Presuppositionalism Defended...

[Mad Man P]

How can it be, for example, that in a hypothetical universe where only material objects exist, mental objects can also exist? The one seems to preclude the other.

Well I kinda got into this with felix earlier... this is a problem with how you define words and concepts.
"Mental objects" being something other than "material objects" is a function of how you choose to frame the world in the first place.

How can atoms connect to the internet and log on to ILP... it would seem a near impossible task to elaborate on.
We have simple concepts like "browser" or "windows" and we speak in such terms all the time, but if you were to ask what is a browser made of... the answer would seem nothing like the object you're asking about.

The way we interact with the internet, software, or even the computer, allows us to remain blind to the material underpinning of it all, we merely need to understand what is displayed on the screen and how to interact with it using a keyboard and mouse... We'd have to establish a great many emergent properties and to do that we'd have to understand a lot of complex systems within complex systems, before we even got close to understanding the answer to our original question.

"Mental Objects", given the stupendous complexities of brains, are very likely similarly many layers of emergent properties away from the material underpinnings. Although given the unidirectional consequences of brain damage or manipulations on "mental objects" it seems quite conclusive that "mental objects" are in fact a product of brains, though we do not know how they are produced... unlike with computers, we don't have the blueprints for human brains.

[felix dakat]

How can it be, for example, that in a hypothetical universe where only material objects exist, mental objects can also exist? The one seems to preclude the other.

Well I kinda got into this with felix earlier... this is a problem with how you define words and concepts.
"Mental objects" being something other than "material objects" is a function of how you choose to frame the world in the first place.

How can atoms connect to the internet and log on to ILP... it would seem a near impossible task to elaborate on.
We have simple concepts like "browser" or "windows" and we speak in such terms all the time, but if you were to ask what is a browser made of... the answer would seem nothing like the object you're asking about.

The way we interact with the internet, software, or even the computer, allows us to remain blind to the material underpinning of it all, we merely need to understand what is displayed on the screen and how to interact with it using a keyboard and mouse... We'd have to establish a great many emergent properties and to do that we'd have to understand a lot of complex systems within complex systems, before we even got close to understanding the answer to our original question.

"Mental Objects", given the stupendous complexities of brains, are very likely similarly many layers of emergent properties away from the material underpinnings. Although given the unidirectional consequences of brain damage or manipulations on "mental objects" it seems quite conclusive that "mental objects" are in fact a product of brains, though we do not know how they are produced... unlike with computers, we don't have the blueprints for human brains.

How about living in a world where material objects apparently exist most of the time except when they don't at the quantum level say? The phenomenal world is a mental creation. Causation in such world apparently goes both ways as demonstrated by the placebo effect, and psychosomatic illnesses for example. And do you see causation as more than an apriori mental construct? What can we, as beings who process a world that is the product of sense organs+neural structures, say anything about a world that exists independently of what we are?

In the phenomenal world we tell ourselves stories about non-existent pasts and futures. Those are mental images demonstrably only more or less approximation of reality. The major religions are such stories that endure because they work on a deep level. They "resonate" with people. Why? And why does Shotgun think Christianity's story uniquely true among the stories? I don't get it. Do you?

[Mad Man P]

How about living in a world where material objects apparently exist most of the time except when they don't at the quantum level say? The phenomenal world is a mental creation. Causation in such world apparently goes both ways as demonstrated by the placebo effect, and psychosomatic illnesses for example. And do you see causation as more than an apriori mental construct? What can we, as beings who process a world that is the product of sense organs+neural structures, say anything about a world that exists independently of what we are?

In the phenomenal world we tell ourselves stories about non-existent pasts and futures. Those are mental images demonstrably only more or less approximation of reality. The major religions are such stories that endure because they work on a deep level. They "resonate" with people. Why? And why does Shotgun think Christianity's story uniquely true among the stories? I don't get it. Do you?

I'm an atheist, felix... if there is a good reason to believe any of those stories are true, then I am unaware of it.

As for causation going "both ways" you cite examples that clearly misunderstand what the two ways are. What would demonstrate causation going "both ways" would be if I materially seperated a piece of your brain from the rest of it, but you managed to "mentally" cause that isolated piece to react... THEN there would be a "both ways" causation for us to talk about.

The fact that your brain can and does interact with itself, is not at all strange... the evidence suggests they are in fact the very same thing, mental objects and brains. The same way a browser is the same thing as the computer, just an isolated portion of it responsible for generating the function you and I would call a browser.

[Sculptor]

Hey all...

I used to post regularly on ILP a number of years ago from a Reformed Christian philosophical position. A hallmark of contemporary Reformed philosophy (at least, on the popular level) is something called presuppositionalism.

...an apologetic method codified and promoted by Westminster Theological Seminary professor Cornelius Van Til, presuppositionalism tries to take unique epistemological insights from the Reformed theological tradition and ply them in defense of the Christian worldview.
I appreciate any convo. on the matter...
-
Shotgun

Well well done for sharing the name of the state of affairs that has existed in theology for millennia.
Yes all theologians are supreme at presupposing their views to be true regardless of evidence or reason.
I'd not recommend it for science.
And evidence that such a things exists in jurisprudence in presupposing guilt is evident but the results are always utterly tragic, especially in ethnic groups outside the norms.

Many a witch has been burned due to the presupposition that one verse in the bible should be followed without mitigation.

[felix dakat]

How about living in a world where material objects apparently exist most of the time except when they don't at the quantum level say? The phenomenal world is a mental creation. Causation in such world apparently goes both ways as demonstrated by the placebo effect, and psychosomatic illnesses for example. And do you see causation as more than an apriori mental construct? What can we, as beings who process a world that is the product of sense organs+neural structures, say anything about a world that exists independently of what we are?

In the phenomenal world we tell ourselves stories about non-existent pasts and futures. Those are mental images demonstrably only more or less approximation of reality. The major religions are such stories that endure because they work on a deep level.  They "resonate" with people. Why?  And why does Shotgun think Christianity's story uniquely true among the stories? I don't get it. Do you?

I'm an atheist, felix... if there is a good reason to believe any of those stories are true, then I am unaware of it.

As for causation going "both ways" you cite examples that clearly misunderstand what the two ways are. What would demonstrate causation going "both ways" would be if I materially seperated a piece of your brain from the rest of it, but you managed to "mentally" cause that isolated piece to react... THEN there would be a "both ways" causation for us to talk about.

The fact that your brain can and does interact with itself, is not at all strange... the evidence suggests they are in fact the very same thing, mental objects and brains.
The same way a browser is the same thing as the computer, just an isolated portion of it responsible for generating the function you and I would call a browser.

If your brain doesn't appear to your consciousness it appears nowhere. It doesn't exist. The brain is never more than a representation to consciousness —what Descartes would call a “clear and distinct idea".

To experience consciousness is more like the computer screen upon which objects like a browser appear.  

So the brain is a representation of what?  The thing-in-itself that is unknown.  What is form but an a priori construction?  So nobody knows what the brain is outside of the human objectifying process.
  
How does it work?  Nobody knows. We make models. If the predicted outcomes of the model are achieved that’s as good as it gets…we have no depth knowledge of the phenomena. Everything is a surface to perception.

From the materialist perspective comes the hard problem of consciousness.   It is the magic hat out of which pops the rabbit of the present moment.  Nobody has explained the trick. 

Cognitive research has shown that thought affects physical health. That's mind => matter causation. It doesn’t fit the materialist paradigm. You can go with identity --the double aspect theory--I've long held that. But reality unfolds as representations in the field of consciousness. You can't get over, under or around that.

So, there’s no need to move around pieces of brain. The unexplained substance is your consciousness right now reading the page. Brain is never more than then how it appears to you in the present nanosecond.

Of course that is ever changing. It necessarily has to as you view brain representations. Which makes me curious. Have you ever actually seen a human brain first hand? Not that it changes relative to anything I just said.

What’s important to me is to keep the mystery of consciousness from being the unacknowledged elephant in the room.

[Mad Man P]

Cognitive research has shown that thought affects physical health. That's mind => matter causation. It doesn’t fit the materialist paradigm.

Mind and matter are the same damn thing given a materialist paradigm, which means that thoughts ARE brain events, which can cause physical health issues... that's just material causation all the way.
You keep spouting this nonsense, not realizing that you're merely assuming mind is something immaterial and thereby a problem for materialists whether or not they cause anything.

What you'd need to demonstrate is that mind is something OTHER than matter. It'd be fairly simple to "test" if mind is in fact something other than matter... we can scan brains these days and correlate thoughts with brain activity, to the point of allowing you to move a cursor around with your thoughts. Now if the causation for this was immaterial, there'd be an origin point in the material world, a change in the brain caused by something immaterial... materialy isolating that origin point ought not prevent it from being activated, given it's an immaterial causation we're talking about... but not once have we observed such a phenomena. Likewise if mind was something immaterial, material brain damage reducing the capabilities of a mind, would seem odd...

Mechanically, what we're observing in the world suggests that minds are in fact material brains and not at all immaterial... THAT is what you're up against trying to argue mind and matter are distinct.

[Bob]

Mind and matter are the same damn thing given a materialist paradigm, which means that thoughts ARE brain events, which can cause physical health issues... that's just material causation all the way.
You keep spouting this nonsense, not realizing that you're merely assuming mind is something immaterial and thereby a problem for materialists whether or not they cause anything.

What you'd need to demonstrate is that mind is something OTHER than matter. It'd be fairly simple to "test" if mind is in fact something other than matter... we can scan brains these days and correlate thoughts with brain activity, to the point of allowing you to move a cursor around with your thoughts. Now if the causation for this was immaterial, there'd be an origin point in the material world, a change in the brain caused by something immaterial... materialy isolating that origin point ought not prevent it from being activated, given it's an immaterial causation we're talking about... but not once have we observed such a phenomena. Likewise if mind was something immaterial, material brain damage reducing the capabilities of a mind, would seem odd...

Mechanically, what we're observing in the world suggests that minds are in fact material brains and not at all immaterial... THAT is what you're up against trying to argue mind and matter are distinct.

It is interesting that you tend to use very forceful language in discussions but manage to avoid what the other person is saying. The materialist paradigm is an illusion, because there are numerous events in life when the mind is active when the brain has no correlated activity, which is especially so in NDE’s, but also in several other experiences of perception. Unfortunately, this is a subject that books are written about, and therefore they would overreach the scope of a discussion forum. To accuse Felix of “spouting nonsense” is therefore only a signal that you haven’t got the sources of such information that Felix has.

This is an interesting example of an unperceived bias. Because I have thought about something, I assume that my opinion is informed rather than "biased" in the colloquial sense. However, the very fact that I have prejudged something means that I am prejudiced. On the other hand, if someone has reconsidered his opinion by weighing the evidence and has changed his mind in the process, he still has a prejudice, but he knows it is one. The first claims that the second is biased toward an opinion, while disregarding the fact that he himself is also biased. The point, then, is to weigh the evidence, not to dismiss the other's arguments on superficial grounds.

The “simple” tests that you suggest only show up the activity of the brain, but not what has initiated that activity. Rather like the tubes in old radios showed a processing of a signal into sound but were not the source of the signal. You have a logical mistake in your argument as well: If the causation is immaterial, it needn’t have an original point in the material world. And since we are talking about consciousness “at large” being the ground of being, from which everything manifests, this seems to show that you are mixing paradigms.

[felix dakat]

Cognitive research has shown that thought affects physical health. That's mind => matter causation. It doesn’t fit the materialist paradigm.

Mind and matter are the same damn thing given a materialist paradigm, which means that thoughts ARE brain events, which can cause physical health issues... that's just material causation all the way.
You keep spouting this nonsense, not realizing that you're merely assuming mind is something immaterial and thereby a problem for materialists whether or not they cause anything.

What you'd need to demonstrate is that mind is something OTHER than matter.
It'd be fairly simple to "test" if mind is in fact something other than matter...

we can scan brains these days and correlate thoughts with brain activity, to the point of allowing you to move a cursor around with your thoughts.

Now if the causation for this was immaterial, there'd be an origin point in the material world, a change in the brain caused by something immaterial...

materialy isolating that origin point ought not prevent it from being activated, given it's an immaterial causation we're talking about...

but not once have we observed such a phenomena.

Likewise if mind was something immaterial, material brain damage reducing the capabilities of a mind, would seem odd...

Mechanically, what we're observing in the world suggests that minds are in fact material brains and not at all immaterial...

THAT is what you're up against trying to argue mind and matter are distinct.

I'm not arguing that mind and matter are distinct. They are, it seems to me, two aspects of one unknowable thing-in-itself. Viewed from within it appears as a thought. Viewed on a functional MRI scan there appears to to be a corresponding physical event. Mind events are brain events. Brain events are mind events. One is not reducible to the other. Both are aspects of the transcendent unknowable One.

Here's an article that describes the phenomena you mentioned https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/16/ctrl ... your-mind/ It seems to me to be a triumph in demonstrating the proposition that mind and brain are one. It does not (to my poor mind relevant as it must sadly ever be to the discussion) reduce mind to matter or conscious thought to brain.

I was reminded of an argument Chalmers made in his book "The Conscious Mind" that there are features of the world over and above the physical features.

1. In our world, there are conscious experiences.
2. There is a logically possible world physically identical to ours, in which the positive facts about consciousness in our world do not hold.
3. Therefore, facts about consciousness are further facts about our world, over and above the physical facts.
4. So materialism is false.

The Conscious Mind (Philosophy of Mind) (p. 123). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

As long as I don't forget that my appreciation of stories like the one about the the guy moving a curser with his mind via a highly sensitive machine depend on how the stories appear to my conscious mind, I won't be tempted to conclude that materialism has the ultimate answer.

Thank you for the intelligence you bring to dialogue; it's always enlightening. I hope we haven't gotten too far away from shotgun's OP proposition. I fear it will be up to him to post again if we're ever going to get back on his track. Of course if what I said about the transcendent one dove-tails with what he calls "Christianity" then perhaps we're already there.

[felix dakat]

The “simple” tests that you suggest only show up the activity of the brain, but not what has initiated that activity. Rather like the tubes in old radios showed a processing of a signal into sound but were not the source of the signal. You have a logical mistake in your argument as well: If the causation is immaterial, it needn’t have an original point in the material world. And since we are talking about consciousness “at large” being the ground of being, from which everything manifests, this seems to show that you are mixing paradigms.

It's paradoxical isn't it? We are conscious of how things appear not how they really are. Science has made us aware of this with it's counter-intuitive explanations. The paradox being that we only know the appearance of consciousness not what it is in itself. It's the appearance of appearance all the way down! To practioners of the presence of God like Brother Lawrence we need look no further. The mystery of God is between our ears so to speak. And in “Him” we live and move and have our being... Spinoza's God.

[Mad Man P]

I'm not arguing that mind and matter are distinct. They are, it seems to me, two aspects of one unknowable thing-in-itself. Viewed from within it appears as a thought. Viewed on a functional MRI scan there appears to to be a corresponding physical event. Mind events are brain events. Brain events are mind events. One is not reducible to the other. Both are aspects of the transcendent unknowable One.

You'd be quite perplexed, I imagine, if you were to go seeking a browser in the circuitry and wires of your computer and yet that is where it exists and originates and at no point does it escape the materialist paradigm... merely because you have a conception of a browser absent it's material underpinning, does not mean the "thing" we call a browser is immaterial.

Now just imagine your awareness of yourself is limited to the equivalent of what is displayed on the monitor of a computer... What you see on that "screen" your "mind's eye", may have nearly no semblance to the material hardware that's producing the image and functions... but it would still be producing the image and functions.

As for everything being part of some mystical unknowable ONE... That is exactly what we'd start with if we started tabula rasa... all of existence to us would be some amorphis unfathomable stream of experience without distinctions, a singular unknowable ONEness... so congrats, you've receded to absolute ignorance... but we spent billions of years evolving a brain that has learned to make distinctions that are useful and practical and worth talking about.

Now is it logically possible for a world to exist that is physically identical to ours but where my computer does not produce a browser function?
The answer is a resounding no... and it may well be the same for brains and consciousness.

You're merely assuming your conclusion or quoting others who do, and I'm not particularly impressed by it. However, remarkably you seem quite pleased with yourself... and I honestly kinda like seeing you be a bit cocky and sarcastic, adds a little spice to the conversation and it made me smile. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything and let you flex some more. Either way, you should do it more often, felix... Have a great day, my dude!

[felix dakat]

Mad Man— I read, I ponder, I look around, I write .
I’m not claiming originality here. I can’t say it better than Schopenhauer did in 1818 — your world is your representation. That truth is valid for you and me and every conscious being. To become aware of it is to be meta-conscious i.e. conscious of one’s own consciousness. Such is re-representation— the ground on which philosophy stands.

We don’t know the sun or the earth but only the eye that sees the sun and the hand that feels the earth. All we know ultimately is the one doing the representation. And here’s the taboo proposition which I first encountered over 50 years ago in a little book by Alan Watts you are that One! Like the ancient oracle said over 25 centuries ago wisdom is to know thyself.

The major religions are all elaborations symbolizing that fact. Time, space and causality PRESUPPOSE it. This is what I suppose Shotgun is trying to get at with this thread. But I shan’t insist on God talk. The common denominator of all dialogue is consciousness. If we don’t have that between us we have nothing. If we have more than that, what do we have? Also nothing, I suppose.

So I’m not denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability and extended form. I’m merely contending it has no essence independent of mental perception. Existence and perceptability are convertible terms. Empirical reality is compatible with transcendental ideality.

There, I think I’ve given you enough ammunition with which to tear me a new asshole. And great day to you amigo!

[Ecmandu]

Mad Man— I read, I ponder, I look around, I write .
I’m not claiming originality here. I can’t say it better than Schopenhauer did in 1818 — your world is your representation. That truth is valid for you and me and every conscious being. To become aware of it is to be meta-conscious i.e. conscious of one’s own consciousness. Such is re-representation— the ground on which philosophy stands.

We don’t know the sun or the earth but only the eye that sees the sun and the hand that feels the earth. All we know ultimately is the one doing the representation. And here’s the taboo proposition which I first encountered over 50 years ago in a little book by Alan Watts you are that One! Like the ancient oracle said over 25 centuries ago wisdom is to know thyself.

The major religions are all elaborations symbolizing that fact. Time, space and causality PRESUPPOSE it. This is what I suppose Shotgun is trying to get at with this thread. But I shan’t insist on God talk. The common denominator of all dialogue is consciousness. If we don’t have that between us we have nothing. If we have more than that, what do we have? Also nothing, I suppose.

So I’m not denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability and extended form. I’m merely contending it has no essence independent of mental perception. Existence and perceptability are convertible terms. Empirical reality is compatible with transcendental ideality.

There, I think I’ve given you enough ammunition with which to tear me a new asshole. And great day to you amigo!

You missed a spot Felix. We are not only aware that we’re aware... meta.

We are matter that knows it’s matter. Also meta.

In the spirit world we call this the matter stream.

Some spirits for entertainment purposes have put limits on themselves. None of us really have limits except destroying existence,

[felix dakat]

Mad Man— I read, I ponder, I look around, I write .
I’m not claiming originality here. I can’t say it better than Schopenhauer did in 1818 — your world is your representation. That truth is valid for you and me and every conscious being. To become aware of it is to be meta-conscious i.e. conscious of one’s own consciousness. Such is re-representation— the ground on which philosophy stands.

We don’t know the sun or the earth but only the eye that sees the sun and the hand that feels the earth. All we know ultimately is the one doing the representation. And here’s the taboo proposition which I first encountered over 50 years ago in a little book by Alan Watts you are that One! Like the ancient oracle said over 25 centuries ago wisdom is to know thyself.

The major religions are all elaborations symbolizing that fact. Time, space and causality PRESUPPOSE it. This is what I suppose Shotgun is trying to get at with this thread. But I shan’t insist on God talk. The common denominator of all dialogue is consciousness. If we don’t have that between us we have nothing. If we have more than that, what do we have? Also nothing, I suppose.

So I’m not denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability and extended form. I’m merely contending it has no essence independent of mental perception. Existence and perceptability are convertible terms. Empirical reality is compatible with transcendental ideality.

There, I think I’ve given you enough ammunition with which to tear me a new asshole. And great day to you amigo!

You missed a spot Felix. We are not only aware that we’re aware... meta.

We are matter that knows it’s matter. Also meta.

In the spirit world we call this the matter stream.

Some spirits for entertainment purposes have put limits on themselves. None of us really have limits except destroying existence,

You’re an alter who has forgotten who you are.

[Ecmandu]

I don’t know everything. Nobody does.

I’m not of this cosmos though.

In the same way that we all transcend the matter steam... (unless we chose). I transcend the cosmos.

I can remote control the whole earth to my will just with my mind alone. That’s really bad karma even if you do it perfectly.

[Ecmandu]

Mad Man— I read, I ponder, I look around, I write .
I’m not claiming originality here. I can’t say it better than Schopenhauer did in 1818 — your world is your representation. That truth is valid for you and me and every conscious being. To become aware of it is to be meta-conscious i.e. conscious of one’s own consciousness. Such is re-representation— the ground on which philosophy stands.

We don’t know the sun or the earth but only the eye that sees the sun and the hand that feels the earth. All we know ultimately is the one doing the representation. And here’s the taboo proposition which I first encountered over 50 years ago in a little book by Alan Watts you are that One! Like the ancient oracle said over 25 centuries ago wisdom is to know thyself.

The major religions are all elaborations symbolizing that fact. Time, space and causality PRESUPPOSE it. This is what I suppose Shotgun is trying to get at with this thread. But I shan’t insist on God talk. The common denominator of all dialogue is consciousness. If we don’t have that between us we have nothing. If we have more than that, what do we have? Also nothing, I suppose.

So I’m not denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability and extended form. I’m merely contending it has no essence independent of mental perception. Existence and perceptability are convertible terms. Empirical reality is compatible with transcendental ideality.

There, I think I’ve given you enough ammunition with which to tear me a new asshole. And great day to you amigo!

You missed a spot Felix. We are not only aware that we’re aware... meta.

We are matter that knows it’s matter. Also meta.

In the spirit world we call this the matter stream.

Some spirits for entertainment purposes have put limits on themselves. None of us really have limits except destroying existence,

You’re an alter who has forgotten who you are.

You’re funny. You’re diagnosing me with DID even though I don’t have blackouts.

In that case, I can diagnose you with DID for being upset about something and happy about something.

[Mad Man P]

We don’t know the sun or the earth but only the eye that sees the sun and the hand that feels the earth. All we know ultimately is the one doing the representation. And here’s the taboo proposition which I first encountered over 50 years ago in a little book by Alan Watts you are that One! Like the ancient oracle said over 25 centuries ago wisdom is to know thyself.

Know thyself, indeed, felix... You're the one who is giving up before the attempt was made.
If we are indeed products of our brains... if that is what gives rise to our consciousness and everything we experience, then I'd want to understand it, how it works, how I work...
Meanwhile you're happily announcing such investigations futile, consciousness is to be mysterious and "unknowable", in your ideal world.

So I’m not denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability and extended form. I’m merely contending it has no essence independent of mental perception. Existence and perceptability are convertible terms. Empirical reality is compatible with transcendental ideality.

Materialism is a model of the world we experience... what we are arguing about isn't whether or not it's a model... it's whether or not it's a good model, or possibly even the best model we have.
Besides, you just finished arguing that there is no such thing as can "transcend" conscious experience... as that's all we have, and I agree.

Conscious experience is where we start and from there we attempt to comprehend what it is we're experiencing... that's why we build a coherent model of the world that is revealing itself to us, so that we can understand it and navigate it more intelligently. Yes we too are part of the world we experience... but we are not the whole of the world we experience, that'd be far too egocentric to suppose, not to mention solipsism can be a very severe mental disorder.

There, I think I’ve given you enough ammunition with which to tear me a new asshole. And great day to you amigo!

Nah, I've decided to go easy on you... for now

[Bob]

If we are indeed products of our brains...

That's not what he said ...

[felix dakat]

We don’t know the sun or the earth but only the eye that sees the sun and the hand that feels the earth. All we know ultimately is the one doing the representation. And here’s the taboo proposition which I first encountered over 50 years ago in a little book by Alan Watts you are that One! Like the ancient oracle said over 25 centuries ago wisdom is to know thyself.

Know thyself, indeed, felix... You're the one who is giving up before the attempt was made.
If we are indeed products of our brains... if that is what gives rise to our consciousness and everything we experience, then I'd want to understand it, how it works, how I work...
Meanwhile you're happily announcing such investigations futile, consciousness is to be mysterious and "unknowable", in your ideal world.

So I’m not denying the existence of matter, that is, of solidity, impenetrability and extended form. I’m merely contending it has no essence independent of mental perception. Existence and perceptability are convertible terms. Empirical reality is compatible with transcendental ideality.

Materialism is a model of the world we experience... what we are arguing about isn't whether or not it's a model... it's whether or not it's a good model, or possibly even the best model we have.
Besides, you just finished arguing that there is no such thing as can "transcend" conscious experience... as that's all we have, and I agree.

Conscious experience is where we start and from there we attempt to comprehend what it is we're experiencing... that's why we build a coherent model of the world that is revealing itself to us, so that we can understand it and navigate it more intelligently. Yes we too are part of the world we experience... but we are not the whole of the world we experience, that'd be far too egocentric to suppose, not to mention solipsism can be a very severe mental disorder.

There, I think I’ve given you enough ammunition with which to tear me a new asshole. And great day to you amigo!

Nah, I've decided to go easy on you... for now

If you think I'm giving up on knowing myself it's because we are on different paths and you don't see the validity of the path I'm on. To me self-knowledge on the basis of materialism looks like a promissory note on a self-knowledge that will never arrive.

Perhaps, as Chalmers has said the physical and the phenomenal will turn out to be two different aspects of a single encompassing kind, in something like the way that matter and energy turn out to be two aspects of a single kind.  But if the science verifies that a variety of monism is true, it cannot be a materialist monism. Consciousness is primary.

Rather, science may explain from an objectivized standpoint how consciousness becomes localized, separated, and beyond that how it becomes dominated by the illusion of the ego. But, not to sound alarmist, time seems to be running out. Not just for me in the body-mind I perceive around me, but for civilization as we know it in consensual reality or the public sphere, which, by the way, seems to be collapsing as we speak. I'm glad when neuro science finds ways to help people live better lives, But, I'm not going to put my faith the white coated folks in the lab to teach me who I am while the conscious witness who I am is right here to do the job first hand.    

But, I don't wish to be dogmatic. I seem to be in a minority view. I am surrounded by friends who don’t see things the way I do. I’m not a member of a group to provide me an echo chamber for my view. The history of religion is full of persons so convinced of there own way of seeing things that they turned the stairway to heaven into a highway to hell. And anti-religion seems to have the similar negative aspects as religion from a socio-political perspective. Show me where I'm wrong and I'll be better for it.

[Ecmandu]

Felix.

https://youtu.be/low6Coqrw9Y

[felix dakat]

Felix.

https://youtu.be/low6Coqrw9Y

Could be theme music.

[Ecmandu]

Felix.

https://youtu.be/low6Coqrw9Y

Could be theme music.

People all over existence couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t be killed. Even if they shot me to death. I’d just resurrect and send them to hell.

The local deities were like, “who the fuck is this person?”

I’m beyond the cosmos.

I’m here and I won’t be stopped. My goal is to patch analog.

Then I’ll be gone.

[felix dakat]

Felix.

https://youtu.be/low6Coqrw9Y

Could be theme music.

People all over existence couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t be killed. Even if they shot me to death. I’d just resurrect and send them to hell.

The local deities were like, “who the fuck is this person?”

I’m beyond the cosmos.

I’m here and I won’t be stopped. My goal is to patch analog.

Then I’ll be gone.

Grandiosity thy name is Ecmandu!

[Ecmandu]

I’ll just make a joke. Grandiosity is your projection of the truth if it was you.

[felix dakat]

I’ll just make a joke. Grandiosity is your projection of the truth if it was you.

I used to work in a psychiatric ward where I listened to other Ecmandus.

[Ecmandu]

I’ll just make a joke. Grandiosity is your projection of the truth if it was you.

I used to work in a psychiatric ward where I listened to other Ecmandus.

I’m sure you did man. Let me ask you this question.

Is god the most grandiose narcissistic grandiose narcissist in existence or not?