and yet God repeatedly asked for animals to be killed for him. He did love the smell of their burning flesh.

Because absent the actual first person subjective experience of pain, I don’t think we’d conclude, or derive from, a complete accounting of an entity’s material interactions that said entity is having a subjective experience at all. For example, I don’t think a p-zombie scientist employing all the tools available to modern neuroscience would conclude there is a first person subjective experience of pain.

Well, the claim that the earth is 6,000 years old is not inconsistent with the tenets of Young Earth creationism and the beliefs of its adherents. So following your criteria, one is then required to show that a 6,000-year-old earth is inconsistent with YEC to show that YEC is false.

I don’t know what you guys are reading into my mention of rocks, but we’re crossing wires somewhere. I’m, first, defining a wholly material entity as an object whose properties are derivable from the laws of physics (and chemistry if you’d like). From there, I’m making the claim that a rock is such an object. What I’m not doing is arguing inductively. I’m not saying, for instance, that since whales are mammals, therefore, all aquatic animals are mammals.

My views are nearest monist idealism.

Sure, if someone can show the experience of pain is[…] So far itt, all anyone has managed to show is how pain is generated, not how the experience of it is derivable from material interactions. But, IMO, most attempts I've run across ultimately fail by collapsing into eliminative materialism in disguise.

As an aside, I do think that eliminative materialism is a logically coherent metaphysical schema, though. In fact, I think eliminative materialism and radical idealism are the only real live options for metaphysics. In other words: either reality is the first-person subjective or the third-person objective, but not both. But as I said earlier, I think eliminative materialists will accept my second premise and reject the first, so my argument would take a different turn.

You could have just said "I don't accept the science of pain, I believe that if you don't possess a soul you can't experience pain", instead of masking it. You don't believe that pain is caused by signals sent through the central nervous system to the brain. You find the subjectivity of pain as cause for concern, proving that we must have a soul or something.

Fine. But you're wrong, science knows you're wrong, and there's nothing you can say to change that. I'm done with this thread.

You are making a faulty assumption here. Physicalists do not claim that humans are p-zombies. Thus, even if you are correct that p-zombies wouldn't conclude that x, it doesn't follow from the claims of physicalism that humans wouldn't conclude that x. Now, if you think that physicalism is committed to the claim that humans are p-zombies, then your argument would succeed. But you have not even attempted to show this and since almost all physicalists would disagree with this implication, it is something that needs to be shown.

Notice also that most physicalists think that p-zombies are not metaphysically possible.

I don't see how this applies to my comment. Of course the belief that the earth is 6,000 years old is not inconsistent with the tenets of YEC. Are you saying that it is equally obvious that the claim that living organisms exist is not inconsistent with materialism? Because that is after all what I was claiming. I thought you were claiming the opposite by citing the wiki definitions for "materialism" and "living organism" as support for a claim that no purely material entity could have the relevant characteristics of a "living organism."

My point was twofold: first, that many living organisms do not have this characteristic (such as plants), and second, that materialists do not deny the existence of living organisms--rather they have a different view from you of the nature of living organisms. How does your response connect to these points?

Here's another way of putting it. You seem to be taking rocks as a paradigm material object and saying that just as it seems silly to suppose that rocks are conscious, it should seem silly to suppose that any purely material object is conscious.

Now, I agree with you that it does seem silly to suppose that rocks are conscious. But I don't think it seems silly because the properties of rocks are derivable from the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. Rather, in my view, it seems silly to us because rocks do not exhibit the behavior we associate with entities that are conscious, nor do they have the internal structure that we think creates that consciousness.

Humans though, and other animals, do exhibit this behavior and do have such a characteristic internal structure (i.e. brain and nervous system) that is causally connected to consciousness. Presumably you think that humans and animals other than you also have some kind of first-person experience. But you don't believe this because of your own direct experience--you only experience your own first-person consciousness, not others. Thus, your belief that they also have such consciousness must be based on something else--I would say inductive reasoning (specifically, an analogical argument between you and other humans).

However, nothing in this analogical argument has to do with whether we are wholly material or not--if we were, our reasoning based on the similar behavior and internal structure of other humans would be the same.

Okay. Just so we're clear that there are more avenues for rebuttal than the two you offered.

@duffee

Since you seem to be interested in logic and argumentation, maybe you should consider taking this free online course from Stanford Univerity

https://www.coursera.org/course/intrologic

in the name of knowledge and improving the human condition,
#

Mises wrote nice piece on the problems with materialism in 1957. The whole thing is worth a read, but the snippet below to me ultimately demonstrates the inherently limited explanatory power of the materialist lens:

Isn't that just an appeal to ignorance?

I don't think the passage you quoted shows something inherently limited about materialism. As we come to know more about the nature of the mind, I wouldn't be surprised at all if we get a much better understanding of why some people vote Republican or Democrat. We are already seeing the beginnings of such research in the work of Jonathan Haidt and others.

Also, note that as a criticism of materialism, Mises' point is fairly specious. Even if you think it is correct, it provides no advantage to either dualism or idealism, which also give us no explanation for why some people vote for one party over the other.

I don’t think materialism is committed to the claim that humans are p-zombies per se, but it is committed to a wholly objective accounting of an entity. In other words, all objective science can say of a human is what we can say of a p-zombie. So since the objective evidence does not support the claim of sentience or subjective experience or consciousness, materialists can’t claim humans are sentient or are having subjective experience or are conscious.

By insisting that I show a phenomenon is inconsistent with materialism, you’re just shifting the materialist’s burden to me. Materialism is an affirmative claim, namely, that all phenomena are a result of material interactions. Hence, it’s the materialist’s burden to show how this is so, that is, how sentience is derivable from matter and energy.

My argument against materialism is that you can’t meet your burden. That is, I don’t think you can show how (a) subjective experience can be derived from material interactions, nor do I think you can show how (b) subjective experience is derivable from objective evidence. Arguing I haven’t shown that sentience is not consistent with materialism does nothing to meet my challenge, because it does nothing to support the materialist claim (other than maybe showing it’s not logically impossible, which I grant).

I’m not really concerned or arguing against how you get there. I’m saying the materialist can’t just make the arbitrary leap from the physiological, neurological, behavioral, etc. to the claim “[all] that is causally connected to consciousness.” Because “all that” doesn’t give the materialist grounds to make the assertion unless he can show how consciousness is derivable from “all that.” In other words, the mere fact that there is the phenomenon of consciousness is not sufficient to show how it emerged from material interactions. I mean I know materialists believe all phenomena are the result of material interactions, but arguing in such a manner is glaringly circular.

Two problems here. First, I think the bolded is false. You've asserted this a few times here, but with no evidence to support it. I view the existence of consciousness as a theory about humans, and one with enough explanatory value to take seriously as an explanation for human behavior.

Second, materialists are not committed to a wholly objective accounting of an entity. We might claim that some things, even thought they are material, are not knowable through science (e.g. mysterianism).

Well, showing how sentience is the result of material causes won't be done by philosophers in their armchairs. This is a problem for neuroscience and related fields. So far the the investigation of conciousness by science is still in its infancy, so I don't think we understand it very well.

That being said, I wouldn't rule out physical theories of consciousness like you do before we even start. That just seems like a mistake.

Why are we still talking about burdens of proof? You make a claim, back it up. If you can't fine, but then don't expect others to accept it. I accept materialism--I view it for a number of reasons as the best general theory of this type. However, I recognize that there are problems with it, such as so far an inability to explain subjective experience on physical grounds (or any other grounds for that matter). But I'm not trying to convince you to accept materialism because it can explain subjective experience. The reasons I've given for accepting materialism lie elsewhere, so as long as I can defuse the argument against materialism provided by subjective experience, then I am satisfied.

But here you don't even provide an argument. You assert that materialism is wrong because we can't explain how x happens. But how do we know that we can't explain how x happens? Obviously, the fact that we haven't so far explained how x happens doesn't suffice. So there must be something else going on here. What is it?

It's not an arbitrary leap. I've been pretty clear about why I am a materialist about the mind and you've been ignoring it. I don't think we have very good scientific theories of consicousness yet. However, I do think we have a good reason to think that non-physicalist theories of consciousness are bad theories, namely the mind-body problem. If you think, like I do, that the mind-body problem rules out dualism, then we have to conclude either that the universe is not material (which I reject for other reasons), or that the mind is material.

Forgot to say thanks for posting this link, I've signed up for a couple of the courses there now.