I, being a former materialist, was convinced that materialism is untenable by a seminar on Nagels book "The View from Nowhere". I feel that I was naive in this topic until I read and discussed Nagels book, although it took a while to really understand the point.
The book appears to cover a lot of ground. can you explain in detail what happened and why you are convinced that materialism is untenable? I would be very interested in such a description!
Did anybody also experience a transformation from a materialist to a non-materialist?
I underwent such a transformation about 17 years ago.
What convinced you the most?
I believe this problem should be understood in terms of opening eyes, not in terms of convincing, as you put it yourself in your original deleted post:
Nagel's book opened my eyes
I believe that a logical argument can only play a (small) part in a genuine shift on this particular problem, and might not even be required. Imagine trying to open a door without unlocking it first. no amount of pulling will help, as you experienced with your friends.
That said, there are many "wrong" reasons to adopt or reject materialism, and people may be persuaded into or out of materialism by persuading them to adopt or reject such reasons.
The most obvious problem is that materialism and physicalism are hard to define if not outright incoherent. See this SEP article by Daniel Stoljar: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/ and the following opinion by Chomsky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5in5EdjhD0&t=46m22s.
If that is the case then mind-body arguments in terms of materialism are inevitably a meaningless mess where anything goes.
Luckily, I believe the problem can be framed more intelligibly in terms of computational functionalism. Namely, if it is possible in principle for computers to be conscious in the fullest sense of the word.
This formulation is related enough to the classical mind body problem because computation is a mechanical phenomenon in the sense that any computation may in principle be computed with a "mechanical" device made out of cogwheels and running on steam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40DkJ9vt5CI
Note that here too there are plenty of "wrong" reasons to adopt or reject either position, mostly stemming from misguided intuitions, misconceptions, and misunderstanding of computation.
Generally speaking, the root computational functionalist argument is that a computer should in principle be able to simulate a functioning brain in its entirety by simulating it as a physical system (of atoms and molecules) and if that is the case then one would be hard pressed to explain what would be left out of such a computation: https://xkcd.com/505/
Among philosophers, does anybody strongly disagree with Nagels statements on materialism? Is materialism generally spread today among philosophers?
What is said Nagel's statement on materialism?
Daniel Dennett is a famous philosopher and computational functionalist who believes that computers may in principle be conscious in the fullest sense. He expressed his position clearly in The Zombic Hunch: https://dl.tufts.edu/file_assets/tufts:ddennett-2001.00004
(The painting by Steinberg to which Dennett is referring to in his paper is the following: http://pp.kpnet.fi/seirioa/cdenn/newyorkr.gif)
From my experience most philosophers, and overwhelmingly most people, who have their bearings on this subject agree with Dennett.
I would be interested to know what you think of Dennett's position after reading his paper:
a) I think that Dennett is right. Nagel just confused me for a while.
b) I think that Dennett is as blind as a bat. What on earth is going on?