this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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Eliminative materialism isn't my thing no. Emergent materialism is what I roll with. So the human mind and culture and numbers are things that exist as emergent properties of other things.
Sure it could all be a lie with us living in the matrix or so on, and it's fun to entertain such thoughts every now and then. But I won't accept it as truth without a better reason than "but technically it's possible".
Now I'm not sure you get what the allegory of the cave is about. It's literally trying to explain that our perception can't be 100% trusted.
I know. The matrix (or any other metaphysical idealism for that matter) is an example of a situation where we cannot trust our perception for knowledge about the true nature of the universe (much like the allegory of the cave), although taken to the extreme. The epistemological and metaphysical aspects of Plato's cave are very much intertwined.
But you're assuming, from what I'm reading through your comments, that these shadows are cast by metaphysical forces, and I'm interpreting the allegory as how our senses are ultimately something we can't trust completely.
As accurate as science may seem, it is ultimately based on these senses. It's the best way we can understand the physical world, but science, wisely, always has a caveat at the end of every law and discovery: "... As far as we know."
This is a good thing, it means that nothing is held sacred and everything can be tested and questioned again.
Our senses and measurements (or are those the same thing, with one merely augmenting the other?) tell us that we live in a purely material universe. I'm not claiming that our senses are perfect or that science is over with every secret revealed, but questioning the validity of our observations on such a foundational level invokes questioning the validity of the worldview (metaphysical materialism) built on top of them. That's what I interpreted Mickey was on about in the meme.
Donald is despairing about the inherent meaninglessness of a purely material universe, so I assume that Mickey, with his radical rejection of all that Donald says, represents at least some sort of metaphysical dualism or idealism which would allow for inherent cosmic meaning.
And I'm saying that not questioning your senses is unscientific. Questioning our observations, and retesting them, is the very foundation of scientific thinking.
As for living in a purely material universe, how exactly would you test for something immaterial using material means? Would it look like weird unknown forces we can't explain or the results of tests looking different depending on if it's being observed or not?
And also are we going to throw out human experience? Are we not part of the universe? So would not the immaterial things we imagine into existence also exist?
Numbers aren't material but we treat them as real, and use them to study material things to understand them.
I suppose I should've emphasized the "on such a foundational level" -part of that sentence. Questioning and refining observations is obviously of paramount importance, but that's only valid if we assume that deriving knowledge about the nature of reality is at all possible via our senses and observations.
That's where the distinction between physics and metaphysics comes in. Metaphysics is philosophy and thus inherently unverifiable.
The things we imagine do exist, as patterns of activity in our brains, emerging from the complexity of a whole bunch of neurons in brains and as part of societies. I said as much in a previous comment about emergent materialism.
Heh, for someone who has a poor view of philosophy you sure do subscribe to it a lot.
You're fine with making an assumption, and that's ok, that's part of your philosophy.
Care to explaing what "subscribing to philosophy" would even mean? If you instead meant to say a philosophy, then yes. I do have my own worldview, as I think every thinking being does. I apologize if I was unclear in my previous comment, I was commuting while I typed it and had to rush it a bit. The first paragraph was a response to the first paragraph of your preceding comment, the second one to the second and the third to the rest of it. I'll elaborate a bit:
If we don't make the assumption that our senses and measurements could possibly derive information about the nature of the reality around us, then trying to do so (empirical science) would be quite insane in my opinion. Why would anybody seriously try to do something which they think is categorically impossible to do?
If some physical phenomena is found which can only be explained via some sort of substance dualism or idealism, I'll let you know.
I assume you're referring to dark matter with this one. It's just an unsolved mystery. It sure would be interesting if it was ghosts, but we have no reason think so as of currently.
How do you feel something without touching it and thus affecting it? To see something requires the object of observation to reflect or emit light. At small enough scales that will affect the object itself in a significant manner. Quantum physics sure is weird, but I don't see how that would be a reason to think that ideas could exist independently outside of a brain or similar material substrate.