Is Materialism based on faith?

[jacobin1949]

Hegel argues that Materialism is just a crude idealism. In that there is no objective way to know of the object other than through your senses. By assuming that the material object is exactly as expressed by your senses you are putting faith in something you have no proof of.

Would someone care to refute the sceptical Empiricist argument?

[apathy maybe]

In that there is no objective way to know of the object other than through your senses. By assuming that the material object is exactly as expressed by your senses you are putting faith in something you have no proof of.
Well, actually it is true.

Psychologists have show through a number of studies that people often see things that aren't there, and don't see things that are there.

Your perceptions are biased because of a number of things. Your cultural upbringing will have a big impact on how you perceive things for example.

Anyway, I suggest going and talking to a psychologist, or doing a course in psychology, rather then asking a philosopher about this subject. The field of study for philosophers gets gradually smaller as science comes up with real answers for their questions (sometimes though, the philosophers don't pay any attention).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Jacobin, not wonder you end up in confusion; if you will pay attention to a ruling-class hack like Hegel, you deserve everything you get.

The solution is to look at the language you use, the meanings of which words are all socially-conditioned. In that case, neither Hegel nor you can use words any which way you like.

Now, knowledge claims are typically propositional, they are not sense-orientated.

You can see this if you consider a very simple example. You look in the garden and see a Robin. But, what sense impression can you appeal to that tells you it's a Robin?

None at all; if you reported "I sense a Robin" that would not be the same as "I see a Robin". If you came out with the former, people would think you mad, or linguistsic incompetent.

The fact is, you were taught what to say in certain circumstances, just as you were taught what our words mean -- and your senses were educated accordingly.

In this way, your knowledge is socially-orientated, not individualistically created.

So, it is not a case of refuting this crude view, but of showing that it is based only on a crass misuse of language (and, of course, on bourgeois individualism).

In that case, do yourself a huge favour: throw the Hegel away -- despite what he says, he was a bourgeois individualist, too --, and a confused one at that.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

AM:



Psychologists have show through a number of studies that people often see things that aren't there, and don't see things that are there.



And how do you know that these psychologists are not 'seeing things' too?

The fact that they are 'trained' cannot break them out of the solipsistic hole into which you have dumped knowledge.

On your view, these psychologists would merely be trained fantasists, as opposed to us rank amateurs.

[So my earlier challenge to you was apt; you are here reporting objectively that objectivity does not exist. You are in the same quandary that Lenin was in which I illustrated in that notorious thread on Santa Claus: lost in a world of sensations, but all the while trying to pretend that the rest of us are not just sensations/impressions 'in your mind' -- or you would here simply be talking to yourself...]

[Volderbeek]

Hegel argues that Materialism is just a crude idealism. In that there is no objective way to know of the object other than through your senses. By assuming that the material object is exactly as expressed by your senses you are putting faith in something you have no proof of.

Would someone care to refute the sceptical Empiricist argument?

It could be argued also that idealism is just a crude form of materialism in that one can't know of something without material existence. As I've argued before, we need to move past this foolish dualism of idealism and materialism.

About the faith thing: we can test our sense of things against other people's senses as well as measuring instruments, so it's not like we have no evidence of an external world.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

V:


About the faith thing: we can test our sense of things against other people's senses as well as measuring instruments, so it's not like we have no evidence of an external world.

But how can you break out of the little solipsistic/Hegelian world you occupy? How can you 'test' anyone else's senses? All you can do is register sense impressions of something-you-know-not-what, given this way of seeing things.

[Volderbeek]

But how can you break out of the little solipsistic/Hegelian world you occupy?

And what "solipsistic world" would that be?


How can you 'test' anyone else's senses?I don't mean to test their senses, but to compare yours with theirs (or at least their account of them).


All you can do is register sense impressions of something-you-know-not-what, given this way of seeing things.What? :confused:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

V:


And what "solipsistic world" would that be?

The one that your traditional view of 'knowledge' has dropped you in.



I don't mean to test their senses, but to compare yours with theirs (or at least their account of them).



But, on this traditional view, all you have access to are your senses of something you might want to call their senses, but for all you know it could just be your 'subjective' view of the impressions your 'mind' is processing, and nothing more.

On this view, you can't break out of this prison.


What?

Precisely!

[LSD]

Solipsism is logically irrefutable, but it's also irrelevent, since if it's fact, you don't exist and hence cannot hold an opinion on anything whatsoever.

When you reject the foundational basis of materialism, you basically get into psychology, because if you're doubting that what you see and hear is real, then it is the nature of those mental experiences which must be examined.

There is no doubt that the human perception of the material world is a filtered one, but since we're all equiped with functionaly identical apparatus, all of our data is filtered in about the same way. So even though we may not be getting a complete picture of the universe, at least we have an contextualy objective base on which to work

You either accept the world as it appears to be, or you don't. But if you don't, you have no argument to disprove the notion that I am in fact an enormous oak tree that has just invaded Lithuania and plans to sprout roots into Moldova. That's the nonsense "solipsistic world" to which Rosa refers.

[Winter]

I don't put "faith" in believing the world and what I experience is real. I just naturally accept things as they are. Sure, there's always the question of "is green really green or do humans see it as green?" But in order to function we got to take things as they are to us.

I would argue that faith is something that has to be consciously applied. Like, you don't unconsciously have faith in Jesus just as you wouldn't unconsciously have faith in reality. You just work with what you have.