I did address the third complaint in my original post that was lost, but didn't feel like bothering to reply in my post take 2, because well, admittedly now, I didn't understand it quite the way you meant it, and on that fact, I thought it was not a point worth discussing.
Originally posted by LW Sleeth
But this statement, "Materialism produces consistency, and useful results. Nothing else does" is just plain wrong. You are doing just what I have complained about, studied only that which supports your belief system.
The correct statement would be, "no other investigative method produces useful results for understanding the material universe than empiricism." That you only find material processes useful is your thing, but to a lot of others inner contentment, happiness, wisdom mean more . . . to some of us, a hell of a lot more.
Materials, and understanding their physical laws, have contributed very little to my contentment, happiness, and wisdom, and I am pretty well off materially and understand the physical side of things better than most people. Now if all YOU value is materiality, and all YOU want is that, and all YOU pursue is matter, and all YOU study is how to understand, manipulate, and acquire it, then of course you might arrive at the conclusion that "Materialism produces consistency, and useful results. Nothing else does" because that's all you care about.
Perhaps you don't understand how my beliefs work. I don't deny happiness, I don't deny wisdom, or contentment...I do not deny the psychich phenomena (psychic as in psychological), in fact it is the first and foremost thing that I am/have. Everything that exists, after the fact of its existence, is experienced from the psychie. The psychie exists. Thats what I am. I am a psychological phenomenon. So are 'you' and so is zero. The difference between me and al of the idealists out there though, is the fact that I am like galileo and they are like the church. Where they could only see the universe from the perspective of the earth, and so claimed that it must have been the center, Galileo saw that perspective does not dictate fact. Just because our perspective is a psychic perspective does not mean that psychic is all there is, nor that psychie is the origin of the universe. Instead, we have to look outside our perspective and understand that the universe exists without us, exists in its own right, and it is because of its existence that this psychological phenomena may have come about.
There is a good chance that we will never be able to figure out how Objective facts are translated into experiences, but I'll guarantee that we will be able to figure out how Objective facts of the brain etc, are correlated to the mental phenomenon. And as such, we will be able to control many aspects of experience, life, and all the rest.
It's not because I say that "Material*" is
all that exists, but more importantly: Material* is all that exists in an absolute sense, which gives rise to all of these phenomenon which make life rich and interesting. I don't deny the phenomenon, but instead accept, and explain them. Idealists and various other philosophies just accept them and claim higher idealic ground for those phenomenon, claiming they are 'special' and can never be explained. How arrogant. To think that an experience of a human is above the objective nature of everything else in the universe.
(* Where material is expressing of the existence understood by the philosophical definition of Materialism)
But to project your personal tastes and preferences onto the entire universe, and then suggest to those who want something more that there is nothing more and therefore materialist philosophy is suited best for everyone, well . . .
Materialism is
Precisely the opposite of projecting personal tastes and preferences. It is the absolute removal of personal tastes and preferences (well, the attempt to, as best we can), and the expressing of what is left over. And then, it is claimed that this is how the universe IS, whether people like it or not. Materialism isn't about what people like, or what they want to believe, or what sounds good, or nice, or pleasant. It is about how things
ARE. It isn't about telling you how u are supposed to experience it, or how you are supposed to reach contentment or anything like that. It is only about objective description of how things are.
I think this is vitally important to know if you are ever going to meaningfully decide what you 'should' do. For without a solid understanding of how things are, your decision of should starts from something unknown, and so you have no standard on which to judge it.
I know for a fact there is something more. Thirty years of meditation has not been to torture myself, but because it has been so rewarding to do so. You can sit on the sidelines, having never practiced to that extent, and pooh pooh it, call it narcissistic, say it reveals nothing (because, after all, there is nothing more is there?), but in the end you really don't know what such a dedicated inner effort reveals do you?
I like meditation. I believe mediation is a great thing to use to access your mind, to calm the noise that accumulates in your mind, a great way to let you rmind sort itself out etc... I have nothing but praise for meditation. But that doesn't change the fact that I can look at meditation from both a subjective and a materialistic point of view. In fact, being able to look at it from both points of view, in my opinion, gives me a greater understanding of it than someone who says simply: Oh, its something from within the mind, and that makes it special.
Here's a bit of an analogy for you. In biology there are phenotypes and genotypes. We have always dealt with phenotypes in the past (because they are obvious), and throuhg phenotypes much has been speculated, including evolutionary relatedness etc. Now that we have Molecular Biology technology, we can sequence the Genome,we can comment on the genome relatedness, we can look at individual gene relatedness etc. We are now able to do both phenotypic analysis and genotypic analysis. And for this fact, we are in a better position to claim understanding. The genotypic level is a much better level to use (Because of its digital nature, the definant yes no aspect of it, and the definate logical connections made between it and phenotype), but that doesn't stop the phenotype level from existing.
So too with the objective universe and the subjective experience of that universe. Just because we are starting to understand the objective, doesn't mean we deny the subjective, it just means we are starting to understand the cause of the subjective.
You could study the Buddha in depth or Meister Eckhart, or Rumi, or Kabir, or Teresa, or the Baal Shem Tov, or Nanak, or Joshu, or the Desert Fathers, or the early Greek Orthodox monastics . . . and then you might actually gain just an inkling of what they'd managed to learn to experience after many years of dedicated practice.
But no, you won't do that. Yet you and the rest of the self-assured materialists still have no qualms about stating in a public forum, in front of the entire world, that ""Materialism produces consistency, and useful results. Nothing else does."
I renew my complaint about half-assed educations.
I won't go study Bhudda etc, not because of materialism, but because I simply have other things to do with my time which I believe are more important. I really don't appreciate the way you have assumed so much about 'Us materialists' based on your straw man cariacture of materialsm.
I stand by my claim that Materialism produces consistency and useful results. I will take back the 'And nothing else does' part, because I do accept that having someone internally content is important, and 'useful' for various reasons. But having someone internally (psychologically) content/happy/wise, is of little impact on the objective reality of the universe. And that is all materialism is really concerned with. The truth.
. But I do have an immediate response which for the time being, for me, is good enough.
I did not say one stares at one's navel.
