God most likely exists

Thanks Con, Preamble: In retrospect it might have been wiser to attack more points than my opponent’s dismissal of materialism & reducibility of mind to ‘physical stuff’, but I will stick to my guns for the remainder of this debate, first and foremost because holding this at least as an equally valid explanation invalidates my opponent’s argument for idealism, and secondly because this is my own position. Materialism/Idealism: The core assumption of materialism against idealism is that mind is necessarily reducible to physical brain states. I’d sooner add some word salad to Pro’s description of the mind, as it’s a result of the brain and the physical processes the brain undergoes (which themselves may be fully reducible but our science doesn’t go that far). It seems Pro does not accept this assertion, which is surprising since the core contention I originally thought was what the ‘stuff’ the brain is made of actually is. Is this stuff itself ‘mental stuff’ or ‘physical stuff’? Note that when I refer to ‘physical stuff’, I simply mean ‘non-mental stuff’, therefore any argument made by my opponent into burdening me with the problem of a priori or a posterori knowledge of the ‘stuff’ is irrelevant, I only need to demonstrate that asserting it is a mind is unsound. Free Will: I will be the first to say, if free will was demonstrated to be absolutely true then materialism would be false. Materialism directly implies that our decisions, emotions, and perceptions are purely physical manifestations, and while the brain It is true we ‘seem’ to experience free will, indeed we ‘seem’ to experience many things. Our mind is excellent at deceiving itself. For example, you are reading this text, think to yourself ‘how much of what I see is in focus?’. The truth is only a tiny fraction of your visual field is actually in focus, and the peripheral . Another example the blind spot we have in our eyes. It’s rather significant, roughly ten times the size of the full moon (!), but we never perceive this definitive hole in our vision. This of course doesn’t prove free will doesn’t exist, it does prove that Pro’s appeal to our intuition regarding the brain itself is a disaster waiting to happen, however. Furthermore we are quite capable of manipulating people’s emotions today with various neurostimulants (marijuana, cocaine, etc) which affect their decisions. This also doesn’t disprove free will, but it’s a direct prediction of what would be the case if it was not true, more than enough to hold this conclusion questionable. Materialism’s Explanatory Power: In materialism this has the direct prediction (and potential falsification) that anything that affects the physical nature of the interactions that occur within the brain, short circuiting, neurotics, damage, etc will inevitably have an effect on the perception of consciousness. Of course this holds absolutely true in the universe we currently live in. This of course does not falsify idealism as I already explained last round, but it does mean that materialism is a better, pragmatic, explanation. Arguments against Idealism: My opponent made the following concession: “ But who is to say that there is a necessary connection between brain and mind? He surely hasn’t shown this. In our world, yes, there is a connection between the two. “ Obviously I am not going to be able to conclusively show that various physical states that represent our exact ‘experiences’. A more compelling demonstration that our mental states are directly representable as physical states is in the following TED talk[3], with astonishing demonstrations that we can in principle, even see the images produced by the brain. What more of a demonstration would Pro require to show that mind is fully dependant of the brain? Pro’s Argument for God: Given that we have evidence demonstrating the mind’s dependence of matter, and the occum’s razor favoured explanation that mind is reducible to states of matter, we can conclude that materialism is a reasonable, self-contained explanation for reality. Our universe in the context of Pro’s Idealism (warning, possible strawman) however, from what I have presented above, if idealism is true then the best explanation favoured by occum’s razor is that human consciousness is manifest from the ‘mental matter’ our universe appears to be made of. And this ‘mental matter’ are the perceptions of Pro’s proposal god. This, plainly, requires an additional entity to materialism. The reason being I have already explained, the unperceived things we can assume to still exist in some form. The tree that falls in the forest when nobody is looking does make a sound. This seems to necessitate a ‘perceiver’, or God. Therefore Pro’s argument that reality is a mind becomes a necessary one to explain some stuff, and therefore becomes a required assumption. Logical Possibility/Conceivability/Metaphysical Possibility: This is the crux of the argument, is solipsism metaphysically possible or not? I have given a few examples of conceptions that are logically impossible, and possible truths that could be logically impossible. This alone dispels the notion that what is logically possible is not necessarily metaphysically possible, especially the ‘impossible shapes’ I have given. It is conceivable that logically impossible things could occur, therefore by Pro’s current line of reasoning that which is conceivable is metaphysically possible. However, it’s clear this line of argumentation isn’t even valid how it’s been presented so far, which appears to be as follows: Everything that is metaphysically possible is logically possible and conceivable 1. Sollopsism is logically possible 2. Sollopsism is conceivable C. Sollopsism is metaphysically possible. This however, obviously, is not a valid argument. ‘All Irishman are called Jim, Person A is called Jim, Jim is an irishman’ is also obviously invalid, as this Jim could be from somewhere other than Ireland, and I have already illustrated this with the Venn Diagram below. I see no reason to conclude that Pro demonsttrates what he's attmepting to demonstrate with hsi current line of reasoning.Attempted reducto ad absurdum: Let me attempt to represent/strawman the overview of my opponent’s fuzzy rabbit/tobacco argument argument. 1. Experiences/sensations cannot currently be described with physical terms 2. Physical things are describable in physical terms C. Experiences are not physical However, this argument is invalid, and requires premise 1 to map onto the following premise:1ii. Experiences/sensations are not describable with physical terms Which quite obviously, an argument ad ignorantum, and really says nothing more than ‘I cannot imagine how they could be described in physical terms, therefore it’s not physical’. That is not me asserting that itis physical (although I do hold that position). Let me give another example we have a better grasp on. The internet is an ever-flowing web of information, pictures, documents, movies etc are always in motion at any one time along the channels. What’s more, we actually know how much the ‘internet’ weighs. Since the internet is trivially reducable to the mass of elections and energy of photons within the system, we can calculate the internet weighs ~50 grams. Of course the internet is not conscious, but it’s probably our closest example to it, and therefore the physical representation of it should be taken seriously. ‘Same stuff’: I really don’t see what my opponent’s argument attempts to prove, as this seems to be a trivial reverse-fallacy of composition (the whole doesn’t necessarily need to be made of those specific parts), I presume this is some form of an explanatory gap argument. Conclusion: I hold that P2 is unsound, and doesn’t provide much explanatory power at all, in fact the explanatory power of materialism is much more in line with current observations, therefore we almost have a positive case for conclusing P2, and therefore the entire resolution false. Back to Pro for the final round! References: 1.) http://snowbrains.com... 2.) http://discovermagazine.com... 3.) http://www.ted.com...