this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2025
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Nah, not going to waste my time entertaining justifications for belief in the unprovable. I already told you, I'm not here to debate like a Reddit atheist, I just wanted to address your absurd strawman in the beginning. Thoughts are products of the brain, not of some idealist "soul" or other analogue. Matter is objective, measurable, and knowable, through scientific analysis and repeated testing. It isn't subjective.
No, lol. The ideas of people like Kastrup and Hoffman rely on consciousness being distinct from matter, and not a product of matter. Brainwaves are measurable, as biology advances we understand the electrical signals and chemicals forming perception. Further, matter is measurable and consistent, many humans can measure the same rock's mass in isolation from each other and get the same result without knowing the mass or the results beforehand.
What you're doing is deliberately holding onto idealism as the basis for justifying what you personally wish to be true. Idealism always returns, in some fashion, to religion, as explanation. It's a further abstraction from science and replicatable results in favor of subjectivism and vibes.
You're having a bit of a meltdown now because you can't actually argue against science. You have a hypothesis, and reject anything going against that on the basis of your hypothesis resting on the immeasurable and immaterial.
Yes. Good. You got it. Now definitively prove that consciousness arises from matter and not the other way around. No, brainwave scans exist in consciousness. Everything you say exists in consciousness. Prove to yourself that ANYTHING exists outside your consciousness, prior to thought (as thought is only a reflection of what is, like an image in a mirror but it's not the thing itself).
Else, you are just insisting that your beliefs are the correct ones without proof. All I need to prove consciousness is be. You're the one insisting on extra steps. You're just taking materialism as a fact because that's what you're used to doing. You put the block of materialism at the bottom and use the blocks you put on it to try to prove it. This is called circular reasoning.
This is circular reasoning on your part, equivalent to positing that I'm not real simply because you are not me. Consciousness is a material, measurable process, that increasingly is better understood the more science advances. It isn't that I require no proof, it's that materialism is the best method for understanding, and the more science advances, the more it affirms the materialist understanding. You flip this on its head, affirming that even if materialism is the better method for understanding the world and is increasingly affirmed while idealism remains stagnant and increasingly disaffirmed, you prefer it to be true so you hold to it.
Again, prove it. It is YOUR system of thought which requires that every claim must be backed with objective proof. Where is the objective proof of matter? All the rest you're saying hingest upon that being a fact. But if you can't prove it as a fact, all you have is an unverified belief that you insist everyone else should have. Which, again, makes you exactly the same as any other oppressor. In your own system of thought. And before you parade some scientists in front of me, ask yourself if you can know that they know what they are talking about, or do you just believe them because they share the same core belief system as you?
This is getting very, very silly. You're rejecting any and all proof of matter despite the continuous and replicatable proof of the same experiments resulting in the same results, across double-blind testing and more, of matter behaving in the same way regardless of who is percieving it.
Because all your proof hinges on matter being real and prior.
And since we require perception to say anything about matter, what does that say about which comes first, matter or consciousness?
Matter comes first, because consciousness is represented through brainwaves, electrochemical signals, and stimuli from material perception ๐
For someone harping about science, you certainly fall for logical fallacies a lot. You keep pointing at the extracted brain, textbook appeal to the stone.
You are pointing to contents of consciousness to try to prove matter comes prior.
Maybe take the hint that you don't understand the argument (and aren't willing to try) and thus aren't really equipped for this conversation.
This is reddit-tier reverse-atheism, lol. Matter comes prior to consciousness because the brain is a physical organ responding to stimuli as reflected from the material world, a phenomenon further affirmed by the same results happening even from people completely unaware of the other. I think you need to settle down, maybe relax a bit, rather than acting so condescending baselessly.
Nah, you came in here declaring materialism to be tyrannical, when historically it has been idealism used by monarchists, fascists, and liberals to exploit the people while materialism has been liberatory, and used in service of working class liberation.
Wow. You really actually believe that? You actually equate non-dual ideology which necessarily posits a non-hierarchial ultimate reality without absolute good and evil with the bullshit of theistic religions?
Damn I have seen the memes about Marxists thinking they're way smarter than they are but I thought they were exaggerating.
I don't equate it, but it's in the same family. I don't really care how you spin it, dialectical materialism is the liberating philosophy of the proletariat, and any attempt to spin it as "the ultimate tyranny" is just vibes and nonsense.