Gator wrote:

How would you compare EM to solipsists? Which is the more insane view in your books?

Haha. I'm not sure. On the one hand, sort of the whole thing with solipsism is that it has an insidious plausibility but, on the other, it doesn't have any serious contemporary defenders like eliminativism.

Yes that’s true, in a sense I think it’s a case of becoming so enveloped in ones theory and so convinced of materialism that the outcome could be essentially anything and it would still be accepted. I think one can almost sever themselves from reality when enveloped in such a theory.

I suppose, but part of my point is that they don't obviously have to go that far to be materialists. So here is my challenge for anyone on here who thinks they can make short work of “mind materialism”: go pick up a later edition copy of David Malet Armstrong's A Materialist Theory of Mind, read it, and give refuting it your best shot. I think you'll find (or most of you will, anyway) that even an older materialist theory like his, treated out of isolation in the context of a living philosophy, is much, much harder to land a clean blow on than you currently think.