Noax wrote: unless it is not your mind producing your posts, which would explain their content a bit more...
Ah yes...my old friend the
ad hominem. I wondered how long it would be until that came out...
Give it a try. An immaterial consciousness is the source of your opinion, and is the origin of your physical posts in this thread.
That, plus your subsequent disclaimers, is what you came up with? I was pretty sure you didn't know.
You're asserting that a materialist must assign properties like mass to an idea. So you're retracting that now?
Now you reword it, and drop "object"? Who's misrepresenting views now?
Do I retract the idea that Materialists must assign some sort of material property to ideas? No, not a bit. It's true. It's absolutely what their view requires.
I categorically did not. You're mistaking me for someone else. Go back and look, if you doubt it.
Ambiguous grammar. Sorry. I took the comment for brain tasks.
Apology accepted. No problem: it can happen.
But repeated negative when searching for an unknown thing is also growing evidence of nonexistence.
Yes, it is at least an indicator of the probability of the hypothesis in question. It may not be capable of closing the books, but if a repeated and diligent search in all plausible locations and situations has been made for an entity, and no one has discovered said entity, then we can induce a case for its non-existence...at least until additional evidence comes in.
And that's what people generally do.
Naturalism is the first thing such a procedure rules out.
No, it does not rule it out. It proceeds with the assumption of supernatural causes and effects, but does not assert them any more than methodological naturalism asserts naturalism.
Well, that's just not true. Naturalism is not a methodology but a dogma. But this is distinct from using such an ideology as a methodological strategy or an heuristic device. Even an ardent Theist could, for example, temporarily adopt a methodological Atheism without conceding one bit that Atheism was true. He could do it, for example, to better articulate his opponents' views, so as to understand their flaws.
But Naturalism
itself is the attitude that precedes a person adopting any methodology at all.
In a way, it is a conflict you cannot win. If a supernatural cause of our behavior is ever demonstrated, the cause will cease to be supernatural. It becomes part of the full natural description of the universe. It gets relegated to 'more physics'.
Not so.
Perhaps you misunderstand what "demonstration" entails. You're talking again like a "demonstration" closes the book on a question, rather than, say, providing plausibility to a theory. You forget that human knowing is merely
probabilistic. In other words, physics only tells us what we are wise to
expect to happen,
all things being equal and no unforeseen circumstances intervening. But what happens if those latter conditions for some reason to not apply, even physics cannot tell us in advance.
For example, physics might give us the formula to know when a bridge will collapse as a result of the deterioration of old age -- metal fatigue, thermal flex, salt damage, and so on -- if we have all the variables. But physics can't tells that three years before that a flood will sweep the bridge away. Even physics has to have all the right variables in hand, or it is only guess-making.
Though physics looks the closest in form to pure mathematics, unlike maths it does not provide certain proof, nor does it deliver absolute truth; the world is an uncertain place for us. Physics is empirical, not a closed system. So we have to decide how to interpret what it tells us, and decide what we should believe.
In that respect, perhaps it's a bit like faith.
Were physics absolute, perhaps you could make such a case. As it is, you cannot make that plausibly.
