/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Because it has no explanatory power and is usually not only unfalsifiable but also unverifiable.

>>2177938
You see, you analyze the outside world with "tools" of your mind that aren't fully empirical or based on reality outside of your mind, you view the world with your mind.

>>2177950
>>2177929
there is an reality independent of your mind and thoughts do not control reality

>>2177952
True, but still how can we conciliate the "immaterial thinking mind" with the empirical world?

>>2177957
shit man ion know, thats one of those philosophical conundrums I don't think you'll ever get a conclusive answer too but I'm fine with just living with the ambiguity.

reality runs on material facts
ideas are thoughts isolated in your mind
therefore
idealism is doo doo poo poo

>>2177950
>>2177957
The mind can be explained entirely in terms of physical reality. Consciousness is nothing but a continuity of memories attached to hardware that is capable of retrieving them. You feel tethered to a specific body, a specific perspective, because all of your memories have been created using sense-data from that perspective. If I were to kill you, and then transfer your memories into a new body, it would then wake up and think of itself as the same person that inhabited the old body. In general (and to be clear, this is a generalization), you can swap out "soul" with "memories" and there would be zero functional difference.

That's not to say idealism has been ruled out completely, but rather, that it isn't necessary to explain the world around us.

>>2178025
I think we it comes to the world outside of our minds, then materialism is ok, but when we turn to look inside the inner workings of our mind, not our physical brains, but our minds, things get very strange or at least ambiguous, but that no to say that the mind is a mystical thing or magical, just works in a framework that isn't totally material.

>>2177929
I don't get the fourth panel, whores are lumpen and should not be respected, the rest is based tho

traditionally, this debate begins with fichte, who saw materialism as reactionary, and idealism as progressive, then marx "turned hegel on his head" causing lenin to reverse fichte's position. then althusser reproduced lenin's approach by seeing that all philosophy just secures the status quo and only material science progresses things. then zizek said materialism, yes, but asserts that marx is an idealist and hegel is the true materialist.

objectively speaking however, there's nothing inherently incorrect about idealism, its just a buzzword people use around here. for example, ask a materialist "what is matter?" and see them implode into tautologies. the only way to combat metaphysics is to apply your own metaphysics. philosophy is an unsolveable problem since mind and matter share the same substantial identity, yet each retain an independent form.

>>2178025
are you suggesting a "tabula rasa" or "blank slate" theory of consciousness? we are born with instincts, so clearly "memory" doesnt just exist in brains, but in genetic material itself. this is problematic for empiricists

>>2178040
would the textbook definition of matter being anything that has mass and volume be a tautology?

>>2178046
no, since you arent saying "matter is that which exists" like most materialists. but if you then said "all things which exist have mass and volume", then you just reduce everything into matter (although, photons have no mass or volume, yet exist, but are they "immaterial"?) the point isnt to say that tautologies are inherently incorrect though, but just that at this level of abstraction, you can posit anything. if everything = matter, then you can say everything = mind by the same deduction.

>>2178025
>it would then wake up and think of itself as the same person that inhabited the old body. In general (and to be clear, this is a generalization),
It would think so but that doesnt mean it is. It doesnt change the reality that one body is dead and the other is alive.

>>2177938
idealism explains morality and first causes
>>2177952
thoughts control actions, which control reality. where does the internal and external meet?
>>2177989
our "mind" is being transmitted through satellites right now to achieve intelligible communication.

>>2178058
>thoughts control actions
lmaoooooooo

>>2178075
you clearly had intention of writing that post, then sent it.

>>2178419
Environment control thought

Lmao, delusional, environment just constraints the thought, but it doesn't control

>>2177938
>alunya flag
opinion discarded

>>2177929
to be pretty honest, idgaf about idealism.
materialism v. idealism fights are absolutely irrelevant outside of marxism

>>2178687
Hmmm… I don't think that people in philosophy think that is irrelevant, there's plenty of people fighting in philosophy of mind about either mind is either fully material-physical or something else.

Both Idealism and Materialism are too binary. There is literally no way of separating these two things so you can not prove which influences the other so likely they just influence each other each playing their own role. I hate when leftypol users treat socialism like a religion and Marx their patron saint.

>>2178040
Economic explanations do not rely on a notion of the physical. There is an economy mediated by the social construct of money which has dramatic political effects. Strictly speaking, economic explanations do not demand physicalism. There is only work.

>>2178743
I agree, many LeftPoltards treat socialism as a religion and Marx as some kind of prophet that know it all, dude clearly was right about many things about capitalism, but it doesnt mean he's right 100% about everything.

>>2178777
Also I want to add that Cartesian dualism is dumb and that faith without work is dead faith. Living faith is nothing but work and struggle. Religion is fundamentally a materialist enterprise struggling for the liberation of the oppressed.

If I was gonna punch you in the face, you could imagine yourself shooting me with a gun to counter my punch, but I'd still punch you in the face because the gun is not real.

>>2178583
It's not an opinion.

>>2178878
/thread

>>2177929
Think of it this way. Idealism is like a map. Materialism is like the actual landscape. When a contradiction appears, are you going to reference the map, or the landscape, to resolve it? I think I know which one I would choose

The problem goes even further, sometimes idealists will try to modify the landscape to match the map, for shady reasons. Sometimes through genocide, like when the Nazis had idealized concepts of gender and said trans people must all die because they are attacking those ideals of gender binary.

>>2178043
Tabula rasa in terms of continuity of experiences, in terms of the "ego" and the "superego", the part of you that identifies with your past self. I do agree that rest of the brain (and to a lesser extent the body) definitely determines things, although the brain and the body themselves can still be explained 100% in material terms.

A good comparison is with computer hardware. You can swap out every component of your PC one by one until nothing from the original remains, but if you've kept the contents from your original hard-drive(s) on the new one, and are using the same version of the same operating system with the same configuration, it will function as an extension of the old one. The CPU might be faster, and the GPU may be capable of fancier graphics, both of which will likely impact how you use the computer, and thus populate the hard drive going forward, but you're still running your old software and accessing your old files exactly as you did the old one.

And this metaphor isn't as far fetched as you might think. Your "hardware" as an adult is, on a physical level, completely different from your "hardware" as a child. But you still have memories that were created on that hardware, and thus identify with it.

>>2178054
We're talking about the "consciousness", the "mind", the "soul", not the "body".

Regardless that kind of identity, seeing a thing as a fixed set of matter in space, is, IMO, not a particularly useful way of looking at things. Better to look at things dialectically, in terms of changes and relationships.

>>2178777
but here's the idealist/materialist divide,
since money mediates the economy, would changing money change the economy itself? a materialist says money just *represents* labour, yet an idealist would say labour is just one representation of money, fundamentally. thats why in a subjective theory of value, if i pay for something, i create its value, but to a materialist, value in exchange is always tied to something "necessary" (i.e. physical utility). however, within man is both a necessary and unnecessary expense; thus, society offers him use for both mind and body. plato says man must be taught the art of civilisation (which is why we raise children a certain way), while aristotle says man is a political animal.
>>2179031
your analogy fails when you imagine the human mind being tied to a human body, and specifically, an individual mind to an individual body. aristotle saw how within the substantiality of man there are two natures; his formal, or ideal and material. for example, what would it mean to put our consciousness into the body of a worm? its inconceivable since it is theoretically impossible, unless you imagine the mind having an objective separation from the body, but at this point you just become an idealist in reverse, except an uncritical one. for example, the empiricist and kantian both imagine the mind to be linked to the senses; what would it mean then for the mind to exist in empty space, say, in a "hard drive"? in this case, there is no mind, just like in death, when the soul and body depart. thus, the mind is tied to the body in which it has its experiences in. this is also the curious case whereby the jewish and christian "afterlife" is a physical resurrection, not an ethereal dream.
>>2178784
>What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? [james 2:14 kjv]
>>2178878
but the gun still exists in concept. you cant kill an idea since ideas are eternal in the mind.

>>2179011
> Think of it this way. Idealism is like a map. Materialism is like the actual landscape. When a contradiction appears, are you going to reference the map, or the landscape, to resolve it? I think I know which one I would choose
Your analogy is situational. Think of it this way. Idealism is a blueprint of a home. Materialism the end result. When a contradiction appears, are you going to reference the home alone or the blueprint on what seems off?