Plotinus Enjoyer on Nostr: A common objection to any sort of idealism is "If idealism is true and materialism is ...
A common objection to any sort of idealism is "If idealism is true and materialism is false, why then do changes to our brains affect our mental states? Mind must therefore be something physical." After all, this sounds very intuitive on the surface level because it agrees with our "common intuitions", which also shuts down most attempts to reason through the statement.
Let's then take a look at the claim "Mind must be material, since changes to the brain affect our mental states". Already I see a problem. This claim takes it for granted that this brain that a person is observing with his eyes is really existent. In other words, this material brain is a thing-in-itself and there is no deeper reality. But is what our senses perceive really all there is?
Quantum physics has shown that perception is not to be trusted, since even the act of measurement changes the thing being measured. There is also no reason why our sense-perception should be able to tell us the full truth of the matter from an evolutionary standpoint (which most materialists believe anyway). Usefulness in relation to survival is after all not the same thing as seeing the truth. If anything, there are many instances why falsehood is ultimately more conducive to survival. If anything, it may even be harmful, since the world out there by itself may be too much for the animal to take in so there is a need to distort things for the sake of simplicity. And there is entropy. If entropy is ever-increasing in the world and the material is all there is, how do we have that one-ness of experience? How are we even able to experience a single object in the first place? If the material world is all there is, then our mental states would mirror that material world and would thus suffer dispersion due to entropy.
All of this taken together means there is no reason to treat the material as all there is. There is then no reason to think that the thing causing brain damage really is material. For that matter, there is also no reason for us to think of the material brain as being really what is there.
Let's then take a look at the claim "Mind must be material, since changes to the brain affect our mental states". Already I see a problem. This claim takes it for granted that this brain that a person is observing with his eyes is really existent. In other words, this material brain is a thing-in-itself and there is no deeper reality. But is what our senses perceive really all there is?
Quantum physics has shown that perception is not to be trusted, since even the act of measurement changes the thing being measured. There is also no reason why our sense-perception should be able to tell us the full truth of the matter from an evolutionary standpoint (which most materialists believe anyway). Usefulness in relation to survival is after all not the same thing as seeing the truth. If anything, there are many instances why falsehood is ultimately more conducive to survival. If anything, it may even be harmful, since the world out there by itself may be too much for the animal to take in so there is a need to distort things for the sake of simplicity. And there is entropy. If entropy is ever-increasing in the world and the material is all there is, how do we have that one-ness of experience? How are we even able to experience a single object in the first place? If the material world is all there is, then our mental states would mirror that material world and would thus suffer dispersion due to entropy.
All of this taken together means there is no reason to treat the material as all there is. There is then no reason to think that the thing causing brain damage really is material. For that matter, there is also no reason for us to think of the material brain as being really what is there.