[resource] Political Typology Quiz: Where do you fit in the political typology? Are you a Faith and Flag Conservative? Progressive Left? Or somewhere in between?
Take our quiz to find out which one of our nine political typology groups is your best match, compared with a nationally representative survey of more than 10,000 U.S. adults by Pew Research Center. You may find some of these questions are difficult to answer. That’s OK. In those cases, pick the answer that comes closest to your view, even if it isn’t exactly right.
That's a very interesting question, but unfortunately one I don't have much input on myself. I've always understood materialism as a belief that everything can be, in theory, explained by science (or in the somewhat-related Epicurean understanding that everything is comprised of atoms). As such, its counterpart would be something along the lines of spiritualism rather than idealism. I'm certain that my understanding of materialism must be a specific definition of perhaps a different concept entirely than that which you've brought up. I don't have a great deal of formal knowledge of sociology or psychology. Likewise, I've studied a fair bit of political philosophy but nothing that I can think of which touches on this specific topic. Nonetheless, you've piqued my interest and I expect I'll be heading down a rabbit hole tonight.
You are on the right track w/ idealism vs materialism in psychology, at least.
The question there arose from the brain: how do you rectify the mind/soul with the brain/body? Dualism apparently fails (the idea that there is a separate mind from the brain) which leaves only some form of monism. A sort of hybrid materialism-idealism seems to make the most sense, where consciousness is a property of the universe, like time or space, and different entities have differing consciousnesses. In that sort of a philosophy, when talking about the brain of a person you are equally talking about the experience that person is having, just in different terms.
I suspect that in sociology that would be some sort of unified anarcho-marxism, if such a thing exists. The atomic theory of society seems to be the thing where they are working on unifying language. If society is fully atomized, asking whether a new society arises due to free choice or resource demands is like asking whether rivers rise due to rain or sewer overflow, if that makes sense?
There is no mind-body problem in the first place. All dualisms and idealisms are circular as they start from the premise that reality is subject-dependent then work backwards from that conclusion, but they never justify that premise. Even many materialists fall for it.
What is thought of as opposed to thought itself must necessarily exist prior to the thought in order for it to enter into thought and be what is thought of in the first place. I mean, it's just self-evident, is it not? If all thoughts cease, reality doesn't disappear. It's always there independent of whether or not thought is applied to it or not, whether or not there is an attempt to interpret it. It exists independent of any attempt made to formulate a subjective interpretation of it. That's all that is meant here by "objective," that reality is what it is entirely independent of what it is subjectively taken to be.
But what justification is there that what is thought of is actually in existence outside of thought? One can think of things that do not exist outside of thought.
What justification is there that reality isn't thought by it's very nature?
They're just categorically different, there isn't an "inside" or an "outside" in the sense of spatial structure as that is something derived a posteriori as part of thought.
I'm not sure what it would even mean to say reality is "thought". If I try my best to stop thinking about things does experiential reality just disappear? Not for me it doesn't. Maybe for you.
They’re just categorically different, there isn’t an “inside” or an “outside” in the sense of spatial structure as that is something derived a posteriori as part of thought.
So.. there are things that are either within the category of thought or not? Is thought mutually exclusive to material? Is thought composed of material or the other way around? Or are they both the same?
I’m not sure what it would even mean to say reality is “thought”.
That is the standard definition of idealism, is it not? That existence is immaterial?
So… there are things that are either within the category of thought or not?
Objects are in the category of thought but not in some spatial "realm" or "world" of thought. It is definitional, linguistic, not a statement about ontology.
Is thought mutually exclusive to material? Is thought composed of material or the other way around? Or are they both the same?
From an a priori standpoint there is no material, there is just reality. Our understanding of material reality comes from an a posteriori standpoint of investing it, learning about it, forming laws etc, and we do come to understand thought from an a posteriori lens as something that can be observed and implemented in other systems.
Usually thought itself is not even considered as part of the so-called "hard problem" as that's categorized into the "easy problem."
That is the standard definition of idealism, is it not? That existence is immaterial?
They say existence is "mind" which includes both thought and experience which they both argue are products of the mind, and so if we start off with thought and experience as the foundations of philosophy then we're never able to leave the mind. That's how idealism works, the "thought" part of basically the "easy" problem and the "experience" part is what entails the "hard" problem since even idealists would concede that it is not difficult to conceive of constructing an intelligent machine that can reason, potentially even as good as humans can.
That's all very interesting and something I will definitely be looking up. While I have little knowledge of psychology myself, I do find it fascinating - especially stuff like this that touches on the idea of consciousness. While I'm a believer in approaching everything scientifically, I hold some explicitly non-scientific theistic beliefs that are at odds with this approach (and which I admit essentially amount to hoping there's more than we're capable of understanding ourselves). That brings to mind some of what you said there regarding that sort of dichotomy (as I'm understanding it) of physical biology vs the workings of the mind.
This part is still definitely confusing me though:
I suspect that in sociology that would be some sort of unified anarcho-marxism, if such a thing exists. The atomic theory of society seems to be the thing where they are working on unifying language. If society is fully atomized, asking whether a new society arises due to free choice or resource demands is like asking whether rivers rise due to rain or sewer overflow, if that makes sense?
Is the idea here essentially a question of whether social progress (for better or worse) is essentially pre-determined by geography in some fatalistic way?
I'll definitely be digging into this a bit over the coming days and may ask my wife her thoughts on the psychological side of what you said earlier. She's a former psych nurse, so while not at all a psychologist at least has more background in this stuff than I do.
I think there's a way to follow people on Lemmy (?) so I'll see if I can do that to keep in touch with you via private messages. Or, I recently got around to setting up a mastodon account. If you happen to use that, feel free to link up with me that way so we can keep in touch (if you'd like). I'm at @herrcaptain@geekdom.social