Psience Quest

(2018-09-28, 08:07 PM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]Sounds like science to me.

Because you have an a priori commitment to that definition. We all already know that. That is not science.

(2018-09-28, 08:07 PM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]noun: physicalism

a doctrine associated with logical positivism and holding that every meaningful statement, other than the necessary statements of logic and mathematics, must refer directly or indirectly to observable properties of spatiotemporal things or events.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/doctrine

Quote:doctrine

NOUN

1. A belief or set of beliefs held and taught by a Church, political party, or other group.

‘the doctrine of predestination’

Again, from the same dictionary (Oxford Dictionaries online):

Quote:physicalism

NOUN
Philosophy 

The doctrine that the real world consists simply of the physical world.

I wonder - would it be worth improving the site by setting up a sub-forum devoted to semantics?

Considering the OP, I thought it might be worth mentioning that, according to my New Zealand version of Netflix, The Good Place season 3 has just started. Episode 1 is already online.

(2018-09-28, 08:07 PM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]Sounds like science to me.

No, science is a process not a doctrine!

EDIT:  I should have read Kamarlings post before posting this.  It makes the same point in a much better way!

Immaterialism is simply the term describing a variety of metaphysical positions that don't think "physicalism" or "materialism" can describe all of reality.

Usually - from what I've watched/read at least -  that means Consciousness is fundamental, though one could also say Information as fundamental would be immaterial.

That doesn't refer to an afterlife at all, nor God

Of course we don't really have clear accounts of what "matter" is...

The new season brings in Near Death Experiences...curious to see how deep into the field they'll go...

(2018-09-30, 12:35 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Immaterialism is simply the term describing a variety of metaphysical positions that don't think "physicalism" or "materialism" can describe all of reality.

Does that put an unfair burden on ‘materialism’ or ‘physicalism’? Can any metaphysical position describe all of reality?

And is anyone (outside of strict adherents to religious doctrine) subscribing to any position that isn’t open to new discovery?

(2018-09-30, 04:44 AM)malf Wrote: [ -> ]Does that put an unfair burden on ‘materialism’ or ‘physicalism’? Can any metaphysical position describe all of reality?

And is anyone (outside of strict adherents to religious doctrine) subscribing to any position that isn’t open to new discovery?

Well this gets into the whole "What use are metaphysical labels?" debate. I think it's useful to a point, but as in past discussion I know Max for example is more critical of the "isms"...I think both sides of this argument can raise good points.

For broad strokes it's somewhat useful (for me at least) to know whether someone is trying to describe a kind of Idealism, Physicalism, Platonism, etc...but it does get to a point where the distinctions become less clear. People who are Idealists sometimes seem to describe   Thought as a kind of substance, and similarly one can think of qualitative aspects like redness or the smell of chives as belonging to a physical but non-mechanistic material universe that is simply not fully measurable in a quantitative sense.

Re: whether there's an unfair burden I'd say Materialism/Physicalism taken a burden upon itself akin to that of other metaphysical positions like Panpsychism, Idealism, etc. For Idealism the burden is explaining how what we usually take to be matter arises from consciousness, for Materialism/Physicalism the burden is flipped.

Could any metaphysical position described all of reality? Probably Idealism could, if one is willing to accept that the differences between a lucid dream and physical reality aren't easily distinguished?

Re: New discoveries - well I don't know if metaphysical positions could necessarily be altered by new discoveries. The Idealist can always say a new discovery is made within our consciousness experience, the Materialist can say any new discovery extends the material world, etc. That said we can probably answer questions like "Is there an afterlife?" or "Is Psi real?" with some degree of satisfaction, but even an afterlife doesn't invalidate Materialism any more than Idealism would definitively mean survival of the Individual after death.

(2018-09-30, 07:16 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ] For Idealism the burden is explaining how what we usually take to be matter arises from consciousness, for Materialism/Physicalism the burden is flipped.

I'm not sure that idealists need to explain how matter "arises" from consciousness. I'd have thought that an idealist would say that matter is consciousness. Idealism is monistic.