I don't really want to derail your thread further from your main topic, I just wanted to voice my objection to you dismissing idealism out of hand. — Victoribus Spolia

This thread hasn't been commented on for a while, so it doesn't matter.

I don't dismiss idealism out of hand, because I've been involved in plenty of very long idealism/realisms threads in the past, which challenged me to seriously consider the idealist arguments, but ultimately, realism is more convincing.

...but ultimately, realism is more convincing.

I don't see how the assertion of the improvable (deductively speaking) can be more convincing, but perhaps my standard of what serves as an appropriate criteria by which a philosopher may be convinced is too high....

If realism's claims could be demonstrated in syllogism, I would be more open to the position, but it seems all Realists have followed the sort naive realism of Thomas Reid in one way or another and that just seems to be poor philosophy.

That Berkeley's Idealism was more often ignored than answered is not a secret, but the fact that this state of affairs is not an outrage says more about our biases and corrupt nature than it does about Berkeley's actual premises.

I am not entirely convinced you are not being dismissive of Idealism because you prefaced your thread with a clear dismissal of consideration regarding the position of Idealism and then defended such to me with clear question-begging and an admission of a belief that your position was not provable (metaphysically), but "reasonable" nonetheless (whatever that means).....

Like I said, I would prefer to see you flesh out your realism in a large and thorough post on a new thread (as you have alluded to) rather than banter back-and-forth here. I would like to hear your well-articulated and well thought-out case.

I will be waiting.