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What's wrong with Materialism?

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
This is a trap I see in many people claiming validity of paranormal evidence. They frame a claim as a scientific one, and attempt to cite scientific support for their world view, but when it fails to actually live up to the standards of the framing device, they insult the framing device and require ad populum acceptance or neutrality. But no matter how many millions of people and cultures misperceive our sun sheds mostly yellow light, it's still mostly white light (with a tiny bit on the green spectrum). Thus millions/billions of people can still be incorrect.
The links you've presented to me have asserted scientific evidence of their claim, so it's silly to then say expecting the evidence to be as scientific as claimed is 'scientism' (a word I see using almost exclusively as a pejorative in the same way some religious people try and frame atheism as 'a religion' in a game of equivocation.)
I'm not a 'scientism' (which is a weird word because it's got no noun. Someone who is a scientist is not necessarily a follower of scientism) because I don't reduce all relevant fields of study to just science. Because that's what it really is. Evidence: I'm an artist and I also dabble in history and philosophy, none of which are scientific fields yet I still consider valuable to learning and the human experience. Not being a follower of scientism though doesn't mean that I can't have the completely valid expectation that claims about the natural world (which includes the claimed effect ON the natural world by 'something not natural') be empirically accessible, ESPECIALLY if they're being framed as such. And I don't think "parapsychologists" have come anywhere near to achieving that.
I believe parapsychology has proven the existence of the paranormal beyond all reasonable doubt. The question becomes then; who is the official judge if this has happened or not.

Here is one of the better papers arguing the case:
AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EVIDENCE FOR PSYCHIC FUNCTIONING

Excerpt:
Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud.


Then there are the untold number of case investigations and testing done by numerous investigators showing materialistic explanations unsatisfactory .

But even beyond that endless obfuscation of facts, a fair analysis of the million/billion events in the human experience (including my own) has convinced me beyond reasonable doubt that there is more to the universe than can be understood through materialism. I have seen/heard way too many strong cases for me to accept that they all have an in-the-box materialist explanation.

We each must form our own opinion. I can only present an overview of what has convinced me to reject materialism.
 
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George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
Time for some examples that have been independently authenticated by scientific method, no?

I'm not aware of any, as you can tell from my previous posts, so I hope to learn something from your reply.
Things like the ganzfeld experiments, remote viewing, etc. have yielded fantastic odds against chance of a materialistic explanation.

Here is one of the better papers arguing the case:
AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EVIDENCE FOR PSYCHIC FUNCTIONING

Excerpt:
Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud.

Even putting experiments aside, I would reject materialism from the mountain of anecdotal cases in the human experience judged on the unlikeliness of a materialistic explanation for all of them. And I have seen/heard enough convincing cases, including my own. I understand science can not work with anecdotal cases but my worldview is not one of scientism.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Sounds like you ruled out any alternatives to materialism by assumption
I looked at quite a few options first.

But as I said in the OP, my primary question to myself is, What's true in reality? And materialism, after due investigation, seems innate in the answer.
 
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sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
No, our brain processes come equipped with the ability to learn abstract subjects like maths and logic, and so it's fair to say this ability is part of our mentation. After all, computers can compose sentences in English and write or speak them. Do you say the human capacity for speech is therefore not part of human mentation?

Mathematical objects and processes are abstractions, and the human brain is good at abstractions. Children learn early that this chair and that chair can give rise to the abstraction 'a chair', for example.

As well, maths doesn't exist independently of the concepts of maths in brains. In the absence of brains there is no maths, there are no numbers or quantities.

Here's the link (which I gave earlier in this thread in another discussion) to the >Global workspace theory< of consciousness, which was thought the most fruitful hypothesis when last I was digging in these matters.

I didn't say there weren't options. I said that materialism is the only conclusion that I find satisfactory.

Are you a neutral monist, by the way?
There is a difference between saying that humans can do it and between saying humans alone can do it. As soon as a computer can reliably associated the language with the events in the world they represent, I would say the computer knows to speak.That a computer knows math seems indisputable to me.

Are you implying that numerical properties ceases to exist and relations between these properrors ceases to hold without humans.The relation between earth's diameter and it's volume will cease to hold without humans.???

Yes, I am a neutral monist.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
What are the “entities and processes . . . recognized by physics from time to time”?
That's an open-ended question, since it will change from time to time. Phlogiston and the lumeniferous ether will be removed and the Higgs boson added. Meanwhile, as far as I'm aware, no one keeps a comprehensive list hence no one updates one, so it's a question of checking each example as the question arises.
Where does one get the delusional idea that "physics" “recognizes” certain “entities and processes from time to time”?
You think that the electron, or the Higgs boson, is a delusion? You think that radioactive decay is a delusion? You think that those are not entities and processes recognized by physics as at this date?
And obviously it is neither scientific nor logical to deny the existence of any “entities and processes” or anything else whose existence has not been experimentally ruled out.
The Higgs boson was not an entity recognized by physics until its existence was established to the satisfaction of physics. It had been an hypothesis since first proposed in the 1960s, but that wasn't sufficient.
If someone had told this sort of materialist in 1900 that wave functions exist, the materialist would deny it, presumably claiming that wave functions are “supernatural”.
Which 'wave functions'? A more exacting case arises with the Copenhagen interpretation in quantum theory, which although mainstream (recognized) is still occasionally disputed; but the point is that I don't recall anyone saying the phenomena would thereby be supernatural when originally criticizing the interpretation; so I don't know any basis for your assumption that this is a likely outcome.
The materialism that you espouse generates wrong answers, wrong ideas, wrong beliefs at any given time.
For instance?
When Smart and Armstrong wrote about materialism in the early 1960s, no physics book mentioned anything about strange attractors of chaos theory. Attractors had not been discovered at that time. How wrong Smart and Armstrong were to believe that only those entities and processes existed that were mentioned in physics textbooks in the early 60s.
But that's why the definition says, 'from time to time'.

Truth is the best opinion available to us at any particular time and place. It was once true that the earth was flat and the sun and stars went round it, for example. It was once true that the atom was, as its name says, indivisible. And so on.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Your materialism has a scientific definition.
Actually Smart and Armstrong were two philosophers specializing in (non-supernatural) metaphysics. But yes, they were scientifically literate.
All I know is that the less I have, so the more free I feel. I don't know why, I have just accepted such feelings after decades of experiencing the same mindset.
Can't argue with that!
 

ADigitalArtist

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
I believe parapsychology has proven the existence of the paranormal beyond all reasonable doubt. The question becomes then; who is the official judge if this has happened or not.

Here is one of the better papers arguing the case:
AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EVIDENCE FOR PSYCHIC FUNCTIONING

Excerpt:
Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud.


Then there are the untold number of case investigations and testing done by numerous investigators showing materialistic explanations unsatisfactory .

But even beyond that endless obfuscation of facts, a fair analysis of the million/billion events in the human experience (including my own) has convinced me beyond reasonable doubt that there is more to the universe than can be understood through materialism. I have seen/heard way too many strong cases for me to accept that they all have an in-the-box materialist explanation.

We each must form our own opinion. I can only present an overview of what has convinced me to reject materialism.
Yes I have read the Utts report and seen some of the criteria by which it was judged. Which to me, was far from 'a fair analysis' or that no methodological flaws in the experiment exist. For one thing, the standards for determining 'hits' was subjective, based on if a vague drawing matched the true location more than the dummy photos. In one there was only one judge, and in no situation was double-blinds used. And I've seen some of the remote viewing drawings and verbal records, and they're ambiguous as hell. Not really dissimilar from cold reading. Something that could be a bridge or a rail road or a ribbon are selected as 'hits' if the judge is lead to believe it resembles the given subject. Cold reading produces statistically positive results, too, but for reasons that have nothing to do with legitimacy. And that's a recurring pattern among these studies. Total subjectivity relabeled as 'well established.'

Like I said, this only seems to be relevant to parties already convinced.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
There is a difference between saying that humans can do it and between saying humans alone can do it.
Yes there is, but you challenged it on the ground that it wasn't part of human 'mentation' whereas in humans it is, and in smart computers it isn't (at least by current definitions, though in future that may be an appropriate way to think of it).
That a computer knows math seems indisputable to me.
I don't think that at present our computers, even the self-programming ones, understand maths. Instead they do maths by carrying out sequences of operations in the manner prescribed in the programming. There are examples of humans who don't understand maths doing the same thing. When I was taught long division in primary school, I dang sure didn't understand the principles behind the algorithm, but I passed the tests.
Are you implying that numerical properties ceases to exist and relations between these properrors ceases to hold without humans.
Yes.
The relation between earth's diameter and it's volume will cease to hold without humans.???
The materials representing the earth will continue to exist, but no brain will interpret those materials as being a single thing (a planet), or impose abstractions like 'diameter' and 'mass' and 'pole' on the material, or compare it to the sun, or say there are seven other planets. All of those things are human interpretations.
Yes, I am a neutral monist.
Then I wish you well with that.
 

bobhikes

Nondetermined
Premium Member
With respect, that seems to be moving the goalposts.

Anyway, grateful if you'd clarify what you mean by the 'working unit' and what you say is 'completely unexplained'.

With materialism you can sort of explain what a rock is but yet no 2 rocks are really the same. You can sort of explain what atoms are that make up the rock but no 2 atoms are the same. It used to be believed that all atoms where the same which is when materialism was created. So now you have to go to quarks (Quantum Physics) which causes materialism to break down and then you need to go to the higgs boson maybe?

Fails to completely explain (biological)working units. What is a dog, when is a dog not a dog, can we create dogs again, will they be genetically the same. What is a human explain. What is a tree explain. You could get a paper that maybe explains 60% of any of this and the rest is still being worked on and your satisfied because materialism stops when scientific evidence stops. Materialist's are fine and sure science will catch up and find a materialist answer for everything, forgetting they still don't have a materialistic answer for the beginning or existence of anything.

My favorite Materialistic challenge, what is music and where does it come from. If you truly search for an answer it will lead you down a rabbit hole as there is no answer.

Materialism is a great limiter for life. As a materialist if what you ask is outside my knowledge and sciences I am sure science will eventually prove it to be materialism so I don't have to investigate.
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Yes there is, but you challenged it on the ground that it wasn't part of human 'mentation' whereas in humans it is, and in smart computers it isn't (at least by current definitions, though in future that may be an appropriate way to think of it).
I don't think that at present our computers, even the self-programming ones, understand maths. Instead they do maths by carrying out sequences of operations in the manner prescribed in the programming. There are examples of humans who don't understand maths doing the same thing. When I was taught long division in primary school, I dang sure didn't understand the principles behind the algorithm, but I passed the tests.

Yes.

The materials representing the earth will continue to exist, but no brain will interpret those materials as being a single thing (a planet), or impose abstractions like 'diameter' and 'mass' and 'pole' on the material, or compare it to the sun, or say there are seven other planets. All of those things are human interpretations.

Then I wish you well with that.
Thus the statement "earth rotated faster when it was 1 billion years old." is an incoherent statement and not a true one since there is no such thing as past, or earth or axis or rotational rate before human beings came to be! Also the universe wasn't expanding before humans existed as things like size and distance were also meaningless.

Interesting kind of materialism this.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
With materialism you can sort of explain what a rock is but yet no 2 rocks are really the same.
Physics will quickly distinguish them with a clarity that prayer, meditation, divining and card-reading will not. Materialism in action.
You can sort of explain what atoms are that make up the rock but no 2 atoms are the same.
Leaving aside the question of when it might be correct to say two atoms were or were not the same, so what? It's a question for physics to answer so materialism again.
Fails to completely explain (biological)working units.
The biochemical branch of chemistry is one of the physical sciences, and that's where you go to get the only evidence-based experimentally confirmed explanations of biological bits.
What is a dog
Is a question for genetics, a specialization within biochemistry.
What is a human explain.
Again a genetic definition applies. Or you could take an evolutionary view. Both give materialist answers.
What is a tree explain.
Trees too are defined by their genetics.
they still don't have a materialistic answer for the beginning or existence of anything.
No, but science is the only discipline actively conducting a principled enquiry into such questions. The only reasoned answers you'll get will come from materialism.
My favorite Materialistic challenge, what is music and where does it come from.
The origins of music are in sound signals (which even insects use), rhythm (useful for working as a team, and some suggest has its origins in hearing heartbeat in utero, but that hypothesis may not be necessary) and dance. The mnemonic use of rhythm is used in all pre-literate societies which have designated 'rememberers' like skalds and shenachies; rhyme is also a mnemonic aid. Rhythmic words have crossovers with song and with drama. The coming of instruments led the Greeks to theories of chords and harmonies, and the development of musical theories of sound, orchestration and form. Different musical paths were followed in eastern cultures and tribal cultures. (Thus not all the world necessarily wants to hear Western music.)
Materialism is a great limiter for life. As a materialist if what you ask is outside my knowledge and sciences I am sure science will eventually prove it to be materialism so I don't have to investigate.
You could always inform yourself about science, of course. The net is full of places to start, information and groups.

But as I said in the OP, I rate the question, What's true in reality? highly, and if you don't, materialism may not offer you much.
 

Koldo

Outstanding Member
Mathematics and logic are not part of mentation as we see that computers can do both. More importantly math and logic are quite independent and stands apart from material processes that happen to embody them. Same with information bits.
Consciousness requires an extensive discussion and I would prefer a separate thread. Briefly, saying that some material processes are correlated with conscious experience explains as little regarding ontology of conscious experience as saying " voltage patterns in CPU circuits are correlated with math processing" says about ontology of mathematical structures.

Supernaturalism (whatever that means) is not the only alternative to physicalism. Both neutral monism and dual aspect ontology are options. While Eastern philosophies have these in far more developed forms, perhaps it will be easier if provides examples from Western thinkers.
Neutral Monism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

There are many other options of course.

There are indeed a lot of options. But it is important to keep in mind that every ontological view comes with its own set of problems.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Thus the statement "earth rotated faster when it was 1 billion years old." is an incoherent statement and not a true one since there is no such thing as past, or earth or axis or rotational rate before human beings came to be!
Only in the absence of brains. In that case, there is also no concept of year, billion, old, incoherent, statement, true, one, past, earth, axis, rotation, rate, human, being, coming &c.

That's because the only place concepts exist is in brains.

When brains are present, no problem, no necessary incoherence, &c.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
And that is coming from a believer in God (Baha'i)??

Yes, I am directly referring to the problems with ancient belief systems in today's world, such as the conflicts, violence, and rejection of science. There are real reasons for the Baha'i Faith, and not just because it is nice religion that believes in unity.

Even though I do not believe in Ontological Naturalism (Physicalism or Materialism?) it does get science right and deals with the reality of the physical world better and more consistently than ancient religions.
 
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sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Only in the absence of brains. In that case, there is also no concept of year, billion, old, incoherent, statement, true, one, past, earth, axis, rotation, rate, human, being, coming &c.

That's because the only place concepts exist is in brains.

When brains are present, no problem, no necessary incoherence, &c.
Very surreal! Is this your personal materialism, or is there a philosophical tradition you are using here?
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Your materialism has a scientific definition.
Most people think of the social definition.
Little Oxford Dictionary: Concentration on material possessions rather than spiritual values.

I do not believe the social definition is the proper definition for what Materialism is proposed in this thread.

I find both the scientific and social definitions to be strange, the one because I am not focused upon physics, the other because nobody as yet has been able to show me a value that I think is 'spiritual'.

I do not consider the scientific? one (Philosophical Naturalism) as strange. This is a non sequitur, or the problem that it does not follow that Physicalism determines one's spiritual values? or morals and ethics.
 

idav

Being
Premium Member
I'm a materialist, principally because I think the primary question is, What's true in reality? and I'm not aware of any meaningful alternative to materialism.

By 'materialism' I mean (as Smart and Armstrong put it) the idea that the only entities and processes that exist are those recognized by physics from time to time.

And accordingly, by 'reality' I mean the realm of the physical sciences, the sum of things that have objective existence.

The purpose of this thread is to invite those who oppose materialism to set out the reasons for their opposition.

If you reject materialism, why?
Even in materialism there are things like thoughts which don't really have apparent physical attributes. Can memories simply be certain chemical configurations or data with certain electrical frequencies coming from neurons? People who believe in a separate soul that survives death, I don't know what they are expecting the memory data to be.
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
Yes I have read the Utts report and seen some of the criteria by which it was judged. Which to me, was far from 'a fair analysis' or that no methodological flaws in the experiment exist. For one thing, the standards for determining 'hits' was subjective, based on if a vague drawing matched the true location more than the dummy photos. In one there was only one judge, and in no situation was double-blinds used. And I've seen some of the remote viewing drawings and verbal records, and they're ambiguous as hell. Not really dissimilar from cold reading. Something that could be a bridge or a rail road or a ribbon are selected as 'hits' if the judge is lead to believe it resembles the given subject. Cold reading produces statistically positive results, too, but for reasons that have nothing to do with legitimacy. And that's a recurring pattern among these studies. Total subjectivity relabeled as 'well established.'

Like I said, this only seems to be relevant to parties already convinced.
I do not think you understand this correctly. To do statistical odds against chance there must be an objective way of judging.

Let me give the simplest example.

In a Ganzfeld experiment a sender tries to psychically send a random image to a receiver person. The receiver is then asked to select which of four random images the sender was seeing. If materialism is correct, the receiver should be correct 25% of the time. But if the score is higher than 25% over a large sample size then the odds of a materialist explanation can be precisely calculated. Utts' involvement is in being a recognized expert in statistical analysis.

My point is that parapsychologist understand the subjective stuff you are talking about so they devise ingenious ways to remove subjective judging.

Here is more detailed description:

Experimental procedure
In a typical ganzfeld experiment, a 'receiver' is left in a room relaxing in a comfortable chair with halved ping-pong balls over the eyes, having a red light shone on them. The receiver also wears a set of headphones through which white or pink noise (static) is played. The receiver is in this state of mild sensory deprivation for half an hour. During this time a 'sender' observes a randomly chosen target and tries to mentally send this information to the receiver. The receiver speaks out loud during the thirty minutes, describing what he or she can see. This is recorded by the experimenter (who is blind to the target) either by recording onto tape or by taking notes, and is used to help the receiver during the judging procedure.

In the judging procedure, the receiver is taken out of the ganzfeld state and given a set of possible targets, from which they must decide which one most resembled the images they witnessed. Most commonly there are three decoys along with a copy of the target itself, giving an expected overall hit rate of 25% over several dozens of trials.

However before we get off on this tangent, this is only one reason for my rejection of materialism. We are splitting just one strand of hay with this discussion in a haystack of reasons I have given for rejection of materialism.
 
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