An argument against materialism +

Just posted to a discussion board... but I have doubts

let me restate that another way in more depth if u don't mind reading it. You talk as though the table exists independent of the brain which percieves it, or the laws of physics under pin a reality which is independent of the brain which undertands them.
From a first person perspective you must admit you don't see 2 tables (the real one, and the perception) there is only 1 and that one is the perceived one. So what happened to the "real" one? Bad dualism steming from the materialist axioms we started with.
Lets start again (phenomenologically). There is only one table, that which you perceive. That is the thing you were calling "real". Your thoughts about it, which are not perceived, are just that "thoughts". when you think that the table is "real" actually that is a thought, not a state of existence! Hence how we can talk endlessly about it!
Now when you state in the 1st person that the perceptions are identical/product/what-ever of a "material brain" there are problems. Firstly that statement is an idea and has no "reality" - it's fantasy, like God. Secondly you are saying that your -now only - table (the perceived one i.e. the real table in your senses) is now not real but the result of this fantasy. Its very shakey territory, it will drive you mad, I hate this thought (for that is all it is).
The only escape is to reassert the primary status of the perception (the real table in the sense), for that is where all this thinking came from! Even if we think later it was an illusion, that is a thought, the "reality" is the "given".
Now that is true non-dualism, and strangely the notion of the "given" leads straight into notions of Pure-Mind, the Absolute and true-God. Ironic eh?

Doubts
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I'm still not done personally with the idea of the "given". Certainly I can be unconscious, and certainly i will die, losing all sense and thought. It seems that my ideas can gain knowledge of the "given" in a way that seems to transcend the "given".

Another example would be touching my own brain and watching not only the finger touching the tissue (in a mirror or something) but also the hallucinations it would create. My thoughts would be that the finger presses were causing the hallucinations. In other words the "given" was caused by finger presses to the brain, and that sets off all the thoughts about the brain being the cause of my experience.

Now I could take that a stage further and say that the finger press had caused a given and then caused all the thoughts themselves. That is the problem though isn't it because if the thoughts were caused by the finger press then the finger press is primary, and the thoughts simply entailments of that.

That does bring us back to the given being the primary cause, because it was the given "data" about the finger press, and the "given" hallucinations, that then caused thoughts.

If I fall asleep and wake from unconsciousness that sets off thoughts also. Thoughts about being conscious and thoughts about being unconscious. Interesting then that consciousness is a thought then brought on by unconsciousness. Is consciousness a "given"? that is the question!!

i have assumed to this point that consciousness was the arena of the "given". The "given" being the objects in consciousness. But if consciousness itself is a given, something to be distinguished from unconsciousness only by thought I finally get the bigger picture. The "Given" as transcending even consciousness and that is what I have personally struggled for, for ages.

Now returning to recent posts in the investigation of a proof of the finiteness/incompleteness/indefinite nature of thoughts it is actually accademic! The post made on meditation is the true path, but I wanted to leave a legacy at this cross roads, one that I could return to which clearly summarised the reason for turning away from "thoughts". s it worth continuing? Its still exciting work for the thinking mind, especially making a Turing machine, and learning set theory and logic enough to construct Cantor/Godel/Von Neuman proofs with confidence and following the science of consciousness and mind.

However it seems clear that whatever these branches discover it doesn't change anything, that the mysterious immediacy of Mind, the true Given, cannot be investigated because from it all things come, even the thoughts and theories that fill the pages of science books. Are these devils sapping my energies?

I was reminded last night of the Other World. Particularly vivid after a few weeks of intense "thought". The experience when i was 14 of jhana, that transcendent state of mind brought on by many weeks of hard work and concentration at school and home as i sort to be the best I could be. Totally different from anything I have talked about in these pages, complete unimaginable peace and purity of knowing. I saw the infinity of space within my Mind. I remember especially being aware of the space behind my head. This was not visual space. It came from contemplation of the darkness that surrounding the spot of light cast by the lamp on my desk. That light I realised was created by the darkness, and at once my mind filled the space of darkness - which is all around in a dark room. I may have mentioned this in previous posts ( a failure of my memory). It struck me last night how special and unexplored that experience was, quite different from the arena of play recently.