A stone carried along in a river will either continue on downstream or get stuck if it bumps up against some other object or objects depending on its shape. — Fooloso4

And which stone would that be? 'Oh, it doesn't matter - any stone.' But 'any stone' is an abstraction - and abstraction is still dependent on the matrix of conceptual thought.

I certainly see the 'constructionist' logic in your last paragraph. — Tom Storm

Constructivism (I've learned) is an approach in science and philosophy that emphasizes the role of the mind in the construction of knowledge and the interpretation of data - hence the name! I don't think it is synonymous with idealism and so I'm not sure if 'idealism' is really what I'm arguing for - although I do notice that Kastrup has published articles in Constructivist Foundations.

So a starlight, for example, from distant galaxies (or the CMB) that predates by millions (or billions) of years the human species – it's capability of "mind" – is not a "meaningful idea" or a "real" (mind-invariant) referent? — 180 Proof

No, it's not. It's not anything, until it is cognised. It's not non-existent, but it's also not existent - it has a kind of latent or unmanifest reality. There's a subjective element in all cognition which synthesises and contextualises the stimuli we're receiving - starlight included - and combines it into the world. That activity is what gives rise to the subjective unity of experience - which is 'the world'. That is the sense in which nothing is ultimately mind-independent, although for practical purposes, it can be treated as if it is. Hence as I said - mind-independence is a methodological assumption, not a metaphysical axiom. In actual fact, reality is not something we're outside of, or apart from - it has an inextricable subjective foundation, which we're not consciously aware of - transcendental in the Kantian sense.

This is why I asked about the "something" that has always been capable of observing. — Fooloso4

We can form no meaningful idea of what exists in the absence of the order that the mind brings to reality.

Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of life—and the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer. — Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order

In order for Kastrup's assertion to qualify for a theory of reality it must explain how animals like us, capable of experiencing, came to be in a universe like ours full of things to be experienced. — Fooloso4

There is an implicit endorsement of scientific realism in this. Analytic idealism is not a realist philosophy in that sense.

There is no "aha!" point or moment in time that can be pointed at, and then it can be said "here it is!". There is no magical combination or point in evolutionary progression that consciousness suddenly appears, resides, or has emerged as we know it. — creativesoul

I wonder if that ‘aha’ point is the appearance of the very first living organism.

6371 At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.

6.372 So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.

And they both are right and wrong. But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear terminus, whereas the modern system makes it appear as though everything were explained. — TLP

I notice in modern discourse that even the notion of laws is called into question. This goes back to the discussion about the erosion of the idea of an animating cosmic purpose.

Interesting how nature, once 'the created', is now imbued with the power of creating itself.

When Trump returns to the Oval office the buck will stop at his desk. He will actually do something. How refreshing that will be. — Varnaj42

Now we see your true colors.

Yes well the problem is that people seldom agree on which facts are correct. — Varnaj42

You may not disagree, but the fact of human-induced climate change is proven beyond reasonable doubt, regardless of how you feel about it.

We are living in a threat of global communism and we can't find anything better to do than to argue about climate change. — Varnaj42

Yes so perhaps you can find something more constructive to say rather than waste further time denying the science.

The science is very clear - increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, plainly correlated to emissions caused by human activities, are unmistakeably linked to increasing global temperatures. It is very clear and simple. There might be scientists who want to dispute that, but scientists were employed by the tobacco industry to cast doubt over the link to lung cancer (see Merchants of Doubt). It's the same kind of scenario with climate-change denial, there are many vested interests who want to deny it.

We just don't happen to think it is the fault of human beings. — Varnaj42

'Everyone has a right to their own opinion, but not to their own facts' ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

I’ll stick with the free version for now. I find myself using it all the time. I can see the day, and it’s not far off, where it becomes embedded in your audio-visual life-space, helping with all kinds of information - recipes, tips, exercise plans, life plans, motivational talks. I think an alternative title to ‘artificial intelligence’ might be ‘augmented intelligence’ - using it to augment your own capacities in various ways.

(Seems to me that one of the big players who’s completely failed to catch this train, is Amazon. I’ve been using Alexa devices for about eighteen months, and they’re pretty lame - glorified alarm clocks, as someone said. Whereas ChatGPT, with speech recognition, is more or less what I think Bezos set out to do when he created Alexa. So far, he’s failed miserably, as far as I can see.)

You'll find them here.

In terms of science, I think that science proper is the acquiring of how entities relate to each other and not what they fundamentally are — Bob Ross

:up: Agree. I am also a Kastrup reader. Overall, as I'm opposed like him to reductive materialism, I'm generally in agreement with him. My criticism of his philosophy is perhaps an over-reliance on metaphors - the 'dissociated alter' and 'the dashboard' to name a couple. At the same time, I think he's an important voice. He is building up an impressive bibliography and does an excellent job in many debates and forums.

My overall philosophical orientation is to emphasise the primacy of experience and that knowledge is a constructive and synthesising activity, which absorbs experiences and perceptions and synthesises them into the gestalt of subjective experience. Empiricists likewise stress the primacy of experience - Berkeley was an empirical idealist - but I adopt the Kantian principle of there being innate categories and functionalities of the mind which are not simply given but which the mind brings to experience.

Forms || Outside Time/Space — schopenhauer1

'Prior to' - ontologically prior. Not 'outside' as in 'located somewhere else'.

If the nature of reality is essentially experiential does this mean that prior to experiential animals there was no reality or is this a teleological claim or has there always been something that is capable of experiencing?....I would say that the physical world is represented. It is not the thing itself, but both what is represented and experience are of something.

Is the assumption that there is something that is experienced and something that is represented mistaken? — Fooloso4

Hope you don't mind my chipping in. What's at issue here, is the sense in which the physical world has an inherent reality outside our experience, knowledge and perception of it. From a realist point of view, that it exists independently of us is so obvious as to seem hardly worth stating. But consider the role of the observing mind in arriving at this understanding.

The problem with your argument is that it assumes you can get outside your understanding of the world to see it as it truly is, without any observer. Then you imagine on the one side, your representation, and on the other, the object being represented. What that neglects is the role of the observing intelligence in synthesising experience to form a whole - a gestalt, in fact - which is then the subject of your judgement. Absent that synthesising capability, there is nothing to pass judgement about. So you can't literally get outside your representation. You can't in any sense imagine a world from no viewpoint. Perspective is essential, and perspective is what the observer brings.

You might object (as did Einstein) 'surely the moon continues to exist when there is nobody to perceive it'. Bishop Berkeley, and Bernardo Kastrup, get around this difficulty by positing God and a Mind-At-Large, respectively, which ensures the continuous existence of the moon, even the absence of observers. However I have a rather more radical view than that (and here part company with Kastrup.) It is that all we know of existence — whether of a specific thing, or the Universe at large — is the product of our cognitive and intellectual capacity, the activity of the powerful hominid forebrain which sets us apart from other species. All that processing power generates our world, and that’s what ‘empirical reality’ consists of. After all, the definition of ‘empirical’ is ‘based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience.’ So, asking of the Universe ‘How does it exist outside of, or apart from, our observation or experience of it?’ is an unanswerable question. It's not as if it really ceases to exist when not observed, or really comes into existence when it is observed. To exist is to be 'inside' this relational subject-object dynamic¹.

Because of scientific realism, we assume that the world exists independently of your or any mind. But that's only true as a methodological assumption, not as a metaphysical axiom. This is something that has become increasingly evident in 20th century science and philosophy, mainly as a consequence of the observer problem in physics. Science has had to acknowledge the role of the observer, whether via the 'Copenhagen interpretation' or in Wheeler's 'participatory universe' model or in QBism. (Kastrup addresses all this, by the way, he is thoroughly conversant with modern physics and was employed at CERN at some point.)

I suspect that is probably a controversial analysis, but that's my take on it.

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1. 'By and large, Kaccayana, this world is supported by a polarity, that of existence and non-existence. But when one sees the origination of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "non-existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one. When one sees the cessation of the world as it actually is with right discernment, "existence" with reference to the world does not occur to one'. ~ the Buddha, Kaccāyanagotta Sutta

When something is said to be material a common meaning is, as 180 Proof outlined above, that it is observable (or detectable in some way), and when something is said to be immaterial there are two common meanings: either that it doesn't exist or is unimportant, or that it exists in some way other than the material. — Janus

The point is that our rational grasp of things is constructed around abstractions, which are fundamental to language and therefore the basic operations of predication (is, is not, less than, same as, and so on.) None of those abstractions are materially existent but they're intrinsic to our ability to reason. That is one of the reasons that reason is unique to h. sapiens. We kind of straddle two worlds, the world of sensable objects, and the world of thought, from which we are able to envision and then realise possibilities - which is the ability that has provided the technology that we're using to mediate this discussion. Hence Wigner's 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics'.

I don't know what it could mean to say that logic and maths transcend physical reality. Would it mean that they would still exist, even if nothing else existed? — Janus

It would mean that at least some of the primitive terms of both of those would be the same in all possible worlds, that if intelligent life evolved elsewhere, it would still be obliged to recognise the law the excluded middle and the notion of 'equals', for instance. I think they precede existence, in the sense that they are associate with or constitutive of the natural order, from which life evolves in the first place.

Then why bother asking? It's a serious example. 'Money', would be another. Especially now that all money is electronic. It exists only by fiat, as a set of agreements, has no material existence.

Is there an example of an immaterial 'something' we can point to uncontroversially? — Tom Storm

Interest rates.

I enjoyed how 'Wayfarer' engaged 'ChatGPT' (presumably GPT-4) to elaborate on this intricate connection. — Pierre-Normand

Thanks! Actually as far as I know, it’s still ChatGPT - I’m signing in via OpenAI although whether the engine is the same as GPT-4, I know not. Also appreciate the ref to Haugeland.

If you ask ChatGPT, it will not go and check against Sartre's corpus. — Banno

Whereas if you use Google’s forthcoming Bard, it will. Check out this presentation on it.

I’m looking forward to being able to converse with Siri - let’s imagine you’re interacting via Siri - with these kinds of questions.

‘Siri, can you provide some examples of the texts where Jean Paul Sartre said that?’

I agree, but it is still an active detachement even for the sage. — Christoffer

Indeed. 'Being' is a verb. ;-)

Some philosophical questions I put to ChatGPT 20.05.23

Q: Where would one encounter the expression about things that are 'always already the case'?

ChatGPT: The expression "always already the case" is often encountered in philosophical and theoretical discussions, particularly in the realms of phenomenology, existentialism, and post-structuralism. While it doesn't have a specific origin or a single author, it has been explored by various thinkers.

One notable instance of this expression can be found in the works of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre used the phrase "always already" to describe the idea that certain aspects of our existence, such as our facticity (our given circumstances and conditions) and our fundamental freedom, are inherent and preexisting. He argued that these aspects of our being are not products of our conscious choices but are thrust upon us, shaping our existence.

Additionally, the concept of "always already the case" can be related to the philosophical notion of "being-in-the-world" (Dasein) put forth by Martin Heidegger. Heidegger emphasized the idea that our existence is always already embedded in a specific context, a world that precedes our individual consciousness. According to Heidegger, we are thrown into a world with preexisting meanings, values, and structures that shape our understanding of ourselves and our experiences.

Furthermore, the expression is frequently encountered in post-structuralist and postmodern thought, particularly in the works of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. These thinkers emphasized the ways in which power structures, historical contexts, and language itself shape our understanding of reality. The notion of "always already the case" points to the idea that our perspectives and interpretations are influenced by preexisting discourses and systems of meaning.

Overall, the expression "always already the case" reflects the philosophical inquiry into the preexisting conditions, contexts, and structures that shape our existence and understanding of reality. It is encountered in discussions surrounding existentialism, phenomenology, post-structuralism, and postmodernism.

Q: Would it be feasible to link the notion of what is 'always already the case' to the realm of the a priori?

ChatGPT: Yes, it is feasible to link the notion of what is "always already the case" to the realm of the a priori. The concept of the a priori refers to knowledge or propositions that are independent of experience or empirical evidence, based on reasoning alone. These are considered necessary truths that can be known prior to any particular experience.

When we consider what is "always already the case," we are essentially referring to certain aspects of existence or reality that are assumed to be fundamental and unchanging. These aspects are often seen as transcending individual experiences and are considered to be universally applicable. In this sense, they can be thought of as a priori conditions or truths.

For example, Kant argued that certain synthetic a priori elements are necessary to make sense of our experience of the world. These are not derived from experience but are inherent in our cognitive faculties. They are considered "always already the case" because they are universal and apply to all individuals.

In a similar vein, the notion of what is "always already the case" can be related to the a prioristructures of understanding discussed by phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl. Husserl argued that our experience of the world is shaped by certain preexisting structures of intentionality and consciousness, which he referred to as "transcendental subjectivity." These structures are considered a priori because they are not derived from individual experiences but are assumed to be inherent in consciousness.

Therefore, by linking the notion of what is "always already the case" to the realm of the a priori, we can explore the underlying and universal conditions that shape our understanding and experiences of reality. Both concepts involve aspects that are considered fundamental, necessary, and independent of empirical evidence or particular experiences.

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I think this actually addresses a gap I'm aware of in Kantian philosophy. The concept of the a priori sounds so dry and so much an artefact of logic, but linking to that sense of the 'always already' provides a phenomenological and existential dimension that it is lacking.

I'm not sure there is a "classical tradition", a religious life seem to be mostly very subjective even if practices as an institution looks collective. — Christoffer

There’s a term that is distinct from both the subjective and objective, and that it transcendent(al). The detachment of the sage in philosophy has a different quality to the detachment of the scientist because it is concerned with more than what is simply quantifiable. But of course in secular culture, everything is viewed through what Charles Taylor calls ‘the immanent frame’ which brackets out consideration of the transcendent(al).

have found most religious people to be far more fundamentalists than they even seem to be aware of themselves — Christoffer

There are fundamentalists in areas other than religion.

But that is one of the points at issue, although I’m not in a position to pursue it right at the moment.

Marx said that after turning Hegel on his head. I won’t argue the case beyond noting dissent.

And as such, a product of culture and society. But sure, it wasn’t institutional. Not sure what the point was here. — Jamal

The point is that it’s not a product of culture and society. It preceded them, as did the axial age religions generally.

Actually I guess ‘confirmation bias’ would often be very difficult to expose and often effective as an accusation. See this case of.a biased investigator accusing juries of bias.

I agree that Meta’s logic is sometimes baffling :lol:

I still think a presupposition or an axiom is different to a bias. I suppose you could say that a strongly held but unexamined belief might constitute a bias. And that there are ‘cultural biases’ that are held by many people who take them as ‘the way things are’. Some will characterize religious attitudes like that but I think the same can be said of scientific materialism.

The main problem with our usual understanding of secularity is that it is taken-for-granted, so we are not aware that it is a worldview. It is an ideology that pretends to be the everyday world we live in. Most of us assume that it is simply the way the world really is, once superstitious beliefs about it have been removed. — David Loy

The Enlightenment era not only categorically rejected all Religious doctrines, it also rejected all philosophical beliefs that "go beyond" actual/factual descriptions of the world based on the five senses (meta-physics). — Gnomon

Much of the fault lies with the ‘rule of fear’ of the Churches and disgust with the religious wars and power struggles.

Then, not long ago, I came to a realization that may seem like it would worsen my depression at first glance, but was actually a complete game changer for me… I don’t matter. — AWill

Good realization.

One of the sayings that helped free me up was ‘My life has been a series of crises, most of which have never occurred.’

I think bias has more of a connotation of being unconscious, subjective or held on emotive grounds. Different to axioms which by definition are open to scrutiny.

An update from The Hill - discussions have been paused.

The 'Freedom Caucus' (read: MAGA Extremist) faction is still insisting that it won't sign the limit increase until it's extortion demands are met. Not discussing their demands is categorised as the White House 'being unreasonable'.

McCarthy has warned that negotiators must come to an agreement on at least the broad parameters of a deal by this weekend if a bill is to have any chance of moving through both the House and Senate by June 1, the earliest date when the Treasury Department has warned of a default.

Politico reports that Biden is resisting invoking the 14th Amendment to bypass the vote, saying it is not a slam-dunk and would lead to complex negotations and legal cases.

I know! Ain't he amazing! Tommy Emmanuel put a comment on one of his latest, 'keep up the great work'. The attention to detail is fantastic - all these little flourishes from the original recording that he captures.

If we are talking about the energy of the body kickstarting at the formation in an egg and the energy flowing away after death as heat, then I would never call that by anything other than what it is, energy, and energy is not a soul. — Christoffer

We come into the world with proclivities, tendencies, traits, character, talents, and so on. These are all characteristics of living beings that are not reducible to physical forces. (One of the motifs from Buddhism, which is said to eschew the idea of soul, is that each individual is actually a 'mind-stream' (citta santāna) that manifests from life to life - a process, not an entity.)

I agree that using the term ‘soul’ carries religious connotations and that it’s not an especially useful term. But I don’t agree, on those grounds, that it is a meaningless term, or connotes an obsolete or supestitious idea.

It is like when evangelists move their goal posts of what the definition of God is every time a scientific discovery shows that their previous beliefs are clearly wrong — Christoffer

That is typical of fundamentalism, not so much of the classical tradition.

If so, what you’ve got here is a truism, since institutions are social reality. — Jamal

I understand that marxism will generally depict religious ideas as being product of culture and society. But consider Buddhism, if you can call Buddhism a religion. It is certainly a social institution now, but it originated as a renunciate movement, deliberately outside social convention.

In the sense of ‘known first person’ not ‘particular to the individual’ or ‘private’.

There is no way of distentangling religious thought institutions and social reality

I updated that post as I had omitted something important. What I'm trying to get at, is that there is an experiential (or even empirical) element in gnosticism which was lost with its suppression, whereas it stayed very much part of the mainstream in Indian and Chinese religion. In the West, I think that experiential dimension might have been represented in some forms of philosophical spirituality, but it ultimately vanished altogether with the fideistic emphasis on 'salvation by faith'. And that this has had ramifications for culture.

Well, if religion meant something different then the question of the relationship (I meant to say) with philosophy might have also been very different. It always seems obvious to me that the way it's interpreted on this forum is very much a product of a specific historical background.

I actually do have an e-copy, I've read sections of it, but must find the time to give it a more thorough reading. I had encountered his criticism of the malign effects of Darwinism on philosophy on another site, that is what caught my eye (but only as a critic of scientific materialism, *not* as an ID sympathizer.)

If subjective reason in the form of enlightenment has dissolved the philosophical basis of beliefs that have been an essential part of Western culture, it has been able to do so because this basis proved to be too weak. — Horkheimer, The Eclipse of Reason

When I was studying comparative religion, I had a theory that the kind of enlightenment prized in yoga and Buddhism - not Enlightenment in the European sense! - was similar to what the early gnostic schools had been based around. And that the victory of what came to be Catholic orthodoxy was because it was much more politically expedient to organise belief, than the esoteric knowledge represented by gnosticism which it ruthlessly suppressed (even up to the time of the Cathar massacres).

I found a scholar by the name of Elaine Pagels, whose book Beyond Belief affirmed a similar thesis. It concerns exegesis of the Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic text that was found in Egypt in 1945 as part of the Nag Hammadi Library discovery. Through analysis of the sayings found in the Gospel of Thomas, Pagels demonstrates its themes of self-discovery, spiritual enlightenment, and the pursuit of a direct connection with the divine. She reveals the influence of Gnosticism on the Gospel of Thomas and examines its contrasts with orthodox Christianity and the political and theological tensions that led to the suppression and exclusion of Gnostic texts from the canon of the New Testament. She explores the power struggles within early Christianity and how the emerging orthodoxy based on the Gospel of John sought (successfully) to define and control the faith. And as always, history is written by the victors.

At the time I was doing this reading, I had the view that this was a watershed in the history of Western culture, and that had more of the gnostic elements been admitted, it would have resulted in a much more practice-oriented and 'eastern' form of spirituality. The fact that these exotic forms of religion have had such a huge impact in Western culture the last few centuries is because that approach was suppressed in, and absent from, its own indigenous religious culture. That's what made it 'weak'.

Interesting, I must go back and read more of the original.

I’m also slightly vexed by Wayfarer’s use of secular humanist Horkheimer as a weapon in his battle against secular humanism, although it’s fair to do so. — Jamal

There is, as I've noted in another thread just now, a tension between philosophical rationalism and naturalism. I think it's because philosophical rationalism in some sense ascribes reason to the Universe at large. In the Aristotelian system, that is implied by the fourfold nature of causality, which proposes that things exist for a reason, whereas that has generally been rejected by science after Galileo. There was also the widespread belief in the 'logos' which was understood as an animating universal principle (perhaps unfortunately) co-opted by Christian theology as 'the Word'. I don't know if Horkheimer elaborates on that point, but from what I've read, I think he's identified something similar in what he describes as the 'subjectivisation' of reason in the modern era as a consequence of the erosion of objective (or, better, transcendent) reason.

if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else. (In this respect, rationalism is closer to mysticism than it is to materialism.) Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it. — Leon Wieseltier, The God Genome

the pertinent point in this thread is that Materialism is presented as a natural fact, while alternative metaphysical notions are rejected as Super-natural fictions. It's like an old western showdown : there ain't no room in this town (Truth) for both tangible Matter and intangible Mind. — Gnomon

That's pertinent in many a thread. This is why I keep referring to Thomas Nagel's essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, although it is often misconstrued as an apologetic for religion, which it isn't. What Nagel is saying, is that there are certain avenues of thought that are cut off because of their association with religious ideas. And it is very much relevant to the point you're making.

He starts with a passage from C S Peirce, which concludes:

The soul's deeper parts can only be reached through its surface. In this way the eternal forms, that mathematics and philosophy and the other sciences make us acquainted with will by slow percolation gradually reach the very core of one's being, and will come to influence our lives; and this they will do, not because they involve truths of merely vital importance, but because they [are] ideal and eternal verities.

Nagel says that he finds Peirce's musings 'congenial', but also notes that they're 'quite out of keeping with present fashion.' He says 'the idea of a natural sympathy between the deepest truths of nature and the deepest layers of the human mind, which can be exploited to allow gradual development of a truer and truer conception of reality, makes us more at home in the universe than is secularly comfortable. The thought that the relation between mind and the world is something fundamental makes many people in this day and age nervous. I believe this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life.'

There is then an often-quoted elaboration of the fear of religion which I won't reproduce again (you can find it here). But Nagel is not, as I said, preaching - he declares that he himself is an atheist. It's more that what he sees as the fear of religion has pernicious and generally unstated philosophical consequences. The argument then goes on to discuss 'the sovereignty of reason' and, in particular, whether reason can be understood as a consequence of evolutionary biology, without undermining it. (The tension between philosophical rationalism and naturalism is another very important theme in my opinion.)

He develops this argument in more detail in his 2012 Mind and Cosmos, where he argues that the materialist concept of mind is self-contradictory. According to the materialist neo-Darwinian view, consciousness and subjective experience are seen as byproducts of physical processes, understandable solely through the perspectives of evolutionary biology and neurobiology (which is the view expressed by Daniel Dennett and other scientific materialists).

Nagel argues that this perspective falls short in providing a comprehensive account of consciousness because it focuses solely on objective, third-person explanations rooted in physical processes and fails to address the subjective, first-person aspects of conscious experience. He argues that subjective experience, or what it is like to be a conscious being, cannot be reduced to any purely physical or functional explanations and that to depict it as a kind of accident is basically absurd (as many philosophers have said about Dennett's philosophy.)

Which is basically one of the main subjects of argument in this and any number of threads. I think the majority view maintains defensive or presumptive materialism - defensive, because questioning materialism seems to open the door to religious philosophy, or presumptive, because it is presumed in the absence of a defensible model of idealism, having first defined idealism in terms of the 'ghost in the machine' model of Cartesianism. In that context, the presumption of materialism, whilst itself not a religious view, is held for religious reasons, namely that to question it, is to open the door for what is not, in Nagel's terms, 'secularly comfortable'.

Why thanks, kind of.