> I am amused by your paradoxical argument. I work from the presumption
> that consciousness has a physical basis, mainly to avoid mystical or
> religious nonsense. Yet you dismiss this as an "argument based on
> faith." This is a bit like a Creationist dismissing evolution as a
> "religious belief."
>
> How is what I stated an "argument based on faith?" An axiom is a
> presumed truth; it forms the basis of investigation, which may provide
> a reason for revising the original presumption. It's about as
> essential to scientific reasoning as one can get.
>
> ---
> The assumption is that spirits, souls, independent minds, Leibnizian
> monads, idealism, etc., etc., are all mystical or religious nonsense.
> There is no way to know if this is true. Therefore, it is an argument
> made on an ungrounded assumption, that is, an argument based on faith.
Oh, yeah, the time-honored "But science is just another kind of _faith_" argument. I hear it a lot from Creationists.
S: "We must base our knowledge of the emergence of life on verifiable physical evidence, consistency of explanation, and continual re-evaluation of established knowledge. We cannot include claims of divine intervention or mystical influences, as they are non-falsifiable, and have no explanatory power." C: "But that's just another argument based on _faith_."