I think it’s because we have no evidence mind can exist without matter. Unless you claim to have unique gifts/a 6th sense, unless you claim you can percieve ghosts/spirits, mind cannot ordinarily be percieved apart from matter, whever mind is, matter is, but matter can be percieved on it’s own. Objects seem to go on existing without minds, but subjects don’t seem to go on existing without bodies, as soon as the body is destroyed, the mind seems to be destroyed, but a basket ball or a door has no percievable mind. This makes matter seem more fundamental.
I don’t know if it’s “so popular” or not.
I’d say majority of people believe or at least don’t reject the possibility of “non-material”.
I mean, there are lots and lots of religious people on the earth, now.
This is the case of someone like volchok.
I think it’s the opposite.
It’s mind (or awareness) processing all sort of information.
I think perception, interpretation, emotion, thinking are all “non-material” for materialists.
So, we first have “non-material” and then we categorize “material” and recognize it.
After that, we may think that “material” is more tangible, reliable, solid, etc and think/believe like “materialists”.
To protect this type of “world view”, some materialists may develop and cling to the strategy like you showed; no evidence ==> should believe in the opposite.
I think pretty much all happen in the “appearance”, and appearance is happening in the “non-material”.
Thinking, believing, and “materialism” are “non-material”.
So, some type of “materialism” is a bit contradictory or ironic because people clinging to these “ism” cannot do that without “non-material”.
To me, certain type of materialism is just another form of religion that replaced god with “material”, holy words with “science”, and church/preachers with scientists/rationalists/materialists.
They are often very dogmatic and become fanatic like religious people.
I still prefer materialists over very fanatic religious fundamentalists, very slightly, though.
Blame me for being rational and valuing evidence… 
I think only 10% of the world population consider themselves non-religious. So, almost everyone accepts the possibility of “non - material” which obviously, means nothing. You can’t measure the credibility of a given claim by the number of people who agree with it.
Don’t worry. I wasn’t blaming you.
You were just nearly a perfect example for what he brought up. So I mentioned you.
Oh, then I’m probably in the minority group.
Sure.
Yeah, maybe you’re right, but it certainly seems to be growing in popularity, since the enlightenment, I think.
I’ve never had a conversation with volchok, perhaps I’ve talked to you once or twice, as Lucis Trust.
Yes I knew someone was going to bring this argument up. So on the one hand, mind is all we have direct access to, since we’re conscious beings, everything our consciousness has access to, the physical and the mental, is in some sense, a mental state, has to go through our mental filters/interpreters first, in order for us to be aware of it, or at least so we’ve been told, perhaps we have direct access to the mental and the physical. On the other hand, mind seems to be dependent on matter to exist, as soon as you remove pieces of your physical brain, you remove pieces of your consciousness, but you can go to sleep for awhle, come to, and the material world seems to have gone on existing without you, independently of your consciousness. Then again, perhaps we can’t be sure the material world would’ve gone on existing, had we not come to. Well, It’s a difficult subject, and no doubt it’s been discussed thousands of times before on iLP. I’m not for one position more than the other, actually, I lean towards agnosticism/dualism. I was merely trying to understand why materialism is on the rise, especially amongst the learned, although I wouldn’t mind aruguing for or against materialism. What about you Nah, which do you lean more towrard?
I think you’re right, science comes with a set of metaphysical dogmas attatched to it. In a sense, that makes science more dogmatic than philosophy, since virtually nothing is beyond question, in philosophy.
Although I don’t, you certainly can, and there’s probably a reason why so many of us are programmed to go along with the herd, especially the more dull among us, it seems to have an evolutionary advantage, and therefore it probably has a truth advantage.
This is not a personal attack, just so we’re on the same page here, I don’t want to get in another argument.
Having said that, this kind of argument is so god damn ridiculous, no pun intended.
Unless your beliefs are support by faith instead of evidence, you can’t talk of something being a religion. You just can’t. Otherwise everything is a religion and religion becomes a vacuous word.
Also, someone who vehemently refuses an idea because there’s no evidence for it is not a fanatic because, if there was new evidences in favor of that idea, the person would immediately reconsider their beliefs. That’s the beauty of valuing evidence.
I didn’t say we weren’t programmed to go along with the herd, and it must have been an evolutionary advantage for sure , but objectively speaking, a claim isn’t more credible because it’s believed by many. I think this is self-evident, no?
Is there evidence for materialism? Or do you just mean that substance dualism isn’t a very worthwhile metaphysical theory?
Materialist theories typically claim that mind is no different than matter, while at the same time claiming that mind came from matter - a clear contradiction. Supervenience, eliminativism, reductionism… somehow, some way, matter has superior ontologically status - it came first, is more primary, etc. But why? “Matter” and “mind” are imputed designations. Given the materialist project of blending these useful distinctions (blending is also useful, don’t get me wrong), where does matter end and mind begin? “My mind” regulates my heartrate. This is an unconscious activity of “my mind”. The physical aspect of this regulation probably takes place in “my brain”. So, in agreement with materialists everywhere, “my mind” and “my brain” go together. I am an intelligent, biological organism. But what of trees? What of rocks? Why can’t the materialist follow through and commit to his own supposedly nondual theory that mind and matter are identical? We might suspect that a tree is not conscious, but is a tree really this relatively inert thing fortunate enough to not be complex enough to be tricked into dualism? Does a tree not regulate its “heartrate”?
We usefully split the world into objective/subjective, rational/emotional, matter/mind, determined/free etc. - a variety of imputed dichotomies that are like two sides of a coin. There’s the dark side of the moon and the bright side of the moon, but nobody would accuse another of “moon dualism” unless they stated that these two sides of the moon were substantially disconnected realities.
The entire universe is mind, just as the entire universe is matter. It’s just a matter of shifting perspectives. My house is also my home.
Maybe. Do you have any statistic? (Just curious a bit)
I know. I’ve read some (or more) of your posts and replied a few times, I guess.
As for volchok, he is here. So, you can read what he’s got to say. 
If you want, you can read this thread, too.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176562
Well, so far, I’ve never found any definite/absolute/clear-cut separation.
I mean, I don’t know how to draw the line that separate me and the rest, even in the physical sense, for example.
The air inside my lungs, is it part of me or not? How about oxygen absorbed in the blood stream?
And I don’t think we can separate material from non-material.
I asked this to people here, but I don’t remember anyone answering this.
My preferred way of seeing things is what I call “awareness perspective”, and I take low-level awareness as the base for focusing, comparing focuses and evaluating things, thinking by taking different perspectives (sets of focuses) and analyzing opinions, etc.
Also, I consider pretty much anything as input or output “information” in the information processing system made of awareness and the field of awareness.
In this perspective, “material” is the strongly related to the sensory information and ideas/concepts connected to sensory information.
And I think it’s normal for us to take “material” for granted or to be reliable/persistent/etc, because sensory information is often very acute and attention grabbing, thus it makes stronger impression than other information and also doing it at the younger age before our reasoning part of information processing ability is awaken.
So, the reasoning part of information processing can be overridden/overpowered by the habit of taking material information for granted, very easily.
Also, it’s a comfortable source of certainty. God requires some sort of effort/maintenance to feel solid certainty, while material gives away certainty, effortlessly.
It’s easier to believe material (for many). 
As for the dependency of awareness or thinking on material, we can have different theories. But all theories are there thanks to awareness/thinking.
Any valuing, meaning, moral, whatever the priority evaluation you want to make about material (or non-material) is done with awareness/thinking and it’s not going to be there without awareness/thinking.
So, for us, if we think of ourselves as awareness (or thinking, information processing system), material is just another information.
Not all scientists are dogmatic, though.
It depends on each person, just as anything else.
There are many philosophical person who is very dogmatic, too.
I don’t think it’s very easy to make general comparison, in this case.
I thought you understood (at least partially) that your beliefs on material are based on faith, in the thread we talked.
Don’t you remember?
Humean kindly showed you the first part, and he was to guide you to the next part (but you avoided discussing with him, after).
I also posted that very funny video showing some evidence of human telephone-telepathy (and email/text-messaging telepathy…).
Check it out, and tell us how you are reconsidering your beliefs.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176562&p=2247900#p2247900
Maybe we should talk about that again because I disagree.
Sorry but I don’t have the time to watch a +1 hour video these days. I’ll get to it eventually.
It isn’t.
I fondly remember presenting my paper critical of materialism to the University of New Hampshire, in front of a room full of professors and assistant professors. At the Q&A period afterwords, one of the grey-beards shrugged and said, “Is anybody really a materialist anymore anyway?”
Materialism is popular among teenagers on the internet and people who think Richard Dawkins is a philosopher. Other than that, it’s mainly a phenomenon of non-humanities fields.
Says the mad theist who thinks theology is an actual subject. 
I’m not sure, it’s been said two minds are better than one. 10 minds = 10 times the experience of one. The audience is usually right on that show millionaire (for the record, I don’t normally watch that show).
Let’s keep things civil, please.
Also, Richard Dawkins is a very mediocre philosopher. He’s a good biologist, though.
Houses (a form of matter) come from bricks (another form of matter), is that a contradiction?
Because in some ways (but not necessarily in all ways) mind seems dependent on matter for it’s existence. Minds cannot be percieved apart from matter (animals), but matter can be percieved apart from minds (tables, rocks), that is, unless you’re an occultist (ghosts, angels).
That’s a good question, as an analogue dualist (as opposed to a digital dualist), I believe it doesn’t begin/end at any precise point, just as red doesn’t begin/end at any precise point.
Because there’s different forms of matter, we can’t possibly use the same language to conceptualize/describe two vastly different material phenomenon, for example, astronomy and biology, or chemistry and physics, it helps to think of them differently.
We can’t think without discriminating, without saying this is at least in part this and that that, nor does the world normally appear to us as a haze, a mish mash.
I am conscious, rocks are not.