The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #166053   Message #3991516
Posted By: Bill D
08-May-19 - 11:03 PM
Thread Name: BS: Bill D. do you have inroads with this?
Subject: RE: BS: Bill D. do you have inroads with this?
Ok,, I listened for awhile with CC on,,, and got an immediate sense of what was coming. In spite of the careful repetition of certain phrases about 'consciousness' being the base from which 'material' **emerges**, it seems evident (to me, anyway) that the basic philosophical approach is little different from the solipsism of David Hume and others.
   Starting with the phrase... almost a slogan... that "all knowledge begins with experience", they define their terms in such a way as to assume that (paraphrasing liberally) 'because none of the stuff we see has any meaning until our ~minds~ encounter it, if sort of follows that our minds are where it all exists.' From that, it is easy to make a sneaky jump, hidden in nomenclature, to 'minds are just part of some metaphysical uberMind. Couple THAT with the Creationist argument that 'because everything we know about has a chain of causes 'before it', it follows that minds and consciousness MUST be 'caused' by some *entity* beyond space & time... therefore...yep.. a Creator. Sometimes this chain of reasoning/(rationalization) is done, as in this video, with supposed scientific language.. and sometimes in simplistic terms to make it 'clear' to the hoi polloi.

   There are several bits of logical legerdemain operating here: one is that by giving a concept a name, it somehow confers reality. (After all, don't we KNOW what ghosts are, whether we really believe in them or not?)
The other is my favorite logical fallacy.. the Principle of Explosion... which doesn't try to tell you what is true, but only cautions that IF two or more conclusions are incompatible, at least one MUST be false, and that therefore at least one...usually more... premises must also be false. Humans seem to have the interesting ability to 'believe' several contradictory things at once. This makes it easier for 'certain types' to use our fallible logic to influence us to the advantage OF those certain types. (yeah... priests & politicians & insurance salesmen) they use this, often without really understanding exactly what they are doing.

My personal opinion is that the basic concept these folks are pushing is only a rhetorical device to put nomenclature around something that cannot in principle BE proven/decided. It is a belief...or set of beliefs. Some of us NEED to have answers, and it is obviously easier in many ways to just pick one that feels good than to be like the "dyslexic,agnostic, insomniac" and lie in bed all night wondering if there IS a Dog.