I sometimes wonder if idealism's great strength is its ineffability and its contrast to the materialist model which has atrophied over time and is rather easily undermined by philosophers. — Tom Storm

It seems to me that the most common argument for various forms of idealism goes something like "materialism is flawed, therefore this..."

The flaws in materialism are not, however, evidence in favour of any old alternative.

Again, appeals to empiricism are perfectly warranted. It's a very convincing form of evidence. — Isaac

But you've already agreed in respect of the issue at hand that there can be no evidence for materialist theories of mind:

It's just a model I find most convincing, that's all. Just like Catholics and God. — Isaac

But you've already agreed in respect of the issue at hand that there can be no evidence for materialist theories of mind: — Wayfarer

I don't believe I said anything about a lack of evidence, only a lack of proof, the evidence does not compel us to choose. What we take to be evidence is about what, for us, is convincing. There is empirical evidence for materialism. The failure to yet discover any mechanism other than those of materialism is one.

But that aside, your comment seemed to pertain to empirical claims in general...

someone who makes constant appeals to empiricism — Wayfarer

I answered in kind. Claims to empiricism are entirely appropriate, empirical evidence is good, convincing evidence. It should be appealed to as often as possible. The fact that some questions lack sufficient empirical evidence to answer them does nothing to undermine the usefulness of empirical evidence where it exists.

There is empirical evidence for materialism. — Isaac

Isn't materialism what empiricism is defined by?

Isn't materialism what empiricism is defined by? — Jackson

I don't think so. The SEP gives us...

The main characteristic of empiricism, however, is that it endorses a version of the following claim for some subject area:

The Empiricism Thesis: We have no source of knowledge in S or for the concepts we use in S other than experience.

So experience, not necessarily matter, defines empiricism. That we experience matter (ie all of our experiences thus far are directly attributable to matter) is empirical evidence for materialism. If we had experiences that were unaffected by matter (I experience a nice day out despite having had my brain completely removed and being locked in a windowless box) then we'd have direct empirical evidence against materialism.

So experience, not necessarily matter, defines empiricism. That we experience matter (ie all of our experiences thus far are directly attributable to matter) is empirical evidence for materialism. — Isaac

We don't experience matter. I do not even know what that means.

how can minds arise from mindless matter? — RogueAI

That's a question to discuss for another time I believe.



So, If I understand well, idealism is the view that the nature of reality as we know it is all grounded in the human mind ?

So, If I understand well, idealism is the view that the nature of reality as we know it is all grounded in the human mind? — Hello Human

Indeed. And I think it can be supported with reference to science.

According to evolutionary biology, H. Sapiens evolved through tens or hundreds of millions of years. Through this process our sensory and intellectual abilities have been honed and shaped by the exigencies of survival, through billions of lifetimes in various life-forms - fish, lizard, mammal, primate and finally hominid - in such a way as to eventually give rise to the capabilities that we have today.

Cognitive and evolutionary psychology have revealed that conscious perception, while subjectively appearing to exist as a steady continuum, is actually composed of a heirarchical matrix of millions of interacting cellular transactions, commencing at the most basic level with the parasympathetic system which controls one’s respiration, digestion, and so on, up through various levels to culminate in that peculiarly human ability of rational thought (and beyond, although that is beyond the scope of natural science.)

Consciousness plays a central role in co-ordinating these diverse activities so as to give rise to the sense of continuity which we call ‘ourselves’ - and also the apparent coherence and reality of the 'external world'. Yet it is important to realise that the naïve sense in which we understand ourselves, and the objects of our perception, to exist, is dependent upon the constructive activities of the mind the bulk of which are completely unknown to us (as demonstrated by Kant in his famous Critiques).

When you perceive something - large, small, alive or inanimate, local or remote - there is a considerable amount of work involved in ‘creating’ an object from the raw material of perception. Your eyes receive the lightwaves reflected or emanated from it, your mind organises the image with regards to all of the other stimuli impacting your senses at that moment – either acknowledging it, or ignoring it, depending on how busy you are; your memory will then compare it to other objects you have seen, from whence you will recall its name, and know something about it ('star', 'tree', 'frog', etc. These are gestalts, organised conceptual wholes, which the mind synthesises from sense data through the process of apperception.)

In other words, your consciousness is not the passive recipient of sensory objects which exist irrespective of your perception of them - the fabled 'tabula rasa' or blank slate of the British empiricists. Instead, consciousness is an active agent which constructs reality - partially on the basis of sensory input, but also on the basis of unconscious processes, memories, intentions, and so on. And in the case of h. sapiens, also through the faculty of reason, which exists in only rudimentary form in other species, as well as through intuition, which together provide the unique ability of self-awareness, by which the being can become aware of the way in which the mind creates its world, which is one of the fundamental principles of Buddhism.

This is why I believe that a thoroughly scientifically-aware form of idealism is the philosophy of the future. Materialism in its classical sense - the idea that the Universe consists of inanimate lumps of matter and undirected energy which somehow give rise to life - will be consigned to history.

This well written response reads to me like section one of a useful essay for laypeople. Would section two (hypothetically) be exploring how it is (under idealism) that the world appears consistent day to day?

I think one of the more elusive elements of idealism is dealing with the subject of universal consciousness or Will (as Schopenhauer would have it).

This is why I believe that a thoroughly scientifically-aware form of idealism is the philosophy of the future. Materialism in its classical sense - the idea that the Universe consists of inanimate lumps of matter and undirected energy which somehow give rise to life - will be consigned to history. — Wayfarer

This account implies a relational basis for the basic organizing processes of life, but it doesn’t necessarily support a subject-based and consciousness-based relationality. One could just as easily argue that outside of consciousness and subjectivity are fundamental relational processes that transcend materialism at the same time that they transcend subjective consciousness.

consciousness is an active agent which constructs reality — Wayfarer

When the family got together and made a Lego model on a cold wet day last week, we constructed it from lego. When I built a small garden out the back, I constructed it from rocks, soil, seeds and cow shit.

When one's mind constructs reality, what is it it constructs it from?

As said, from the data provided by the senses, co-ordinated by the mind, the limbic system, and the other sub-systems that comprise the human - which is quite in keeping with Platonic (objective) Aristotelian (hylomorphic) and Kantian (transcendental) forms of idealism. Your mind is continually synthesising, combining and judging, and that activity is what constitutes your reality, or should we say, your being. The task of philosophy is understanding that, as Schopenhauer says in the opening paragraph of World as Will and Idea.

I'm interested in what motivates idealism. Berkely hoped to prove the existence of God via idealism. I think the contemporary idealist wants to prove that they themselves are God.

The idealist sees his or her mind as fundamental to reality. Nothing is greater than their own mind.

The physicalist sees his or her mind as just one of many products of a greater reality. They know that if all human minds cease to exist tomorrow, the Earth will go on circling the Sun.

It's the difference between hubris and humility.

It's just possible that your mind is not the pinnacle of creation. Maybe subjective experience is actually the result of your brain's limitations! Limitations imposed by our faulty means of interfacing with external reality (i.e, the senses), and limitations imposed by our faulty cognitive abilities. Subjective experience is just our brains trying to make sense of it all. On the scale of paramecium to omniscience, we're much closer to the paramecium.

Actually, this seems in keeping with your thoughts :

Your mind is continually synthesising, combining and judging ... — Wayfarer

I.e., doing the best it can given it's limitations.

The idealist sees his or her mind as fundamental to reality. Nothing is greater than their own mind. — Real Gone Cat

Mature idealism speaks in terms of 'mind'. Not 'my mind' or 'your mind'. Take a look at this blog. The author name is Peter Saas, I know nothing about him except what's on his blog, but he seems to know an awful lot of stuff - far more than myself. He has a panoramic view of the whole subject drawn from ancient, modern, and Eastern sources. A snippet:

Kant was deeply disturbed by Hume’s attack on causality. His respect for the physical science developed by Copernicus, Galileo and Newton was so great that he simply could not stomach Hume’s dismissal of causal laws. Where Hume went wrong, according to Kant, was in his assumption that causality, if it exists at all, must be a feature of external reality, in other words, that causal connections must be connections between real objects, independent of our consciousness. But, as Kant argued, such external objects are “nothing to us”. Objects become something for us, i.e. they become accessible to us as experienceable and knowable objects, only if they conform to our forms of cognition, and causality is one such form. Raw sensations do not yet give us experiences of objects. The sensations have to be ordered by our forms of sensory intuition (space and time) and our forms of conceptual understanding (the categories, prime among which is causality); only then do we experience a single, ordered, integrated reality consisting of interconnected objects. Hence Kant’s Idealism: the world to be known by us is not an “external world” outside of consciousness, but a construction within consciousness, an ordering of sensory material by means of cognitive forms such as time, space and causality.

---

It's just possible that your mind is not the pinnacle of creation. Maybe subjective experience is actually the result of your brain's limitations! Limitations imposed by our faulty means of interfacing with external reality (i.e, the senses), and limitations imposed by our faulty cognitive abilities. Subjective experience is just our brains trying to make sense of it all. On the scale of paramecium to omniscience, we're much closer to the paramecium. — Real Gone Cat

We know what a paramecium is, but a paramecium has zero concept of what we are.

The physicalist sees his or her mind as just one of many products of a greater reality. They know that if all human minds cease to exist tomorrow, the Earth will go on circling the Sun.

It's the difference between hubris and humility. — Real Gone Cat

That's the exact opposite of the reality of the situation. The physicalist takes her own meagre sense-knowledge - 'science' - as the gold standard for what can be judged to be real. Because post-Enlightenment science is completely extroverted and 'objectified', it has no comprehension of the role of the observing mind in the constitution of science itself - at least, it didn't, until quantum physics came along and punched it in the nose. That's why a lot of modern physicists since James Jeans and Arthur Eddington have displayed an idealist streak in their popular writings. Everyone knows 'scientific materialism', but there is also such a thing as 'scientific idealism' - see Reality is just a State of Mind, Bernard D'Espagnat.

As said, from the data provided by the senses, co-ordinated by the mind, the limbic system, and the other sub-systems that comprise the human - quite in keeping with Platonic (objective) Aristotelian (hylomorphic) and Kantian (transcendental) forms of idealism. — Wayfarer

Sure, all that. Whence the data that the senses are processing? Where does the data originate?

Your mind is continually synthesising, combining and judging, and that activity is what constitutes your reality, or should we say, your being. The task of philosophy is understanding that, as Schopenhauer says in the opening paragraph of World as Will and Idea. — Wayfarer

Now all you have to do is dump Schopenhauer’s metaphysical conception of the Will in favor of Nietzsche’s:

“There are still harmless self-observers who believe in the existence of “immediate certainties,” such as “I think,” or the “I will” that was Schopenhauer's superstition: just as if knowledge had been given an object here to seize, stark naked, as a “thing-in-itself,” and no falsification took place from either the side of the subject or the side of the object.”(BGE)

Whence the data that the senses are processing? — Banno

It's true that idealism is not solipsism. This was the basis of Kant's critique of Berkeley. Probably a bit too technical to go into.

Sorry but I detest Nietszche. I know I don't understand him well but nothing I've seen makes me want to understand him any better.

He's talking about S's idea that the will is the thing in itself. S eventually decided against that.

N is here agreeing with Kant.

Sorry but I detest Nietszche. I know I don't understand him well but nothing I've seen makes me want to understand him any better. — Wayfarer

What exactly do you object to?

It's something I don't want to get into an argument about. I probably should not have made that remark.

Probably a bit too technical to go into. — Wayfarer

Pathetic.

You ignore my line of argument that idealism (as you present it) doesn't oppose materialism, then you respond to @Banno making much the same point with a hand-waiving "too technical". It's not 'too technical' at all.

The materialist answer is "material matter". The brain constructs it's reality out of the material universe. Meaning that matter is the cause of all mental events.

Your answer is ....? "it's too technical"?

I think it can be supported with reference to science. — Wayfarer

Go on then. Reference a single paper in neuroscience which has sensory neurons triggered by anything other than physical forces.

Whence the data that the senses are processing?
— Banno

It's true that idealism is not solipsism. — Wayfarer

That's not what I asked. We can identify the following variation in idealism, according to SEP:

Within modern philosophy there are sometimes taken to be two fundamental conceptions of idealism: — SEP

• something mental (the mind, spirit, reason, will) is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of reality, and
• although the existence of something independent of the mind is conceded, everything that we can know about this mind-independent “reality” is held to be so permeated by the creative, formative, or constructive activities of the mind (of some kind or other) that all claims to knowledge must be considered, in some sense, to be a form of self-knowledge.

I'm wondering which you advocate. I gather it is not the first. Is that correct?

The second is nearer to my sense of what idealism means, but neither of them really capture my sense of it. The paragraph down the page a little quoting A C Ewing is perhaps nearer to how I see it.

I'll have another attempt at answering your question:

Whence the data that the senses are processing? Where does the data originate? — Banno

I understand that humans are sentient beings situated in the world, and that sense data originate with objects (and other subjects) in that world. But to refer back to one of the earlier passages, 'Raw sensations do not yet give us experiences of objects. The sensations have to be ordered by our forms of sensory intuition (space and time) and our forms of conceptual understanding (the categories, prime among which is causality); only then do we experience a single, ordered, integrated reality consisting of interconnected objects.' That is very similar in content to the paragraph following your quoted passages in the SEP article.

So it is that ordering and categorising which creates the life-world which is the world in which we dwell, which is synthesised by the observing mind, comprising sensory data combined with the structures of conceptual understanding (and much else besides, language, culture, and so on).

I think I understand the intuitive objection to that, which is the strong sense we have of the distinction between what is 'inside' and what is 'external' to us, and that what is external is real, while what is internal is 'only' subjective. The question is, where does that division exist? To which I would respond, that is also internal to the observing mind, it is one of the fundamental parameters of being conscious where it appears as the distinction between self and other, and self and world. (That is something that is made much more explicit in some forms of Buddhist philosophy but note also the resemblance to the idea of the 'epistemic cut' which comes up in quite a few of Apokrisis' discussions.

By the way, the topic I said was too complex, was Kant's criticism of Berkeley's idealism which can be found here.)

Hope that is helpful.

Further down the SEP entry:

the idealist, rather than being anti-realist, is in fact … a realist concerning elements more usually dismissed from reality. (Dunham, Grant, & Watson 2011: 4)

:up:

I understand that humans are sentient beings situated in the world, and that sense data originate with objects (and other subjects) in that world. — Wayfarer

So your idealism is not incompatible with materialism then. You could have just said so right at the beginning.

At risk of being insulted again, I would aver that what idealism calls into question is the mind independent nature of matter.

At risk of being insulted again... — Wayfarer

I engaged in good faith in a perfectly reasonable line of enquiry in our earlier conversation which you ignored. To me, ignoring someone who is engaged in a perfectly reasonable conversation is a far greater insult than a bit of robust language. My colleagues and I often exchange some robust language, yet I wouldn't dream of just walking out of the room and ignoring them. We each have our own notion of civility I suppose...

I would aver that what idealism calls into question is the mind independent nature of matter. — Wayfarer

Right. A completely different subject then. You seem to draw in this notion of the mind affecting matter without either reference or forward. We were talking about the cause of mental events (matter affecting minds). If you have an argument for mind affecting matter, I'd be fascinated to hear it.

There is an external world, but it is immaterial, meaning that phenomena such as weight, color, reflex, etc(all material, henceforth 'illusions'), are physical sensations. The quddity of stars colliding is supreme logic, that to minds is a statistical event of which can be exemplified, giving what is an image, sensation.

Does a star weigh X, or, does a star project weight X as sensation?

The vex. An illusion of different centres.

↪Joshs He's talking about S's idea that the will is the thing in itself. S eventually decided against that.

N is here agreeing with Kant. — Tate

Deleuze argues that Schopenhauer’s pessimism is a result of thinking Will as representation and illusion.

For Schopenhauer, “ the essence of the will puts us into an unlivable, untenable and deceptive situation.
And this is easily explained: making the will a will to power in the sense of a "desire to dominate", philosophers see this desire as infmite; making power an object of representation they see the unreal character of a thing represented in this way; engaging the will to power in combat they see the contradiction in the will itself.

Schopenhauer does not inaugurate a new philosophy of the will in any of these respects. On the contrary, his genius consists in drawing out the extreme consequ-ences of the old philosophy, in pushing the old philosophy as far as it can go.

By making will the essence of the world Schopenhauer continues to understand the world as an illusion, an appearance, a representation (BGE ) Limiting the will is therefore not going to be enough for Schopenhauer. The will must be denied, it must deny itself.

According to Nietzsche the philosophy of the will must replace the old metaphysics: it destroys and supersedes it. Nietzsche thinks that he produced the first philosophy of the will, that all the others were the final avatars of metaphysics.“

Tate

Deleuze argues that Schopenhauer’s pessimism is a result of thinking Will as representation and illusion. — Joshs

No, in WWR, he pictures Will as the thing-in-itself.

I don't understand that quote from Deleuze.

Schopenhauer does not inaugurate a new philosophy of the will in any of these respects. On the contrary, his genius consists in drawing out the extreme consequ-ences of the old philosophy, in pushing the old philosophy as far as it can go. — Joshs

His Will is what moves everything. Your body is how you represent it.

Limiting the will is therefore not going to be enough for Schopenhauer. The will must be denied, it must deny itself. — Joshs

Schopenhauer was a hard determinist, so there's no denying the Will in that sense.

According to Nietzsche the philosophy of the will must replace the old metaphysics: it destroys and supersedes it. Nietzsche thinks that he produced the first philosophy of the will, that all the others were the final avatars of metaphysics.“ — Joshs

I don't think you understood Schopenhauer. Go back and get the vibe of it. Then come back and examine N.