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Regarding the mind, human experience, and reality, what do you believe is primary, or more actual - what do you think can most truly be said to exist?

Physicalists, materialists and reductionists of various kinds believe that matter is primary, that it exists. Some think that mind and experience are reducible to matter, others claim that they do not exist.

Dualists fall in the middle. Substance dualists claim that there are two kinds of thing - physical stuff and mental stuff. Property dualists say that there is physical stuff, but that the physical can have non-physical, experiential properties.

Idealists take the other extreme and say that, ultimately, mind/experience is most real, and that the physical is either a non-existent construct of mind or that it exists, but is not really physical and is secondary to mind.

What do you believe? I have typically been property dualist and heading toward idealism, and really, I think idealism is what I'd really like to believe. But, physicalist accounts pose some serious problems (for dualism in particular). Idealism seem to be very hard to argue for. So, what do you all believe? What seems intuitively true to you?

Very interesting response!

But, I think some of your points may be interpreted two ways:


Of this, I would ask - what is it that you consider real here? The experiences, which are all the evidence we have of anything, or what it is that we are allegedly having access to in our experience? The intuitive response is that it is the object our experience is an experience of, but, in the case of some properties at least, we know that things simply aren't how they seem. No object is green; objects are only of a certain textural disposition to absorb and bounce back certain light waves. So, in a sense, the experience of green has at least the potential to be real, but there is no material green. We have no reason, based on the mechanisms of perception, to expect that anything material is in any way similar to what's really out there.


I do agree that pragmatically, in terms of day-to-day living, there is no viable alternative to assuming that matter exists.


If you were an identity theorist (i.e. "mental states just are identical with brain states"), then you would claim that to change your thoughts just is to change matter - neural matter. In a sense, I guess the ease with which we change our thoughts would come from our essentially being that matter, as opposed to our having to manipulate matter not identical with us to achieve other effects (such as moving a hand to pick something up).


I can only counter this by pointing out that everything we know and everything we experience of the world is in our heads, either it is neural or it is mental - but our senses give us no actual access to anything in the world. What we think of as the world - mustn't it be an entirely internal construct? Even our notions of physical matter, that seem so stable, are ideas. I guess what I'm trying to say is that all we have to work in, when dealing with these problems, are ideas (which, of course, may be material).

I think the reason this problem is so...problematic...is that fact; that we can only work in (and we only have access to) ideas. Because of this, ideas seem primary; it seems we cannot deny that they exist because they are all we can know - and yet, this situation is equally well explained by a theory of reality that is physical. And, like you said, it's impossible to prove one way or another.

If that's the case, then assuming matter exists is definitely the only option. I'm chiefly concerned with trying to work out exactly how things really are, and that isn't entirely (ok, isn't at all) a pragmatic thing. It's actually rather depressing and painful at times, but I just can't leave it alone until something has convinced me one way or another.


Yes, that is probably one of the best. After all, identity theorists point out all of the little correlations between the brain and experience, which works marvelously against substance dualists (property dualism probably wouldn't exist were it not for identity theory making substance dualism seem implausible), but if someone takes a hardcore idealist position, it's difficult to use material evidence against them, since they hold mind as primary. So I guess that's where the practicallity approach comes in.


I think I was just saying that your argument there - the different degree to which you can influence apparent 'matter' and apparent 'thought' - assumes, as it were, a distinction between matter and thought. If you believe that matter doesn't exist and is only as it is represented in thought, or that thought doesn't exist but really consists in matter, then you shouldn't be able to influence one any more easily than the other, since they are the same thing.


I'm not entirely sure I agree with this one. I'm not sure I disagree, either, but think of this: There is a totality of all things (i.e. the universe or, if there is more than one universe, then the totality of all universes and anything not contained in them). Whatever this totality is, it cannot be influenced from the outside, because there is no outside, and yet there is variation and change in the universe - galaxies form out of gas, etc. So it seems there might be completely isolated, self contained things and these need not necessarily be unchanging.


It's as reasonable as any - I'm still trying to work out what my view is. I don't think solipsism is what I'll ultimately end up with; it's too lonely.


I admit this is a very real problem for views which take the mind as primary - it's very difficult to argue from the self evident "I exist" to the existence of other minds, and so many end up with apparent solipsism. Which is fine, unless, like a lot people, you don't particularly like spolipsism. It's not a problem I will claim to have an answer to just now.


Most accounts which pit mind against matter as different kinds of thing treat matter as physical and tangible and mind as immaterial, intangible. Given this, if we are idealists and we think mind alone exists and that tangibility of anything is an illusion, we will see no need to propose that we need a material medium for the conveying of ideas. It might as well be an ideal medium. It could even be said that, since intagible things presumably cannot affect matter (at least, it seems there is no room for this kind of thing in our physics), an intangible medium is the only logical option for the idealist.


That is conceivable, although what you're describing seems to be more of a dualist account - matter and energy, and ideas which exist somehow in this. However, as I've described just above, I don't think idealists who claim that mind is intangible are forced to accept a physical description of a medium for carrying ideas.


Given that I don't know quite where I stand on philosophical views of the mind, I can't say. For a hardcore idealist, no - I don't think matter fits the bill best. However, I don't have a well formulated account of how such an idealism could be described or argued for, so for now, I'll reserve judgement.

I don't mean it as an emotional appeal or part of any reasoning. I was just saying that I don't like solipsism, and that I'd prefer it if my reasoning didn't end up there. Where my reasoning is actually going seems to be down a property dualist path (finds identity theory convincing, yet cannot deny that there are mental properties not reducible to the physical) though I find idealism interesting enough to look into the arguments associated with it (I havent had a chance to read very much on idealism yet).


I don't think this is the case. The dualist says that there are both physical and mental things, so this position demonstrates more clearly the difference between the two concepts.

And there is a conceptual difference. Both paths may predict that we act the same way, but that it because they are both supposed to be explanations for the observed state of the world. But can we really say that there is only a linguistic difference between these two theories?

1: There is only physical matter; experience is somehow illusory or doesn't exist. There is no 'self' but the neural pathway which encodes the concept of 'self'.

2: There is only nonphysical mental experience; the only 'things' are experiencers. 'Physicality' is only a concept, there are no tangible things.

Now, these are not the only forms of materialism or idealism, but they are some forms of materialism and idealism, and it seems that they cannot be collapsed to mere linguistic differences. If one of these is a correct, accurate account of reality, the other has to be wrong.


I must admit, you've confused me a bit here. Maybe, a solipsist would suffer here and be inconsistent, although, theoretically they would still act in such a way as to bring about the best and most satisfying state of mental experience for themselves, and this would involve denying that this is the case, claiming that a crime has been committed in their mind, and continuing. In other words, you and your act are, to them, just a part of their mental experience, and your being convicted is also a potential part of their mental experience - and they would like to make it so.

Of course, non-solipsist idealists don't suffer from this problem, because they accept that you, too, are mind, and that you committed a crime by causing them intentional harm.

IF beliefe is real do you believe in reality? LOl.