/lit/ - Literature

>>22604564
never seen him before

>>22604564
He thinks he's a genius for knowing how a transistor works

He’s not great but we need him because he’s our only hope to convince stemsöys to take metaphysical inquiry seriously.

>>22604846
the hero we need-- not the one we deserve.

>>22604846
>to take metaphysical inquiry seriously
I don't care about your fantasies. Go to the scifi thread to try and get someone to read your trash there.

>>22604859
>I don't care about your fantasies.
oh my anon. Did the metaphysicians hurt your feefees?

>>22604859
Materialism is a fantasy. Show me the little balls of matter, I dare you.

>>22604564
he doesn't. but his theory cannot be proven or disproven. it's one of those cult things. doesn't help that most people misunderstand this theory.

>>22604924
>Show me the little balls of matter, I dare you.
I can show you experiments whose results agree with atomic theory and where a different result would disprove it. But I'm pleased that you agree that empirical evidence is necessary for something to be considered as more than just your imagination.

>>22605021
>I can show you experiments whose results agree
Funny because those experiments themselves say otherwise.

>>22605093
You think the double slit experiment disproves atomic theory? It's only been very recently where they could do it with single atoms instead of photons and even then it's still in agreement. Quantum mechanics is a fundamental part of atomic theory and all physics undergrads have to go through deriving the orbitals of a hydrogen atom as a rite of passage

>>22605109
Of course atomic theory is true. What is obviously untrue is the notion that particles are little balls of matter.

>>22605231
So you don't think atomic theory is coherent with materialism then? I just assumed your little balls of matter was referring to it since that's the popular metaphor.

>>22605231
>What is obviously untrue is the notion that particles are little balls of matter.
Which modern physics says it isn't. Physicalism is still true.

>>22605231
>What is obviously untrue is the notion that particles are little balls of matter.

>Only a couple of years after Boltzmann's death, Perrin's studies of colloidal suspensions (1908–1909), based on Einstein's theoretical studies of 1905, confirmed the values of the Avogadro constant and the Boltzmann constant, convincing the world that the tiny particles really exist.

>>22605021
>>22605242
You will never experience matter. All you experience are thoughts and perceptions which appear to be a physical world. Some objective qualityless matter that supposedly exists outside of or apart from our experience is just your imagination and fantasy. How could there ever be empirical evidence of matter when matter by definition cannot be experienced or observed? All the scientific instruments and experiments you may appeal to must be designed, carried out, and assessed within experience and are therefore able to show us nothing other than the behaviors of our perceptions. I'm not anti-science and these experiments are valuable but they do not prove nor even suggest materialism/physicalism.

>>22605451
This kind of radical skepticism cuts both ways though.
>Some objective qualityless matter that supposedly exists outside of or apart from OUR experience is just your imagination and fantasy
Why do you say "our" there? I can't experience what you experience. I have no evidence that you even exist besides as an idea in my mind. The same argument you're making against matter can be made against other people. You're not arguing for idealism by nuking everything with radical skepticism you're arguing for solipsism and reality being a product of my own mind. Which is pretty clearly not the case.

>>22605507
>I have no evidence that you even exist besides as an idea in my mind.
>t. doesn't know

>>22605514
Hegel is mystical gibberish. I already beat you down so hard in the other thread you gave up responding. Spout more crap about how logic doesn't need postulates

>>22605522
>I already beat you down so hard in the other thread you gave up responding.
is that what you tell yourself to cope?

>>22605533
>Speculative truth, it may also be noted, means very much the same as what, in special connection with religious experience and doctrines, used to be called Mysticism.
That's agreeing with me that Hegel is mystical gibberish by quoting him in the other thread.

>>22605544
>mystical
yes
>gibberish
only if you got filtered-- which you did

>>22605507
>reality being a product of the absolute Geist.
ftfy

>>22605507
I'm the anon you initially replied to, not the Hegel anon. But your objection is valid. The tl;dr answer is that yes certain assumptions are made in both idealism and materialism. The important difference is that the assumptions made in idealism are far more parsimonious than in materialism. The primary assumption of materialism is that there exists out there an entirely distinct ontological category we call matter and from this matter our individual experiences somehow arise. The primary assumption of Analytic Idealism is that a single "universal mind/consciousness/subjectivity" dissociates into individual minds or "alters" and experiences its own imaginary physical world from these various perspectives. That may superficially sound more abstract than materialism but my point here is that it merely assumes starting from my own consciousness that there is the same basic consciousness for other appearances of metabolizing bodies such as yourself and in doing so does not introduce anything unnecessary like matter or abstract quantities. I regret that this explanation may not be the clearest or most satisfying that I could write if I had more time, but if you are interested then of course Bernardo Kastrup's or Donald Hoffman's work will worth looking into.

>>22605639
>a single "universal mind/consciousness/subjectivity" dissociates into individual minds or "alters" and experiences its own imaginary physical world from these various perspectives.
ok but how does this physical world arise from this supposed dissociation and how do different alters experience one coherent physical world? How do prevent idealism devolving into solipsism? pro tip: you can't

>>22605021

>>22605021
Atomic theory was disproven long ago by the discovery of subatomic particles.

>>22605639
A judgment of parsimony must be entirely subjective since it seems ridiculous to me to say that imagining a whole host of metaphysical entities that somehow create the illusion of the physical world is somehow simpler than just admitting the physical world exists. But that is ignoring the fact that Occam's razor isn't even the correct principle here if you accept that kind of radical skepticism. If you believe that radical skeptic stance you don't choose the less wrong option you choose the correct option of solipsism. I don't believe in radical skepticism so I have no problem avoiding solipsism.

>>22605674
wow. it's as if space itself is not dicrete but continuous and therefore infinitely divisible. yep. the philisophers sure didn't see that one coming. yep. no clue whatsoever. we had to wait for those high iq "empirical" scientists to "discover" it.

>>22605657
If you're sincerely interested then read or watch Bernardo Kastrup. He addresses these objections in detail better than I could here.

>>22605682
I probably won't be much of an interesting opponent because I don't have the conviction to firmly disagree with you or call you a retard, but I'll briefly address what I can.
>a whole host of metaphysical entities
There isn't a host of entities. Space and time are also imagined by this universal Mind which isn't itself within space or time, so it is you and me and everyone else simultaneously, or one of us at a time if that's easier to conceptualize.
>somehow create the illusion of the physical world
It does so similarly to how an illusion of a physical world appears when you dream.
>somehow simpler than just admitting the physical world exists
The main problem I see here is that making this assumption leads to a new set of seemingly unsolvable problems such as how or if we get from matter to consciousness. There are also several assumptions and abstractions in the assumption that the physical world exists, it's not simply one assumption.
>Solipsism
I think if we define solipsism strictly as "only my mind exists" then at least what analytic idealism tries to say isn't solipsism. A subtler point is that under analytic idealism the "my" in "only my mind exists" is not an entity but an illusion or a figment of the universal Mind's imagination. So it's rather "only Mind exists", and in that case I don't think solipsism in the conventional sense applies. I wasn't suggesting radical skepticism btw, I think I'd agree with you if I were.

>>22605831
>So it's rather "only Mind exists", and in that case I don't think solipsism in the conventional sense applies.
so then it's solipsism but bigger?

I don't see anything interesting about him. It's like he thinks he's the first person to discover idealism and has somehow built a career on pushing this BRAND NEW INSIGHT to the masses.

Plus his version of idealism is literally retarded and no genuine psychiatrist even thinks DID is anything other than histrionic teenagers vying for attention.

It's he like he got so mindfucked by being a stemcel the notion that the world is anything other than "atoms and void" is am unbelievable revelation to him and he just MUST tell the whole world about.

But there's a whole idealist philosophical tradition even dating back to ancient India- to the platonists to the German idealists and even to an extent the phenomenologists


He's onky interesting to the I HECKIN LOVE SCEIENCE materialist atheist types who need some fag who worked at CERN to make the same Berkeleyan case otherwise they dismiss it as woo-woo.

>>22605962
>BRAND NEW INSIGHT to the masses.
to be fair to the masses it is brand new

>>22605967
But any metaphysics of consciousness is new to the masses. There is no settled science or even coherent theory of consciousness. I'd say for even the most thinking people they just have a vague materialist notion that comsciousness ests on nervous system function. Most people are religious and probably align more with dualism anyway

That say major criticism. It's like he got mindfucked by physicalism and thinks it's an absolute bombshell that it might not be true. But anyone with half a brain already has issues with physicalism, and there's already a large historical idealist tradition. I really can't understand how he's built a career essentially on taking geroge Berkeleys argument in the dialogues, tacking on some dissociative identity disorder pseudoscience to appeal to the modern audience, and then package it up in books as if he's some sort of mysticist with a fundamental insight into reality.

It's even weirder to me as well seeing as though the vast amount of these historical hardcore stemcels had idealist inklings anyway. Considering physical laws the laws of God or consciousness to be irreducible or just are straight up scientific antirealists. I really think this whole idealist thing just seems like such a grand revelation to Bernardo, because he got brainwashed by physkcalism his whole life and thinks everyone else was.

>>22605874
If you insist, but then "big solipsism" here is just in the same spirit as saying "only matter exists". It means that everything is mental or qualitative opposed to everything being physical or quantitative. In other words, everything is made of Mind rather than made of matter.

>>22605995
anon breathe it's ok. let him have his moment. he is "analytic" which basically just means "I don't read books from the history of philosophy". so of course it's all new to him. he's apparently only read fucking Schopenhauer and Jung (not that that's bad but there's so much more) from historical thinkers. I don't even think he's read Plato or Kant.

>>22605831
>analytic idealism
why even call it that? just makes him sound like a pseud. like what the opposite analytic realism? "analytic" already have realism vs. antirealism.

>>22606035
Why do you think? His entire project is to sell books on idealism to western materialist types. Of course he needs to package it up as "analytic" as if that means anything, and spends half his lectures talking about his engineering and CERN background - otherwise his target audience has their eyes gkaze over. The heckin love science types are total materialist dogmatists and nowhere near the "skeptics" they claim to be and so need an authority in "science" to even consider the incoherence of physicalism

>>22606035
I have no idea. I just specified to distinguish Kastrup's philosophy from other Idealisms.
For the record, I'm not OP and I'm not an "analytic idealist" or strictly a follower of Kastrup so I'm probably not gonna say much more after this. I'm well aware that his philosophy is essentially a supposedly unintentional rehash of Advaita Vedanta in modern scientific/analytic language, but I think his position in disseminating it is unique and important for what it is. And as someone who discovered Advaita and Idealism before discovering Kastrup, I find the alternative perspective/language and modern cultural momentum surrounding it intriguing.

>>22606083
>need an authority in "science" to even consider the incoherence of physicalism
Is that such a bad thing? at least he gets the message across. how else would materialistfags listen? he's just knowing his audience. that's basic rhetoric.

>>22605507
Solipsism is logical irrefutable but I could go and say that I infer you do have inner mentation because you seem to act the same way I do and I avoid the zombie argument by saying that your physical representation (DNA, protein folding) is the mark of dissociation or basic autopoietic unit that we know happens endogenously in nature.
You could also infer that our experience is a product of an abstraction we call matter but then you will have to face several more problems than with idealism. Specially interactionism because now you have this distinct ontological entities. You could go on by discarding one (mentality) through illusionism but that for me doesn't make sense.
>>22605657
Solipsism is avoided by saying that reality is mental but not from your mind or my mind but from a larger, integrative mind at large from which all experiences behave. But since individual mentation is dissociated then one could not argue solipsism through identifying oneself with the mind at large.
>how do different alters experience one coherent physical world?
Representations are controlled by mental processes deeply rooted in evolution and natural selection. For one to survive in the world one needs to make a coherent representation of the world. Otherwise no survival would be possible. We all represent the world the same way because we need not to dissolve into an entropic soup.

>>22606095
My issue is fuck the audience. They are gay reddit tards and Bernardo himself is a reddit faggot.

I could give a shit about "getting the idealist message across", especially wasting my time convincing reddogmatist materialists.

>>22606371
There is more joy in converting an enemy than in preaching to the choir.

>>22606371
ok then don't faggot. in fact why even reply then? let him do his own thing if you "don't care" and just ignore him. holy shit dude. you literally just confirm OP.

>>22606465
I hate Brazilians. They MUST die.

>>22606536
wtf are you on about you mental nut? Kastrup is dutch.

>>22606536
he is of Aryan descent, you half-witted mongrel

>>22606545
He looks Brazilian, and that's enough for me. Half breed mud people. Yuck!

>>22606707
>t. literal retard
even if you were white you are trash

>>22606035
It means he’a trained in analytic philosophy and expresses his philosophy analytically, that’s it. I’m amazed by the idiocy of people on here.

>>22604846
This. Other anons already said this at length but to me he is retarded to even consider DID a valid basis for a theory. Idealism from Berkeley, neo platonists, Hindus and even meme stuff like simulation theory or Tegmark's mathematical universe all make more sense than multiple personalities. But he is talking about idealism and people are listening, hopefully the discussions he started will lead to a better theory eventually.