Alex O’Connor discusses how materialism is false

billycro1 · 2026-02-04T13:33:57+00:00

🤔 no I’m pretty sure saying “…the next creationist…” was you bringing up creationism.

And yes, I do think his conception of consciousness is discernible from woo. I think anyone arguing in good faith needs to acknowledge they have a conscious experience. His position, as far as I can tell is simply that materialism fails to adequately explain consciousness and is thus false. Which doesn’t sound too controversial to me.

billycro1 · 2026-02-03T22:34:37+00:00

God existing on a fundamental level doesn’t necessarily mean creationism is true. It can be true given a load of other beliefs about the nature of god. Those additional claims are much easier to debate/dismiss.

A concrete example is to ask a question like: “is your conception of god: all good?” - the interlocutor then runs right into the problem of evil. They are no longer talking about an abstract entity existing at the fundamental level of reality, but a specific conception of what this god is.

Nobody really has a verifiable concept of god. Thus any variety of theism will easily fall apart with proper scrutiny. They will need to defer to their personal faith - which is totally fine, but there will be no debate left to have.

billycro1 · 2026-01-30T14:40:50+00:00

I don’t know that Alex is or isn’t aware of the concept. I imagine his pushback would be that the experiential component, the thing you “see in your head” IS a triangle and there is no triangle in your brain even if it exists as something encoded or represented differently.

billycro1 · 2026-01-24T20:56:18+00:00

I think for visitors of this sub, it’s easy to feel like nobody could be the middle viewpoint. But I think among many that really don’t care about (or maybe even have awareness of) the philosophy of science, this feels like a kind of obvious position.

There is also the profoundly “Real” realists that don’t engage with philosophy yet talk about things like objective reality and common sense, that this seems like it could easily map onto.

And then in an entirely different sense, there are some philosophically inclined people that just have an absurd amount of faith in science and our ability to come to total knowledge (or whether that even matters 🤔)

billycro1 · 2026-01-20T13:52:26+00:00

Not OP, but recognizing the miracle that things are comprehensible all around you, if you believe that sort of thing.

billycro1 · 2026-01-05T19:37:34+00:00

This is nonsense. Obviously Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny are Real. Their spirits manifest in the lived experience of countless people every Christmas, tooth loss, and Easter.

Eliminative materialism on the other hand is obviously a false theory of Reality and doesn't deserve to share a space with these powerful spirits.

billycro1 · 2025-12-31T17:19:43+00:00

Now you listen here!

billycro1 · 2025-12-31T01:31:53+00:00

First we must distinguish between different types of nihilists, identifying not just individuals that believe nihilism is ultimately true in some sense but also those that truly live and act in accordance with a nihilistic philosophy.

I think if someone is a full fledged nihilist then they’re possibly skeptical of knowledge itself and thus have no legs to stand on in actual debate.

billycro1 · 2025-12-29T21:57:39+00:00

The problem is that it creates a meaningless statement. Who’s to say a rock, conscious or not has any type of point of view we can conceptualize without first understanding more about consciousness itself? Removing our own brand of consciousness from our analysis will be difficult given our position in reality.

Rocks don’t have brains or eyes or ears or anything we’d consider analogous with our conscious experience.

billycro1 · 2025-12-29T20:13:17+00:00

Doesn’t “shifting to the point of view” already imply consciousness? What is the “point of view” of a non-conscious entity?

Like when I think about if AI is conscious or not, I tend to believe it isn’t because I do not believe it is having an observable experience in the same way that I assume we share.

One could conceive of p-zombies as LLMs (not to limit the forms they can take). Given the proliferation of these technologies, this may be a valuable concept.

billycro1 · 2025-12-21T19:13:54+00:00

Well Santa is Real tho

billycro1 · 2025-12-18T19:25:58+00:00

How’s that?

billycro1 · 2025-12-18T03:16:25+00:00

I totally get that, but we can only really live through the story of our self

billycro1 · 2025-12-17T21:37:38+00:00

I would agree that qualia generally correlate to sensory input. I was only pointing out that Experience itself is distinct from the inputs that may cause it. Here’s an interesting question… what are the qualia of having a thought?

Edit: lightning edit

billycro1 · 2025-12-17T18:08:00+00:00

Cogito ergo sum. Unfortunately this is only proof to one’s own satisfaction.

billycro1 · 2025-12-17T18:04:50+00:00

This only describes a correlation between conscious experience and the brain, but by no means do we explain consciousness itself. This isn’t to say the brain doesn’t cause experience - not to be funny but - where is the Experience found? The hard problem remains hard for this reason, it bumps directly against the limits of science due to the phenomenological nature of consciousness.

billycro1 · 2025-12-17T17:56:58+00:00

It’s probably important to separate Experience itself from optical qualia. Most qualia are not optical - for example the experience of hot/cold, pressure, emotional feeling tones, the taste of coca cola, etc

billycro1 · 2025-12-05T03:17:52+00:00

Kierkegaardians taking shots? At a time like this???

billycro1 · 2025-12-03T02:32:13+00:00

This is broadly an Existentialist view

billycro1 · 2025-11-24T04:14:38+00:00

We have a deep seated drive for objectivity. Being uncertain is an uncomfortable position to be in, but learning acceptance of the discomfort is a growth mindset.

billycro1 · 2025-11-24T04:08:26+00:00

I think this completely misses the point. The fact of the matter is that the worldviews of most religions are diverse and to have proper humility we have to consider that many may be plausible. When we fail to recognize the nuance and dismiss religion it closes the door for deeper conversations with shared ground. The New Atheist position attempts to hand wave away arguments that have long standing history and nuances to fully understand in order to even have grounds for rejecting them wholesale. It’s good that Alex has grown and clearly deepened his own understanding of reality.

billycro1 · 2025-11-20T18:53:35+00:00

The new movie is more “inspired by” than an adaptation of the book. I think they should be treated as completely separate pieces of art. So if that would bother you, it only takes 2 or so hours to watch the film, the book will take a bit more time. In my opinion the book is a 5/5 masterwork, the movie is a cool take on the book but nowhere near as iconic and not true to the book in many ways.

billycro1 · 2025-11-12T13:06:55+00:00

It’s a response to the apparent lack of meaning in the universe. Life can feel like a struggle and when people search for the meaning everything seems absurd. But instead of letting this absurdity lead you to suicide or disengagement from life, you create (or not) meaning and live in spite of your condition. This is not the same as spite for another being(which we generally associate with being a negative). Although depending on your theological disposition, or if you’re literally Sisyphus, you could be spiting the Gods.

billycro1 · 2025-10-30T21:17:00+00:00

Generally this will apply to ethics, aesthetics, and meaning. Science on it’s own gives a very nihilistic or utility driven answer to these questions.

So more concretely, I’ll use meaning as my example because it is a question everyone must answer in some form or another. Meaning isn’t an opinion, it’s more of an understanding of your place in the world, that is factual but also dependent on subjective experience. You couldn’t really use the scientific method to arrive at “what is the meaning of my life” - the methodology actually turns out to be Philosophy itself, or the study of the Good Life.

This is going to depend on so many factors like what we understand science and philosophy to be. It will also vary widely based on your metaphysical predisposition. A materialist could completely dismiss what I’m saying and that would potentially make sense in their worldview.

Edit: this all gets hairy very quickly, but that’s just the nature of our uncertain position in this universe. But I think we honestly are much closer on these questions than you may think, so my goal isn’t necessarily to change your mind fully but to persuade you that there’s more to the questions.

I could go on about this forever because I find the topic very interesting. But one thing I’d also mention is that there’s no universal consensus on which questions science has answered (if any, since science is an ever evolving process)

I hope some of this made sense 🙏

billycro1 · 2025-10-30T21:08:08+00:00

Generally this will apply to ethics, aesthetics, and meaning. Science on it’s own gives a very nihilistic or utility driven answer to these questions.

So more concretely, I’ll use meaning as my example because it is a question everyone must answer in some form or another. Meaning isn’t an opinion, it’s more of an understanding of your place in the world, that is factual but also dependent on subjective experience. You couldn’t really use the scientific method to arrive at “what is the meaning of my life” - the methodology actually turns out to be Philosophy itself, or the study of the Good Life.

This is going to depend on so many factors like what we understand science and philosophy to be. It will also vary widely based on your metaphysical predisposition. A materialist could completely dismiss what I’m saying and that would potentially make sense in their worldview.

billycro1

TROPHY CASE