The point is that idealism is unnecessary. It adds nothing to understanding — Real Gone Cat

Except that without ideas our attempts to understand will be in vain.

Except that without ideas our attempts to understand will be in vain. — EugeneW

Who said anything about rejecting ideas? Not me.

Why do you think I have advocated that position?

He uses an analogy to multiple personality disorders. The universe is a mind, granted a very strange one. Objects in the universe are what they appear to be to us, and are ontologically based in mentation. So, while physicalism claims that the physical supervenes on all things observed, the corollary here is less of a positive claim. Things appear to us as mental objects, so why suppose they are something different?

Concious beings are minds disassociated from the surrounding mental substrate. The brain - behavior link is explained by the fact that brains are part of the extrinsic view of another mind. That is, neuroscience gives us a viewpoint of a mind from the viewpoint of another mind, in the same way that behaviorism is also a way of viewing other minds by how they represent in our minds.

It's funny that you say idealism is just extra steps. One of the main arguments in the book is that physicalism is the ontology with extra steps.

I have to agree with him here. Idealism is saying "things are what they appear to be." To be sure, our intuition about how things are is often wrong (optical illusions, the discovery of microbes), but it was observation, something that occurs in the mind, that told us all about bacteria, protons, quarks, etc.

Physicalism is saying, "no, actually what you experience isn't the real deal. You essentially hallucinate a world. The real stuff is the abstract model of the world we use to understand and predict observations. Yes this abstraction is only accessible as a component of thought, but it is actually ontologically basic."

It only appears simpler because it is accepted dogmatically and passed over outside graduate level science courses (and even not commonly then), and in philosophy. Ironically, the big source for new ontologies that compete with physicalism these days mostly come from physicists themselves.

To be clear : Idealism is fine if it satisfies some personal itch. But it is not really different from physicalism. Both admit of a transcendent whose nature we can never know. It's simply a renaming.

The idealist's challenge is not to tear down physicalism, but to prove the transcendent to be "mental". Otherwise, haughty claims of superiority are nonsense.

Maybe I got you wrong then. What then do you mean that they add nothing to our understanding?

I have to agree with him here. Idealism is saying "things are what they appear to be." — Count Timothy von Icarus

You kind of negate this point with your next sentence.

To be sure, our intuition about how things are is often wrong (optical illusions, the discovery of microbes)... — Count Timothy von Icarus

We experience the world through minds, so of course things appear mental. If you wear rose colored glasses, everything will "appear" pink. Does that mean the world is pink?

Physicalism is saying, "no, actually what you experience isn't the real deal. You essentially hallucinate a world..." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Really? Who says we hallucinate a world?

Yeah, it's debatable. He might be right though. There is a regular cottage industry of PhDs in the physical sciences presenting new, non-physicalist ontologies rooted in the findings of the physical sciences themselves. "It From Bit," is a popular one with many major variations, including simulation theory, or Tegmark's "the world is mathematics."

Notably, the most popular interpretation of physics among physicists, Copenhagen, leaves the question of "being without observation" unaddressed and in many formulations calls such questions "meaningless." Hardline, old-school 19th Century physicalism is alive and well in the wild, but dead in science. The new physicalism has non-local action, no objective world in some formulations, and a massive proliferation of unobservable dimensions in many others.

It's fine to speculate on the actual nature of the transcendent. But by definition we can never know for sure. Physicalism seems to work fine for most of the mouth-breathers, so what does idealism add? It's just a renaming of the transcendent.

But idealists on TPF would have you believe that physicalists are Neanderthals.

Physicalism is saying, "no, actually what you experience isn't the real deal. You essentially hallucinate a world. The real stuff is the abstract model of the world we use to understand and predict observations. Yes this abstraction is only accessible as a component of thought, but it is actually ontologically basic." — Count Timothy von Icarus

The physical world proposed to lay behind the perceived qualiatic world is just as an idealist world as the directly. If the directly perceived world, the empirical world of the sense, were all there is, what would be the difference between a real person and a dreamt one?

Physical matter is an idea. Without this idea it doesn't exist.

My sentence doesn't negate that at all. Ask yourself, if no experiments could have shown evidence for electrons, would we say they exist? Why do we say the N Rays once proposed by science don't actually exist? Why do we no longer say luminous aether is the source of light?

In each case, it is because of observations. We thought we had observations of the aether, it turned out another theory explained our observations better. Sans observations, there is no science. The observations include the optical illusion, but only through observation can you ever tell that there is an optical illusion. So when you attack the credibility of observation, you're also attacking the credibility of arguments for physicalism and science as a whole. People don't see this connection because they are used to getting third person descriptions of the physical world as a story of facts, but these facts are all derived, at least in part, from observation, and confirmed by observation.

The point about the rose colored glasses is particularly apt. That IS the argument against physicalism. Just reframe it: "if you assume you have an abstract thought model that explains reality, and you interpret all experience using that model, does that mean your model is actually a reflection of reality?"

The rose colored glasses critique applies every bit as well to physicalism, it is just less clear because the latter is a complex system of overlapping abstractions, a "lens" for thinking.

What do you mean with transcendent nature? How things really are?

Umm, your missing the point. Either the transcendent exists or it doesn't. What you call it hardly matters.

Physicalism is saying, "no, actually what you experience isn't the real deal. You essentially hallucinate a world..."
— Count Timothy von Icarus

Really? Who says we hallucinate a world? — Real Gone Cat

Andy Clark, for one:

https://www.edge.org/conversation/andy_clark-perception-as-controlled-hallucination

By the way, I consider myself a physicalist. I am just aware that the ontology has significant unresolved issues and undermines itself through trying to enforce dogmatic adherence to its precepts

Donald Hoffman too. It's kind of a mainstream cognitive science view now.

Donald Hoffman too. It's kind of a mainstream cognitive science view now. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This view is problematic for me because it still implies a split between inner and outer, subjective model vs Thing in itself, Descartes’ veil of appearance regurgitated. Phenomenology dispenses with this dualist residue.

“ For Husserl, the world that can appear to us – be it in perception, in our daily concerns or in our scientific analyses – is the only real world. To claim that there in addition to this world exists a world-behind-the-scene, which transcends every appearance, and every experiential and theoretical evidence, and to identify this world with true reality is, for Husserl, an empty and countersensical proposition.”(Dan Zahavi)

So when you attack the credibility of observation, you're also attacking the credibility of arguments for physicalism and science as a whole. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But who does this? I've never run across this claim on the part of physicalists.

By definition, the transcendent is unknowable. The credibility of an observation is just as useless for idealists as physicalists. Can the idealist guarantee that they are having a true thought? What if it's a hallucination as you claim - doesn't that render the observation untrue for both? Or are you claiming observations are always true?

The point about the rose colored glasses was this : we interact with the world as thinking beings. So our frame of reference necessitates that we understand the world through thoughts. "The chair" is a thought in our minds. But that doesn't imply that the actual chair is a thought.

Umm, your missing the point. Either the transcendent exists or it doesn't. — Real Gone Cat

But what is the transcendent?

By definition, the transcendent is unknowable — Real Gone Cat

Then the definition is wrong. Apart from the sense there are ways to contemplate this reality.

Andy Clark, for one: — Joshs

Donald Hoffman too. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Both make their bones by positing novel wild claims. Otherwise, Clark wouldn't get tenured and Hoffman wouldn't sell books. Is it really becoming mainstream? Do they teach it at university? Maybe, but it's new to me.

Both make their bones by positing novel wild claims. — Real Gone Cat

These aren’t wild claims. It’s just good old fashioned neo-Kantianism.

“That which through the medium of our senses is actually perceived by the sensorium, is indeed merely a property or change of condition of our nerves; but the imagination and reason are ready to interpret the modifications in the state of the nerves produced by external influences as properties of the external bodies themselves (Müller 1842: 1059).

Helmholtz accepted this reasoning, and likewise argued that since the information about the external object is transformed beyond recognition on its way through the nervous system, what we end up perceiving is strictly speaking the internal effect rather than the external cause:

The result of [scientific] examination, as at present understood, is that the organs of sense do indeed give us information about external effects produced on them, but convey those effects to our consciousness in a totally different form, so that the character of a sensuous perception depends not so much on the properties of the object perceived as on those of the organ by which we receive the information (Helmholtz 1995: 13).

I would interpret the sensation only as a sign of the object's effect. To the nature of a sign belongs only the property that for the same object the same sign will always be given. Moreover, no type of similarity is necessary between it and its object, just as little as that between the spoken word and the object that we designate thereby (Helmholtz )

But what is the transcendence? — EugeneW

From the Oxford English Dictionary

transcendent
adjective

beyond or above the range of normal or merely physical human experience.
"the search for a transcendent level of knowledge"

surpassing the ordinary; exceptional.
"the conductor was described as a “transcendent genius.”"

(of God) existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe.

From Mirriam-Webster

transcendent

1a. exceeding usual limits : surpassing.

b. extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience.

c. in Kantian philosophy : being beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge.

What is beyond experience is unknowable. We can speculate given appearances, but we can't know.

If you doubt the transcendent, then all is what's in your mind. That's solipsism.

What is beyond experience is unknowable — Real Gone Cat

That's exactly the question. Why would that be?

These aren’t wild claims. It’s just good old fashioned neo-Kantianism. — Joshs

Is it mainstream cognitive science? Could be, I don't know. If so, it needs to get out to the public.

If the approach to understanding the world is largely physicalist on the part of scientists and other thinkers, and if that means we hallucinate the world, shouldn't that have implications? Like the same experiment run twice yielding different results?

Again I ask : What does idealism add to our understanding?

Accepting the dictionary definition (i.e., not mine), it should be obvious to you. Can you know what you can't experience? You can make assumptions based on appearances, but you can never be sure. (As a physicalist, I do happen to believe that appearances do reveal the approximate nature of things-as-they-are, but that's my peccadillo.)

Now the only question that remains is does the transcendent exist or not? If not, then you must accept solipsism.

If you doubt the transcendent, then all is what's in your mind. — Real Gone Cat

I don't doubt the transcendence, I doubt that we can't know what we have no knowledge about, paradoxically as that may sound.

You might ask then: is it transcendental still? I think yes.

As a physicalist, I do happen to believe that appearances do reveal the approximate nature of things-as-they-are, but that's my peccadillo — Real Gone Cat

English language has some nice words. Peccadillo? Ha! :wink:
Why only the approximate nature can be revealed? The exact nature can be known it seems to me.

Well, if we put aside Berkeley's context - which I frankly have to re-read - and simply take the phrase as is stated, it's a problem.

To be a human being entails having perception. If you do not have perception - say are in a comma, you can't well categorize or think of anything.

On the other hand, obviously others things "are", irrespective of us in some manner, rocks, water, etc. So far as we know, they don't have perception but exist. We happen to give them the characteristics (automatically, not a choice) of "hardness", "wetness", etc.

But having a perception does not entail that one is being perceived. The best one can do is assume another person perceives you - or another animal. But we can't go beyond this assumption to proof.

Don't be silly. The point is that idealism is unnecessary. It adds nothing to understanding. Does it render science moot? Count Tim doesn't think so. — Real Gone Cat

Who said that science is moot under either physicalism or idealism? Perhaps idealism adds nothing, but you simply accept physicalism as the default position. That is an unphilosophical approach, as philosophy engages and critically examines presuppositions. From my post it shows I think that I find the whole question whether the world is made of matter or made of mind rather moot as any investigation into the 'real' nature of things harps back to premodern metaphysical times. It brackets the subject, but the subject cannot be bracketed since any metaphysical speculation is limited by our human perspective. That does not make metaphysics moot in my opinion but any categorical assumption about what the real actually is, seems to me A. idle because it does not matter to us what it is and B. unprovable.

That is why I would find it more interesting to investigate the assumptions behind something like "esse est percipi", the central role given to perception over action for instance. The hierarchies embedded within the history of ideas says something about our being in the world, but speculation does not.