Are you a materialist or a dualist?

[Mole]

Sin and Redemption - Pygmalion and Galatea

There are a number of sins you can commit with metaphors and one of them is literalism.

To take a metaphor literally is a sin - but worse it leads into absurdity.

And we have caught a sinner in the full flush of her sin - taking the soul literally.

But why should we be surprised?

MBTI commits exactly the same sin - MBTI takes the personality literally.

MBTI is based on the sin of literalism.

And the wages of sin are that you will be turned to stone.

And this is precisely what MBTI does, it takes the personality literally - it treats the personality as as thing - it turns the personality to stone.

MBTI reifies the personality.

But just as Pygmalion brought his statue, Galatea, to life by falling in love with her, we can bring our personalities to life by falling in love with one another.

 

[reason]

I'd like to what you all think on the subject and where you stand.

I am neither a materialist nor dualist.

 

[booyalab]

I am neither a materialist nor dualist.

same.


and I can't stand when people view the history of philosophy as an assortment at a candy shop. It is not there for you to pick one, it's there to understand the history of philosophy.

Do you prefer the abacus or the sundial?

 

[Mole]

same.


and I can't stand when people view the history of philosophy as an assortment at a candy shop. It is not there for you to pick one, it's there to understand the history of philosophy.

Don't be silly! Philosophy is a candy shop.

Half the fun is buying an irresistible piece of candy, slowly eating it and digesting it. Then becoming disillusioned and moving onto the next piece of candy.

There is nothing to understand in philosophy - only illusion and disillusion.

Those who sell understanding in philosophy are not doing the dance of philosophy - they are simply gurus looking for their sannyasins.

MBTI is the perfect example - the guru Jung has found his disciples here.

Don't think for a moment Jung was a philosopher - he was a fascist guru and here are his followers.

Philosophers don't need followers because they teach you to think for yourself - as each idea is a piece of candy to put to sleep the watchdog of your mind.

 

[Kyrielle]

Philosophers don't need followers because they teach you to think for yourself - as each idea is a piece of candy to put to sleep the watchdog of your mind.

I find that thought unusually profound. Thank you.

For the purposes of the thread:

I think I recognise my thoughts most in neutral monism, but it's not quite how I would describe my thoughts. But it is closeish.

 

[ajblaise]

I am neither a materialist nor dualist.

same.


and I can't stand when people view the history of philosophy as an assortment at a candy shop. It is not there for you to pick one, it's there to understand the history of philosophy.

Do you prefer the abacus or the sundial?

Maybe one of you two could explain how you are neither? Do you simply have no opinion on the issue?

Say something! Use words.

 

[Venom]

Long story short: as a Catholic, I cant be a materialist since it denies the metaphysical(or at least the value of it). Dualism, at least as you explained it, seems to assume a contarian relation between the material and the immaterial. I don't agree with that.

i dont mean this in a mocking way:

so do you like believe in goditrons?

I would think that anyone who believes in souls would have to be a dualist by definition (unless they believed souls were collection of some unknown particles)

I am neither a materialist nor dualist.

Im not sure where the false dichotomy lies. What other option is there? it seems that there would be two options:

1. material world and nothing else
2. material world and magic

(im aware that I may be blatantly applying my own paraphrasing and may be distorting the true definitions)

unless you're just claiming agnosticism on the subject?

 

[Eileen]

I'm basically a materialist. That's why literal belief in god and souls is tough for me.

 

[Mole]

I'm basically a materialist. That's why literal belief in god and souls is tough for me.

A literal belief in god and the soul are tough for anyone not in a trance where the critical faculty is asleep.

However with the critical faculty asleep, it is possible to believe in anything. And the proof is that people do believe in anything.

Rather, it is that god and the soul are metaphors, so they are neither material nor literally true.

Except in a deep religious trance where the critical faculty and the sense of reality, are turned off.

So you might say that deep religious belief is actually the suspension of disbelief.

And belief and disbelief play off each other in the real world.

Belief and disbelief are engaged in a delicate dance.

Just as the believers and the unbelievers are dancing with one another in print on this page in front of us.

God bless their cotton socks.

 

[Venom]

A literal belief in god and the soul are tough for anyone not in a trance where the critical faculty is asleep.

However with the critical faculty asleep, it is possible to believe in anything. And the proof is that people do believe in anything.

Rather, it is that god and the soul are metaphors, so they are neither material nor literally true.

Except in a deep religious trance where the critical faculty and the sense of reality, are turned off.

So you might say that deep religious belief is actually the suspension of disbelief.

And belief and disbelief play off each other in the real world.

Belief and disbelief are engaged in a delicate dance.

Just as the believers and the unbelievers are dancing with one another in print on this page in front of us.

God bless their cotton socks.

to relate it back to MBTI... an INFJ trance?
looking back on my one year stint in fundamentalist christiandom, it had a very Fe feel to it, and I can only assume that all of this writing came from some Ni trance 1000's of years ago...





edit: ok I now see the false dichotomy

the opposite of dualism is monism. Monism does not necessarily equal materialism:

Monism in philosophy can be defined according to three kinds:

1. Idealism, phenomenalism, or mentalistic monism which holds that only mind is real.
2. Neutral monism, which holds that both the mental and the physical can be reduced to some sort of third substance, or energy.
3. Physicalism or materialism, which holds that only the physical is real, and that the mental can be reduced to the physical.

the correct dichotomies would be:
-monism and dualism (which still wouldn't be a perfect dichotomy, due to various versions)
-materialism and idealism

 

[Llewellyn]

Dualism

 

[Mole]

I'm a dualist simply because we perceive by making distinctions. And as a distinction always has two sides, a distinction is dual by nature.

And as we cannot see what we cannot perceive, all we can see is the dual world.

However here is the kicker - we can only see one side of a distinction at a time. So we appear to be looking at a mono world, when in fact we are seeing a dual world. And this leads to all the classic paradoxes of perception.

And then there is the after kick - dualism is politically incorrect, so the bien pensant say they are not dualists for social reasons.

So dualism gets a bad press. First because it is counter-intuitive and second because it is politically incorrect.

 

[ygolo]

I'm a dualist.

I think the mind is "software," while the brain/body is hardware.

Software needs a physical manifestation to exist, but it is not the manifestation itself. As long as there is no corruption, the same software can be on a CD or you hard-drive (two different physical manifestations).

Right now, brains/bodies contain the only physical manifestations of minds. However, I believe there will come a time when another physical manifestation is possible.

 

[Tamske]

I have a strong, but quite complicated opinion about this.

There are two things. Matter (or energy) and information (or entropy).

You could see a soul/mind as information. My brain is more than a random collection of neurons firing. They are firing in a structured way.

But. The mind/soul/information/entropy is NOT that spiritual, ideal thing unaccessible by science, like the dualists say. It follows the laws of nature, just like ordinary matter. Read "The selfish gene" and "The god delusion" of R. Dawkins.

When I die, that bunch of neurons will decay, entropy will rise and my soul/mind will be no more.

A really dualistic standpoint would have a mind/soul independent from a body. There are these stories of the soul travelling when you are dreaming; or of souls switching bodies; or... Nice stories, but not true. You can't separate the information (eg. mind) from the carrier (brain) - information is the way the carrier is built.

Of course, information can be copied along carriers. In this way, information can live a longer life than the carrier. I'm doing this right now. I'm copying my opinion about materialism and dualism onto the carrier called typologycentral. Some of the copies (probably not this one) will live longer than I do.

Another dualistic standpoint says the soul/mind is eternal and matter is temporary. Not true. It's the matter that stays. The electrons firing in my head right now would be still there. But the information is changing all the time: I'm learning and that changes my mind; my post on typologycentral (that snippet of information I'm trying to spread) will get mixed up with other opinions, interpreted, rejected, copied into another brain with copying errors,...

I voted for Materialism, because ultimately, matter and structure of matter are the same.

 

[Tiltyred]

I'm a Duelist. Pistols at dawn!

 

[Oberon]

My interest in materialist philosophy ended with my researches into what we think we know about the precise nature of electromagnetic waves.

Matter just doesn't explain everything, not even in physical terms.

 

[Shimmy]

I believe in both. We have our own subjective interpretation of everything. However, matter is responsible for at least a part of our subjective interpretations. The way the neurons in our brain work can in theory account for the concept of subjectivity, making it truly materialistic. On the other hand, we haven't yet observed the full process, the way the brain works is largely unexplained and even most of the theories tend to fail explaining everything. More so, modern day scientifical concepts like multiple dimensions, quantum superposition and the uncertainty principle state that it will be incredibly hard, if not impossible, to observe the basic processes of the universe. If this is the case it is impossible to establish whether the world is materialistic or dual, but to our consciousness it will therefore be dual.

 

[evilrobot]

Matter is mostly empty space between subatomic particles with Alice-in-Wonderland properties that can’t be separated from the observer. So what exactly does a materialist believe in?

 

[Tamske]

Space + Time + Matter = Universe.

Our perception spreads them into differences. But you can turn space into time, time into matter,... One does not exist without the other. There is one universal entity which can present itself as space, time, matter and any combination of these.

 

[Fluffywolf]

Materialist, believing that dualism can exist in waves and/or particles we simple can't register at this time.

So basicly, I'm a materialist admitting we don't know everything.