/lit/ - Literature

>finally actually googled dancing israelis
>mfw

>>11337044
>why do we take for granted that it exists as a thing in itself?

What confuses me is more the following
>we don't know what anything "is" (we don't know anything about essences or formal/final causes in nature)
>all we have are our imperfect linguistic/cultural descriptions of things ("soul") which may be self-referential, on the one hand, and on the other hand, our best attempts at pre-linguistic, universal statements about the world and our experience of it ("I don't know what a 'soul' is, but I seem to be subjectively conscious," and "I don't seem to be able to regard my actions as un-free, even when I logically cannot see or say how they could be free," "I seem to have ideas of a transcendent (deity, truth, order)," "I seem to have innate moral aversions and preferences," "subjectivity seems to be one sort or modality of existence, as I don't seem to be the only one who can act 'spontaneously' in this way," etc.)
>all of these "best-guess" preliminary descriptions should be given just as much (or as little) ontological status as "there seems to be an objective non-ideal world outside of me," or "something like cause-and-effect seems to exist objectively," or "time seems to be a real thing outside of our perception of it," etc.
>especially given how little we know about "matter" and "mind" (e.g., whether they are even distinct "things" or not)
>seems like we have no more reason to believe in cause-and-effect being "real," or "realness" even being a "real" thing, than we have to believe (or disbelieve) in panpsychism, in "supernatural" spiritual essences (souls etc.) being the ground of consciousness
>seems like all this should be an open book
>yet not one natural philosopher or scientist is willing to take these latter "best-guess" preliminary descriptions of consciousness/freedom/inner experience as jumping-off points for rigorous analysis
>everyone assumes by default that consciousness must be a secondary, totally determinate (and deterministic) "function" of mechanistic matter (a giant metaphysical assertion, usually made with no backing)

I agree that we shouldn't take any thing-in-itself for granted, but why wouldn't we regard it as an open question? Why would subjectivity/life being "supernatural" in origin (say, from a psychic/pan-psychic medium that we can't presently see or understand) be just as likely/unlikely as it being an afterthought function of mechanistic/stochastic matter?

Why is materialist metaphysics simply presumed to have vanquished the open question of "what and why is consciousness?" or "what and why is the world at all?" Why do scientists default to quaint metaphysical myths like materialism, biosemiotics, et al. rather than just acknowledging it's an open question requiring experiment and exploration?