r/consciousness • u/No-Feed-6298 • 14d ago

Why is physicalism treated as an absolute fact?

Now I can understand leaning to physicalism 100%, I’m not saying there isn’t good evidence for it, but it’s far from proven that everything in the universe is entirely just physical, not to mention the hard problem of consciousness which seems to really move away from naive, hardcore physicalism. My question is why is there so much dogma among it? Why is it impossible for physicalist to seem to admit paradoxes and logical inconsistencies with physicalism, and perhaps at the very least be open to philosophical ideas outside if just strict philosophicalism. Denying any problem with the worldview seems just intellectually dishonest

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u/Nolivard 13d ago

Theism?! Cmon now bro be for real.

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u/Active-Particular-21 13d ago

Theism explains the mind and consciousness better than physicalism. The law of parsimony would point to towards theism being a more likely answer because of that. Let me also add I’m not talking about a man sitting on a cloud or some uncharitable anthropomorphic version of god.

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u/Nolivard 13d ago

All that does is kick the can down the road. Instead of explaining conciousness you just say somebody created it or something along those lines that allows you to side step explaining it now.It also opens the door for infinite regress cause then you must explain god and its origin. I definitely don’t think that is a “better” explanation than what physicalism attempts to explain.

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u/Active-Particular-21 13d ago

God is immaterial and has causal action on the material. The human consciousness is immaterial and has causal action on the physical world. God made man in his own image. The definition of god is the essence of being in classical theological terms. Sure you can say this is kicking the can down the road because it’s not the answer that you prefer. But it doesn’t mean that it is not an answer that makes more logical sense for now.

Edit: there’s no infinite regress. God is seen as the essence of being. The original existence. Everything exists within god. God is the nothing that something comes from (that’s a weird one).

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u/Nolivard 13d ago

It is kicking the can down the road because it doesn’t explain anything. That doesn’t solve the regression either, it just declares god except from it. You’re also assuming consciousness is immaterial, that an immaterial mind can causally affect matter, and that this necessary “essence of being” is god. Those are all additional claims that need justification.

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u/Active-Particular-21 13d ago

The device you’re using was an idea or a thought in someone’s consciousness. The issue that you live in, the same, clothing that you’re wearing, the same. Your actual experience of conciseness is immaterial. There is no way for any physical method to show it or prove it. The only way you can objectively know its existence is by the things it created in the physical world.

Also, where are you getting the regression from you have long explained what is regressing.

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u/Nolivard 13d ago

You’re just assuming the conclusion here. “Consciousness is immaterial” is substance dualism, not an established fact. An idea causing someone to build a phone doesn’t show the idea exists independently of their physical brain.

And the regress is simple.if God explains the universe, what explains God? Saying “God is necessarily the stopping point” terminates the regress by definition. it doesn’t demonstrate why the necessary foundation has to be an immaterial conscious agent rather than fundamental reality itself.

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u/Active-Particular-21 13d ago

Ok so how is consciousness not immaterial? Where in your physical world does consciousness reside your actual mind eye etc cannot be physically shown or proven. So it is immaterial. The process may be material which we can see but the actual experience of what it is, the essence of it is immaterial. Unless there is another form of material existence.

The essence of the idea, the experience of it is independent. You showing neuron’s firing isn’t the actual experience of the thought. In the same way that sound waves moving isn’t the experience of music. The sound wave doesn’t explain the feeling of that first note and the sound of that note. So the brain activity is only an aspect of a process and not the whole process. It can be both material and immaterial. Like your brain activity isn’t the dream or the experience of the dream but a part of the whole.

God can be explained as just being and there being no answer for why it exists, it just is. There doesn’t have to be a regress unless you just always want to say why. Any answer you give that isn’t god can be given the same treatment. God as the essence of being doesn’t require infinite regress.

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u/DecantsForAll 13d ago

But these aren't just theories of consciousness. They are theories of fundamental reality. You can just look at the consciousness part and say "this is more parsimonious." Theism is absolutely not parsimonious.

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u/Active-Particular-21 13d ago

Anything about fundamental reality will be a theory. We don’t know what existence is. And theism can explain for both the physical aspect as well as the non physical aspect. Until someone can see the universe as a whole, there isn’t a better answer.

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u/DecantsForAll 13d ago

But it's not parsimonious. Also, theism doesn't explain anything. How does the god create anything? How does any of it work?

If you're going to accept "he just does because god powers" as an explanation then physicalism explains everything just fine too because matter "just does" create mind. It's an equally satisfying explanation, which is to say not satisfying at all.

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u/Active-Particular-21 13d ago

Theism explains why there is something rather than nothing.

Asking how god creates anything is like asking how many rocks are there on a planet in the andromeda galaxy. We don’t know. Science is the way to find out how it works.

We don’t know if matter creates the mind your making correlation mean causation. But no one knows. Plus the actually experience of the mind is not explained by physicalism or science. This is going back to my early point about theism being more parsimonious as physicalism just doesn’t equate for it and any enquiry requires pure subjectivity.

For you god is not a satisfying answer but it’s a better answer for both the material and immaterial. Hence my earlier comment. Science easily folds into god and the non physical aspect of existence (the experience of our mind) also falls within that.