6 Answers

  1. Everything that we call material is given to us only in sensations, that is, through something ideal. Including such a thing as the brain, on which we try to write off these sensations. The brain is also a complex of our sensations. This was noticed by Hume.

    The sensations themselves are largely dependent on even more abstract things. Locke said that there is nothing in the mind that was not previously present in the senses. Leibniz added, ” except for reason itself.” Starting with Kant, we know that our experience is determined by pre-experimental forms and is impossible without them. This means that even if we allow the division of reality into a subject and a material object, the subject is not passive in its knowledge of the object. That is, it does not reflect it, but largely constructs it.

    But later philosophy does not want to accept this doubling of reality by default. If we see a teapot or a brain, it is not necessary to think of it as an objective material substrate of the teapot or brain, which for some reason differs from our subjective image of the teapot or brain [and we learned this from somewhere]. For more information, see here.

  2. It seems strange to me to equate materialism and physicalism. There is a simple anti-reductionist argument against physicalism : the existence of emergent properties. Although I have just seen that Davidson, whose theory of consciousness I like best, is considered a “non-reductive physicalist”, and physicalism, accordingly, can be limited to the statement that the physical is the cause of everything else, even if it is irreducible to the physical. I have no arguments against this position, it seems quite solid.

    Materialism, in a broader sense than physicalism, is now a matter of taste, the opposition “materialism/idealism” has lost at least some relevance, because the one that was, was artificially created by Marxism. Today, one does not need to be an idealist to recognize the existence of meaning or the importance of the concept of justice for human communities. And you don't have to be a materialist to recognize the existence of a reality that is not subject to human will.

  3. First of all, do not confuse materialism and physicalism. The latter is just a stupid idea of some neo-positivists of the mid-20th century, even then abandoned by them. But there are no convincing arguments against materialism in science. But there are a lot of ideological “arguments”, and they will regularly “defeat” science, at least as long as religion dominates the mass consciousness. And in addition to religion, such “arguments”will always be found in human psychology, which often “drools” at logic.

  4. Hello.

    There are a lot of arguments. For example, your consciousness. But these arguments, if we remain in the field of philosophy and do not immerse ourselves in religion, are relative. Remember the antinomies of pure reason (Kant). Materialism / idealism fits one of them. So both sides have arguments.

    It's a different matter if you practice any religion. Then you have the experience of supernatural communication and understand that matter does not exhaust everything. Then idealism is clearly closer to you. But still, theism and idealism are not identical. In Christianity and Islam, God is primarily a Person, and the laws of the world, as well as the matter that exists according to these laws, are created or established by God.

    Read good books and gain experience.

    Good luck to you!

  5. Philosophical answers should be based on Logic, because without it, there is no argument and proof.

    And there are no logical arguments against the materiality and reality of the world, which is perfectly confirmed by the rest of the answers of “philosophers” who have lost logic in this topic.

    I will only add that “the absence of real material” means that everything is imagined, well, apparently by a certain “solipsist”. We refute this idea-

    1. Solipsism is contradictory. The very discussion of it implies the possibility of comparing imaginary representations and true objective representations of the real world (beyond the control of the solipsist in any form-absolute denial of thinking, or collective solipsism or the divine source of imaginary representations).

    The idea of solipsism is not an axiom at all, it is not obvious and is not inevitable (like the axiom of the scientific method that “True representations of reality are consistent”! in this formulation, there is no subject for discussion at all, the rejection of the axiom is equal to the rejection of discussion), the idea of solipsism can be discussed! And as soon as the discussion begins, it is necessary to discuss the comparison of imaginary representations with material objective reality. Well, that's all, the very possibility of comparison and the “separate” term about “imaginability, illusory” immediately means that an unimaginable reality is allowed. And then it is necessary to refute the existence of objective reality – which is impossible.

    Solipsism is inherently contradictory, in any collective or divine form.

    1. Imagination is the essence of the desires and thoughts of the individual, but here's a surprise-the wishes of the solipsist do not come true )) I.e. imagination does not describe the whole reality – for example, you can not correct these words of mine in the text of my message.

    The Solipsist cannot remove any source of irritation from perception, which means that there is an unimaginable Material Reality and objective true ideas about it.

    1. You can safely bring the idea of a solipsist to completion and immediately see its absurdity. YES, solipsist, you're right! Yes, you are imaginary and illusory, and therefore all your arguments are imaginary absurdity.

    After all, the imaginary world can only be in one single instance, and of course in my mind and not in yours. There can only be one solipsist alive!

    So if the author of the question implies the possibility of arguments against materialism, then the author does not exist! After all, I exist, which means that the question and the author of the question are imaginary )) And by the way, I can refute it – and I do. And the author can't correct me in any way.

    PS-the idea of divine solipsism and a Brahmin who sleeps and creates all imaginary things-does not change the essence. The person who told ME about this is clearly illusory and inspired by my higher self )) Well, I can just think for myself, so goodbye imaginary solipsists, your arguments are insignificant.

    1. If you look narrowly at the mind-body problem, then the knowledge argument or the thought experiment “Mary's Room” is a very powerful antiphysicalist one.
      To put it succinctly: if we imagine a scientist-Mary-who knows everything about color, all the physical facts, all the behavioral facts, etc., but has never seen colors (because she has lived in a black-and-white room all her life), then when Mary first sees color – will she learn something new?
      If Mary gets new knowledge, namely “what it feels like” to see color, then it turns out that in our perception of color there is something fundamentally inaccessible to a third-person observer.
      Indeed, 7 billion people see colors, hear sounds, and feel pain, but there are no pain meters, for example. First-person perspective is a key feature of consciousness, and mystics, dualists, and near-solipsists cling to it.
    2. More radical anti-materialists believe that all that is available to us is a phenomenon of consciousness. The outside world can easily be a hallucination. Putnam's brain-in-a-flask thought experiment is a completely materialistic refutation of the” transparency of experience”, representationalism. Mystics, dualists, and near-solipsists attack materialism from this point of view: we are, but there are doubts about matter
    3. The very concept of matter is vulnerable. If by matter we mean only the physical: substance+field+physical vacuum, then a separate concept of matter is just a synonym, a duality. Mystics, dualists and near-solipsists can say that, they say, why not exist in addition to the substance-field-vacuum and something immaterial. And indeed, with a narrow definition of abstract=physical, it is impossible to insure against the existence of something that did not fall into the field of view of physicists. Russell's teapot won't help.
      Lenin, in his theory of reflection, defined matter as an objective reality, that is, independent of consciousness, given to us in sensations. Matter and idea exist only in conjunction: an idea is a reflection of matter in a part of matter, in the brain. A materialist, therefore, can say that there is only matter. This is a kind of slyness, because God and the soul, if they exist, are matter in relation to my consciousness. Therefore, mystics, dualists and near-solipsists can build a bastion here, putting forward unfalsifiable theories of the immaterial.

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