Materialism is true
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 4 votes and with 12 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 3
- Time for argument
- Three days
- Max argument characters
- 30,000
- Voting period
- One week
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
No information
Empirical evidence is information that verifies the truth (which accurately corresponds to reality) or falsity (inaccuracy) of a claim. In the empiricist view, one can claim to have knowledge only when based on empirical evidence (although some empiricists believe that there are other ways of gaining knowledge). This stands in contrast to the rationalist view under which reason or reflection alone is considered evidence for the truth or falsity of some propositions.[2] Empirical evidence is information acquired by observation or experimentation, in the form of recorded data, which may be the subject of analysis (e.g. by scientists). This is the primary source of empirical evidence. Secondary sources describe, discuss, interpret, comment upon, analyze, evaluate, summarize, and process primary sources. Secondary source materials can be articles in newspapers or popular magazines, book or movie reviews, or articles found in scholarly journals that discuss or evaluate someone else's original research.[2]
We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of the past and the cause of the future. An intellect which at any given moment knew all of the forces that animate nature and the mutual positions of the beings that compose it, if this intellect were vast enough to submit the data to analysis, could condense into a single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom; for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.— Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities
Existence is the ontological property[1] of being,[2] with reference to the ability of an entity to, directly or indirectly, interact with the physical or, especially in idealistic worldviews, mental reality.Materialism holds that the only things that exist are matter and energy, that all things are composed of material, that all actions require energy, and that all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of the interaction of matter.Dialectical materialism does not make a distinction between being and existence, and defines it as the objective reality of various forms of matter.[2]
Idealism holds that the only things that exist are thoughts and ideas, while the material world is secondary.[3][4] In idealism, existence is sometimes contrasted with transcendence, the ability to go beyond the limits of existence.[2] As a form of epistemological idealism, rationalism interprets existence as cognizable and rational, all things as composed of strings of reasoning, requiring an associated idea of the thing, and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of an understanding of the imprint from the noumenal world in which lies beyond the thing-in-itself.
In scholasticism, existence of a thing is not derived from its essence and is determined by the creative volition of God, the dichotomy of existence and essence demonstrates that the dualism of the created universe is only resolvable through God.[2] Empiricism recognizes existence of singular facts, which are not derivable and which are observable through empirical knowledge.
The exact definition of existence is one of the most important and fundamental topics of ontology, the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence, or reality in general, as well as of the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology deals with questions concerning what things or entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such things or entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences.
A syllogism is a systematic representation of a single logical inference. It has three parts: a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. The parts are defined this way:
- The major premise contains a term from the predicate of the conclusion
- The minor premise contains a term from the subject of the conclusion
- The conclusion combines major and minor premise
When all the premises are true and the syllogism is correctly constructed, a syllogism is an ironclad logical argument.
The proof for the non-materialistic is both able to be and highly likely to be non-physical and is entirely capable of being valid in spite of being such.
The material world, in any proof-based sense of interpreting it, is itself proving that there is immaterial aspects to it, given that the value of material information is solely based upon the immaterial garnering of knowledge.
The material is a means to an immaterial end, no matter how we interpret it or use it.
The proof for the non-materialistic is both able to be and highly likely to be non-physical and is entirely capable of being valid in spite of being such.
physicalADJECTIVE‘a range of physical and mental challenges’1.1 Involving bodily contact or activity.
physicalADJECTIVE2 Relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind; tangible or concrete.
Material (adjective): Denoting or consisting of physical objects rather than the mind or spirit.
Matter: physical or corporeal substance in general, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, especially as distinguished from incorporeal substance, as spirit or mind, or from qualities, actions, and the like.
Voting PolicyThe voting policy is a subset of the Code of Conduct (COC) Policy.I. Sufficient VotesA sufficient vote is one that states why one debater was better than the other in a particular respect and explains why the voter thought that. The last part of that definition is crucial. It is not sufficient to merely state that "Pro had better arguments", because nothing in that statement explains why Pro had better arguments. The requirements for a sufficient vote are explained in more detail below. Votes that are reported and which are deemed insufficient will be deleted.
Pro set up basic logic reasoning for why the immaterial doesn’t exist, and can’t be shown. Not a great start, but enough to meet his initial burden of proof.
Con argues that knowledge is immaterial, he doesn’t explain why he comes to that conclusion, or the reasons that he can consider knowledge immaterial rather than a product of the material brain - he just seems to clip in the conclusion somewhere around in C4.
Pro casts doubt by stating that knowledge is a mere product of the material brain and con has to show they’re separate.
Cons final round does a little bit better, showing that emotions and feelings are interpretations and thus non physical. It’s unrefuted due to the conflict. So arguments have to go to con.
Conduct to con for forfeit
Arguments: This one was close. In the end, I was left more convinced that the "proof of materialism" was in itself, not materialistic, and since we can experience that it must be real. This is a bit shaky, and pro even contested this idea by claiming that consciousness is immaterial, however they didn't attempt to back up their position when it really counted.
Conduct: Awarding the conduct to Con because Pro forfeited R4.
Spelling and grammar: Both had decent spelling and grammar, therefore it's a tie.
Reliable sources: Pro only used 1 single source in his debate and it was from a wiki page, Con not only used a wider variety of more trustworthy sources but used his sources in his argument better than pro did as pro throughout the debate mostly used anecdotes. Therefore con has better sources.
Conduct: Pro ff the last round while Con didn't. Therefore Con by default had better conduct.
Convincing arguments: Both made decent points, however in the final round Con absoulutely destroyed most of Pro's argument on this point.
"There is a missing link, even in the Harvard-supported research into proving consciousness to be physical, to identify what exactly knowledge known to the conscious being is and what the emotions experienced turn into from 'hormones' into genuinely felt sensations."
Con than stated,
"There is absolutely no way to explain it is in a physical sense because while you can prove consciousness to be materialistic in the sense of this definition, you cannot explain where, how or when knowledge is or feelings are 'operating' or absolutely tangible in a physical sense for the conscious being to 'access' with their conscious thinking. Instead, only the 'why' and the 'what' are explainable, meaning it isn't entirely unreal but it lacks any physicality."
- This statement alone while doesn't 100 % prove that materialism doesn't exist, it does provide reasoble doubt on the entire concept of materialism. And since all Con had too do was to provide reasonable doubt, Con easily won the debate in terms of convincing arguments.
Argument points.
Pro:
1. Only material is observable
Pro use sound strong inductive reasoning (everything ever observed is material) to reach a probabilistic conclusion. This meets the Burden of Proof
2. Only material is necessary
Pro did not meet the burden of proof here because pro did not address how abstracts could be material or unnecessary in all cases
3. Only material is sensical
Same problem as the last statement. Pro did not explain how abstracts how abstracts could be material or arbitrary in all cases.
4. Only material is tangible
This is basically the same as the first argument, except it address the sensory aspect of observation. So it also meets the BOP
5. Only the material exist.
Pro's argument is true by definition here. Although, it's a tad redundant since anything that exists is necessarily material. This is a tautology.
Con:
Con did not use proper structure in any of the syllogisms, so they are all invalid. I'm going off of the actual rules for categorical syllogism.
Major Premise (MP): Proving things in a non-physical way can still be valid proof.
Minor Premise (mP): Material things can be proven to exist by physical means only.
Conclusion (and also Contention so the symbol will be 'C' as my Conclusions will be my actual Contentions/Points of argumentation)...
C1: The proof for the non-materialistic is both able to be and highly likely to be non-physical and is entirely capable of being valid in spite of being such.
Here, Con did not follow the rule of even distribution nor did Con use the proper wording for the arguments themselves. A properly distributed argument with valid language looks like this.
1. All A's are B's
2. Some B's are C's
C. Therefore, some A's are C's
Furthermore, the conclusion does not logically follow from the premises. This is why the distribution is necessary, to gain logical connectivity. Since all of Con's subsequent premises rely on the first conclusion and also commit the same error in structure by not using the even distribution, Con's entire set of syllogisms and subsequent arguments defending them are also invalid. This was Can's entire argument.
After weighing both arguments, I find that Pro has met the BoP of proving that materialism is true. Con was not able to meet the BoP on the contrary nor was Con able to point out any flaws in Pro's arguments.
Sources.
So according to the rules of voting, I have to provide at least one source, and also describe their net impact on both side and then compare them.
Pro's sources were centered around defining things in order to show the truth of the claim. In particular, Pro sourced a Wiki on Empirical Evidence which help to demonstrate the nature of what is and is not observable and what can and can't be evidenced. This was a key point in the debate. So this source was specifically useful. Overall, I would say that pros sources had a net positive impact and no particular source was unreliable.
Con's sources were a couple of definitions, a guide to syllogisms, and an article about a study. The definitions were helpful for clearing up terms in the debate. The guide to syllogisms was accurate. The article about the study in particular was a dubious source that merely quoted data from a study without showing the methodology. I think this source hurt Con a bit in terms of credibility. Con also claimed that this source helped to demonstrate the metaphysical by saying that it proved "sensory". But the study never mentions anything about the metaphysical at all.
Overall. Pro ends up with the better sources because Con's sources ended up being a net loss due to the study.
Spelling and Grammar.
Both sides formatted their arguments in a way that was easy to read. Neither side made any noticeable error and all definitions were well understood. I call tie on this.
Conduct.
Neither side was rude.
Rules say I can award conduct on a single forfeit if argument points were award or an explanation was posed for not awarding. Since Pro forfeit the crucial final round and all other things were equal, I award conduct to Con
Good debate. I hope this was a better vote
thanks very much for the vote.
Well, there's a lot of reasons it doesn't follow. You ignored the rule of distribution. There is no logical connectivity between your first two premises, which mean they're non sequiturs (technically, all fallacies are non sequiturs, fun fact) The reason is because there is no middle term that is in both premise 1 and premise 2. Furthermore, the conclusion is only allowed to contain things that were in the first 2 premises, which it didn't. It added things that weren't in the first two. It could have been the case that your conclusion did logically follow, but if that's the case, you did not use the right set of premises. It's not entirely your fault. Categorical syllogisms are extremely specific in usage and most people can't use them properly. They also have limited proving power for this reason. You should have used propositional logic because it would have been much easier. Then you could have done it easily. For example.
1. Physical things can only be proven physically
2. If physical things can only be observed physically, then non physical things can only be proved non physically.
C. non physical things can only be proven non physically.
This is a syllogism constructed using modus ponen and is much easier to do. The important thing here is to either affirm the antecedent (The first half of premise 2). Or negate the Consequent (The second half of premise 2) Don't ever do the opposite or it's a fallacy. When I say affirm or negate. I"m talking about how the first premise relates to the second premise. If I was doing a disjunctive syllogism which use modus tollens instead. I would make the first premise would have to deny the consequent. Sorry if I hurt your feelings about your logic skills. I'm just trying to be honest here.
I am both furious and calm right now.
The furious and calm part.
So what is this special thing beyond human control?
As I said, you do not understand yet. Also you didn't realise the third thing isn't about patience, it's something beyond normal human ability to emotionally control.
There is a difference between controlling your ass in a strategical and calculated way and being passive and restrained because you spend all day meditating under waterfalls.
Elaborate on the 'sometimes' and you will realise where I am going with this.
I am not an example, because I can control it when I want to but I don't. Hitler is not an example either because he lacked the specific type of strategical and social intelligence that helps with this. Buddhist monks are sometimes intelligent so IDK where you're going with that.
No, it isn't. A good example would be you. If you want an example other than you, look at Hitler. Want more examples that the two skills are completely unlinked?
Alright, Buddhists monks are on the other end of the spectrum. Want more?
Intelligence is what allows you to control your impulses and make rational decisions despite having emotions.
The ending of that is wrong, it more likely was quite the opposite or really you never achieved that.
Intelligence is overrated though, it's just as important as developing a patient temperament and becoming both furious and calm at once. Until you achieve these things you won't understand why intelligence matters less but once you achieve them, intelligent people will fall to their knees before you and do your bidding in a highly intelligent way or they will lose anyway because you equal them in intelligence or almost equal them and make up for the difference due to those temperamental things and mental capacity to strategise very, very steadily and boring which will drive them to insanity and force them to make dumb moves.
Do not think it is easy to be as disciplined as I am; you will become a psychopath if you tried it too fast. Even becoming patient while still having all the emotions of an impatient madman in tact and living richly and passionately is itself part of the patient journey and puzzle.
The end destination is really death no matter which way you look at it, but fuck the ride is smooth. Fate is the only thing that will always be and Fiora will but Fiora can opt-out (suicide) whereas Fate is the actual 'god-physical' entity that can't kill itself no matter what it tries or does.
After that I met the guy that was briefly on CD who was my best friend for years (and my only friend ever other than ones from when I was a little kid) I converted to Islam because of the things he told me. A year later though I was no longer convinced and became brutally agnostic and unsure about everything in life which caused him to stop talking to me. A few months later we talked again and he was agnostic as well, after which we became a pair of pseudo-geniuses combining our intellect into the semblance of full geniusy and we helped each other to figure everything out.
Then you did what? Gave up on rational insanity and switched over to irrational pseudo-sanity? Shame on you, man. Don't let science authorities enslave you, look beyond the obvious.
When I was about thirteen-fourteeen I believed in an ancient aliens version of Satanism where God was a reptillian archon creature and angels are greys, whereas Satan and demons were the more humanoid Annunaki that created mankind from their own DNA.
Neither. She is attracted to concepts and personalities. She is actually sapiosexual among other things. She loathes sex that's why she made it be rape-like for most animals. She loathes humans as a whole and is a very jaded, sadistic being who has suffered under her merciless pimp Fate for what seems like eternity (but isn't, she isn't eternal just the most ancient of all other than fate and fate is the only eternal thing). Fate toys with her; she was originally the only being. Fate synthesised her alone and it drove her insane but things began to alter when it granted her control and creativity that enabled her to control and create all other than herself within some limitations (she isn't omnipotent, only omniscient). Fate had begun to grant her things that enabled her to reverse-engineer fate to make herself an irreplaceable part of it among other things. The 'how' is simple; fate randomised things to a point where the formation could organise the very core randomisation in the first place but it's true; even that is randomised and ultimately fate is controlling its own alteration by her from its original randomisation and coding. As I said, chaos-theory vs determinism is a false dichotomy; it's both.
Yes, she is very good at tricking people into thinking she likes them more than she does. She is far, far closer to Satan than the Christian God's personality.
Here are some questions for you that Fiora may have given you some knowledge to answer
Is Fiora bisexual or just into men? My guess is she's bisexual.
Will my rage and impulse still be controlling me when Fiora makes me king? My guess is no.
Will she be turned off when I am making good use of that pussy to craft my algorithms? My guess is again no.
Whether or not you delete that comment, she WILL answer you. The answer will be via manipulating fate.
In all seriousness, you may actually win this debate as she appreciates dominant men but she requires them to be both intelligent and patient and you're not necessarily high on those 2 departments on her scaling.
You could be more intelligent, you have the capacity, you let your rage and impulse control you rather than you being the master to harness them and this will end up turning her off, but you do have the dominant streak going for you.
Well shit, I'll just do that then. Fiora may I borrow your cunt for a moment?
Then it would be severely creative and intricate.
But what if I used Fiora's cunt to make the algorithm?
*decode not decide
And then perhaps, yes, we'd have Communism.
But it wouldn't, it would who can manipulate the limitations and loopholes of the AI's logic and way of separating truth from fiction and the cycle would begin again except some "good guy Aristocrat" would reveal an algorithm and be the Julian Assange to the top rankers.
The Algorithm he/she would decide and reveal is a step by step method to never ever select a debate that you possibly could lose based on what the AI already "knows" is right according to it's version of truth and reasoning. The Algorithm would also extend into how to present the ideas in the highest marked style for the AI to rank as "strong".
It would create an entirely new and better purpose. Instead of being a sport it would genuinely be an endeavor to decide which viewpoint is actually correct.
Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of having the debate in the first place?
There would need to be an objective method of deciding the winner that doesn't come down to opinion or allow bullshit to slip through.
Working with your "everything is Aristocracy" worldview and extremist way of applying it, I'm curious what you think the solution would be?
Could you design a debate site that defied your concluded attitude of all the top ranking members to the sport of debating?
Here's how it works...It is possible to have a relatively high rating and not be a douchebag, and it is possible to have a low one and be a douche bag, but those at the bottom are usually put there for thinking in unpopular ways rather than being wrong and those at the top are always scum and always retarded because the way to get there is by tricking the site majority of idiots into voting for you or genuinely being agreed with by the majority of idiots more often than not.
Are all those with low Rating the least douchebags of the site, according to you?
I can see it though, numbers don't lie.
I'm nowhere near the top of such a pyramid.
Prepare to lose your spot at the top of the pyramid of douchebaggery.
You win that, hands down.
He said only the material realm can be physically proven
I said, yes this is true and the immaterial realm of semantics and knowledge is proven true with immaterial but irrefutable proof.
I am going to show you how utterly easy it is to be a better douche bag than you'll ever be.
I had ignorance of human psychology regarding specifics nuances of persuasion. I don't have stupidity with using my knowledge of said topic.
Now, I have less ignorance. I'll avoid all debates where the Con side requires logic and the Pro side requires physical proof (or vice versa but the vice versa opens Pro up to Kritiks so not necessarily).
This will improve my winrate and actually is a severe ignorance I had that explains nearly all of my losses, bar two or three that I genuinely lost for other reasons.
Your stupidity is something to fight against and tame, not be enabled by the very shitty system you benefit from and complain about the second a fair vote slips through the cracks.
Your anger is something to fight against and tame, not let completely rule you.
Okay, I know there is no answer to this as I know how logic works but prove me wrong then and please tell me how my C1 doesn't follow from the premises.
Look at you, the second you start losing a single debate you start whining about how the system is unfair just because no one believes your baseless retarded claims that there simply must be something beyond the physical. At the end of the day there are more retards then smart people and you will probably get more points but this just goes to show...You literally lie and cheat and distort and call it "superior strategy" and are wrong 99% of the time whereas I am the opposite, and the ONE TIME I start winning fair and square because someone with some fucking brains finally joined the site you whine about it like a little bitch.
This is how you sound:
"Waaaah, but I cheated fair and square!!!"
Okay, I'm going to attempt to explain this to you so we can move passed this. I gave my criticisms of both sides and then weighed them. In the end, his argument met the BoP and yours didn't. Your argument doesn't magically meet the burden just because Pro didn't give the exact same criticism as me. Pro convinced me that his argument was true. Nothing in your argument countered this, so even if your syllogisms were perfect, I still would have to vote Pro unless one of your counter arguments debunks the burden that he met.
You can keep this one up. I know exactly how to get away with abusive cherry picking on this joke of a voting moderation, I just am morally against it as it doesn't help me to create a voting revenge scheme and will make me feel shit on top of dumbing down my actual reasoning skills if I go around doing that.
The voting rules are far too exploitable as they do not necessitate one to explore all the angles, especially of later rebuttals, and also because they enable voters like yourself to do their own debating against points in the debate which defies what a judge is meant to do.
These flaws in the game are part of a larger flaw with humans and how they process reasoning. I will take the brutal L (brutal in rating loss) if need be, not that I have a choice. The choice is that I'll take it and study patterns in what does and doesn't trigger blindness of logic in voters. I have noticed that physical proof and physical evidence is often taken more seriously than logically irrefutable counters. This trend is not just in this debate but led to my wrong loss against oromagi and magicaintreal despite me having an airtight ingenious case in all three scenarios.
This will factor into my future debates and enable me to gamble more boldly with debates where I know I am wrong but I know I have more physical evidence for my side.
I haven't even begun to prove my forum thread right. I have something special planned that's going to knock your tits off.
"Good luck on your shall I was endeavour that you accused me of."
Learn proper sentence structure before attempting to condescend to others you half witted hole-haver.
I will actually concede something. You have surprised me with how soon you proved your forum thread partially accurate. Let's see if it is true for the other voters. Either way you do have a point in your forum thread and I was proven wrong very fast after you said you'd do so. I'm extremely impressed by you and your mastery of fate, but how long will it last?
An immaterial realm is not necessitated to justify jack diddly ding dong. All that is necessitate is the fact that materialism is true and you are arguing for some superstitious notion of bullshit that doesn't exist.
Lack of voting rules? Yeah right. This place is strict. I'll be surprised If I can keep this one up, lol.
Anyway.
I accounted for that. The fact is that no concession he made had any affect on his BOP. Saying some could possible be the case is not a strong enough case to debunk the contrary.
So you debate only for wins? Bad results if that's your motive. Good luck on your shallow endeavour that you accused me of.
It's not secret but I'm not going to bother now that the debate is over. It's too much work for absolutely no reward.