I feel like I understand communist theory pretty well at a basic level, and I believe in it, but I just don’t see what part of it requires belief in an objective world of matter. I don’t believe in matter and I’m still a communist. And it seems that in the 21st century most people believe in materialism but not communism. What part of “people should have access to the stuff they need to live” requires believing that such stuff is real? After all, there are nonmaterial industries and they still need communism. Workers in the music industry are producing something that nearly everyone can agree only exists in our heads. And they’re still exploited by capital, despite musical instruments being relatively cheap these days, because capital owns the system of distribution networks and access to consumers that is the means of profitability for music. Spotify isn’t material, it’s a computer program. It’s information. It’s a thoughtform. Yet it’s still a means of production that ought to be seized for the liberation of the musician worker. What does materialism have to do with any of this?

    • DroneRights [it/its]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      https://hexbear.net/comment/3894130

      The FBT theorem does not depend upon there being a world in order to hold true. Rather, it erodes the concept of there being a world such as humans would understand it to be a world, because it confirms that our perceptions of the world are perceptions of fitness, not truth

        • DroneRights [it/its]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          There has to be some existence in which evolution selected for things for it to work

          Some, yes. But not one that carries the cultural baggage with which you associate the term “existence”. It does not imply that there exists matter, or nonconscious entities.

          If we cannot know reality, then there is no reason to believe this aspect of reality is true either, and therefore no reason to believe that we cannot know reality etc etc

          If we are to propose that reality exists, then we must have some consistent theory of reality that does not invalidate itself. Hoffman proves that mainstream realism invalidates itself. In the absence of a coherent model, the null hypothesis of solipsism is supported by Occam’s razor. You seem to think realism is the null hypothesis, which is as strange as it is to say that a teapot orbiting mars is the null hypothesis.

            • DroneRights [it/its]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              The skyscrapers, dams, and bridges are representations of what may be some unknown part of some unknown conscious entity, according to Hoffman. Hoffman does not believe consciousness is exclusive to human beings.

                • DroneRights [it/its]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  We know there are such things as conscious entities because we’re conscious entities. We have no evidence that there exist such things as non-conscious entities, and Occam’s razor says we shouldn’t take their existence on faith.

                  Conscious realism is the subject of one single chapter out of a whole book of proofs that realism is false. Hoffman states in the book that he put the section on conscious realism at the end because he doesn’t want people to over-focus on it. This is just a proposed model and he hasn’t put a lot of study into fleshing it out and testing it, in comparison with his work disproving realism. He suggests conscious realism only because he knew that some people aren’t going to buy a single thing he says if he can’t present an alternative theory. His primary goal was to refute the existing theory. He’s a cognitive scientist, not a philosopher. He just wanted to prove that brains don’t represent truth, because that’s cognitive science. He’s not in the business of inventing worldviews, he’s just in the business of one narrow corner of science.