Posted by Noctillucent on July 31, 19101 at 03:12:11:

In Reply to: Re: A 'skeptical' solipsist posted by Karma Police on July 30, 19101 at 21:35:18:

: I admit some freedom from the determined physical brain, and some dependence of our consciousness upon the brain. Rationality demands free will, but it is also clear, as in the examples John gave of experiments with the brain, that we are in some ways dependent upon the physical brain.

I agree that reason demands free will. However, this clearly implies that the mind to this extent is not the physical brain, for as you noted with John, the brain’s physical atoms are mutually determined in their activity, whereas the mind is not so determined. So mind/matter interaction stands as a very real issue in your philosophy.

: Your uming we know only our ideas. If all we directly apprehend is our ideas, then we cannot know the ideas refer to any objects. All ideas are then subjective. To say they are objective, based on your umption, is to appeal to blind faith. We do not apprehend our ideas; we are not directly aware of them as we are sensations and feelings; they (ideas) are rather the means by which we apprehend the objective physical world. You seem to have fallen in to Locke's philosophical trap/mistake.

What we know, and how we come to know it, are very much related. To merely presume a correspondence between ‘internal idea’ and ‘external thing’ implies there exists a vantage point by which we are able to compare our ideas with the physical objects themselves. No just vantage point exists, or logically can exist. This itself is a curious fact. I think you will agree that there can be no correspondence in the sense that we can first know things by themselves, and then form ideas of the things already known, and finally compare the things with the ideas in order to note their correspondence.

: Again, this implies an underlying and unifying reality common to both. That is why I carefully stated they were *apparently* incommensurate. Taken without the qualification of an implied common ground, they are incommensurate. The other alternative (what appears to be the logical conclusion of your position) is to become a solipsist, which is an affront to reason and common sense.

Wasn’t your argument with John that matter is indifferent to thought? If so, it seems you agree that thought *as thought* is powerless to effect physical matter. And matter, being essentially mindless, cannot take a conscious from, and so is nothing for thought. This is a straight path to solipsism. While solipsism may be an affront to common sense, which is often wrong, I don’t see why it’s an affront to reason. In fact it may be the only truly reasonable position to take.

: I speak of an "implicit" common ground. If you ask me to define it I cannot. You may as well ask me what free will essentially is. I can only tell you it must exist, and explain what it does, but what it "is" and how it works is beyond us in our present capacity to know. What *is* reason? Again, I can only tell you what it does (or allows us to do). We have to admit a limit to our finite knowledge eventually, don't you agree?

You’re being evasive here. I know what the mind is by virtue of *being* a mind. And a minimum definition of matter is that it’s essentially mindless. This makes each the logical opposite of the other. Unless we toss logic out the proverbial window, something cannot be A (mind) and non-A (no mind) at the same time and sense. Maybe you have another definition of matter. If so, I should like to hear it. Otherwise, I can make no intelligible sense of an “implicit” common ground.

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