Bias; Materialism Bias

This post contains both a working definition of bias and an example of a bias.

Bias is when what is not-strictly-rational is programmed into how we think or intuit.

Materialism is the belief that matter is real and its own substance just because it feels real, or the further belief that all that exists is matter. So materialism bias is when this belief goes beyond what is strictly rational. To some extent (to a large extent), we see things the way the others in our culture do, so a bias can be a societal thing, not just an individual thing. Materialism has been the underlying belief of atheists and practical atheists for the last few centuries.

It's possible that when we perceive matter to be real ordinaristically, that should count in favor of matter really being real. But I find it easy to think that the perception of matter being real may really be a perception. This informs how I look at material objects, ordinaristically. I see them as simultaneously material objects and perceptions -- as perceptual objects, perhaps. Whatever lingering sense I have that matter has to be its own thing to the exclusion of an immaterialist view is, in my view, a materialism bias.

I don't know exactly how to tell the difference between "this intuition is valid noetic perception" and "this is a bias". But I think it's possible for there to be biases, and for there to be such a thing as materialism bias. Perhaps simply by asking the question, people can sometimes introspect and see that they have been biased, instead of that they have perceived something noetically.

The arguments for immaterialism (the attractiveness of monism and the inescapability of the reality of consciousness) may provide enough reason to think materialism false, and that lingering intuitions to the contrary are probably bias.