More contemporary idealists like Kastrup additionally make the point that materialism or physicalism is false (using a particular understanding of QM) therefore all which exists must be consciousness - ergo idealism.

What do you consider to be the best defeater/s for idealism? — Tom Storm

I don't believe idealism or realism can be defeated; they just represent the two imaginable metaphysical possibilities. I do think it is pretty disingenuous when idealists cherry pick ideas from an empirical discipline to support their beliefs, as if the implications of the observer problem, or just what constitutes an "observer" in QM is known and perfectly well understood.

So, I have more time for phenomenology; which brackets the question of the mind-independent existence of things, and focuses on what things and our experience of them and ourselves is for us, rather than worrying about, and taking stances on, questions which are not ultimately decidable.

@Wayfarer says that physicalism is corrosive. I think that's bullshit, it is the physicalist/ idealist polemic which is corrosive. Obviously I would not agree with atheists who think idealism is corrosive either. That said, inasmuch as any philosophical or theological position supports attitudes which contribute to any undervaluing of earthly life, then I would say it is corrosive

A third possibility: the things we encounter are dependent on human contact to take the form we perceive or imagine them to take.

The things we encounter may be independent of human contact for their existence but dependent on human contact for their particular form.

I think this is closer to what Wayfarer is aiming at. I could be wrong. — ZzzoneiroCosm

But as I have acknowledged ad nauseum, I have no argument with what seems to me to be the obvious fact that the way we are constituted affects the way we view things, in the very most basic perceptual or cognitive sense. That, however, says nothing whatsoever about the independence or otherwise of the things we perceive.

I have acknowledged this countless times to @Wayfarer, and if that is all he is arguing, then I can only say that he is anything but a close reader. I don't believe for a minute that is all he is arguing, but of course I could be wrong.

:up:

The attempt to use any "non-physical interpretation" of physical sciences (e.g. QM) in order to "refute" a methodological paradigm (i.e. physicalism) is, at minimum, a category mistake. "Mind" is nonmind-dependent (just as "walks" is legs-dependent); "ideas", of course, are mind-dependent but "mind" presupposes other/more-than-mind (i.e. substrate, embodiment, environment) – unless, even more than the incoherence of "idealism" (e.g. Kantianism implies an unwarranted anthropic / anthropocentric ontology), one proposes (despite being a performative contradiction) "solipsism". Just my 2 bit(coin)s.

We eat. That's a fact. The food exists regardless what we think about it. In food there are huge collections of electrons. They have charge. A scientific fact. On the hypercomplex structure of the brain, parallel motion of charges can be imagined. These are running since the brain evolves in the growing embryo. These charged currents can flow in an astronomically huge number of ways, compared to which the number of elementary particles is tiny. All physical processes in the universe have a potential counterpart related to these charged currents. A bird flying in the sky has an electrically charged bird as counterpart flying in the brain, mainly on the visual cortex. These are facts. Nobody knows what charge is: fact. That's why nobody knows what a conscious visual of a bird actually is. Yes, a charged resonance (in connection with a birds or on it's own, like in a dream) of electric currents on the lightning-like axons, connections (synapses), and transit stations (neuron bodies), literally and more or less in the form of a bird. Nobody knows what charge is. But still we know it because we actually see the bird. So, consciousness can be explained by charge (holistically) but is a mystery at the same time though we all know how it feels.

I would tend to agree, idealism or physicalism, to me, are essentially a terminological quibble in terms of the actual state of affairs.

A whole different can of worms would be, say, realism (of any kind) vs. eliminitavism, I think that much has substance.

I see your point, and acknowledge that the question is not decidable (that of the mind-independence of things), but I'm obsessed with it, particularly the variant of "things in themselves", but the onus would be on me to show why this matters or should matter.

I agree that phenomenology can be very useful. And although Husserl is frequently referred to (likely correctly) here, I think Sellar's distinction between "Manifest" and "Scientific" images is actually quite important.

But I see your point, I'm not arguing against it, I guess its related to temperament.

I don't believe idealism or realism can be defeated; they just represent the two imaginable metaphysical possibilities. I do think it is pretty disingenuous when idealists cherry pick ideas from an empirical discipline to support their beliefs, as if the implications of the observer problem, or just what constitutes an "observer" in QM is known and perfectly well understood. — Janus

:up: :up:

@Wayfarer says that physicalism is corrosive. I think that's bullshit, it is the physicalist/ idealist polemic which is corrosive.

:100:

"Mind" is nonmind-dependent (just as "walks" is legs-dependent); "ideas", of course, are mind-dependent but "mind" presupposes other/more-than-mind (i.e. substrate, embodiment, environment) – unless, even more than the incoherence of "idealism", one proposes (despite being a performative contradiction) "solipsism". Just my 2 bit(coin)s. — 180 Proof

Mind is only nonmind dependent insofar as we don't know what mind is. However, it is intriguingly becoming more and more plausible that the essence of mind generates from a parental view of "mind", i.e father and son, (higher and lower mind). This is mostly backed by near death experiences where people undergone brain death achieve in fact a higher understanding of reality, a sacrifice of low mind for high mind so to speak.

:groan:

It's also 4 am in the morning, and I've had 7 glasses of red wine.

Edit: ok, maybe a little bit more than 7.

It's interesting that Schopenhauer was in his day understood as a vociferous atheist, and yet now his metaphysics is criticized as being too near to religion! Speaks volumes, in my opinion.

:party: :clap:

I have no argument with what seems to me to be the obvious fact that the way we are constituted affects the way we view things, in the very most basic perceptual or cognitive sense. That, however, says nothing whatsoever about the independence or otherwise of the things we perceive. — Janus

The fact that you think it 'says nothing' shows why you're not understanding the point that is being made. It is precisely the point. I'll say it again: that 'the world' is in one sense independent of your or my or anyone else's knowledge of it. But in another and more important sense, our knowledge of it is dependent on our mind and on the capacities of the human cognitive apparatus and the categories of the understanding. Insofar as we know the world, that world - the world as it appears to us - is all that we ever know. That I take to be the salient point of Kant's philosophy.

The fact that there's two senses of 'dependency' here is reflected in Kant by his acknowledgment that he is at once an empirical realist and also a transcendental idealist. But as I've already reproduced the passages where he declares this, and you've completely failed to see the point, while at the same time declaring that it is 'trivially true', then I won't go to the trouble of repeating it. And it's not that I 'can't handle' what you're saying, but that it's pointless to argue about it.

But in another and more important sense, our knowledge of it is dependent on our mind and on the capacities of the human cognitive apparatus and the categories of the understanding. Insofar as we know the world, that world - the world as it appears to us - is all that we ever know. — Wayfarer

That should be uncontroversial.

I mean, what other option is there? Unless we attribute actual cognition to the world.

It's interesting that Schopenhauer was in his day understood as a vociferous atheist, and yet now his metaphysics is criticized as being too near to religion! Speaks volumes, in my opinion. — Wayfarer

I don't think it's surprising, Given the shifting notions of religion and metaphysics. It's Schopenhauer the metaphysician whose arguments I see as facile and specious. His conclusions do not follow from his premise. As I already said, that it is our constitutions, whether that be considered in some "transcendental" or merely physical sense, which contribute to the ways we perceive things, does not entail that things are mind-dependent.

Similarly, that Kant was a transcendental idealist indicates only that he thinks we cannot be realist about the imagined "ultimate" nature of things because we cannot apprehend any ultimate nature; it does not follow that he was an idealist, rather than a realist, when it comes to the question about whether the things we perceive have their own existence, they are fro him "things in themselves", after all. He actually says they must exist since it would be illogical to propose that there could be appearances without there being something which appears.

Thanks.

I haven't failed to see the point, Wayfarer; I actually agree with what you said above, it is you who fails to see what I am saying and are thus arguing against a strawman; see my post above.

does not entail that things are mind-dependent. — Janus

Do you have in mind ordinary objects (tables and chairs) or scientific objects (atoms and electrons)?

I think there's a case for mind dependence on both, it just so happens that in the latter case, there is a chance convergence between out mental constitutions and the external world.

But I would not understand what you would mean to say that something like tables and chairs are in any way mind independent.

I feel like the nature of reality debate often gets stuck at this point. I wonder if there are other ways to discuss the realism/idealism debate?

I can see a case for mind dependence and mind independence.

Is there room for us to step out the arguments in a more direct point form approach and identify precisely where things get stuck? Seems to be it boils down to presuppositions.

I feel like the nature of reality debate often gets stuck at this point. I wonder if there are other ways to discuss the realism/idealism debate?

I can see a case for mind dependence and mind independence.

Is there room for us to step out the arguments in a more direct point form approach and identify precisely where things get stuck? Seems to be it boils down to presuppositions. — Tom Storm

It's supposed to get stuck and we're supposed to go silent.

It's supposed to get stuck and we're supposed to go silent. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Good to know - that's been my approach for the past 40 years.

the obvious fact that the way we are constituted affects the way we view things, in the very most basic perceptual or cognitive sense. That, however, says nothing whatsoever about the independence or otherwise of the things we perceive. — Janus

Affects the way we perceive things AND the way we imagine things to be in the absence of a perceiver?

But in another and more important sense, our knowledge of it is dependent on our mind and on the capacities of the human cognitive apparatus and the categories of the understanding. Insofar as we know the world, that world - the world as it appears to us - is all that we ever know.
— Wayfarer

That should be uncontroversial.

I mean, what other option is there? Unless we attribute actual cognition to the world. — Manuel

I think the implicit claim of modern realism is that we see the world as it truly is, not as it appears to us, and that awareness of that distinction is lost. Scientific realism is like that - the scientific picture of the world is the 'real world', the stage within which we all appear as actors. But that doesn't see that even the scientific picture is also a construction (vorstellung, vijñāna). Which is not to say that it's false or untrue but that its limitations need to be recognised.

Further from the passage in Magee's book on Schopenhauer's Philosophy

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood, so that these statements appear faulty in ways in which, properly understood, they are not.

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion.

We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.

This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices.

I do think that a lot of what is said in this regard arises from just that 'inborn realism', and there's a lot of indignance when it's questioned.

I feel like the nature of reality debate often gets stuck at this point. I wonder if there are other ways to discuss the realism/idealism debate? — Tom Storm

Well, apropos of the last phrase in the above quote, check out this blog post about one of my all-time favourite Zen teachers. The point about Zen is 'actualising realisation'. That's where it diverges from philosophy (although I think genuine philosophers in the Western tradition, a la Pierre Hadot, also endeavour to do that.) Click here for a deeper dive into Nishijima's Three Philosophies and One Reality.

Sure, what else would we have to go on?

Is idealism the claim that reality is a dream?
— Agent Smith
Worse than that, I suspect:
(something like) "reality" consists of only whatever I/we "know" (or can "know"), that is, my/our (i.e. subjective / intersubjective) ideas and experiences
Re: Plato, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel ... — 180 Proof

Worse than that? Hmmm.

I cannot be grateful enough to Magee, he set me forth into philosophy, without him, I wouldn't have been were I am.

He points out that the problem with empiricism or "transcendental realism", is that it "mistakes an epistemology for an ontology". He's right.

But that doesn't see that even the scientific picture is also a construction (vorstellung, vijñāna). Which is not to say that it's false or untrue but that its limitations need to be recognised. — Wayfarer

It seem probable that science is the intersection between our cognitive faculties (a science forming faculty) and some aspects of the mind independent world: it's interesting to note that the most direct avenue we have for our best science, physics, is mathematics.

And you know of Russell's quote here.

It's easier, cognitively, less taxing - to say those things I see, are out there, in a way not too dissimilar to what they appear to us. It's less confusing. The alternative, that these things are overwhelmingly (but in my opinion, not exclusively) a product of us, is really hard to grasp, I think.

Sure, what else would we have to go on? — Janus

Right, nothing, of course.

Why would you say that idealism understood as reality requires an observer is anthropomorphism
— Agent Smith

Because requirement implies someone who requires something. I'm not saying that consciousness is exclusively human. — Wayfarer

I'm just fascinated by how a dream (world) requires a dreamer (observer). Idealism is very close to making that claim about the real world, yes?

I prefer the original idealism (the mind creates & sustains reality)
— Agent Smith

Any examples in mind? — Wayfarer

What example? Reality is a dream (as per idealism).

Is idealism the claim that reality is a dream?
— Agent Smith
Worse than that, I suspect:
(something like) "reality" consists of only whatever I/we "know" (or can "know"), that is, my/our (i.e. subjective / intersubjective) ideas and experiences
Re: Plato, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel ... — 180 Proof

I think there's some merit to idealism if we only compare it to dreams. The dream world is existentially dependent on an observer doing the dreaming; no dreamer, no dreamscape.

Is the universe a collective dream? How do we distinguish dreams from real world? That we can't (even if we wake up) is the heart of skepticism.

Is the universe a collective dream? — Agent Smith

Perhaps the idea of "universe" is "collective" ... like language.

How do we distingu[is]h dreams from real world?

One dreams alone. One, however, shares the real world with others.

!!That we can't (even if we wake up) is the heart of skepticism

... solipsism.