The Problem with Philosophical Materialism

Part 1 of a series on this subject. I am not happy that I had to skate over so many huge issues as briefly as I did but I had to start somewhere. This is what has put me off making videos on this subject for many months now. So I decided to just jump in somewhere. However, I'm yet to find too many atheists online who even tell us exactly what materialist metaphysic they are, themselves, using. Instead they simply use a crude form of materialism and don't even tell their audience what it is they're using [as with the three atheists I mention in the video]. None of them informs the listener that this is one of many different metaphysical views and thereby implies there is only one rational view. I dislike this and this is why I threw a number of metaphysical theories briefly into the first video. What I hope, as always, is that people WON'T take my word for it but will be inspired to go and reearch the matter [excuse the lame pun] for themselves.

Stefan Molyneux's video in full is found here so you can check on context:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB4vi6gRM70&feature=channel_video_title

Qualiasoup's video for the same purpose:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wV_REEdvxo

Category:

Education

Tags:

• materialism
• philosophical materialism
• soul
• spirit
• qualia
• persons
• thought
• experience
• epistemology
• metaphysics
• knowledge
• physical
• material
• immaterial
• god
• dimension
• science
• physics
• Stefan Molyneux
• Qualiasoup
• Victor Stenger
• god the failed hypothesis

[ScorpiaX]

how does the interaction of immaterial things work? You can't tell me it at all. I can't say it doesn't exist but I can say that there is a lack of proof for it as such that I so far can't say that it exists.

[TheCartesianTheist]

@ScorpiaX

The same can be said of many things. That there is such a thing as objective truth is something almost all reasonable people accept and yet how we know of such an immaterial thing is confusing. Same thing with the laws of science. How they affect physical matter is unknown but it does not mean those laws don't have influence. Same with ethical matters and numerous other aspects of life. Same with the scientific proposal that there are 11 dimensions!

[ScorpiaX]

it cannot be what constitutes the reality of experienced space-time. Go fucking chop up your brain or take up heroin, and tell me if you're experiencing space-time or not. And yet everything we claim to make is ultimately a product of entropy itself.

I don't mind other theories of the mind, but think of it this way, if you are going to go paranormal or outside-of-our-understanding idealism, tell me how you're going to explain the world in terms of relevance? I can say X exists or Y exists,

[TheCartesianTheist]

@ScorpiaX

cont.

If justice is merely the result of chemicals interacting then why is it that one person's [or the majority chemical interaction] gets to be 'right' and someone else 'wrong'? Surely someone can say that their notion that it's just to torture innocent children is just their own private chemical reaction going on in their body and how dare anybody play at being the 'chemical reaction police'?

[ScorpiaX]

Value and truth are ultimately derived from an impositive system created by the chemical interactions of your brain, someone can rape someone and asked them genuinely if they had fun but not even understand the value of justice, or non-violence. An argument from ignorance, or lack of understanding doesn't support your argument of a God existing at all. Where the f did you get since the brain is a material thing in space-time,

[TheCartesianTheist]

@ScorpiaX

If value and truth are merely "chemical interactions" in a physical brain then this raises very serious questions about the objectivity of such things. For one it raises the concern of whether these interactions take place only for my survival benefit. Next, how do material interactions come to have any concern about non-material matters such as truth? How does matter become an authority on something non-material?

[rudegar20]

On a practical, daty-to-day basis, what is the difference between an immaterial god and an imaginary one? By that I mean how would one decide that the FSM, for example, is imaginary and not just immaterial?

[ScorpiaX]

If god is everywhere, then why do you keep on claiming god is transcendental, beyond space and time, beyond logic? If so you already have made a claim that god is non-temporal and non-spatial. This is the essence of one of his arguments.

If I chopped out your brain, took out all your neurons, and sewed your brain together, you can then tell me that I'm completely unimpressed that you're not thinking. In our present day we can do fRMI scans and whatnot of your brain,

[TheCartesianTheist]

@daymyth

No doubt the process is not a natural one. You see, the God whom Christians believe in is not a natural one but a supernatual one. But since that being was powerful enough to create ex nihilo I'm sure it's not too much trouble for him to speak in a variety of ways. By the way, we don't even know that God's speech has to take a "material" form anymore since lots of quantum phycisists are now suggesting to us that matter may not actually be what we thought it was.

[daymyth]

@TheCartesianTheist If you don't have sufficient information logic can sometimes be inaccurate. It happens all the time in Biology and Chemistry (my fields) so many times I have made logical conclusions that had I had more information would not be logical. I think rudegar20 still has a point. HOW is this immaterial being speaking in this material world. At some point he must cause a change in matter, whether that is in neurons or in environmental particle matter. How does that change occur.

[rudegar20]

@TheCartesianTheist Excuse me, sir, but you, not I, brought up speech, I only responded to your claim. You said that god is immaterial and can speak. Speech is a phenomenon that is very rare and we know but one way it can come about. You said that there is another method, so I asked you how it is that you know that. If you are going to say he speaks because he can (omnipotence), then that is fine, but you have explained and demonstrated nothing.