post 36 I questioned your definition of 'thought':

• It also needs a whole new concept for the word thought. Thoughts are representations of the material reality in our brain. That way we can explain our thoughts, but, if the Great Mind exists, then whence all its thoughts, if there's no material reality? As you can see, not a single problem is solved by the Great Mind. The questions simply change place.

  
  I'm not sure I agree with that definition of thought - it's not something I've given much thought to

I respect that an initial circular definition of thought as 'representations of the material reality in our brain' has been replaced by translating 'external stimuli' into ideas. Nevertheless, it remains that you're simply offering your definition for 'thought,' not showing that mental activity is impossible without external stimulation.

And related to this, the third point is that it's likely impossible for us to hold a single thought in complete isolation. We habitually order and interpret concepts new to our minds in light of everything that's already in there, in our efforts to understand. Any truly novel thought would, by its very nature, be vague and indistinct unless interpreted in light of concepts we already hold.

This is what I was saying. Vague is an euphemism; it's not understandable, in any possible way. So how can it be called a thought in the first place? How can it be represented in the mind, how can it get to be an idea, if ideas are the result of understanding? It's a plain contradiction.

I'd suggest that to 'understand' is almost as vague a concept as to be a 'person.' Does the average male 'understand' childbirth or menstruation? Do you 'understand' black holes? Heck if it comes to it, do the world's greatest physicists 'understand' quarks and leptons?

I've used the terms 'thought' and 'concept,' you've used the term 'idea,' and they're all good enough terms. But even without adding something like 'understanding,' when discussing the potentiality of thoughts without external stimuli I suspect that "vague and indistinct" is probably a better phrase to use than "plain contradiction" simply on face value!

So while I don't believe we have reason to state categorically that without external stimulation all thought is always impossible, it seems that the way our minds work and the nature of communication would make it impossible to provide a counter-example. However I would argue, for example, that a mind which could conceive a concept of 'one' could eventually (indeed, perhaps inevitably) reach the concept of 'two' or 'none' - and from there nothing more than contemplating the relationship between them could provide the foundation for a substantial conception of numbers, arithmetic, integers and fractions, indices, negatives and so on.

I have heard about birds which, after long training, understood the concepts of 2, 1 and even null. I don't imagine them doing well with fractions, though. You're extrapolating a list of arbitrary things we know we can do, and saying we could do them. Well, certainly, we have! But our mind has evolved, and probably because of the external world.

No, all of my maths examples come from deduction based on the relationships between 1 and either 0 or 2. Birds aren't great at deduction I agree, and nor are many humans; but with no other distractions and no limit on time, I'm merely pointing out that our 'great Mind' would probably fare even better than my poor understanding of maths would suggest. But even overall, maths merely serves as an example of how quite complex things can develop from a very simple foundation.

Maths is a deductive example; there's nothing new about numbers, arithmetic, fractions and so on which can't ultimately be extrapolated from the relationship between 1 and either 0 or 2. This illustrates how the most basic of concepts could, ultimately, lead to much more complicated concepts - I myself do not know of any upper limit to such potential development. That's a response to the observation (not truism) that generally our thoughts are ultimately based on prior stimuli; it doesn't take much stimulus to get the ball rolling.

Contradicting any implied truism that all thoughts are always based ultimately on external stimuli, in my last post I submitted music and appreciation of beauty as (for a current lack of a better term) inductive examples. That is, there are elements of music and beauty appreciation which are not deductive, which are genuinely new to the world with human experience. In other words, that the minds which we know are indeed, to some extent, creative entities and not entirely dependent on external stimuli.

-

Materialism vs. Idealism
[Mithrae's snip]
That said, I should point out that the perception of external objects as being substantially different from our minds is really the foundation for the concept of matter in the first place. Remove that childhood differentiation and I'd question why the notion is invoked at all.

But this distinction is not so much about the nature as it is about external/self. We also include in the external things which we presumably believe to have minds, like other people.

Okay, point conceded; possibly for the second time, and possibly not the last I wrapped my mind around it with "non-self matter" vs. "non-self mind" - thanks for your perseverance.

The position you describe suggests that things in the 'mind' are material. That consciousness is material. That the colour we see in our minds and the sound we hear in our minds are material. Or temperature; the cold of a hand in ice water is material, the heat of the other in hot water is material, and if we then put them both in lukewarm water we're perceiving both material heat and cold. Pain of course is a material thing, pleasure presumably likewise. Beauty? I can't speak for a position I don't hold, but I can't see how beauty could be anything but material also. But, on the face of it at least, to me it seems almost absurd that one's appreciation of a sunset or a mountain view can be not only explained by, but identified as the activity of neurons in the grey matter evolved from rodents over a few thousand millenia.

Right. Shocking to dualism, yet, in-the-framework, it doesn't mean anything. A sunset is still a sunset, and has always been a sunset, and sensations are just sensations. That a rock has the same nature as, say, love should be as shocking from materialists as it should be from idealists. They are saying the same thing!

Maybe I don't have the philosophical language to describe it, but even given my comment above I don't see this as the same thing. I'll try my best however.

...can't do it. It's self/external again, as far as I can see at 4am. I may come back to this

While not all materialists so readily dismiss our consistent daily observations of our minds, to my mind this does serve to highlight one of the problems inherent in a materialist position.

Ultimately, it seems a view whose basic concept relies on a (presumed) false dichotomy of mind and 'matter' in the first place, which we thus intuitively reject in our conception of self, which seems prima facie absurd when taken to a logical conclusion and which therefore requires at best a radical reinterpretation of what we observe of our minds in every single day. I question how much credibility such a position holds on its own merits, let alone compared with a plausible alternative.

The plausible alternative has the same "dichotomy" which you presumably think takes away the credibility; it's just disguised. Idealism also has to explain the fact that sunsets and rocks have the same nature. We just don't get so shocked because we're in a cultural and philosophical framework that has us interpret our minds as inherently ideal. So when saying that rocks are ideas; it seems like just moving them to our place. But when saying that minds are matter, it seems that we "change" places. This feeling on the subject is absurd within the framework, and is what gives idealism advantage; nevertheless, it's purely a matter of our background with no validity.

I'd say that generally our scientific, philosophical and (to a lesser extent) cultural framework is materialist. But then as I've said, it comes naturally to view our minds as substantially different from the external world - by nature we're dualists, but if there's a nurture bias I'd guess that non-religious families would lean towards materialism even more than dualism (and certainly not idealism).


Anyways, for now I'll go to bed admitting that idealism and materialism might be equally reasonable. Well argued, and thanks

[Ionian_Tradition]

Ah a fellow Star Trek fan. I am in good company indeed.

Thought without objects
It's an important point to make, but as I see it there's three fundamental problems with the argument that the two of you are advancing. Firstly there's the fact that we have no experience (or indeed conception, as Ionian has pointed out) of having no external objects of thought. Our whole lives consist of a barrage of external stimuli, so it's obviously true that most if not all of our thoughts can be traced back ultimately to external stimuli. But this observation doesn't prove a truism that thought can only be based on externals.

Perhaps not, but proof was never a requirement here. If I recall, our endeavor was to determine which worldview ("materialism" or "idealism") was the most RATIONAL position to hold. If our acceptance of idealism is ultimately predicated upon abstruse, unfalsifiable , and fundamentally conjectural notions pertaining to what the mind MIGHT be capable of, how can we say that our conclusion is rooted in the most reasoned assessment of the available data? What you postulate is certainly not unproven, but it also hasn't been demonstrated to be the most plausible explanation of thought. If rationality is our goal, it is far more rational to relegate our assumptions regarding the nature of thought to that which can be demonstrated and which does not require the extrapolation of elements beyond necessity...Parsimony does not seem to favor your position.

I know it's a cheap shot, but since on fourth reading I finally noticed it I couldn't help bolding that comment

I previously replied to Ragna that:

• A single Mind is just that; a mind, with the capacity for thought, change, innovation and imagination. A "whole material reality" is not (at least by the usual theories) an innovative or creative thing. You seem to agree that there are a number of aspects of the external world which can't be broken down or explained in any simpler terms - space, time, fundamental particles and forces. I'm no physicist, so let's go with your choices and even allow your musing that space and time may exist only as functions relative to objects and change.
  
  Damnit, I wish I hadn't written that. But I'll follow the train of thought, in the spirit of honesty
  That would mean that the truly fundamental nature of a physical external world is the fundamental particles and the way they behave. The downside is that this is comparable to a fundamental reality consisting of a Mind and the way it behaves.

Obviously with my limited knowledge, that's all up in the air still. But regarding your comments, my point is that we can no more explain the behaviour (or nature) of fundamental physical substance beyond the range of our observation than we can further explain the behaviour/nature of fundamental mental substance beyond the range of our observation. Our observation on 'thoughts,' as I've pointed out, consist largely of response to external stimuli and are likely hard to grasp and definitely impossible to communicate without reference to external stimuli. Our observation on 'matter' is likewise severely hampered by perspective; we've come a long way in recent centuries, and no doubt have plenty more to learn, but there's no more reason to believe that ultimately the behaviour of 'matter' will prove more explicable than the behaviour of 'mind.'

Are you implying that in order for the existence of the material world to be granted as the most reasonable explanation for the reality we perceive, a comprehensive explanation of "matter's" behavior must first be acquired? I completely lack a comprehensive understanding of how the innermost components of the computer in front of me behave, because of this, would you say that I stand unjustified in granting that the existence of the computer provides the most reasonable explanation for my ability to access the internet? If so, Given that I cannot fully understand how my computer behaves, am I now justified in positing that the existence of abstract, and completely unverifiable, entities equally account for my ability to access the internet? Occam's Razor does not require that the most plausible proposition be one that bears with it a complete explanation of the behavior of its elements. It only requires that those elements best explain a given phenomena without multiplying or adding said elements beyond necessity. Your argument demands that you posit a unverifiable and completely undemonstrative capacity for the mind to create concepts "ex nihilo" for the sole purpose of salvaging your argument in light of an observable behavior of thought which would otherwise damage your argument. The arbitrary manner you assign this unobserved quality to the mind highlights a weakness in your position which I think renders it less credible than an explanation which accounts for thought as it is observed without rooting its conclusion in unknown phenomena.

Like I say, your point about our observations concerning the common origin of thoughts is a valid one. But change, innovation and imagination are also well-observed functions of the mind. Granted these are usually based on prior concepts, and indeed often merely extrapolations from them; but I think I'd be safe in saying that there was more than merely deduction going on in the composition of Bach's Toccata and Fugue or the depth of appreciation and beauty we might get from a lovely sunset.

I'm not sure that pure speculation, coupled with a justification which more or less boils down to an argument from incredulity, provides you the safety you assume. You'll need to provide more than a simple, "There must have been more than merely deduction going on in the composition of Bach's Toccata and Fugue" in order to justify your claim that minds can conceive of novel concepts ex nihilo despite the fact that we observe no such thing. With that said, your appeal to aesthetic pleasure seems somewhat counter intuitive to the point I believe you were trying to make. The sense of beauty one gets from viewing a lovely sunset is first derived from actually viewing the sunset. There is a direct causal correlation between what is observed and the pleasure produced in response to what is observed. Could a man find a sunset beautiful if a sunset never existed in the first place? If not, how is it that you claim that a sense of appreciation and beauty derived from viewing a sun set in evidence of thoughts being produced without the aid of external stimuli?

It's impossible to demonstrate creativity from nothing in our minds, but it seems clear that some measure of creativity does occur and there's no reason to believe (to appropriate an infamous phrase) that it can't be ex nihilo.

Ahh...but you've yet to provide a reason why it can.

[Ragna]

Sounds like we're about on the same page. Agnostic, skeptic, 'questions everything' or 'philosophers' can all mean pretty much the same thing, as far as social tags go (and let's face it, that's all most of them are). Atheist, non-theist and 'ignostic' are about the same too. 'Til a few weeks ago I figured a blasphemous sense of humour and former Christian should be ample introduction to anyone reading my posts, but when even the 'atheist' tag didn't clue someone in I added 'existentialist' - probably my most meaningful tag, though I'm not certain I know what it means.

Pretty interesting. I read a few days ago a thread about moral values without Christianity, and one of the former Christians said that his morality got weak at first right after losing his faith. I hardly remember, but could that member be you?

Generic theists probably are easier to talk to than Pastafarians, but I can't help but feel a little rejected

Does your religion forbid eating spaghetti? You could be eating the creator anytime!

---

Thought without objects

Person-hood isn't the issue; a rat no doubt has 'thoughts' even though it's not a person, I wouldn't consider a 9-month fetus a 'person,' and (as a non-parent) I'd consider a 1-day baby with all senses a grey area. Without any senses whatsoever, I think you know what the last individual in your examples could feel. And I agreed back in post 36 that there would be a "likely scarcity of thoughts without any objects of thought" - call that a correlation if you will.

Yea, well, you're right that personality isn't the issue, though it was a curious example to consider. The senseless person won't ever have any memories as far as I can tell. Does it even have a perception of time, if time is about change and he can't perceive change? For the sake of simplicity, let's also devoid him of sensations that are not sensory, like hunger and thirst (because they are ultimately related to the external world).

Regarding an individual without any of our five senses from birth - and presumably, for the sake of your analogy, without any of those senses in the womb either - what does such an individual think? I don't know. Do you?

Oops, yes, you're right about the womb. I forgot. No, I don't know either, but I have a hypothesis: absolute blank.

Frankly I'd be surprised if s/he didn't at least feel some kind of survival or even reproductive instinct, however vague and (obviously) incommunicable that may be. Nevertheless, I do see what you're getting at in terms of communicating your ideas; I'm not sure there's much for me to add in terms of argument on top of my last three posts though.

Those usually have to activate somehow with external stimuli. E.g., getting excited needs hearing, touching or seeing another person (added to maybe smelling pheromones or whatever). Thirst and hunger can arise on the inside, like many instinctive behaviors. But let's not forget about reality; how do you think you have your instincts? Your genes contain them, and that comes from your parents, and at some point in evolutionary history those instincts developed. Evolution is entirely about environment! It's adaptation to the external world. So instincts are a basis for our behaviors. But this senseless person is so biologically flawed that if it doesn't even feel thirst, it can't know about water. It would obviously die in the wild; it wouldn't probably last a day.

So all the possible biological instinctive ideas that may come to his mind will be incomplete and will be just the result of a frustrated genome to carry on its living function - which is ultimately evolutionary development. But it will never know language, for example. How far down the line of biological complexity (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, ...) do you go before saying: "hey, this doesn't have a mind"! Would apes be minds in your idealistic scenario? Taeniae?

I think this point is flawed. The nature of thoughts, which is key in the discussion, is about the genesis of thoughts, which is being interpreted as the understanding and translation of external stimuli into internal representations we call ideas.

Unless I've misunderstood you, I think our problem lies in the bold area. I agree that often our observations of thought are "the understanding and translation of external stimuli into internal representations we call ideas." But even this definition is manifestly flawed since many thoughts are 'the understanding and translation of existing thoughts into other internal representations we call more complex ideas' - no direct external stimuli at all, and as I suggested in my most recent post there in fact seems to be a likely element of genuine creativity at times.

I disagree because, even if we can think about thoughts, the line ultimately will go back to something external. We can always trace something external; i.e., I can think of an apple and imagine a red apple, then I can imagine a dozen of red apples. One thought comes from another one, but that one ultimately comes from a reality. In fact, all the elements involved in the second thought (a dozen, for example) also come from some reality.

I refuse to believe genuine creativity exists. You cannot invent what you don't know, and I'd need a very good reason to start believing ex nihilo creation makes any sense.

Be that as it may, again back in post 36 I questioned your definition of 'thought':

[...]

I respect that an initial circular definition of thought as 'representations of the material reality in our brain' has been replaced by translating 'external stimuli' into ideas. Nevertheless, it remains that you're simply offering your definition for 'thought,' not showing that mental activity is impossible without external stimulation.

You're right I haven't proved it; I don't think it's even possible to prove a negative. But my defense will be that even if we had thoughts without direct external stimulation (for example, if that person felt thirst, or some instinctive survival desperate behavior activated by his genes); that would still be part of the external world. Just in a more complex way. Idealism is not free from the evolutionary reality of our world and the presumable problem that there are non-human minds that make a tempting continuum of complexity from non-consciousness to consciousness. That our mind seems to have evolved from more simpler states; i.e., brain areas for fear are more internal than other areas (what we call "primal" instincts).

I'd suggest that to 'understand' is almost as vague a concept as to be a 'person.' Does the average male 'understand' childbirth or menstruation? Do you 'understand' black holes? Heck if it comes to it, do the world's greatest physicists 'understand' quarks and leptons?

I've used the terms 'thought' and 'concept,' you've used the term 'idea,' and they're all good enough terms. But even without adding something like 'understanding,' when discussing the potentiality of thoughts without external stimuli I suspect that "vague and indistinct" is probably a better phrase to use than "plain contradiction" simply on face value!

Well, you do have a point here !

Even though I've come to accept that the senseless person may be "there", doing something; even if it cannot understand language, something has to differentiate its brain being alive from it being dead. The question now is whether this is also from external reality in a very complex way, through millions of years and generations.

No, all of my maths examples come from deduction based on the relationships between 1 and either 0 or 2. Birds aren't great at deduction I agree, and nor are many humans; but with no other distractions and no limit on time, I'm merely pointing out that our 'great Mind' would probably fare even better than my poor understanding of maths would suggest. But even overall, maths merely serves as an example of how quite complex things can develop from a very simple foundation.

Sure, some axioms and logic can get to a lot of things. Yet deduction is more than a philosophical name, it's a real human capacity - human, and not avian for example. So why is the Great Mind limited to human capacities? Can't it have higher capacities that are incomprehensible to us, just like Pythagoras's theorem is incomprehensible to cockroaches?

Maths is a deductive example; there's nothing new about numbers, arithmetic, fractions and so on which can't ultimately be extrapolated from the relationship between 1 and either 0 or 2. This illustrates how the most basic of concepts could, ultimately, lead to much more complicated concepts - I myself do not know of any upper limit to such potential development. That's a response to the observation (not truism) that generally our thoughts are ultimately based on prior stimuli; it doesn't take much stimulus to get the ball rolling.

Well, we're getting into a different ground than plain sensory perception / muscular reaction here. Deduction is a higher operation of the human mind, and it's precisely something that has to operate on its own - solving a problem is about finding a solution with the given data, not finding more data (or more than a problem it would be a missing piece). But all these brain activities also need some previous knowledge, which is presumably external, plus genetic brain structures we don't just have; we have them because our genes have built them. And again, isn't that from nature through a very long evolution, gradually? I bet monkeys can solve more complex problems than birds.

Contradicting any implied truism that all thoughts are always based ultimately on external stimuli, in my last post I submitted music and appreciation of beauty as (for a current lack of a better term) inductive examples. That is, there are elements of music and beauty appreciation which are not deductive, which are genuinely new to the world with human experience. In other words, that the minds which we know are indeed, to some extent, creative entities and not entirely dependent on external stimuli.

I don't think creation is ex nihilo. I believe a more accurate description would be recomposition. But anyway I think there are more subtle ways for stimuli to be external than just being perceived through the senses - being inherited.

-

Materialism vs. Idealism

Okay, point conceded; possibly for the second time, and possibly not the last I wrapped my mind around it with "non-self matter" vs. "non-self mind" - thanks for your perseverance.

Thank you for your honesty, it's indeed a very good quality.

Maybe I don't have the philosophical language to describe it, but even given my comment above I don't see this as the same thing. I'll try my best however.

...can't do it. It's self/external again, as far as I can see at 4am. I may come back to this

If you mind, let me say something here. I know that both monisms are not the same, or otherwise we'd just call them both "monisms". The main difference is that a coherent idealism postulates a great mind in which lesser minds exist and perceive parts of it. So there's a window behind me which exists, even if I don't know about it, because it's a thought of a greater mind. Materialism will say that there's just one big reality and we're parts of it which can perceive it. Idealism sounds more like a "virtual reality"; and I have a question, doesn't the idealistic Great Mind have to be a pantheistic deity? How can something not be a part of it, if all reality is about its thoughts in order to exist?

The scenario only needed a greater mind because it needed something to bind reality, just like we need a big computer in a virtual reality game to hold the server. But why have we supposed this mind is conscious? Can't it be just a set of thoughts that correspond to what we call external reality; and there be nothing else to it? Haven't we gone to far supposing it has to be a mind like ours, instead of just thoughts like those we think? It'd be like supposing the great computer who holds the server is also a player - it needn't.

Unless this can't be justified, then even if idealism were more reasonable than materialism; it woudn't constitute an "argument for God". (And never the Christian God, which is forcefully dualist).

I'd say that generally our scientific, philosophical and (to a lesser extent) cultural framework is materialist. But then as I've said, it comes naturally to view our minds as substantially different from the external world - by nature we're dualists, but if there's a nurture bias I'd guess that non-religious families would lean towards materialism even more than dualism (and certainly not idealism).

I'd say that my cultural and philosophical environment is dualistic - almost everybody, religious or not, believes in some sort of soul; (average normal people without a lot of philosophical interest); and certainly nobody denies material existence. Christianity needs dualism, and it's the major influence in my culture I'd say, both morally and philosophically. I don't know about where you live but I'd find it strange that a disbelief in souls was common.

Just a curiosity, the Pope has been in Spain's capital city these past days (Madrid)! - I'm Spanish.

Anyways, for now I'll go to bed admitting that idealism and materialism might be equally reasonable. Well argued, and thanks

Thank you as well!

[Flail]

I was, and yes; that's why it's called Atheist arguments for God

Heh... apparently I'm not the only one with contradictions .

An interesting tangent of thought occurs however; you have the ignostic tag (question what's meant by 'God'), the atheist tag (reject belief in God, or non-belief in God) and the non-theist tag (non-belief in God). Seems to me two of them have to be either inconsistent or redundant .

Well, ignostic represents my a priori consideration in every discussion. I need to know what is being discussed. Meaningfulness is key.

I consider atheist a social tag; which basically means not religious. It can be largely synonymous with non-theist, which means that, until now, after all I've considered, thought and talked with people, I'm not a theist. I'm in no way a strong atheist; I don't deny the existence of God.

Intriguingly, unless I've missed something there's no usergroup for those who question what's meant by 'belief.'

Try philosophers . Those question everything!

I've got on my laptop a fictional piece I wrote (last modified July 28th 2007) questioning what it is that makes a meaningful concept of 'god.' Maybe 'ignostic' is the best term to describe me. But I've also got a journal entry from February 16th of 2007 musing that perhaps the myths used by our forebears are an essential part of being truly human. Maybe I'm more of a liberal Christian with a mytho-poetical hermeneutic at heart. Of course, if we use the term 'meta-narrative' instead of 'myths' and throw in a little of my scepticism about the knowability of absolute truth, I'm almost a postmodernist. But I appreciate gospel music as much as the next man; at work I sometimes get positive reactions when my iRiver plays the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah, or God will #### you up by John Butler.

To be honest, when I first talked to you I felt like talking to a theist.

Thought without objects

It's an important point to make, but as I see it there's three fundamental problems with the argument that the two of you are advancing. Firstly there's the fact that we have no experience (or indeed conception, as Ionian has pointed out) of having no external objects of thought. Our whole lives consist of a barrage of external stimuli, so it's obviously true that most if not all of our thoughts can be traced back ultimately to external stimuli. But this observation doesn't prove a truism that thought can only be based on externals.

As a counter-argument to this objection, I propose a thought experiment: an entirely healthy person; a blind person; a person who is deaf and blind; a person who is deaf, blind and tasteless, a person who can only smell (feels nothing when touching); and a person without any of the 5 senses. All these have these conditions from birth.

Do you imagine any correlation between the people's number of fully-working senses and the amount, variety and nature of their thoughts? Can we even consider the last person a person? What can it feel? What does it think?

Secondly, if a person does conceive of a truly novel thing, with no ultimate basis in the external world, it would obviously be impossible to communicate that thought to others. The whole basis of communication and language is the commonalities between people which permit a shared understanding - precisely the opposite of communicating an entirely novel concept.

I think this point is flawed. The nature of thoughts, which is key in the discussion, is about the genesis of thoughts, which is being interpreted as the understanding and translation of external stimuli into internal representations we call ideas. So how can a "totally novel" thought be conceived, if it has to be understood to be a thought; but it cannot be understood, by definition, in the same way it cannot be communicated? Your objection is like saying: "there cannot be novel thoughts, but if there were you wouldn't disprove them." Well, if there cannot be... !

And related to this, the third point is that it's likely impossible for us to hold a single thought in complete isolation. We habitually order and interpret concepts new to our minds in light of everything that's already in there, in our efforts to understand. Any truly novel thought would, by its very nature, be vague and indistinct unless interpreted in light of concepts we already hold.

This is what I was saying. Vague is an euphemism; it's not understandable, in any possible way. So how can it be called a thought in the first place? How can it be represented in the mind, how can it get to be an idea, if ideas are the result of understanding? It's a plain contradiction.

So while I don't believe we have reason to state categorically that without external stimulation all thought is always impossible, it seems that the way our minds work and the nature of communication would make it impossible to provide a counter-example. However I would argue, for example, that a mind which could conceive a concept of 'one' could eventually (indeed, perhaps inevitably) reach the concept of 'two' or 'none' - and from there nothing more than contemplating the relationship between them could provide the foundation for a substantial conception of numbers, arithmetic, integers and fractions, indices, negatives and so on.

I have heard about birds which, after long training, understood the concepts of 2, 1 and even null. I don't imagine them doing well with fractions, though. You're extrapolating a list of arbitrary things we know we can do, and saying we could do them. Well, certainly, we have! But our mind has evolved, and probably because of the external world.

It's not an invalid point you're making, but I believe all it proves is that without external objects thought would necessarily be much less complicated at first.

How much less complicated? Like for the person without any of the 5 senses, who had never received any stimulus? How do you think he would think?

I hope you'll agree with me that it's entirely different having somebody who loses their 5 senses, to having somebody who has never had them. If somebody suddenly lost their 5 senses, I think they should still be able to talk, right?

Materialism vs. Idealism

I see what you're saying better now, thanks. And I'm not saying that position is demonstrably incorrect (certainly I couldn't demonstrate it). But given my limited philosophical understanding, I still believe that idealism makes more sense. I suggested in my last post that from childhood it comes naturally to consider our mind as quite different from the stuff around us, and even as adults we don't readily identify our 'self' with a brain.

Why would we? That's a scientific discovery, not something natural selection should have us feel or know. It's entirely natural. Would you make an argument using the fact that children don't identify breathing with their lungs? They don't even know they have lungs!

That said, I should point out that the perception of external objects as being substantially different from our minds is really the foundation for the concept of matter in the first place. Remove that childhood differentiation and I'd question why the notion is invoked at all.

But this distinction is not so much about the nature as it is about external/self. We also include in the external things which we presumably believe to have minds, like other people.

The position you describe suggests that things in the 'mind' are material. That consciousness is material. That the colour we see in our minds and the sound we hear in our minds are material. Or temperature; the cold of a hand in ice water is material, the heat of the other in hot water is material, and if we then put them both in lukewarm water we're perceiving both material heat and cold. Pain of course is a material thing, pleasure presumably likewise. Beauty? I can't speak for a position I don't hold, but I can't see how beauty could be anything but material also. But, on the face of it at least, to me it seems almost absurd that one's appreciation of a sunset or a mountain view can be not only explained by, but identified as the activity of neurons in the grey matter evolved from rodents over a few thousand millenia.

Right. Shocking to dualism, yet, in-the-framework, it doesn't mean anything. A sunset is still a sunset, and has always been a sunset, and sensations are just sensations. That a rock has the same nature as, say, love should be as shocking from materialists as it should be from idealists. They are saying the same thing!

Just reading up a little on some varieties of materialism on Wikipedia, two things become apparent: Firstly that it'd take months of research even to understand the various theories folk have put forward on the subject, and secondly that even with that knowledge base it's obvious there's no clear contender for a 'correct' theory. One example sprang out quite poignantly to me:

• Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism)

To be honest, I don't know much on the subject either, I didn't have one special materialism in mind when I offered the counter-example.

While not all materialists so readily dismiss our consistent daily observations of our minds, to my mind this does serve to highlight one of the problems inherent in a materialist position.

Ultimately, it seems a view whose basic concept relies on a (presumed) false dichotomy of mind and 'matter' in the first place, which we thus intuitively reject in our conception of self, which seems prima facie absurd when taken to a logical conclusion and which therefore requires at best a radical reinterpretation of what we observe of our minds in every single day. I question how much credibility such a position holds on its own merits, let alone compared with a plausible alternative.

The plausible alternative has the same "dichotomy" which you presumably think takes away the credibility; it's just disguised. Idealism also has to explain the fact that sunsets and rocks have the same nature. We just don't get so shocked because we're in a cultural and philosophical framework that has us interpret our minds as inherently ideal. So when saying that rocks are ideas; it seems like just moving them to our place. But when saying that minds are matter, it seems that we "change" places. This feeling on the subject is absurd within the framework, and is what gives idealism advantage; nevertheless, it's purely a matter of our background with no validity.

As a long time Ignostic, I have been following your the thread of your arguments. I have nothing to add really, just wanted you to continue...very interesting and well stated positions from both Ragna and Mithrae. Not only am I Ignostic when it comes to God(s) but am a committed skeptic as well. I don't see many answers in life, but I love all the questions, the ideas, the postulations. It's when our subjective answers and views morph into supposed truths that our light grows dim and we begin to lose our way in the dark confines of fundamentalism and we find ourselves huddled in groups like frightened sheep.

[Mithrae]

Perhaps not, but proof was never a requirement here. If I recall, our endeavor was to determine which worldview ("materialism" or "idealism") was the most RATIONAL position to hold. If our acceptance of idealism is ultimately predicated upon abstruse, unfalsifiable , and fundamentally conjectural notions pertaining to what the mind MIGHT be capable of, how can we say that our conclusion is rooted in the most reasoned assessment of the available data? What you postulate is certainly not unproven, but it also hasn't been demonstrated to be the most plausible explanation of thought. If rationality is our goal, it is far more rational to relegate our assumptions regarding the nature of thought to that which can be demonstrated and which does not require the extrapolation of elements beyond necessity...Parsimony does not seem to favor your position.

...But regarding your comments, my point is that we can no more explain the behaviour (or nature) of fundamental physical substance beyond the range of our observation than we can further explain the behaviour/nature of fundamental mental substance beyond the range of our observation. Our observation on 'thoughts,' as I've pointed out, consist largely of response to external stimuli and are likely hard to grasp and definitely impossible to communicate without reference to external stimuli. Our observation on 'matter' is likewise severely hampered by perspective; we've come a long way in recent centuries, and no doubt have plenty more to learn, but there's no more reason to believe that ultimately the behaviour of 'matter' will prove more explicable than the behaviour of 'mind.'

Are you implying that in order for the existence of the material world to be granted as the most reasonable explanation for the reality we perceive, a comprehensive explanation of "matter's" behavior must first be acquired?

No, I'm simply pointing out that whether we speak of mind/thoughts or the external (perhaps physical) world, in either case our knowledge is limited by the extent of our observations and in neither case are we likely to ever reach a complete understanding. It is your argument that idealism is unlikely because thoughts are based on external objects; the implication being that without external objects a greater Mind couldn't think. I'm merely pointing out that this is a weak argument, because all we've actually observed is that most of our thoughts have a significant basis on external objects.

Occam's Razor does not require that the most plausible proposition be one that bears with it a complete explanation of the behavior of its elements. It only requires that those elements best explain a given phenomena without multiplying or adding said elements beyond necessity. Your argument demands that you posit a unverifiable and completely undemonstrative capacity for the mind to create concepts "ex nihilo" for the sole purpose of salvaging your argument in light of an observable behavior of thought which would otherwise damage your argument. The arbitrary manner you assign this unobserved quality to the mind highlights a weakness in your position which I think renders it less credible than an explanation which accounts for thought as it is observed without rooting its conclusion in unknown phenomena.

I'll readily admit that the argument I put forward in the OP wasn't the refined product of weeks of thought and research. One commentator even characterized it as "a drunken, bored rant," and as such there may well be ad hoc elements involved throughout the thread. But hopefully I'm not being pedantic to point out that I didn't arbitrarily posit an undemonstrative capacity of the mind for the sole purpose of salvaging my argument in light of observed behaviour of thought. Back in post 32 I suggested that the well-known creative capacity of minds provides a simpler and more coherent explanation for the various irreducible components of the observed external world. Unless I've missed something in hindsight, it was only after this that Ragna suggested that "Thoughts are representations of the material reality in our brain."

Like I say, your point about our observations concerning the common origin of thoughts is a valid one. But change, innovation and imagination are also well-observed functions of the mind. Granted these are usually based on prior concepts, and indeed often merely extrapolations from them; but I think I'd be safe in saying that there was more than merely deduction going on in the composition of Bach's Toccata and Fugue or the depth of appreciation and beauty we might get from a lovely sunset.

I'm not sure that pure speculation, coupled with a justification which more or less boils down to an argument from incredulity, provides you the safety you assume. You'll need to provide more than a simple, "There must have been more than merely deduction going on in the composition of Bach's Toccata and Fugue" in order to justify your claim that minds can conceive of novel concepts ex nihilo despite the fact that we observe no such thing.

This may be a sticking point in the discussion. I assume you don't claim that you're able to demonstrate how a musical masterpiece is composed through pure deduction without the introduction of any new elements from the composer's own creativity. General opinion, which I took for granted back in post 32, would be that it is a genuinely creative process.

With that said, your appeal to aesthetic pleasure seems somewhat counter intuitive to the point I believe you were trying to make. The sense of beauty one gets from viewing a lovely sunset is first derived from actually viewing the sunset. There is a direct causal correlation between what is observed and the pleasure produced in response to what is observed. Could a man find a sunset beautiful if a sunset never existed in the first place? If not, how is it that you claim that a sense of appreciation and beauty derived from viewing a sun set in evidence of thoughts being produced without the aid of external stimuli?

As in the case of music, there's more going on in the mind than merely the input of sensory data. There's no evolutionary reason why someone would be moved by a sunset, or a mountain view or the like. And indeed I'm sure we've all had occasions when we've seen them and registered nothing more than that sensory input. But sometimes, as in the case of music, there's something more there than the sum of existing external stimuli.

It's impossible to demonstrate creativity from nothing in our minds, but it seems clear that some measure of creativity does occur and there's no reason to believe (to appropriate an infamous phrase) that it can't be ex nihilo.

Ahh...but you've yet to provide a reason why it can.

Physicists have yet to provide the whys and hows of the behaviour of the most fundamental components of the external world currently known; and based on history, I suspect we have good reason to guess that if and when they do, there'll probably be something new waiting underneath that to keep them in their jobs. You don't seem to be making the argument that there's a perfectly-articulated and fully-explained cosmology sitting neglected to the side while I'm talking about minds and their capacity for creativity. You simply seem to prefer the unknowns and limited observations of the external (perhaps physical) world to the unknowns and limited observations of the mind. Or (perhaps) that we don't have sufficient reason to suggest either as a likely possibility.

- - - - - -

Sounds like we're about on the same page. Agnostic, skeptic, 'questions everything' or 'philosophers' can all mean pretty much the same thing, as far as social tags go (and let's face it, that's all most of them are). Atheist, non-theist and 'ignostic' are about the same too. 'Til a few weeks ago I figured a blasphemous sense of humour and former Christian should be ample introduction to anyone reading my posts, but when even the 'atheist' tag didn't clue someone in I added 'existentialist' - probably my most meaningful tag, though I'm not certain I know what it means.

Pretty interesting. I read a few days ago a thread about moral values without Christianity, and one of the former Christians said that his morality got weak at first right after losing his faith. I hardly remember, but could that member be you?

...
Does your religion forbid eating spaghetti? You could be eating the creator anytime!

It might have been me, albeit slightly misremembered; I said I lost my morals with (or not long after) losing my faith. I think that 'morality' is actually quite a good analogy for religion or spirituality, in that it represents a very common human desire or need, which can be expressed in a variety of ways but essentially has no solid basis of 'evidence' or 'objectivity' to it. Perhaps when I win enough points I should start an 'amoral' usergroup

And for crying out loud man, that's not funny! What kind of weird religion would eat its deity? Spaghetti is only symbolic of the FSM, hallowed be His meat balls.

Person-hood isn't the issue; a rat no doubt has 'thoughts' even though it's not a person, I wouldn't consider a 9-month fetus a 'person,' and (as a non-parent) I'd consider a 1-day baby with all senses a grey area. Without any senses whatsoever, I think you know what the last individual in your examples could feel. And I agreed back in post 36 that there would be a "likely scarcity of thoughts without any objects of thought" - call that a correlation if you will.

Yea, well, you're right that personality isn't the issue, though it was a curious example to consider. The senseless person won't ever have any memories as far as I can tell. Does it even have a perception of time, if time is about change and he can't perceive change? For the sake of simplicity, let's also devoid him of sensations that are not sensory, like hunger and thirst (because they are ultimately related to the external world).

Regarding an individual without any of our five senses from birth - and presumably, for the sake of your analogy, without any of those senses in the womb either - what does such an individual think? I don't know. Do you?

Oops, yes, you're right about the womb. I forgot. No, I don't know either, but I have a hypothesis: absolute blank.

Frankly I'd be surprised if s/he didn't at least feel some kind of survival or even reproductive instinct, however vague and (obviously) incommunicable that may be. Nevertheless, I do see what you're getting at in terms of communicating your ideas; I'm not sure there's much for me to add in terms of argument on top of my last three posts though.

Those usually have to activate somehow with external stimuli. E.g., getting excited needs hearing, touching or seeing another person (added to maybe smelling pheromones or whatever). Thirst and hunger can arise on the inside, like many instinctive behaviors. But let's not forget about reality; how do you think you have your instincts? Your genes contain them, and that comes from your parents, and at some point in evolutionary history those instincts developed. Evolution is entirely about environment! It's adaptation to the external world. So instincts are a basis for our behaviors. But this senseless person is so biologically flawed that if it doesn't even feel thirst, it can't know about water. It would obviously die in the wild; it wouldn't probably last a day.

So all the possible biological instinctive ideas that may come to his mind will be incomplete and will be just the result of a frustrated genome to carry on its living function - which is ultimately evolutionary development. But it will never know language, for example. How far down the line of biological complexity (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, ...) do you go before saying: "hey, this doesn't have a mind"! Would apes be minds in your idealistic scenario? Taeniae?

[snip]

Contradicting any implied truism that all thoughts are always based ultimately on external stimuli, in my last post I submitted music and appreciation of beauty as (for a current lack of a better term) inductive examples. That is, there are elements of music and beauty appreciation which are not deductive, which are genuinely new to the world with human experience. In other words, that the minds which we know are indeed, to some extent, creative entities and not entirely dependent on external stimuli.

I don't think creation is ex nihilo. I believe a more accurate description would be recomposition. But anyway I think there are more subtle ways for stimuli to be external than just being perceived through the senses - being inherited.

Well, in thinking about my reply to Ionian I reckon I've got a pretty shrewd idea how he'll reply, or at least how I'd reply in his shoes, and I suspect it's an argument I can't win. Recomposition of current sensation and past memory, along with a healthy dose of mood, cultural/social influence and the like could probably at least provide the groundwork for an understanding of music and beauty appreciation which doesn't involve something new.

I'm not sure about your comments regarding evolution and so on; while interesting, they seem to presume that thoughts are only the product of external realities, which seems to be assuming materialism. On the other hand as far as our observations on the nature of thought go, they seem to reinforce the point that thought without external objects is perhaps inconceivable.



On re-reading my last post, I've got extra comments but no real rebuttals to your comments. So if the likes of music of beauty appreciation fail as examples of genuine creativity; and given our evolutionary observations about minds/thought (including application to deductive capacity); and since I'd all but conceded that materialism isn't less rational than idealism... It seems only reasonable to conclude that my argument for idealism essentially fails. At best, materialism is at least as reasonable as idealism.

- - - - -

The position you describe suggests that things in the 'mind' are material. That consciousness is material. That the colour we see in our minds and the sound we hear in our minds are material. Or temperature; the cold of a hand in ice water is material, the heat of the other in hot water is material, and if we then put them both in lukewarm water we're perceiving both material heat and cold. Pain of course is a material thing, pleasure presumably likewise. Beauty? I can't speak for a position I don't hold, but I can't see how beauty could be anything but material also. But, on the face of it at least, to me it seems almost absurd that one's appreciation of a sunset or a mountain view can be not only explained by, but identified as the activity of neurons in the grey matter evolved from rodents over a few thousand millenia.

Right. Shocking to dualism, yet, in-the-framework, it doesn't mean anything. A sunset is still a sunset, and has always been a sunset, and sensations are just sensations. That a rock has the same nature as, say, love should be as shocking from materialists as it should be from idealists. They are saying the same thing!

Maybe I don't have the philosophical language to describe it, but even given my comment above I don't see this as the same thing. I'll try my best however.

...can't do it. It's self/external again, as far as I can see at 4am. I may come back to this

I don't have a lot to add, but I thought I'd better come back to it, because the position you described does seem (as I've said) intuitively absurd. Though if memory serves, you originally said that you weren't strictly speaking a materialist.

Quite aside from the fun and rigorous critique of one possible theistic argument, the discussion has prompted me to revisit my old friend Wikipedia. Far from settling an issue in my mind, it's started to make me which theory of materialism is more plausible, or indeed if some form of neutral monism isn't more likely. A couple of interesting links, for anyone curious:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysic ... and_matter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialis ... aterialism

Maybe I don't have the philosophical language to describe it, but even given my comment above I don't see this as the same thing. I'll try my best however.

...can't do it. It's self/external again, as far as I can see at 4am. I may come back to this

If you mind, let me say something here. I know that both monisms are not the same, or otherwise we'd just call them both "monisms". The main difference is that a coherent idealism postulates a great mind in which lesser minds exist and perceive parts of it. So there's a window behind me which exists, even if I don't know about it, because it's a thought of a greater mind. Materialism will say that there's just one big reality and we're parts of it which can perceive it. Idealism sounds more like a "virtual reality"; and I have a question, doesn't the idealistic Great Mind have to be a pantheistic deity? How can something not be a part of it, if all reality is about its thoughts in order to exist?

The scenario only needed a greater mind because it needed something to bind reality, just like we need a big computer in a virtual reality game to hold the server. But why have we supposed this mind is conscious? Can't it be just a set of thoughts that correspond to what we call external reality; and there be nothing else to it? Haven't we gone to far supposing it has to be a mind like ours, instead of just thoughts like those we think? It'd be like supposing the great computer who holds the server is also a player - it needn't.

A good point about pantheism, but I'm not too sure about mind vs. thought. The whole premise of the argument (as I put it, at least) lies in introducing as few new assumptions as possible for a coherent worldview. The nature of thought that we know is that of a personal, conscious mind, so the most rational idealism would follow suit. Whether there's even an alternative is also dubious; if it's fair to argue from observation that thoughts seem to be based on external objects, is it not even more in our observation that thoughts come from conscious minds?

I'd say that generally our scientific, philosophical and (to a lesser extent) cultural framework is materialist. But then as I've said, it comes naturally to view our minds as substantially different from the external world - by nature we're dualists, but if there's a nurture bias I'd guess that non-religious families would lean towards materialism even more than dualism (and certainly not idealism).

I'd say that my cultural and philosophical environment is dualistic - almost everybody, religious or not, believes in some sort of soul; (average normal people without a lot of philosophical interest); and certainly nobody denies material existence. Christianity needs dualism, and it's the major influence in my culture I'd say, both morally and philosophically. I don't know about where you live but I'd find it strange that a disbelief in souls was common.

Just a curiosity, the Pope has been in Spain's capital city these past days (Madrid)! - I'm Spanish.

I'm Australian, and I admit I haven't done any surveys on the subject And since my workplace and social circle are all young people, my general impressions probably aren't representative of the whole country.

-

Anyways, since I won't even try to argue for dualism with you two on my case, I think it's fair to say that if argument #1 fails then argument #2 is probably a lost cause also. So when I get 'round to it I'll next try and tackle the comments on my argument #3

[Ragna]

Hello there!

It might have been me, albeit slightly misremembered; I said I lost my morals with (or not long after) losing my faith. I think that 'morality' is actually quite a good analogy for religion or spirituality, in that it represents a very common human desire or need, which can be expressed in a variety of ways but essentially has no solid basis of 'evidence' or 'objectivity' to it. Perhaps when I win enough points I should start an 'amoral' usergroup

I'm not a moral absolutist of any kind, but I think I'm less and less of a relativist after thinking into the matter in a biological way. Your comparison would suppose a problem to non-theists if it weren't for the possibility of a difference. I (though not the Pope) can imagine a fully functional society without spirituality and religion; but I submit no person in the world can imagine a sane society without morals. I think they're a very sound and important biological reality arising from empathy and evolution. It's the behavioral reference - we can't be guided solely by instincts, being so complex. So lacking morals is like a bee lacking its instincts, it simply wouldn't work. On the other hand, I think religion is an "off-shot" of our intellectual capacities that grew a lot because it was useful in ignorance; but it isn't that useful anymore that we know a bit more.

Amoral means lacking morals, not lacking justification for one's morals (that's unjustified morality). Since we're already socialized, being over, say, 15 years old, we're not and we cannot be amoral anymore (we can act morally or immorally, according to our existent moral system). Only animals and non-socialized feral children (like Victor of Aveyron) are "amoral". So do you think, being an atheist, your morality is essentially capricious and unjustified?

And for crying out loud man, that's not funny! What kind of weird religion would eat its deity?

Any decent theophagy would (created the name ad hoc). Hey, misotheists may be interested.

Spaghetti is only symbolic of the FSM, hallowed be His meat balls.

So it'd be like a Christian eating a cross-shaped cake?

Well, in thinking about my reply to Ionian I reckon I've got a pretty shrewd idea how he'll reply, or at least how I'd reply in his shoes, and I suspect it's an argument I can't win. Recomposition of current sensation and past memory, along with a healthy dose of mood, cultural/social influence and the like could probably at least provide the groundwork for an understanding of music and beauty appreciation which doesn't involve something new.

I'm not sure about your comments regarding evolution and so on; while interesting, they seem to presume that thoughts are only the product of external realities, which seems to be assuming materialism. On the other hand as far as our observations on the nature of thought go, they seem to reinforce the point that thought without external objects is perhaps inconceivable.

On re-reading my last post, I've got extra comments but no real rebuttals to your comments. So if the likes of music of beauty appreciation fail as examples of genuine creativity; and given our evolutionary observations about minds/thought (including application to deductive capacity); and since I'd all but conceded that materialism isn't less rational than idealism... It seems only reasonable to conclude that my argument for idealism essentially fails. At best, materialism is at least as reasonable as idealism.

I see. It was an interesting discussion, well done.

I don't have a lot to add, but I thought I'd better come back to it, because the position you described does seem (as I've said) intuitively absurd. Though if memory serves, you originally said that you weren't strictly speaking a materialist.

I don't know what I am aside from an skeptic. I'd go for that which is more rational, and at the moment idealism has something that doesn't convince me. If it were that rational, I guess we'd all intuitively end up believing it; unless, of course, we're evolved animals in a material world whose senses are wired for believing in matter. Dualism, to me, needs proof; and so I guess I am a materialist except for one thing.

That thing is non-material objects which need to exist - laws of nature, laws of logic, energy, ... but I'm not sure about the ontological status of these. I've wondered whether saying that a law "applies" is any different than saying it "exists". But, like Richard Feynman said, we have to "accept nature the way she is".

Quite aside from the fun and rigorous critique of one possible theistic argument, the discussion has prompted me to revisit my old friend Wikipedia. Far from settling an issue in my mind, it's started to make me which theory of materialism is more plausible, or indeed if some form of neutral monism isn't more likely. A couple of interesting links, for anyone curious:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysic ... and_matter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialis ... aterialism

I may take a look, thanks for the links. I've heard of this Encyclopedia of Philosophy from one member on this site (sorry, I don't remember now which one he is, though I know he's atheist). You may find it useful, search for anything you like: "materialism, dualism, ...".

A good point about pantheism, but I'm not too sure about mind vs. thought. The whole premise of the argument (as I put it, at least) lies in introducing as few new assumptions as possible for a coherent worldview. The nature of thought that we know is that of a personal, conscious mind, so the most rational idealism would follow suit. Whether there's even an alternative is also dubious; if it's fair to argue from observation that thoughts seem to be based on external objects, is it not even more in our observation that thoughts come from conscious minds?

Well, that's in a material/dual framework in which thoughts are thoughs, and non-thoughts are non-thoughts. But in idealism, remember that thoughts are all there is, so our "direct experience" of *thoughts* also has to take into account what you now think of as "material reality" - another possible nature of thoughts, of "external thoughts" (because there are no non-thoughts; thoughts are all there is, and external reality has to be something). So why do you extrapolate from your inner thoughts and not from the "world thoughts" (apparently material reality) to guess the nature of the Great Mind (why not the "Great Well of Thoughts", like a platonic idealistic world).

I don't know if I have explained well what I meant .

I'm Australian, and I admit I haven't done any surveys on the subject And since my workplace and social circle are all young people, my general impressions probably aren't representative of the whole country.

Aw, you're quite far from here.

Anyways, since I won't even try to argue for dualism with you two on my case, I think it's fair to say that if argument #1 fails then argument #2 is probably a lost cause also. So when I get 'round to it I'll next try and tackle the comments on my argument #3

Good that you said that, because I forgot to say I followed the link you gave to the argument by CalvinsBulldog and responded in that thread. Got no further response since then, though.