What we must accept if we accept materialism

And then there's idealism: everything's mental. That would solve the problem of how the physical could evolve into the mental. The physical is really mental.There's only one problem with idealism: it's unbelievable.

Of course. My previous post may have been misleading in that it equated monism with realism. As you point out, there are really two general forms of monism, realism and idealism. That's only a problem for a dualist. If you don't believe there are two separate types of things, 'physical' and 'mental', then there's no problem. A realist would argue that mental events are just your subjective experience of physical brain activity.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Eastern religions seem to be idealistic in their metaphysics--"maya" and all that.Western religions are dualistic.One can't be a materialist and believe in God, I don't think.

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Schraf, I certainly do not dismiss alien abduction accounts out of hand, or claim they are beyond the scope of science, as some of you guys claim when it comes to spiritual things.

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Of course, as you must know by now because I have corrected your misrepresentation of my views so many times, I do not dismiss either alien abductions nor "spiritual things" out of hand.I would be the most excited and awestruck person on the planet were there to be good, solid scientific evidence that either of these things were real.But so far I have seen no evidence.You have presented many anecdotal stories which are big on "believe me, I was there!"-, or "a friend of a man I met got gold teeth at church! It's true!"-type of completely credulous assurances.But anybody can make these claims, randman.So tell me, WRT alien abduction claims, do you simply believe what the people are claiming? Do you require any sort of evidence at all?What do you think of the claims of people who say that they have seen Bigfoot? Do you believe them? Do you believe that Bigfoot exists?

I have not defined material in a couple different ways. I've tried to pay careful attention to saying things in consistent ways, and I've actually been wondering if many people are finding my highly repetitive phrasing annoying.I believe I said that in this context I view material and real as synonyms, so no, I did not in one place define the material as real, and in another place define the material as that which is observable. No, I didn't. I again suggest that you quote what you're responding to so it can be immediately above the lines you're typing, because that way you'll avoid making dumb errors, since I said no such thing as you claim, and in fact said this is the very post you're replying to: So no, Randman, I did not start saying that the material has to have matter. I said that the material includes both matter and energy. The answer is obvious. Virtual particles are indirectly observable in the Casimir effect, and so they are part of the material universe. This is the question that makes it clear what most suspect already - you don't really read people's posts. You must just sort of skim them to get a rough idea.The answer is again obvious. First, I plainly stated that energy is material. Second, energy is directly observable, and so by my criteria it is of course part of the material universe. You would assume wrong that I postulate gravitons. I don't postulate either way on the subject of gravity waves and gravitons. I'm aware that they are predicted by theory (some theories, anyway), but I am content to hold no opinion either way until they are observed. Once observed, thereby confirming theory (some theories, anyway), then of course they are part of the material universe. Now you're asking a question I can answer. Anything that can be observed is part of the material universe. Please don't take this out of context. I have stated in the past the scientific requirements of replicability and making testable predictions, and I shouldn't have to repeat them at every turn. This isn't dodging. Given your ability to misinterpret even the most plain statements, well demonstrated and documented in this very message where you somehow confused my statement saying "includes both matter and energy" to mean "must have matter", caution is more than warranted. Yes, Randman, it is "going wrong." And you go on to agree with me and contradict yourself in your next paragraph: Moving on: Of course entanglement is an observed phenonmenon, but you weren't talking about entanglement and neither was I. You were talking about a deeper reality that lies behind quantum theory, and I equated your deeper reality to string theory in that neither has yet been tied to the real world by way of making testable predictions.--Percy

I'm no expert, but it looks that way. (Although there does seem to be a strong idealist tradition in the West as well, from Plato and Plotinus through to Berkeley and Schopenhauer). Unless God is material, as Omnivorous and randman have pointed out.Anyway, back to the thread topic, which I originally started to continue a debate with you about determinism and nihilism. So now I've got your attention...Free will and determinismYour argument (as expressed in previous posts) is that free will is an illusion because each action has a physical cause, and if it has a physical cause then it must have been automatic rather than freely chosen. This argument is one I might have agreed with when I was a young man, but now, with a little more knowledge and experience under my belt, it appears faulty to me for the following reasons:1. Firstly, not all physical processes are deterministic. I've argued this point elsewhere (What we must accept if we accept evolution: Message 189) so I won't go into it here;2. Secondly, the premise that a freely-chosen action must be uncaused is false. In fact, if you think about it, if someone did act without cause you would consider them insane rather than free (thanks to the philosopher Donald Davidson for this argument);3. Thirdly, we are only discussing this issue because human beings seem to be freer of immediate stimulus-response constraints than other animals. And there is a good biological reason for this. Without a brain an organism is pretty much driven by immediate responses to stimuli. What the brain supplies is a way of controlling the response to a stimulus by placing a processing mechanism between the stimulus and the response. In a complex brain like ours, a lot of the processing that goes on is detached 2, 3 or 4 removes from the initial stimulus, which is what gives us the relative freedom to act in different ways under a given stimulus. (So, ironically, it is precisely the blind, mechanical process of evolution that has provided us with the capacity for making free choices!)I want to tackle the issue of Morality and Nihilism next, but as I have to earn a living as well as contribute to this board, I'll leave that to a separate post!

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Randman, I'm beginning to feel a bit left out. You seem to be replying to everyone here but me. Have I done something to upset you?

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

You seem to be confusing 2 different types of "cause"--the logical and the physical. They do not go together.

too busy to respond now and on the road a lot....I'll look at your posts later in the week

Please take your time. I mean this seriously. When you return, please take the time to refamiliarize yourself with the discussion. I think everyone would much prefer a reply in March that advanced the discussion to a reply this weekend that set everything back.--Percy

That's OK. I was just feeling left out . There's no hurry to reply.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

I am sure not every thing is mental.ALthough, I do think there are certain people who are.

There's no such thing as 'logical' causation. We're talking about a material universe where all causes are physical. The argument goes that if an action (like a human behaviour) is entirely determined by physical events, then we don't have free will. One of the implications of this argument is that we WOULD have free will if the action didn't have a cause. But an action without a cause is not free but arbitrary, and a person acting arbitrarily we generally consider insane (unless you're Andre Gide).The 'physical events' that lead to your actions are your instincts, desires, emotions, reasoning, etc. In other words those physical events are you. Your individual freedom therefore consists in your acting upon these physical events with the least possible external restraint, not in those actions being entirely free from physical causation. (A paraphrase of a paraphrase of an argument from the Chinese philosopher Mencius - hopefully not leading to a game of Chinese whispers!).

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Well, yes, but what I meant was that one might argue that you can do something as a result of a logical train of thought. Through a series of deductions, you decide to buy a particular car. You have a ground and a consequent.But if the series of logical thoughts are CAUSED in a physical sense, then the resulting belief ("I should buy this car") came about as a result of automatic physical reactions to stimuli and so was not arrived at as a result of a logical thought. Perhaps it is quite logical to buy the car--it's a great deal--but to say the belief was arrived at logically would be incorrect. It's just seemed to be arrived at in that fashion.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 02-09-2006 03:25 PM

Your argument lacks one point. Why the idea of PHYSICAL causation is important. If we assuemd that the mind was a non-physical deterministic system how would it save your preferred concept of free will ?