Remember that I also pointed out that idealists are really just direct realists. — Harry Hindu
I'm a direct realist. — Terrapin Station
That's great but can we leave your personal position aside — Jamesk
Exactly. What is "matter"? What are "ideas"? How do they differ if not just by location (Ideas are in a mind. Matter is everywhere else)? — Harry Hindu
That is fine and I respect that but the point of this thread was to discuss the arguments presented by Locke and Berkeley both for and against matter and compare them.
I am very interested in your opinion of that — Jamesk
So, the difference between matter and ideas is that matter is incoherent and ideas are not, unless you follow Descartes dualist approach where the difference between the two is that they are different "substances".According to Berkeley matter is an incoherent idea that we arrive at by an abuse of language. Ideas are by definition non material unless you follow Descartes dualist approach that there are two types of substance — Jamesk
I deny them both.Locke denies Descartes spiritual substance and Berkeley denies Descartes material substance. — Jamesk
How is that more coherent than saying there's no ideas at all, only matter and processes of matter?Idealism states that there is no matter at all, only ideas and minds. — Jamesk
And materialists say that ideas are material states caused by something outside of us.Ideas are mental states caused by something outside of us. — Jamesk
So the distinction is in what certain people think, and not a distinction between the nature of "physical" or "non-physical" things.There are people who think that some things are nonphysical. Hence the utility of the distinction. — Terrapin Station
The completeness of the forms of unreal consciousness will be brought about precisely through the necessity of the advance and the necessity of their connection with one another. To make this comprehensible we may remark, by way of preliminary, that the exposition of untrue consciousness in its untruth is not a merely negative process. Such a one-sided view of it is what the natural consciousness generally adopts; and a knowledge, which makes this one-sidedness its essence, is one of those shapes assumed by incomplete consciousness which falls into the course of the inquiry itself and will come before us there. For this view is scepticism, which always sees in the result only pure nothingness, and abstracts from the fact that this nothing is determinate, is the nothing of that out of which it comes as a result. Nothing, however, is only, in fact, the true result, when taken as the nothing of what it comes from; it is thus itself a determinate nothing, and has a content. The scepticism which ends with the abstraction “nothing” or “emptiness” can advance from this not a step farther, but must wait and see whether there is possibly anything new offered, and what that is — in order to cast it into the same abysmal void. When once, on the other hand, the result is apprehended, as it truly is, as determinate negation, a new form has thereby immediately arisen; and in the negation the transition is made by which the progress through the complete succession of forms comes about of itself.
Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind
The spirit of this world is spiritual essence permeated by a self-consciousness which knows itself to be directly present as a self-existent particular, and knows that essence as an objective actuality over against itself. But the existence of this world, as also the actuality of self-consciousness, depends on the process that self-consciousness divests itself of its personality, by so doing creates its world, and treats it as something alien and external, of which it must now take possession. But the renunciation of its self-existence is itself the production of the actuality, and in doing so, therefore, self-consciousness ipso facto makes itself master of this world.
To put the matter otherwise, self-consciousness is only something definite, it only has real existence, so far as it alienates itself from itself.
ibid
So the distinction is in what certain people think, and not a distinction between the nature of "physical" or "non-physical" things. — Harry Hindu
Reason is the conscious certainty of being all reality. This is how Idealism expresses the principle of Reason.
A good example of "Consciousness determines Being" vs "Being determines consciousness"The individual exists in himself and for himself. He is for himself, or is a free activity; he is, however, also in himself, or has himself an original determinate being of his own — a character which is in principle the same as what psychology sought to find outside him. Opposition thus breaks out in his own self; it has this twofold nature, it is a process or movement of consciousness, and it is the fixed being of a reality with a phenomenal character, a reality which in it is directly its own. This being, the “body” of the determinate individuality, is its original source, that in the making of which it has had nothing to do. But since the individual at the same time merely is what he has done, his body is also an “expression” of himself which he has brought about; a sign and indication as well, which has not remained a bare immediate fact, but through which the individual only makes known what is actually implied by his setting his original nature to work.
In my view, yes, since I don't believe there are any nonphysical things. — Terrapin Station
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