As far as I can tell, there is no obligation to counter speculation. Speculation is generally held to bear the onus of showing it is not speculation - though this is an appeal to popularity on my part, the popularity in question is present also amongst the determinist crowd, he writes with a dash of irony.
Matter is not a word with any limited content. It just means verified as real. And we are likely not finished with verifying things are real and stuffing them in that category regardless of their qualities.
Yes.
yes, that irony seems to be one that is missed.
In another thread one determinist wrote how philosophy is about truth, not things that make us feel warm and fuzzy. As if there could be no emotional motivations for hating ideas of free will, or being drawn to determinism, or of having no self (let alone a soul) etc. The implicit idea is that the mentally brave can face the truth and have no tempermental reasons for their beliefs. (and hidden in there is something so close to a claim that they are really FREE while those they disagree with are determined by their emotions that I cannot see the difference. In fact despite the fact that I can laugh at the irony of this, I have to avoid this poster, mostly, because the size of the blind spot and the rage behind his posts is so unpleasant.)
It seems like what you are missing here is that people don’t necessarily 1) say what they really mean 2) connect to their emotions 3) make sense 4) stay consistent 5) avoid talking themselves into all sorts of stuff for reasons they don’t want to notice.
We’re in a transitional phase - probably always have been - but one dealing with issues like this one. Science is moving to the center in a lot of lives. We are in a period of reaction against the monotheisms. The pagans and indigenous people were long ago dismissed by the combined might of the technocrats and the monotheisms. Now the monotheisms are being rejected in the West by a larger %. They see false dilemmas everywhere, and must close any door they see as leading to irrationalism or supernaturalism or loss of a certain kind of mental control. I have sympathy for both their anger and their generally denied fear. The monotheisms were pretty damaging. so they respond in hard cold ways to anything that reminds them of the monotheisms - and sometimes other ways of thinking, which can even mean, thinking like a woman, or what they think this is like.
They are like a cold, harsh, very angry light, that wants to be certain and express as certain, and do not realize how much they resemble what they hate.
Sadly, it is like a chip of that light has been long lodged in my soul. So I sometimes have ‘discussions’ with them so that I can understand what that chip is doing to me.