Uccisore, there are a thousand non-intuitive ways to describe anything (such as a television described as a cathode-ray-tube). It simply isn’t all that big a hurdle to say that something is unintuitive (though I will discuss the intuitiveness of the proposition in more depth shortly). Also, though I have seen many materialist supporters using the word ‘illusion’ and the like, I have to say I disagree. If I tell you that a TV is a cathode ray tube, it would be strange to respond “So you’re saying that I’ve been duped into believing that this is a TV?” But this is just what it is like to call our subjective experiences ‘illusory’, or to say that we are ‘duped’ about our experience of conscience.
Here, I need to clarify, I think, and explain why I don’t think the materialist’s proposed explanation of moral instinct is unintuitive. You characterize the materialist translation of “that was evil” as “That was something deemed unacceptable by my society”. However, the materialist explanation isn’t so strait-forward, and as a result it agrees much better with intuition. Materialism explains moral intuition as coming from 1)evolution and 2) socialization. Its evolutionary origin makes it a bonafide instinct: we instinctually recognize certain things as evil because that recognition helped our anscestors survive. As such, we would expect it to be a pure sentiment, and nothing that feels like social preservation. We can still see, though, that it evolved because it tended to preserve the human in society.
Its socialized origin has a similar feel. People are socialized before they learn to speak. You learned to speak by watching and listening to those around you. But really, as long as you’ve been thinking, you’ve been able to speak. Your memory probably picks up significantly long after your first word. So, when you speak, you aren’t thinking “now what did mom point to when she said ‘oven’?” You simply use the word. Similarly, even though you absorbed a lot of your social context’s moral values, you aren’t consciously referring to them when you recognize evil. The origin isn’t considered at all. And, given the way it was learned, we wouldn’t expect the origin to be considered.
So, no, we don’t intuit “that was evil” to equal “that was something deemed unacceptable by my society”, but then that’s not the claim. You aren’t ‘duped’ when you experience evil, because the extent of the experience is evil is a sort of gutteral rejection, either of someone else’s actions or your own hypothetical actions. So what’s the trick? Like your TV is a cathode ray tube, your moral intuition is an instinctual and socialized low level belief.
I don’t have a problem with the theory that morality comes to us via processes of evolution and socialization. The issue for me is whether there is an ultimate ground for morality or not. Materialism going back to the atomists maintains that there is not. Correct?
Bane’s and Reality check’s responses to Alumno de Verum’s post conceded that the ultimacy of materialism is no more than assumption. If that’s the case, then the ultimate ground could just as well be non-material like our mind as material like our bodies. It’s down to what assumption you choose to put your faith in.
The advantage of a non-material ground is that it leaves open the possibility that other non-material values like meaning, morality, goodness, truth, and beauty can be grounded in ultimate being. The fan’s of Occam’s Razor on this board will appreciate, that the Ultimate Mind is a lot simpler than a reality based on a plurality of quarks and leptons or whatever physicists have it down to these days.
I don’t think the phrase “ultimate ground for morality” means very much, materialistically. I mean, if morality is an instinct, that is its ultimate ground. Is there an ultimate ground for the desire to eat? Or the pleasant scent of a rose?
I also question whether any metaphysical system can offer some sort of ultimate ground for morality. Why is god more ultimate than, say, string theory, or the big bang, or whatever? Why is anything more ultimate than anything else?
And about faith and assumptions and what not, and Occam’s Razor: Yes, materialism requires ‘faith’, but I think it’s just a rhetorical device to call it that. It’s the sort of faith that you have to have. It is a de facto belief: that when I throw a ball at you, you duck. We all duck. Sure, physics and biology have found some intense complexity a little ways down, but that’s not the stuff you compare with a concept like “The Ultimate Mind”. You compare that with “The Computer in Front of You” or something on that level. Quantum phenomena compare to tomes of theology and philosophy that discuss the meaning, implication, and justification of the UM concept.
Isn’t every -ism based on a set of assumptions or agreements?
Definitely disagree here. I think it is completely unproductive to attempt to discribe the world empirically then state that there are OTHER non-materials/non-substances that we can only describe in MATERIALIST terms yet get to break the rules. I probably didn’t state that well because I was trying to capture my idea in one sentence too fast.
The point is, I HATE this leap into DUALISM!!! I can’t stand it! Here we are TRYING to describe the world as we know it by saying, “There is this material and that material and this and that…” We explain physical phenomena as best we can. Then some jackass comes up with a bright idea by saying, “There is also non-matter…” The rest of us sit back and ask, “What the hell would non-material be?” and “Why would anyone make that up!?” I’ll tell you why… it is to fill in the gaps of what we currently cannot explain or understand. All that the jackass has to demonstrate the existence of non-matter is empirical evidence of MATERIALS! Does anyone see where I’m coming from?! 
Do you see why I object to non-matter, non-physical, non-sense!? There is what is… and nothing outside. There is nothing outside of everything!
The fans of Occam’s Razor will appreciate my sentiment! It’s funny that you mention Occam’s Razor because it is precisely my point! WHY ADD NON-MATERIAL when all we can do is attempt to describe materials!? Any attempt to describe non-material will result in a material description. Old Bill of Occam would agree that ONE (Monism/Materialism) is simpler than TWO OR MORE (Dualism or Pluralism)
One more side note: As we discover the world through empircal subjective scientific inquiry, any examples of what people would describe as non-matter begin to evaporate. This is what stands out greatest to me or is one of the biggest reasons that I lean strongly in the direction of materialism. It was the fundamental reason that my ‘faith’ or belief in God evaporated. They call it the God of Gaps: As we discover more and more of the world, the things that we might call spiritual or non-matter, begin to shrink. There are these gaps in our understanding of the world that we fillin with ideas of non-matter/non-sense. As we learn more about the world, these gaps shrink. Simple case and point… GERMS. We still say “God bless you” when we sneaze because, back in the times of the plague, we use to attribute illness to spiritual non-material reasons. We now have a greater understanding of medicine, the human body, germs, etc and spiritual non-matter causes of illness have EVAPORATED! Ideas of the spirit/soul/self have evaproated. The concept of God is perhaps the greatest gap-filler of all… he too has evaporated. 
[size=75](Please don’t take offense felix. My attack was not directed at you at all and I was not calling you a jackass. I was attacking dualism and calling it names. I’m sorry that I get so riled up about it! 
)[/size]
Yes.
Every thought that is entering, has entered, or will ever enter your mind is immediate, and immaterial. You will never perceive the substance of anything. Phenomena is all that you perceive. More information about how to manipulate objects won’t change the fact that every thing you know or think you know will be an appearance on the desk top of your mind. Beings internal or external are presences to consciousness. Whatever else they may be is your assumption. You said so yourself.
That’s my point really. In materialism, morality is ultimately ungrounded. It is the arbitrary by-product of evolutionary and social processes. Theism grounds morality in ultimate being. In that regard theism is ontologically superior.
The faith required to believe that matter is the being of beings is no less than to believe that it is spirit. You cannot get behind the phenomenal world to find out what if anything is there.
It’s not immaterial. It is a specific pattern of neurons firing. If they fire in a different pattern, you’ll have a different thought. When your neurons are no longer functional, you’ll no longer have thoughts of any kind. ‘Thought’ is just shorthand for ‘neurons firing in a specific pattern.’
Please define ‘substance’ as you use it here. What does it mean to ‘perceive substance’ as you use the phrase? Can you explain what you mean by that?
When idealists talk about the external world they refer to the exact same things that materialists refer to except they use different terms to indicate those things. If you are able to answer the questions that I just asked perhaps this will become clearer.
What you are saying is that we cannot observe what we cannot observe. That’s a tautology and therefore trivial. Kant explained all this two and a half centuries ago.
What is this immaterial that you speak of?
Please elaborate.
I am very interested in your sort-of phenomenology. Please continue to help me understand your perspective. Right now I am not understanding you enough to give any sort of proper response to what you are talking about.
What is the grounding of God’s Absolute Morals? What is their reason or purpose?
In the sentence above you are applying Morals with a capital M to materialism.
Don’t bother doing this.
We are already saying that Morality with a capital M doesn’t exist, only morals (little m) exist.
So we are all in agreement that materialism leaves no room for Morals with a capital M, so let’s move on past this point. 
You read that in a book, or saw it in a film, or had some similar symbolic experience. You have no immediate access to that in thought, feeling, or perception.
Substance literally means to stand firm, be under or present," from sub “up to, under” + stare "to stand. I was taught that it is a synonym for matter. But this is the theoretical stance of materialism. It is one answer to the ontological question. And it isn’t verifiable. It can’t be perceived. It’s an assumption. It has philosophical, psychological, and social consequences many that we are living out in the modern world. For Kant substance was an apriori category. Anyway, to get beyond the subject-object split that characterizes modern thought you can’t use matter because the phenomenon of thought is immediate, qualitative, actual, and spontaneous existent as we experience it.
To perceive what we call ‘substance’ is no more than to perceive extension in space, the emission (or reflection) of light waves and sound waves, etc. There IS nothing else to perceive. It is tautologically true that there can be nothing else that we can perceive beyond that which we can perceive. Therefore, what else could possibly be meant by the term ‘substance’ beyond the phrase ‘that which we perceive’?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Since your definition of ‘substance’ is empty, it is unsurprising that you find nothing there.
Is that what you see really? Again you offer something you read in a book. I’ve read those books too. That doesn’t describe what I see. You didn’t perceive that light or sound were waves. This isn’t how you experience these things from day to day.
As for substance: Substance is what is at the bottom of the endless chain of causes. Substance is the opposite of abyss. Substance is what’s left after all the accidental changes. If for you that’s empty, so be it.
But it IS how I experience the world on a day-to-day basis. The inference from what I see and hear to light waves and sound waves is very powerful; so powerful in fact that it cannot be reasonably denied.
We know about the world by experience and inference.
We don’t ‘experience’ the earth going round the sun. If anything we seem to experience just the opposite. It is only a very powerful inference that we draw from our experience to the fact that the earth orbits the sun that allows us to know this.
Here’s a question for you, felix: Do you believe that you experience the ‘immaterial’ or is this only an inference that you believe you’ve drawn?
By definition there is no ‘end’ or ‘bottom’ to an ENDless or BOTTOMless chain of causes.
What you believe you experience as the ‘immaterial’ seems to be nothing more than linguistic confusion.
When I stumble over a rock, I experience the rock as ‘hard,’ ‘brown,’ ‘irregularly extended in space,’ etc.
This IS all that I mean by substance. I can mean nothing else. So which part of that definition is it that you insist that I don’t actually experience when I stumble over a rock?
Here’s a question for you, felix: Do you believe that you experience the ‘immaterial’ or is this only an inference that you believe you’ve drawn?
It’s a word I am using to describe my experience. I used others such as immediate, spontaneous, qualitative. Think of the unfettered plasticity of the imagination to picture the physically impossible as say captured in surrealistic painting. It is is true that inference colors experience. But inferences can be changed at will as in thought experiments. They can also be suspended or bracketed as Husserl suggested. So now a question for you: What is being and how do you experience it?
Sorry, I mistyped. I meant to ask you, do you believe that you perceive the immaterial?
I’ll assume that the answer to my question is no.
Therefore, assuming that you believe that you perceive something and that that ‘something’ is not immaterial, then what is it that you believe you perceive? Is it material?
True, but do you believe that some inferences are more accurate in terms of their correspondence to reality than are other inferences or do you believe that any particular inference is just as likely (or not likely) to correspond accurately to reality as is any other?
Being is all that exists. I experience it by perceiving it. It is only through my senses that I can experience anything.
I am using immaterial in the sense of contrasting mental with physical. I am not suggesting that thought does not have physcial concommitant. I am saying that is not how I experience it.
What is existence then and how do you experience an existent? Also, if you only experience through your senses, do you not experience thought?
Again, existence is all that is. I perceive things that exist. Existence, as has been famously said, is not a predicate.
But the question is how do you experience the immaterial? You must experience it in some way. If you cannot perceive the immaterial in any conceivable way then on what basis do you claim that it exists?
I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine. To repeat: If you only experience through your senses, do you not experience thought? A being is not a predicate is it? How do you experience a being?