[ilugaslifg]

So you distinguish between dualism and the supernatural by expanding your definition of "natural" to include a distinct realm of non-material "nature" with no definable rules.

And, of all the phenomena that might be identifiable as emerging from the fabric of reality, the one that distinguishes you (and other systems you recognize as sufficiently like you) from everything else just happens to be the one you've decided must objectively be set apart.

I'll ask again: in this framework, what remains "supernatural", and why can you reject it?

[goatlover]

Who says the mental has no rules?

Anyway, the question of what fundamentally exists is an ontological question. Materialism is one possible answer. All that fundamentally exists is material objects, and everything else, including mind, society, abstract concepts, etc emerge from that material substrate.

Idealism would be the opposite answer. Everything is mental, and material objects are just ideas presented to the mind.

Everything is mathematical would be another possibility. Or information, perhaps qubits (it from quantum bits).

But maybe aspects of mind and matter are both fundamental to what exists. Or maybe it's some third neutral substance that's neither.

But whatever the case, none of that need involve the supernatural. It can, if one is disposed to think that way. One can say that God created the material world (granted, that leaves God as the something else, but at least the world gets to be entirely material).

[ilugaslifg]

I'm just going to come out and say it.

There is no good reason to believe that any ontology you can come up with to help you describe and attempt to comprehend reality, on the time and energy scales you live on, has any basis in the fundamental nature of reality.

The only distinction between atoms and phlogistons, physiology and the theory of humors, is their explanatory and predictive power, but none of those is any more "real" than the others beyond how they help us symbolize the world in a way we can reason about.

There is no good reason to believe that consciousness is any different, other than unexamined chauvinism, or, at best, wishful thinking.

Reality doesn't give a fuck what circles you draw around some fuzzy densities in an energy field, and what labels you write on them. Cars and sandwiches, atoms and quarks, where you end and the air around you begins, these distinctions that only matter to "you". This is the tyranny of the dichotomous mind.

The amount of unjustifiable, and, on the scale of the universe, unearned arrogance that it takes to assert that you or anything about you is set apart from the rest of material reality, is staggering, and just not something that I'm capable of sharing, having seriously considered the alternative.

Honestly, I'm just not sure we can have this conversation unless you can assure me that you have fully considered this to the point of having to pull yourself out of a serious existential crisis at some point in your life.

Any platitudes that come down to "there must be something that objectively privileges the nature of our existence above that of a rock or an endless field of eternal cold emptiness" are just totally baseless, and fail every test that might distinguish it from "god has a plan for me", "love is a physical force that directly manipulates time and space", or "it's turtles all the way down".

[goatlover]

Doesn't materialism fall into "any ontology" that you're ranting against? That's fine, skeptics about the nature of external reality have been around since the ancient Greeks.

But then to circle back around and privilege materialism as being somehow distinct from all the other ontologies humans have argued for? Are you skeptic or are you dogmatic materialist?

Pick your side. Just so you know, equating every other ontology as the equivalent of "God having a plan for my life" is piss poor philosophy, and just ignorant.

[ilugaslifg]

An ontology is an attempt to define any divisions beyond "all of that which is". Whatever I "am", philosophically, is whatever label describes somebody who does not presume to make any such distinctions.

Or, rather, always does that, like all of us do all the time, because that's what permits us to continue to live and think in the conditions and on the scale we find ourselves inhabiting, because that's the basis on which our minds work. But does not attempt to claim that any of the distinctions that happen to be useful to me have any fundamental basis in the raw nature of reality.

"Materialism" of this type is the default position in the same way atheism is the default position. The burden of proof is on the claim that there's something beyond material reality, and both dualism and theism are making this claim. It is the same claim. The only difference is the details of exactly what the supernatural thing is.

That is something there is not and cannot possibly be any evidence for, beyond "just take my word for it". In that way, dualism is indistinguishable from the existence of god or gods or magic or reincarnation or any other supernatural thing. To permit the possibility of one is to permit the possibility of the other. And there is no more evidence of one than the other, nor can there be. Again, there is no reason besides chauvinism or wishful thinking to believe in a theory of reality that makes you or something about you special.

I'm not going to extend the slightest benefit of the doubt to any theory of reality which says "I, and people/things/systems I recognize as like me, am intrinsically special and set permanently apart because something about me is fundamentally different from everything else", which dualism always comes down to. Any more than I'd be inclined to trust the objective truth of any theory of politics or economics or anthropology which says "I, and people/things/systems I recognize as like me, am intrinsically special and set permanently apart because something about me is fundamentally different from everything else".

----

EDIT: I am definitely, full-heartedly, whatever Daniel Dennett is.

[ilugaslifg]

Also, redefining "nature" to include non-physical things does not get you around the problem. We run into a language limitation, when you attempt to define away this fundamentally impossible premise. That is what I mean when I say "what is supernatural in a reality where you're already permitting things that do not have a material basis".

What exactly is the distinction you're trying to make between "non-physical" and "supernatural"?

What basis is left to make that distinction on, once you've abandoned the material realm?

What distinguishes your "plane of consciousness" from "heaven" or "the astral projection spirit crystal healing field" or "the power of positive feelings"?

[CuriouslyC]

I don't think consciousness is a distinguishing characteristic. We are all just highly complex chemical chain reactions occurring in the context of a changing environment. Our chain reactions are sufficiently complex that they're capable of communicating information to other chain reactions, and we happen to communicate about our experience as a chain reaction. You can't infer from the absence of communication that other chemical systems don't have experience.

I do agree that self-awareness and intelligence exist along a spectrum, along which we are apparently the farthest point.

[ilugaslifg]

Unless I'm missing something, you've just described "materialism", which is exactly what I am arguing for.

I'm not saying that we are the only "conscious" systems, or that "consciousness" is something set apart from the rest of reality. I'm saying the exact opposite of that.

Your point (at least, as I'm reading it) is exactly what I was getting at with "and other systems you recognize as sufficiently like you", which I did not intend to be chemical-biology-centric.

What I am arguing against is "dualism", and its many hidden forms and names (including the one goatlover is espousing). Which is the idea that "consciousness" is some fundamental property of nature, set apart from (really: privileged above) the rest, that exists on some plane beyond material reality.

Which, I argue, there is no good reason, besides pure unexamined chauvinism, or wishful thinking at best, to believe

This is what you are also saying, no?

[CuriouslyC]

I think it is logical to conclude that we are not "blessed" matter, and there really isn't a good basis for excluding non-biological matter from the property of having an internal experience. I wouldn't call myself a materialist though, because I don't know that mental states are caused by physical states. It is just as possible that the arrow of causality goes the other way - evidence only demonstrates correlation. Additionally, while I'm skeptical of the possibility of matter without consciousness, I'm willing to consider the possibility that consciousness can exist in a state that doesn't correspond to what we currently consider "matter"

If I had to label myself I would say I'm a monist, in that I don't think mind and matter are separable or independent. I lean towards idealism in the sense that I suspect the set of possible states of consciousness is a superset of the set of states of matter that are possible according to the current "laws" of physics. Don't read too much into those labels though, that's only a first order approximation of my view.