Materialism means we believe in a world that exists independent of our observations. This external world is in dialogue with people. There is not some kind of third thing that's not in the world, not in the people, and fundamentally unobservable/unknowable, like God or souls or woo in general. (See Engels on agnosticism in Socialism Scientific & Utopian.) Either these things are real material phenomena, in which case we can use science to analyze ghosts or whatever, or they're not. There is room in a materialist worldview for like, cryptids, but most "parapsychology" is stuff that requires discarding huge chunks of knowledge. For instance premonitions violate causality. If you give that up, what's left to be materialist about?
For instance premonitions violate causality. If you give that up, what's left to be materialist about?
A lot. The definition you gave for materialism isn’t incompatible with brainfuck basically incomprehensible weird shit, it just has to be technically observable and predictable. Humans aren’t perfect measuring instruments and often what we make isn’t perfect either, so the existence of systems and shit we might be able to eventually measure but seem completely supernatural to us now is totally possible.
What does it mean to "believe" in something you can't observe or understand? There's a sort of frontier where you make observations, form and test theories, and grow to understand the observations. We agree that crank theories, without evidence and unable to prove anything, are indistinguishable from the supernatural. So what good does it do us to consider them? We should explore things within the frontier - does infrasound cause ghost sightings? if so, does that summon ghosts or change the brain? - on a materialist basis, like some of the fringe scientists are trying to do. Invisible teapots that humans will be able to see in 3000 years should be dismissed as idealism.
I agree with you pretty much, I’m just being pedantic. Idk there’s some stuff that’s just Weird that I’ve experienced, and I love Weird shit, but if there is something unexplainable going on I don’t think it’s likely for it to be whatever invisible teapot we came up with. Just because Weird shit is real doesn’t mean it’s ghosts and insisting that ghosts or anything else specific are real is probably idealism.
Materialism means we believe in a world that exists independent of our observations. This external world is in dialogue with people. There is not some kind of third thing that's not in the world, not in the people, and fundamentally unobservable/unknowable, like God or souls or woo in general. (See Engels on agnosticism in Socialism Scientific & Utopian.) Either these things are real material phenomena, in which case we can use science to analyze ghosts or whatever, or they're not. There is room in a materialist worldview for like, cryptids, but most "parapsychology" is stuff that requires discarding huge chunks of knowledge. For instance premonitions violate causality. If you give that up, what's left to be materialist about?
A lot. The definition you gave for materialism isn’t incompatible with brainfuck basically incomprehensible weird shit, it just has to be technically observable and predictable. Humans aren’t perfect measuring instruments and often what we make isn’t perfect either, so the existence of systems and shit we might be able to eventually measure but seem completely supernatural to us now is totally possible.
What does it mean to "believe" in something you can't observe or understand? There's a sort of frontier where you make observations, form and test theories, and grow to understand the observations. We agree that crank theories, without evidence and unable to prove anything, are indistinguishable from the supernatural. So what good does it do us to consider them? We should explore things within the frontier - does infrasound cause ghost sightings? if so, does that summon ghosts or change the brain? - on a materialist basis, like some of the fringe scientists are trying to do. Invisible teapots that humans will be able to see in 3000 years should be dismissed as idealism.
I agree with you pretty much, I’m just being pedantic. Idk there’s some stuff that’s just Weird that I’ve experienced, and I love Weird shit, but if there is something unexplainable going on I don’t think it’s likely for it to be whatever invisible teapot we came up with. Just because Weird shit is real doesn’t mean it’s ghosts and insisting that ghosts or anything else specific are real is probably idealism.