So materialists and idealists are one and the same and have no idea that they have been arguing for the same thing all of these centuries? — Harry Hindu

According to what you have said, yes. Or would you like to go back on this:

"My point has been that if different things interact with each other, then it is pointless to call these things "physical" or "mental". They are the same "substance" if they can interact. Period."

And that needs to be explained - why some things can interact and some things can't - again without using terms like "substance" (because, according to you, it is a vacuous term), or "physical" or "mental".

Of course. Like I said, the problem of causation is a problem for everyone.

But, if we are to accept what you said above, then if some things can't interact with something else then they are of a different substance, and so monism of any variety fails. Dark matter is one substance, light another, etc.

According to what you have said, yes. — Michael

...and what you agreed with. So, we agree on one thing - that there is a false dichotomy between physical things and mental things, therefore dualism is just wrong.

They'd also be false, given that some things can't interact with other things (e.g. light and dark matter). — Michael

Dark matter is just an idea, or a solution (that hasn't been proven), to our observation of the behavior of galaxies. So to use light and dark matter as an example of things that don't interact is quite presumptuous. Do you have any other examples of things that can't interact?

Of course. Like I said, the problem of causation is a problem for everyone. — Michael

If "substance" is vacuous, then it would seem to me that "causation" would be vacuous as causation is dependent on the idea of like substance can, and do, interact with each other. If they aren't the same substance, then how do they interact? We can observe that these things do interact, and can even make predictions of what kind of effect will result from a certain cause. An explanation of causation would also need to explain how we can make causal predictions that come true more than they don't. To have a higher than 50% chance of making causal predictions must mean something, no?

Do you have any other examples of things that can't interact. — Harry Hindu

Photons and gluons.

Yeah, what makes it the best? Materialism for that matter is also a "satisfying" solution because it denies that the mind exists in any way transcendental to the body. And of course, then we have positions like substance dualism, or neutral monism. — Agustino

But materialism fails for the self-evident truth that the mind is not reducible or identical to the brain.

I'll admit, dualism a la Aquinas are plausible as well.

So just like the metaphysics of being is a psychological defense mechanism against the flux of existence, so too the metaphysics of becoming is a psychological defense mechanism against immutable, unchanging Being. These are of course neither arguments for nor against one metaphysics or the other. They're just red herrings. — Agustino

The point is not to refute metaphysical positions through psychology but to move away from them, cast them aside as being unnecessary.

The point is not to refute metaphysical positions through psychology but to move away from them, cast them aside as being unnecessary. — darthbarracuda

Then you ought to certainly cast both of them aside if you really want to rely just on psychology.

But materialism fails for the self-evident truth that the mind is not reducible or identical to the brain.

I'll admit, dualism a la Aquinas are plausible as well. — darthbarracuda

Okay.

OK, but on its own this leads to the position of Cartesian Dualism. The position does hold some logical inconsistencies at a metaphysical level of contemplation. — javra

Cartesian dualism is not the only logical conclusion here; Spinoza's 'dual aspect' conception is also consistent and coherent with our ordinary understandings of matter and mind.

The question of "whose mind is it then?" holds, at minimum, two alternatives: a) somebody's, such as being the mind of God (as you've alluded to) or, else, b) nobody's, something like "the collective phenomena-endowed mind emerging from out of the collective unconscious, to which all individual minds (similar to Jung's worldview) are in their own ways partly tied into" (hence, not the mind of God). This, of course, is painted with wide brush strokes ... and the two alternatives mentioned are not exhaustive. — javra

Yes, these are just the two alternatives I have outlined; it's either God or a universal or collective mind. You say these alternatives are not exhaustive; can you think of others?

Do the Jews, the Christians, or the Muslims hold the same notion of God, or do they hold three different such notions vying with each other for supremacy? And of course, there are other major religions out there, such as Hinduism and Buddhism — javra

Those three notions of God have their similarities and their differences. In all three though God is an eternal infinitely conscious being. In Buddhism, Buddha Nature is eternal, infinite and all-knowing, as is Brahman in Hinduism. Broadly, they are all conceptions of eternal infinite intelligence and wisdom.

Agree.

It's a satisfying solution to the mind-body problem because it denies the body exists in any way transcendental to the mind. — darthbarracuda

Does it also deny that the mind exists in any way transcendental to the body?

Mathematical realists are unlikely to be materialists. — Michael

I have already acknowledged that 'objective' idealists may be realists (in fact must be) in the sense that they acknowledge the reality of an absolute being which is not dependent on human minds, which is to say on human perception and thought, and I agreed with Javra that Plato is an example; so it's not clear to me what your point is here.

In the old days, this kind of thread would go 100 pages, with much talk of apples, cats on mats, and the height of Mount Everest before it was cataloged.

Yeah, I remember some of those times. :)

Spinoza's 'dual aspect' conception is also consistent and coherent with our ordinary understandings of matter and mind. — Janus

And how would “dual aspect” monism be logically contradictory to a stance of objective idealism? To better spell things out, some mind-stuff holds the aspect of matter and some holds the aspect of individual minds.

You say these alternatives are not exhaustive; can you think of others? — Janus

I can. But again, I await your justification of what is and is not real regarding mind (as asked in one of my previous posts) before I oblige you with any further specifics as regards my own views. Fair is fair. Else it's a one sided interrogation, which we could both agree would be other than fair. Lets first agree on what is real in regard to our thoughts/minds and in how we justify their reality.

BTW, given the posts of the thread so far, as regards those opposed to the very notion of idealism (not here pointing fingers), it seems like this all boils down not to issues of logic, reality, and metaphysics, but to emotive anxieties over atheistic dogmas v. theistic dogmas. Would like to see this disproved, but not holding my breath.

And how would “dual aspect” monism be logically contradictory to a stance of objective idealism? To better spell things out, some mind-stuff holds the aspect of matter and some holds the aspect of individual minds. — javra

We seem to be talking at cross purposes here. I haven't said that dual aspect monism would be contradictory to objective idealism. Hegel's regard for, and appropriation of, some of Spinoza's key ideas is a case in point.

All I have been trying to point out from the start is that any idealism which would purport to explain human experience of a shared world must posit some objectively existent absolute mind or spirit; something to foundationally connect and unify individual human minds. It must be said, though, that Spinoza's monism does not posit either mind or matter as substance, but rather both as attributes of substance. I think Hegel's objective idealism is best understood if you think of his phenomenology as phenomenology of spirit, not as phenomenology of mind. Hegel replaces Spinoza's Substance with Spirit. Body and mind (extensa and cogitans) are dual aspects of substance or spirit, of nature or God ; "Deus siva Natura" ( Spinoza).

But again, I await your justification of what is and is not real regarding mind — javra

To be honest, I still don't understand what you are asking for.

All I have been trying to point out from the start is that any idealism which would purport to explain human experience of a shared world must posit some objectively existent absolute mind or spirit; something to foundationally connect and unify individual human minds. — Janus

OK. To reply, no: There is no "must posit" some guiding mind or spirit required for the stance of such idealism. One could instead posit an end-state that is a final cause. Again, no mind/spirit required in so doing. Actually, a mind/spirit would will/aspire/intend/etc.; hence, would not of itself be the final cause/telos ... for it would be via this final cause that the mind/spirit intends, regardless of how evolved or superlative it might be.

To be honest, I still don't understand what you are asking for. — Janus

The question of what of our being is real is pivotal to the entire metaphysical discussion--far more so than the issue I've just given reply to. If this point is swept under the rug, the conversation becomes meaningless as far as I can see. Don't know what else to add here ... this metaphysical, ongoing debate is about what is and is not fundamentally real ... as was also the case on the old forum we all have such fond memories of.

OK. To reply, no: There is no "must posit" some guiding mind or spirit required for the stance of such idealism. One could instead posit an end-state that is a final cause. Again, no mind/spirit required in so doing. Actually, a mind/spirit would will/aspire/intend/etc.; hence, would not of itself be the final cause/telos ... for it would be via this final cause that the mind/spirit intends, regardless of how evolved or superlative it might be. — javra

It's not that the spirit must be "guiding", because that suggests it would be external to what is "being guided". Reality is the unfolding of spirit according to Hegel's objective idealism and is the manifestation of substance according to Spinoza. Neither Spirit for Hegel, nor Substance for Spinoza has any "prior intentions". Neither are positing a transcendent God who possesses intentionality or a "plan", and such a God is not needed to ground objective idealism. (I should note here that I am not suggesting Spinoza's standpoint constitutes any kind of idealism, but some scholars seem to think there is, contrary to popular contemporary physicalist interpretations, a priority of mind over matter in his system).

And of course, on the assumption of physicalism, one could posit, as apokrisis does, some "end-state" (maximum entropification) as a final cause or telos; nothing I have said runs contrary to that, as far as I can tell.

On the other hand if that "final cause/telos" is somehow "intended" by "mind/ spirit", how would you parse the difference between that and the physicalist model, other than to say that the spirit guides (material, mental or whatever) reality towards a preconceived (by mind/ spirit, presumably) goal?

The question of what of our being is real is pivotal to the entire metaphysical discussion--far more so than the issue I've just given reply to. — javra

I can't see how all of our being would not be real, by definition.

I'm afraid I'm finding most of what you are saying here hard to make sense of, and I certainly haven't been able to extract a salient point from it that runs contrary to anything I have said. :s

You are right. We talk past each other.

Maybe on a different topic we won't. Till then, I'm logging out of this discussion with you.

Since first-person experience is the basis of clarifying and verifying the meaning of all assertions relating to third person perception, to science and to counterfactual possibility then I cannot envisage any meaningful starting point of investigation other than the Cartesian standpoint of the individual who understands his own utterances in terms of his immediate experiences that provoke or correspond to his own utterances.

Let's take a predicate from the first and third person perspective:

a. "I see red"
b. "He sees red"

I presume that everyone is in agreement that the conditions of assertion of a and b are not generally inter-translatable. Wittgenstein mentioned in PI that the experiential criteria for (b) are "what he says and does", but that (a) cannot be given experiential criteria in terms of other words.

Since the meaning of a. and b. are irreconcilable (at least to Wittgenstein), then how did our language manage to trick us into thinking that a and b are in some way transcendentally equivalent or inter-translatable?

What if our language had merged the subject, verb and object so that a and b were represented with the single words "Iseered" and "heseesred" respectively?

Could such a language remain as competitive as our actual language?

Could beliefs in realism still get off the ground?

I intend to post a defense of Berkeleyan-style Immaterialism and phenomenal Idealism in the near future, using concepts from the philosophy of mind....I voted and that will suffice for now....cheers!

The PhilPapers Surveys turned out rather differently:


What gives?

I actually came to this view by studying near death experiences. That we are all part of a central or core mind or intellect, and that reality is created by that mind. My understanding is that there are an unlimited amount of realities that this mind can create.

Man, not to hound you, but, maybe: it's due to peer pressure? Cool is cool, and who wants to be a nerd, kind of thing.

As long as Idealism isn't the idea that phenomenon exists "in the mind", then I'm probably an idealist. But I ulimately don't really see this oppose to a type of realism.

Going by idealism, and keeping it consistent, there’s no difference among you and my experiences of you. — jorndoe

It seems to not take into account the person's experience of themselves, which is important to understand reality and what the person is trying to communicate. If everything is understood only within your lens of perception then you probably have it wrong. The reason being that you are measuring what is being said by your experience instead of the other person's experience. While there are objective truths, everything is subjectively internalized and that means that in the social world we have to accommodate. Idealism doesn't do that accurately.

Going by idealism, and keeping it consistent, there’s no difference among you and my experiences of you. (On a non-idealist account it’s impossible for me to experience your self-awareness, since then I’d be you instead.) You = my experiences of you. But I’m not omniscient, since otherwise I’d know that I were. I don’t have to experience someone else’s self-awareness to take it’s independent existence for granted, I don’t have to become the Moon to take it’s independent existence for granted — and I learn of both much the same way, by interaction, observation, coherence, whatever. Attempting to escape solipsism by declaring that others also are selves would be textbook special pleading. — jorndoe

I've never understood that problem about "other minds".

I can't speak for Materialism, which has other, prohibitively serious, problems anyway.

But,as an Idealist, I don't understand what the problem is.

Obviously, your life-experience possibility-story's setting, the possibility-world in which you live, must include a species to which you belong, and other members of that species.

That possibility-world is implied by, and part of, your life-experience possibility-story. In that sense, it's real for you. It's a world in which there are other people, who are persons like you.

No surprise there.

Of course, among the infinity of life-experience possibility-stories, there's one about the life-experience of each of those other individuals, and in that same possibility-world.

But you needn't theorize about that. Those other experience-stories are inaccessibly-distant from your own experience.

What you do know about is the fact that, in the possibility-world in which you reside, there are other animals, like you, including other animals of your own species, who are essentially just like you.

...essentially just like you in terms of their feelings too

It's a fallacy to try to separate, dissect, "Mind" or "Consciousness" from body, to make the unnecessary fallacious "Hard Problem Of Consciousness". There's just the animal, indivisible.

An animal is a purposefully-responsive device, designed by natural-selection.

Its surroundings, in the context of the purposes built into its purposeful response to those surroundings, are its experience.

Where there's a live body, there's experience, mind, and feelings.

So of course those other animals, including those of your species, have experience and feelings, just as you do.

...even though you don't directly feel their feelings or directly experience their experience.

...even though all that you can know about your surroundings is via your experience.

...and even though your experience is metaphysically primary, in your metaphysical reality.

Michael Ossipoff

As I've said before, each life-experience possibility-story, as a logical system of inter-referring if-then facts about hypotheticals, is real in its own local inter-referring context,and needn't be real or existent in any other context. ...needn't have any other context or medium in which to be real or existent.

Such logical systems are isolated from and independent of eachother**, and independent of any global context or medium.

**except that, inevitably, among that infinity of life-experience possibility-stories, some are set in a common possibility-world.

Tegmark's MUH is described from the universe-wide, objective 3rd-person point-of-view, and that's one of my disagreements with it. Obviously, he describes the same possibility-worlds, but our own experience is what we genuinely know, and anything we know about this physical world, we know via our experience. ...direct physical perceptions, or our experience of someone reporting something to us.

Michael Ossipoff

I agree. In fact, like this one, nearly all sentences that anybody ever utters are as meaningful to idealists as to materialists. It is only when one drills down through a long sequence of definitions from the sentence that one can start to discern any difference. That's why the simple, snappy 'refutations' of idealism like Johnson's kicking a stone or asking about fictional characters are so ineffectual. — andrewk

I think that this skirts around something that hasn't been given due attention.

All philosophical positions consist entirely in/of thought/belief. The only way that one can deny the existence of an external world is if one is working from an inadequate notion of thought/belief.

1. All thought/belief consists of mental correlation(s) drawn between 'objects' of physiological sensory perception and/or the agent's own state of 'mind'.
2. Correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content.
3. All thought/belief formation is existentially contingent upon presupposing the existence of an external world.(from1,2)
4. All meaning is attributed by virtue of drawing mental correlation(s) between that which becomes symbol/sign and that which becomes symbolized/signified.
5. The attribution of meaning happens entirely within thought/belief formation.(from4,1)
6. All meaning is existentially contingent upon presupposing the existence of an external world.(from3,5)

3. All thought/belief formation is existentially contingent upon presupposing the existence of an external world.(from1,2) — creativesoul

This cannot be directly deduced from 1 and 2, since neither of them mentions an external world. At best, there may be some steps omitted, that introduce that notion and could bridge that gap, but they'd need to be written out explicitly for it to be convincing.

Idealism is a test of critical thinking set by professors to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

This forum is populated mostly by undergrads or less, and hence is biased towards the chaff. PhilPapers is biased towards the wheat.

3. All thought/belief formation is existentially contingent upon presupposing the existence of an external world.(from1,2)
— creativesoul
This cannot be directly deduced from 1 and 2, since neither of them mentions an external world. At best, there may be some steps omitted, that introduce that notion and could bridge that gap, but they'd need to be written out explicitly for it to be convincing. — andrewk

Fair enough. Implication isn't always good enough.

:D

presume that everyone is in agreement that the conditions of assertion of a and b are not generally inter-translatable. Wittgenstein mentioned in PI that the experiential criteria for (b) are "what he says and does", but that (a) cannot be given experiential criteria in terms of other words. — sime

I understand I and He to be two different people perceiving something red, unless one is lying. I can think in terms of watching a movie or reading a book where one characters is first person and the other is third. The book or movie can easily can change perspective so the audience or reader can see both experiencing red.

Why do I think other people perceive red? Because they're human beings who also have first person experiences. So I come to KNOW that someone else sees red by their behavior or language, but I cognate that they are like me in the first person.

I can put myself in someone else's shoes and imagine the experiences they have, unless it's something I have no experience of. When they tell me they see red, or I see them looking at something red, I understand this from my first person experiences of seeing red. Unless they're colorblind.

That's how you can translate from a to b. I don't agree with Witty. The alternative is a slippery slope to solipsism.