It's not 'God', but a mind that could be God (or could not be).

And it is not just consistent (unlike materialism) it is also demonstrably true. The sensible world is the place your sensations resemble, yes? And sensations can only resemble other sensations, yes? And sensations can't exist unsensed, can they? Join the dots.

A materialist about the sensible world must maintain either that our sensations of it in no way resemble it (in which case in what sense are they 'of' the sensible world?) or they must maintain that the sensible world is composed of extra-mental sensations, which is incoherent. Sensations are essentially sensed - that is, for any sensation there is a mind that is having it. The idea of a sensation that is no mind's sensation is inconceivable and makes no sense.

Read my earlier posts.

You don't know what idealism is, do you?

how was that an answer to my question?

Do you think an idealist denies that covid exists?

christ all bloody mighty! I think there are- are - reasons to do things.
I said only a fool or a scoundrel thinks there are no such things.

When someone says that, they're not saying they themselves are a fool or a scoundrel.

When someone says they believe there are reasons to do things, that does not mean the exact opposite.

My argument:

1. If p, then q
2. Not q
3. Therefore not p.

You: so, you think p is true

Me: no,I think it is false.

You: but do you not think p is not true?

Me: no,I think p is false

You: but you think that if p then q

Me: yes

You: so you think p

Me: no. I think not p.

Me: if I'm going to the shop, I'll buy you some toffees

You: you're in a shop?

Me: no.

You: you've bought me some toffees?

Me: no

You: I get that you haven't bought me any toffees. But you're in a shop, yes?

Me: no.

Now, pay attention: 'if a wholly evolutionary story about our development is true, then there are no reasons to do or believe anything'.

That has the same form as 'if I go to the shop, I will buy you some toffees'.

It doesn't mean "An evolutionary story about our development is true". That's like thinking I am in the shop. And it doesn't mean "there are no reasons to do or believe anything". That's like thinking I have bought you some toffees.

Again: 'if' does not mean 'is the case'.

It's quite clear what I am doing. It just requires that one pay attention to what I actually argue.

I think this premise is true:

If a purely evolutionary story of our development is true, then there are no reasons to do and believe things.

That doesn't mean I think a purely evolutionary story is true.

It doesn't mean I think reasons don't exist.

Can you see that?

So when I defend the truth of that premise, I am not defending those two claims.

I am arguing that a purely evolutionary story about our development will not have to posit any actual reasons.

That's why it's false. False. Not true. But false.

Now, when I explain why such an explanation does not have to posit any actual reasons, you do realize I am not endorsing the view in question? You do understand, do you, that I think a purely evolutionary story is false?

What do you think an idealist will say about covid? That there is no covid?

Do you agree that if the correct explanation of why a person believes that p makes no mention of p's actual existence, then we should not posit p, other things being equal?

It's just I don't understand your point. You seem to agree that a pure evolutionary story about our development would not require us to posit any actual reasons to do things. But then you said some stuff about human psychology which seemed irrelevant. And then you question beggingly characterized belief in God as hocus pocus. It didn't hang together as a criticism.

I am still unclear why you think there's a problem here for the idealist. As I clearly said, the idealist believes the sensible world exists outside our experience.
Now, you seem to think covid poses a problem. Why?

Surely the reason it is often condemned as immoral is simply to discourage people from doing it?

Death is a great harm to the one who undergoes it. Most recognize this and are sufficiently responsive to instrumental reasons to not do it. Most recognize, for instance, that killing oneself to avoid having to attend a boring meeting would be very stupid.

But if one can persuade someone that it is immoral as well, then one has double bubbled it. And that person is now less likely to kill themselves than if they only recognized instrumental reason not to do so.

That doesn't mean it is immoral, it's just an explanation of why it might be condemned as being. The bottom line is that it's such a great harm to die we want to prevent people from doing it in moments of stupidity

For an injustice to exist there needs to be someone who is not getting what they deserve. If you procreate then there is someone whom your act creates an injustice for: the innocent person who deserves something they are not going to get. But if you do not procreate then there is not anyone who is suffering an injustice.

I cannot find the post from sushi that you are quoting from. It does not turn up in my mentions.

It puzzles me why you think idealism is challenged by the existence of any sensible thing or process. You must have failed properly to have grasped the theory.

Can you paint? I ask because if you paint you view the world as sensations rather than as objects.

Yes to the first part. That is, one does not have to posit any actual reasons in order to explain why creatures who believed in them would be selected for.

with one exception - the idealist will typically posit one extra mind as the mind who is bearing the mental states constitutive of the sensible world we're all inhabiting
— Bartricks

But disagree with this. I don't see any reason to think that our mind is any different from all the others or that saying it is is useful, much less true. — T Clark

I am not sure what you're disagreeing with, for I am not positing a different mind but an extra mind. The idealist takes the sensations constitutive of the external world to be the sensations of a mind (for all sensations are) and thus the external world turns out to be the mental activity of a mind. Not mine or yours, so another mind. That's one mind more than the materialist posits. For the materialist does not posit a mind, but an extra-mental extended realm. So, the idealist posits one more mind than a materialist, other things being equal. Neither view should be confused with solipsism, but given that materialists posit fewer minds than idealists, other things being equal, it is the materialist who is closer to being a solipsist, despite the tendency to think that idealism somehow implies it.

I don't agree with this. We have evolved as, not moral, but rule making organisms. I don't see why evolution and the evolution of mind are in any way inconsistent with materialism. — T Clark

That is not an account of how materialism can accommodate the shoulds of normativity. It is, rather, an account of how we have come to take there to be such shoulds. (This is my point in another thread, the one on God, evolution and intuition).

A materialist seems committed to having to make the shoulds of normativity edicts that we are issuing to ourselves and others. And those views about normativity - individual and collective subjectivist views - are grossly implausible (they're pretty much universally rejected). If we make a rule that says if P, then Q, then if Q then P, that does not mean that we have reason to believe that if P then Q, then if Q then P. Hence why normativity poses a problem: there are norms of reason, but nothing in a material world to be the source of them save us (and clearly we are not their source).

Yes, that's what I was getting at with the question. Would I be correct in assuming that for you God is the universal mind in idealism? — Tom Storm

I have no confident views on the matter. But that'd be the default, given that one should not posit two minds to do the work that one can do.

My words were probably unclear. I wasn't implying that idealism had a role for us but more that if we are idealists how might this have impact upon how we should live? — Tom Storm

There's a tension between materialism and normativity. That is, it is hard to make sense of how there could be 'shoulds' in a wholly material universe. Such shoulds - the shoulds of reason - seem to require there to be a master mind whose edicts they are. And idealism arrives at the conclusion that there is such a mind by an independent route (although whether the mind whose sensible contents constitutes the sensible world is the same mind whose edicts constitute the edicts of Reason is an open question). So in that sense there is a happy marriage between idealism and the reality of morality. But dualism could also accommodate normativity as well.

1. How we can appear to have separate people with unique conscious experiences. — Tom Storm

Idealism is not the view that there is one mind (yours). That's solipsism.

I am an idealist and I believe in billions of minds. And so did Berkeley. Note, the basis upon which one infers the existence of other minds is going to be the same whether one is an idealist or a materialist about them (with one exception - the idealist will typically posit one extra mind as the mind who is bearing the mental states constitutive of the sensible world we're all inhabiting). So, although many confuse idealism with solipsism, it is materialism that is the more stingy view when it comes to positing other minds.

2. How reality (such as it is) appears to be consistent and regular. — Tom Storm

The external sensible world appears to be external and singular - that is, there is 'the' external world, not lots of them. Conclusion: the sensations constitutive of the external sensible world are the sensations of a single external mind. One then concludes that as the sensations seem to cohere, then the mind whose sensations they are is a very orderly one with an extremely good memory.

3. How evolution tracks to idealism. — Tom Storm

The evolutionary process would describe the thought process of the mind whose sensations constitute the external sensible world.

4. Whether we require a universal mind for idealism to be coherent. Other models? — Tom Storm

There needs to be a mind bearing any sensation that there is. If one supposed, for instance, that the external sensible world is not external at all, but a figment of one's own imagination, then one still has a universal mind on the books, it's just that one has made it one's own (unjustifiably, of course).

5. Whether the Copenhagen Interpretation and the perceived flaws in a materialist metaphysics have been key in a recent revival of idealism? — Tom Storm

No, for science investigates the behaviour of the sensible world and does not take a stand on its composition. That is, whether the sensible world is made of mental states or mind-external extended substances is a question in metaphysics that science has no bearing on.

6. What might be the role of human beings in an idealist model? — Tom Storm

There's no connection between idealism and us having any particular role. Note, to have a role you need to have been created for a purpose. Well, it is consistent with idealism that we have not been created for any purpose (for idealism is not a view about how minds come to be, but a view about what reality is made of). And it is consistent with idealism that we do have a role. (And it is consistent with materialism about you that you have a role - if your parents created you in order to stop up a hole in the wall, then that's your role).

The sensible world, on idealism, is the creation of a mind. And this means it can in principle have a purpose. But then that's true if the sensible world is material as well, as nothing stops that from being the creation of a mind either (it just would not be 'in' the mind in question, that's all).

Well, first I haven't a clue what Kastrup is talking about.

I take an idealist to be someone who believes that minds are immaterial objects and that reality is made solely of minds and the contents of minds. So, everything is either an immaterial mind or a state of such a mind. (Berkeley is the paradigm case of an idealist, and that's what he believed).

One way of arriving at the view is from particular self-evident truths, such as that a) mental states cannot exist absent a mind whose states they are; that b) mental states can only resemble other mental states; and c) that the external sensible world is a place that resembles our own sensations of it.

I don't understand the stuff about neuroscience. A neuroscientist - so long as they stick to doing neuroscience and do not start doing metaphysics - is investigating a small part of the sensible world. They're not committed to any view about what the sensible world is made of. So it strikes me as obvious that idealism is consistent with neuroscience - how could it not be? Those who think otherwise must mistakenly be thinking that neuroscience carries with it some commitment to materialism about what it is investigating - which is just false.

I understand 'Karma' to be the idea that if you do wrong, you'll get your just deserts. But importantly, not because a god or God will see to it that you do, but rather just because this is how the universe operates, without assistance from any agency.

It is, needless to say, a preposterously silly view that has no evidence for it at all. Indeed, all the evidence points in the other direction. The world seems to be an unjust place in which the distribution of harms and benefits has nothing directly to do with the morality of one's behaviour or character traits. Some bad people thrive, some don't; some good people do, some don't. And note one example - just one - of a good person having an awful time would refute the theory.

And note too that as we are born innocent then all the harms of childhood are unjust. To posit a past life in which one has done wrong and for which those harms are the deserved consequence is simply to have ignored the evidence in favour of one's theory.

It is no accident, I think, that believers in the Karmic worldview also believe that it is crucially important not to think. For the view simply does not stand to reason. This is not to deny that inculcating the view in people may have moral benefits: it will motivate those too dumb to scrutinize it to behave well. But the existence of moral reasons to believe or inculcate a view is not evidence that the view is true.

Antinatalists, conveniently ignore, the massive harm and suffering many people would experience if they could not have children. People will turn to IVF or might even 'dump a loved partner,' because of their personal need to have a child. Are antinatalists REALLY accusing such people of being immoral?
Do they not care about how childlessness can cause great suffering for many people? — universeness

One does not have the right to impose a lifetime of injustice on another person just because you want to have a little baby to look after.

First, you're begging the question, for if procreative acts visit great injustices on those whom they create, then you're default not justified in satisfying preferences to perform those acts ("but I really want to!" does not standardly justify visiting injustices on others). For what you have discovered is that you desire to do something that is default immoral. The thing to do about those desires is frustrate them and try to change them, not seek to satisfy them.

Second, there are good and bad desires. Desiring to hurt others, for example, is a bad desire. You ought not to have such desires and if you do have them, they don't entitle you to act on them. Well, the desires that some have to create and care for an invalid is a bad desire. To desire to care for those who need it, is a good desire. To desire to create an invalid so that one can then care for them - that's sick.
The desire to educate others who need it is a good desire. The desire to create ignorant persons so that one can educate them is.....sick. The desire to 'pass on one's genes' is a kind of pathetic egoism. And so on. The desires that motivate many to want to procreate are bad desires and it is good, not bad, that they go frustrated.

So, the desire to procreate is a desire to do something immoral (if you think it isn't, then you need to refute the argument in the OP). And that's a bad desire. And then there are the desires for things that procreation will provide. And those too seem to be bad desires. (Not that everyone has those other desires, of course, the point is just that it matters what desires are being frustrated).

The mind is not a sense.
Ideas are always the ideas of a mind. That seems undeniable. And minds seem able to be aware of their own mental states by means of a faculty of introspection.
So when you say that abstract objects are ideas, then they are not objects, but states of a mind (for minds alone have ideas). And we are aware of them via a faculty - the faculty we call introspection (which is a misleading name as it implies it essentially detects only one's own mental states).
Would that be correct?

You said that to not procreate is to deny someone opportunities. Who? They don't exist. You can't deny opportunities to someone who does not yet exist.

But anyway, you then ask why they do not deserve to be ignorant. Well,is it not a bad thing to be ignorant? Why are we obliged, to some extent (and a very large extent if one is the parent responsible for having created the story situation) to try and fix the ignorance as best we can (and note, we are largely ignorant ourselves) if it is not a bad thing?

And if you admit that ignorance is a bad thing, then what has the innocent child done to deserve to be in that bad situation? By hypothesis, nothing. So, by procreating one creates a person who is going to be in a condition they do not deserve to be in. That's to create an injustice. And that's default wrong. All you have done is underline this.

Or perhaps your point was that as newly born children lack the concept of justice, then it does not apply to them. But that's false. That's as confused as thinking that as my cat lacks the concept of a cat it is therefore not a cat

That's a matter of debate among reductionist holists. Some would argue that you cannot make a hole smaller just by dividing it up,anymore than one can make a pizza larger by cutting it into more slices (although there were some pizzist expansionists in 1920s Austria - and Thickmanstein was briefly one - but it's now been discredited thanks to the work of Stupidda).

I know they are born ignorant. And they don't deserve to be. The ignorance is among the injustices. To create a person you know will be born ignorant is to create a person who has much less than they deserve.

You then proceed to make claims that presuppose that people exist prior to procreative acts being performed and desire to be brought here. That is not something one is entitled to believe.

My meaning was clear.

There's an argument in the OP. You need to address that argument. Currently you are simply venting. You don't seem to know what the argument actually is. I don't know of a way of expressing it more clearly than I did in the OP. But most of you here seem to have deep fat fryer minds such that no matter what argument I give to you, you just cover it in your own mental batter and fry it, turning it into an unrecognizable and extraordinarily unhealthy lump of nonsense.

By an 'intuition' I mean a representative mental state that is not an impression or belief. And it is by intuition that we are aware of reasons to do things.
I say this just to clarify that though believing something on the basis of an intuition is not 'reasoning', it is - or can be - to believe it on a rational basis.

So for example, I know by intuition that 1 x 2 = 2. But I know by reasoning that 3 x 16 = 58. And both are rational.

Read the op carefully. Then address a premise. Say clearly which premise you believe to be false and provide some justification.

Dialectics is about dialing tactics. How does one dial? Does one creep up on the dial or boldly go towards it?
Non kantian dialectics involves figuring out how Kant would approach a dial and then not approaching it in that manner.

Yes, that would involve making holes smaller.

Address it, Sound and Fury. The premises are clear. Deny one.

That's not how this works. If you've got nothing to say, then stop saying it.
Address the op

Full of sound and fury. Address the argument

True. It is an argument that every human action is potentially harmful and therefore no action should be taken. — I like sushi

No it isn't. Read the OP and stop attacking dumb strawman arguments of your own invention.

The point being if you follow through the thought it is both impractical and ridiculous. — I like sushi

Argue. Read the OP. Identify the premises. Attack one. Don't just say stuff.

There is something a little clandestine in the thought that innocents deserve no harm because this kind of implies that the guilty deserve harm. — I like sushi

Clandestine? And no, it doesn't. If P implies Q, that does not mean that Q implies P. Those who have freely done wrong do deserve harm. But my argument does not depend upon that being true. It is sufficient that those who are innocent do not deserve any harm.

Then it is a question of who decides who is or is not guilty. — I like sushi

Reason. Reason decides it. If you think someone is innocent, that does not make them innocent. Think it through.

Then try and focus on the actual argument. Don't raise broader metaethical issues to do with the status of morality. My argument assumes no particular metaethical theory.

Anyway, I will continue to work on my argument for antinatalism I suggest you work on an argument against it. — I like sushi

I suggest you read the OP and try and say something that actually addresses it. Like I say, identify a premise and argue against it by showing how its negation is implied by premises more powerfully self-evident to reason than those I am appealing to.

I can't discern any kind of rational criticism in anything you've said.

You seem to think the universe itself has desires and so on. First, even if it did, that doesn't do anything to challenge my argument. Second, the only basis upon which you think the universe has desires would also show that my underpants have desires. I conclude, then, that you are not very good at understanding or making arguments.

Focus. Address the argument in the OP. It makes no mention of knowledge or consciousness. So why are you mentioning them? It makes no mention of my mum's recipe for rhubarb tart either - shall we talk about that?

We are OF the universe so yes it has feelings through us, as it has purpose through us. — universeness

So, you think that if a thinking thing is in the universe, then the universe also thinks? I am in my underpants. Therefore my underpants think.

Let's, just for the sake of argument, assume that the universe itself has a mind and has desires and so on. How does that affect my argument?

Focus on the argument. You do that by first assessing whether the argument is valid. Then - and only then - you move on to assessing the premises.

And if there's a premise that you think is false, don't just say that. Your opinions count for nothing unless they're backed by reason. So, show that a premise is false - or show that there is a reasonable doubt about it anyway - by showing how the negation of that premise follows from premises that appear self-evidently true.

Then thank me for teaching you how to reason like a boss, as opposed to just saying stuff.

"I suggest those definitions have been cooked up by those in a discipline other than philosophy or some well meaning ignorant fool on the internet"
It even said that holism is a part if New age. My understanding is that the terms oneness and pantheism are used in New age. Holistic approach is another term used.
Holism doesn't really describe new age even though it might be related to it in some ways.

We've done the analysis and should now do the synthesis? — musicpianoaccordion

Holism is the view that there are holes, indeed that everything is a hole.

Reductionism is the view that we ought to make things smaller.