God most likely exists

Foreword: I am most grateful to Con for a most stimulating debate. Regarding the debate itself, I realize I perhaps should have maintained more objections and points, but I believe I have hit the jugular on the core ones. I will summarize these points and keep my round concise and powerful so not to distract from these main issues. Final round debate format: I’m aware my arguments are going to tread on the fine line between ‘introducing new rebuttals’ and ‘re-enforcing existing rebuttals’, I’m pretty sure what will follow is acceptable given Pro’s presentation in the last round, but just noted I am aware of this grey area. God: My opponent’s argument for reality must have been caused by a mind/is a mind I had already addressed in the first round, the additional premise “P1: Whatever is mental is either (i) a mind or (ii) caused by a mind.” was countered with by the CPU analogy, where the overall mind is physical and causing a pseudo-idealistic reality. My opponent attempted to rebut this with the fact that the CPU cannot interact with the minds, this is true only if materialism is false, which is the point the argument was attempting to make, even under the all the assumptions Pro gives, it doesn’t equate to arguing for god. It only argues that everything is ‘mind-stuff’. Even under the assumption everything is mind-stuff, this same stuff need not arise from an immaterial overall mind. So my original point on this stands as Pro has not demonstrated P1, and therefore his entire conclusion even if P2 is true. Mind-Brain Separation: Pro is quite set on the mind & brain being two different entities. The issue as I pointed out is this doesn’t explain anything at all, it just sets the problem as most easily seen and leaves it at that. I have argued that we see very strong evidence of the type of relationship between mind & brain we would expect if the mind were just a physical state of the brain. It is true that it does not rule out a separate mind & brain, but it is a specific prediction of what you would expect if the mind & brain were the same thing. We have physical damage, drugs, mental imaging which I had already mentioned as well as large complex networked systems such as the internet, which carry images text etc. which experiences similar philosophical problems as we have when talking about consciousness. It is possible to ‘weigh’ what makes the images, text etc. on the internet in practice once we understand intricately what physical process give rise to the ‘immaterial’ ideas on it, there is no reason to think this cannot be the case with consciousness. It is true it’s not absolute proof that mind and brain are the same thing, but it is most elegantly, simply and pragmatically solved by making this (justified) assumption. This appears to be the point Pro is raising with the Bunny & Chew thought experiment, however the flaw is the ‘point of view’, introspection and ‘extrospection’ are unsurprisingly going to lead to different views on the same thing. The inside of your house is different to what’s outside. Therefore Pro needed to demonstrate that we really are looking at different things and that this ‘point of view’ issue is not a factor [1]. My beef with Idealism: You will have noticed my saying multiple times throughout this debate that ‘it does not disprove/falsify idealism’. That is because - it can explain virtually anything one can throw at it, one can always add an assumption to explain an observation, in this case Pro adds an assumption of a ‘link’ between brain & mind, with no reference as to what this link is nor how we would expect it to behave to test it. This additional assumption is susceptible to Occum’s Razor as I have already argued. Free Will & Reality Perception: Once again I do not entertain the notions of ‘it seems like we have it, so we have it’. Pro needs to do much more than this to satisfy the positive burden of proof he has to demonstrate we have genuine free will, which I assert he has not done so this debate. Appeals to intuition especially when regarding consciousness are a sure-fire way to get the answers wrong. Pro drops my points regarding optical illusions & the blind spot, which are very real indications of our brain perceiving reality as opposed to all of reality and our own consciousness being part of a grand mind. I can only assume additional assumptions are required to explain these observations in the light of idealism, why should colours be different when surrounded by a pseudo-shadow? Once again these observations are readily explained by a materialistic mind, but not as easily explained by an idealistic one. Moreover it really does call what conclusions we can make from what ‘seems obvious’ from introspection (such as free will) into question. Ironically enough, disproving free will still does not disprove idealism, as the idealist can just assume a ‘materialistic world’ in a grand mind (which is an extra assumption), but the lack of is as I’ve argued on several points, much better explained by a materialistic one. There are good reasons to think this is the case, as I already argued, such as emotions triggered by drugs which affect our ‘free will’ or choices. Pro summarises my argument on the ‘connection’ between mind & brain: P1: IF mind is matter, THEN there would be an intimate relationship between the two. P2: There is an intimate relationship between the two C: Mind is matter. The argument is deductively invalid, yes, it is inductively valid however. And is a better explanation than my opponent’s idealism proposal, which seems to explain anything given the right assumption. Pro makes the argument regarding ‘decoding’ visual refutes itself as evidence for a synonymous brain/mind, I don’t see how this argument leads to this conclusion, and seems to fall under the ‘introspection/extrospection’ issue I highlighted in this round. Occam's Razor: One can go through this debate and look at the assumptiosn that must be made for each view of consciousness to work and be true. Materialism makes the assumption of there being brute ‘stuff’ (material) and the reducability of consciousness to non-conciousness, and I have justified this assumption with a number of arguments. In idealism two assumptions need be made, first that all ‘stuff’ is a perception of a mind and secondly that there is a ‘link’ between the brain & the mind. Pro has given no reason to accept #2 and #1 is a more complicated assumption than material being a brute fact. Therefore it seems materialism wins on the basis of assumptions Moreover this grand mind Pro has asserted last round is disembodied, yet we have zero examples of any disembodied minds existing in reality as we have seen thus far, which seems to be another assumption. Solipsism: I never did drop my point on the Goldberg’s conjecture, and the argument made against it seemed to be irrelevant. I only demonstrated that the Goldberg’s conjecture is a logical possibility, and might be metaphysically possible, this point stands on it’s own. The bigger point, that sollopsism seems to be a logical possibility and not necessarily a metaphysical possibility is what I was holding in contention. It is true you can analyse the properties of mind & matter to get a logical solution, but everything up to this point I have argued otherwise. Therefore the rebuttal against whether or not sollopsism is metaphysically possible stands. My opponent has dropped my point on my very simple “All Irishman are called Jim, Person A is called Jim, Jim is an Irishman” rebuttal to this, and I have given a number of examples of conceivable, yet logically impossible objects in my first round, which reinforces this statement. Simply stating it is conceivable and logically consistent is not enough to justify metaphysical possibility and my opponent has done nothing to address this critical point further beyond restating his original contentions regarding it. Which is what my opponent has done last round. “So if something can exist coherently in your intellect, it must be metaphysically possible.” This connection, the axiom S5 is one my opponent needs to demonstrate. Unfortunately I cannot give any positive anti-arguments against this now but the unfulfilment of the BoP on this part is sufficient to rebut this point. Conclusion: As I have argued, materialism makes fewer simpler, much more testable and more reasonable assumptions than idealism does. Moreover I have demonstrated that idealism is more of a theory of ‘anything’ than a theory of everything and have demonstrated that the solipsism argument against materialism rests on unsound assumptions. Therefore, the resolution is negated, vote Con! Final Words: Once again I greatfully appreciate Pro putting in the time and effort and agreeing to this most interesting debate. I look forward to debating him again in future, now I leave this debate in the hands of the voters, best of luck! References: [1] It appears this argument is a new argument (albeit using the same ‘props’) of Pro’s in the final round, so I think this new rebuttal is justified given the circumstance.