I’m sorry, I just skipped to your summary after reading a few paragraphs and seeing how long the post is. Maybe later tonight I will go back and read the whole thing- for now I’ll just say a few things.

What you mention of ‘pleasure’ is an external pleasure, not an internal one. This means you derive your own pleasure from some sort of environmental stimulus, and not created by your own brain. While the ideals of God, Good, Evil, etc are all subjective, the supreme goal of any intelligence is ‘compression.’ Compression is our ability to take any form of information and get the maximum insight from it. Put differently, compression is how efficiently we understand something. Internal pleasure is always gained from compression. This is precisely why we enjoy things like music, art, science and the like. When you learn something interesting it is interesting because we have the ability to understand it, and in turn give us insight into other matters. Information too complex or too simple gives no please because in the former we cannot comprehend and in the latter we have no use. If pleasure and pain were purely material, then why do you get pleasure from listening to music or learning something interesting? It does not serve to satisfy any base need (ex- food, sex, etc.) This why ‘external’ pleasures are empty. Sex feels good because it satisfies a need to reproduce, but it does not last because it does not serve to compress information. Compression is the higher pleasure and external is the lower pleasures. Similarly, those that donate time to helping humanity serve to satisfy this higher pleasure. By helping others we further empathize with them, and empathy (like art or science) is an internal means to compress.

Materialism in general cannot justify qualia. Sure colors are vibrations of atoms at certain frequencies, but this is not the same thing as ‘experiencing’ red. The experience is the qualia because it is different than the object. Heat causes molecules to vibrate faster, but this faster vibration is not the same thing as the ‘experience’ of hot. This follows that the perceive is not the same thing as the person perceiving. Try this thought experiment: Think a thought, but simultaneously be aware that your thinking a thought. This is impossible, since you an only do one or the other. You cannot both think ‘red’ and try to be aware that you are thinking ‘red’. As soon as you pay attention to your thoughts they are gone. These two arguments, qualia and perceiving, allude to something beyond material. I am not saying there is something mystical or godlike, but there is definitely something else. Further, materialism requires you to believe in something outside of the sensory world. You can sense a rock, but do you know for sure that is a rock? How do you know that what you perceive is the same as what there is? This requires an assumption. Because of this assumption materialism is less parsimonious than idealism (the idea that the only thing there is is what we perceive). This is the cornerstone of spirituality.

I saw this and had to reply (I know this is old and I’m sorry) but Jordan is wrong. There is no difference between external and internal pleasure it’s just pleasure. It’s a function of the brain. Everything is a stimulus that creates the release of chemicals that reward us for doing things. It’s literally all chemical reactions, it’s why those with depression experience anhedonia. It has nothing to do with compression of whatever,  not to mention that isn’t the purpose of intelligence.

pretty much all the research coming out now shows that the brain is responsible for everything, even “qualia” (which is debatable subject to begin with). Colorblindness is the brain. Also the brain creates color and sound. Sound is just pressure waves in the world but our brains convert that into sound. Light is just wavelengths of light but our brains create color. In short idealism can’t account for all this and has no data behind it. You only feel hot because you have a functioning nervous system, same with cold. Hot at cold are just the measurements of energy in a system. If you had a damaged nervous system then you wouldn’t feel these things.

It’s also very possible to think of something and be aware that you are thinking about it. Not only do I do this every day but everyone else too. That’s literally how imagination works.

so you are incorrect that idealism is more parsimonious (in fact there is a reason the philosophy dies out), materialism is more in line with the observations and evidence. Not that qualia suggests idealism anyway.

it’s also worth noting that what you’re describing is solipsism not idealism, though solipsism is the inevitable conclusion of idealism. one hole in your reasoning is that if the only thing there is what we perceive then by definition you aren’t responding to anyone, these are just words on a screen. How do you know someone wrote them?

Buddhism doesn’t care about either one though so it’s not the cornerstone of spirituality.