The Good Place

 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.

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?

I don't think the burden is meant to be any different than that for "materialism". That is, "materialism" is simply the term describing a variety of metaphysical positions that don't think "immaterialism" can describe all of reality. As I mentioned to Steve001 earlier, "immaterialism" is not used as "not materialism".

The burden which does seem to preferentially be placed on "materialism" and "physicalism" is that they can't be open to new discoveries which substantially contradict our naive intuitions about what we think of as "matter" or "physical". But this has already become demonstrably false, since QM substantially contradicts our naive intuitions about "matter" or "physical", yet QM is still physics (which would mean that it's part of "physicalism"). It doesn't mean that this fallacy doesn't get trotted out with regularity by anti-materialists, though.

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

I'll bet a trailer load of avocados that there's a sequence in an operating room with a dramatic close up of the overhead surgical lights. As all good sceptics know, a patient in distress, slightly anesthetised for the pain, can easily mistake "that" for the "light"....it stands to reason, doesn't it ?

Funny how it didn't occur with our dear friend Smithy, then.

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.

Holy cow! I mean that with approval.

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.

True - I was thinking of "arises" as simply an explanation for how we get what we usually think of as matter. Given everything we know of matter is in consciousness, the Idealist has a kind of upper hand.

The materialist/physicalist, to the extent they don't want qualitiative/mental aspects to exist as part of the fundamental/irreducible stuff of reality, have - IMO at least - a greater burden as they have to explain why, as Sam Harris once put it, the consciousness that exists arises from that which does not have any consciousness at all. The whole Something From Nothing problem.

I'll bet a trailer load of avocados that there's a sequence in an operating room with a dramatic close up of the overhead surgical lights. As all good sceptics know, a patient in distress, slightly anesthetised for the pain, can easily mistake "that" for the "light"....it stands to reason, doesn't it ?

Funny how it didn't occur with our dear friend Smithy, then.

Well so far Near Death Experience is about dodging death, not necessarily about getting a message from the Other Side.

Though the potential unfairness of not having any message about what awaits you is part of the show's themes.

I don't think the burden is meant to be any different than that for "materialism". That is, "materialism" is simply the term describing a variety of metaphysical positions that don't think "immaterialism" can describe all of reality. As I mentioned to Steve001 earlier, "immaterialism" is not used as "not materialism".

This is entirely false. Materialism has a positive definition, and is in no way “simply” a word that combines other positions stating that immaterialism cannot describe all of reality. 

Materialism, very very clearly, states that there are material explanations for all of reality. It is the one making the positive claim that it can describe everything. I don’t think that immaterialism (which to me is a broader term than materialism) claims that, necessarily, everything has an immaterial explanation (unless you mean god or a prime mover or something). 

But even if it’s fair to say that immaterialism IS saying that, it’s totally unfair and incorrect to try to act like materialism is not saying the same thing the other way. Otherwise, it’s likewise fair to say that immaterialism is simply a term covering all the ideas that don’t think materialism can describe all of reality. 

Immaterialism is often used to mean “not immaterialism”. There are numerous people here including myself who I have seen say “I just believe there is something going on beyond the current materialistic picture,” or something to that effect. It’s just totally false and unreasonable to try to make materialism seem like it is only encompassing a negative definition. It is very clear that that’s not the case, and that in general materialism is holding that material things can explain all of reality.

Again, if you don’t think that’s the case, there is no reasonable basis for saying that materialism is not like that but immaterialism is.

This is entirely false. Materialism has a positive definition, and is in no way “simply” a word that combines other positions stating that immaterialism cannot describe all of reality. 

Materialism, very very clearly, states that there are material explanations for all of reality. It is the one making the positive claim that it can describe everything. I don’t think that immaterialism (which to me is a broader term than materialism) claims that, necessarily, everything has an immaterial explanation (unless you mean god or a prime mover or something). 

But even if it’s fair to say that immaterialism IS saying that, it’s totally unfair and incorrect to try to act like materialism is not saying the same thing the other way. Otherwise, it’s likewise fair to say that immaterialism is simply a term covering all the ideas that don’t think materialism can describe all of reality. 

Immaterialism is often used to mean “not immaterialism”. There are numerous people here including myself who I have seen say “I just believe there is something going on beyond the current materialistic picture,” or something to that effect. It’s just totally false and unreasonable to try to make materialism seem like it is only encompassing a negative definition. It is very clear that that’s not the case, and that in general materialism is holding that material things can explain all of reality.

Again, if you don’t think that’s the case, there is no reasonable basis for saying that materialism is not like that but immaterialism is.

Given that both (materialism & immaterialism) have some details to thrash out, they both must be flexible enough to bend to new findings. This is either pragmatic or promissory, depending on whether one is engaging in rhetoric or not.

But one battle is already won. I don’t think there are any materialists left, not in the way I see them presented here.

Given that both (materialism & immaterialism) have some details to thrash out, they both must be flexible enough to bend to new findings. This is either pragmatic or promissory, depending on whether one is engaging in rhetoric or not.

But one battle is already won. I don’t think there are any materialists left, not in the way I see them presented here.

I completely agree. All I'm saying is it's not the case that materialism represents a swath of views that collectively say that immaterialism cannot explain everything, if it is also the case that immaterialism simply says that immaterial things explain everything. To me, they're on level playing ground as far as what kind of claims they are making - whether it's materialism claiming that material things explain it all, and immaterialism claiming immaterial things explain it all; or each claiming that the other cannot explain it all.

Either way, I don't really think either is a useful definition anyway, which is part of the reason I objected to Linda's post. I personally feel that the evidence, at the bare minimum, suggests more than the current scientific paradigm would permit. That doesn't mean that I think that immaterial things can explain everything, whatever that even means. But I do think there's more too it than the apparent reductive model says could be the case. The whole point is, of course, that it's always better to be nuanced and detailed; that is why the wiser among us are reluctant to describe themselves as some form of "-ism" except to give some general idea of the kind of things they might believe, to some extent. 

And, as I said, I do feel that in many instances "immaterialism" (which in my experience isn't a terribly commonly used term, compared to materialism at least) is used as meaning "not materialism". But then, as if often the case, that depends on who the person is who is using the term.

Given that both (materialism & immaterialism) have some details to thrash out, they both must be flexible enough to bend to new findings. This is either pragmatic or promissory, depending on whether one is engaging in rhetoric or not.

But one battle is already won. I don’t think there are any materialists left, not in the way I see them presented here.

No matter (pun intended) how you argue the semantics or whether you call yourself a materialist or a naturalist or whatever, the battle, as you call it, is really between two distinct metaphysical positions. One that accepts the reality of the so-called supernatural and one that does not.

We can argue over details of what should be included in the term supernatural: psi anomalies, spiritual dimensions, God or gods, etc., but those we usually refer to as materialists will always deny the existence of any of these things. As we see with Steve001, a belief, a doctrine has become axiomatic. No room for question or alternatives, no flexibility. Belief is the reality just as the Bible is the Truth for the fundamentalist. Both are dogmatic and uncompromising. Both fanatical. 

Dualists, panpsychists, idealists, the religious or those who categorise themselves as spiritual-but-not-religious may argue between themselves but there will always be a gulf between all of them and the outright deniers, the vast majority of whom are also committed atheists. So we should ask, is it for them a matter of evidence or a matter of ideology? I think that Steve, if he is honest, will admit that it is the latter. Indeed, his posts in this thread and his inability to distinguish between a doctrine and science prove that. How about you malf?

Absolute metaphysical atheists subscribe to some form of Physicalism, which explicitly denies the existence of non-physical beings.

Quoted from: https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_atheism.html