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
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
:up: :up: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
:100:@Wayfarer says that physicalism is corrosive. I think that's bullshit, it is the physicalist/ idealist polemic which is corrosive.
"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
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
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
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
does not entail that things are mind-dependent. — Janus
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. — ZzzoneiroCosm
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
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
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 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
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
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
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 prefer the original idealism (the mind creates & sustains reality)
— Agent Smith
Any examples in mind? — Wayfarer
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
Perhaps the idea of "universe" is "collective" ... like language.Is the universe a collective dream? — Agent Smith
One dreams alone. One, however, shares the real world with others.How do we distingu[is]h dreams from real world?
... solipsism.!!That we can't (even if we wake up) is the heart ofskepticism
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