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Comment by msg | Hacker News Reader

If a scientist tells you something doesn't exist, remind them of the problem of induction.

If you hold a prior belief that the physical world is all there is (or that physical explanations are the only valid explanations, which the physical sciences take as their starting point), you can come up with endless circular rationalizations of materialism.

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"It doesn't exist" is a shorthand for "There is insufficient evidence for it or against it, and it has minimal explanatory power, and it's not amenable to proof or disproof, so your life will be simpler if you assume it doesn't exist."

This, at least, is the attitude that many people have to ghosts, gods, and werewolves.

Your argument is still circular. What do you think proof and disproof mean in this context? Why don't you think that materialism suffers from the same flaws?

This is why scientists make bad philosophers. They do not acknowledge the boundaries of their philosophy.

This is the difference between science and scientism.

Science is an extremely powerful and well-proven set of tools for learning about the natural world. Scientism is a crock of baloney.

I always thought that "it doesn't exist" means "we have a test which would prove that it does exist, and it has failed that test." If "it doesn't exist" means "I can't prove it either way and I don't think it matters," what category is left for phlogiston?

Does something have to be physical to be real? It seems like no to me. What is a "movie" but pixels on a screen flashing in a certain order, or a song but a series of sounds. But these patterns, or forms have predictable effects on the material world--the sound of a fire alarm will change the position of people around it. If these patterns exist apart from the physical world--their implementations in some sense, then why does free will need a physical basis? Couldn't it be a property that exceeds the sum of parts?

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