Incidentally I don't place G E Moore's refutation of idealism anywhere beyond Johnson's argumentum ad lapidem. 'Here is a hand' is no more a refutation than kicking a rock. — Wayfarer

Sure, for the idealist these would just be demonstrating the regularities inherent in an experience produced though mentation - matter being what mind looks like when seen from a certain perspective. I suppose the argument would be that these are examples of mistaking the map for the territory.

I would say, reality is not generated by the mind but that everything we experience and know is generated by the mind. But we cannot see that process of construction ('vorstellung' in Schopenhauer, 'vikalpa' in Buddhism) 'from the outside', as it is the act of cognition. That's why it's a not a model as such. — Wayfarer

Good. That clarifies things.

But, 'In order to make a comparison, we must know what it is that we are comparing, namely, the model on the one hand and the object on the other. But if we already know the reality, why do we need to make a comparison? And if we don't know the reality, how can we make a comparison?' — Wayfarer

Yes, an odd kind of dualism.

Splendid question. To a fruit-fly, an apple is host to its eggs. If I throw an apple at an annoying bird, it's a weapon. To fruit bats and primates it is food, whereas it wouldn't necessarily register to a carnivore. Which is 'the real apple'? — Wayfarer

This is true, but these are all experiences of the one thing as seen by different beings? It's a type of species-perspectivism, perhaps, but the same object is in play. This notions seems more like a phenomenology.

Full circle, then. As I replied to that post, when one's mind constructs reality, what is it mind constructs it from? — Banno

I think that's the key question in this matter.

When you look at the apple, your brain constructs a model of the apple. But that model is not what you see; it is you seeing.

What you see is the apple. — Banno

Cripes, this thread is like standing before one of those distorting fun house mirrors watching reality bend and dissolve. :gasp:

Do you generally follow Searle on this? It fascinates me how many challenges seem to be built into perception/realism and indirect realism models.

I'm new to much of this. Quick questions. I'm assuming when I see and handle an apple, my perceptual apparatus provides matter (the apple) with all its qualities - colour, size and shape, smell, texture, even taste. This is all an elaborate construction work that humans seem to (largely) share. A bat would have a different range of experiences with this fruit, but it would still be of the apple, right?

Are idealists suggesting that matter has no inherent qualities and that these are provided by conscious creatures in the world, therefore reality is generated by mind? Would an indirect realist say there is an apple behind the appearances/qualities (a noumenal fruit, perhaps?), but it has none of the qualities humans apprehend and appreciate. Our conscious experience puts them there.

A metaphysical or ontological idealist presumably would say that both the qualities and matter itself are creations of mind - our own mind, and, presumably some other mind. Otherwise solipsism...

Where have I gone wrong?

Steelmanning or otherwise, without granting....understood a priori as given.....the intrinsic duality of human nature, no defense of any version of idealism will be acceptable. Or, another way to put it, the only defense of any version of idealism is predicated on an intrinsic duality of human nature. — Mww

Still mulling over this. It occurred to me then that Nietzsche greatly disliked Kant's formulation of idealism because he saw it as a form of Christianity disguised as philosophy - a hateful dualistic world of two realms - a 'false' physical world, which is overshadowed by the special, hidden realm, the beyond world that is the legitimate subject of metaphysics... Sounds familiar....

"Why all the rejoicing over the appearance of Kant that went through the learned world of Germany, three-fourths of which is made up of the sons of preachers and teachers--why the German conviction still echoing, that with Kant came a change for the better? The theological instinct of German scholars made them see clearly just what had become possible again. . . . A backstairs leading to the old ideal stood open; the concept of the "true world," the concept of morality as the essence of the world (--the two most vicious errors that ever existed!), were once more, thanks to a subtle and wily scepticism, if not actually demonstrable, then at least no longer refutable... Reason, the prerogative of reason, does not go so far. . . Out of reality there had been made "appearance"; an absolutely false world, that of being, had been turned into reality. . . . The success of Kant is merely a theological success; he was, like Luther and Leibnitz, but one more impediment to German integrity, already far from steady."

- Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 10

Which brings us back to the point you made earlier, of explaining how it is that you and I seem to see the same stuff as we look out of our little cages. Why should that be? — Banno

Seems to me that the primary answer, by way of idealism, is the space no one has entered yet. And that is the idea of a mind-at-large which holds all perception together and allows us to share a coherent world of regularity. As you know, this is posited as 'God' by Berkeley in his version, 'immaterialism'. And I guess Schopenhauer would call this "will" - a striving, instinctive, non-metacognitive consciousness.

I think for many, this is one step too far.

This is what I think Schopenhauer was commenting on - he is accusing Kant of ignoring this classical distinction and instead appropriating the term 'noumenal' to serve a different purpose in his own philosophy, without respecting the sense in which 'noumenal' was used in Greek philosophy. — Wayfarer

The question seems to be, is this a mistake, or a strategic choice of Kant's? Should it matter?

The noumenal object is, then, an object of the intellect (nous, noetic), in that it is something - a principle, or a deductive proof - which is understood by the intellect in a manner different to that of sensory knowledge. — Wayfarer

I see it. Is this not just a Platonic form or a Jungian archetype at work?

The theory holds that we all see instantiations of those forms in the 'physical realm'. I know I am racing ahead, but is it not argued also that there are some people who are able to apprehend, in some way, those forms/ideas directly?

One alternative is something like Wayfarer may be proposing; a distinctly spiritual entity haunting the brain. — Banno

And I think in idealism, the brain is haunting the spiritual entity (consciousness) and what we call matter is a representational icon or a 'product' of mind.

Deduction is part of sight,and probably all the senses to some extent. Do you agree? — Tate

My senses mean little without interpretation, I would have thought. And it's not often you look and have to ask yourself, what am I looking at?

No worries, what you popped down seemed interesting and thought it might shed light on noumena. I tend to agree with Eugene Gendlin - "Philosophy is something that's very difficult to read. You have to read everything five or six times, sentence by sentence, like a crossword puzzle that you're solving." I don't have that kind of brain or patience, so if I have to read something twice I usually pass on it.

Are you able to clarify what you just said? Then I will go back and try reading you again. It's unclear to me what your point is and the Kant is incomprehensible (to me). Sorry...

Useful information. My mum used to say of economic rationalists and money obsessed people - "The fellow doesn't have any nous.' :cool:

I'm also led to understand that 'Transcendental' (Idealism) is used idiosyncratically by Kant - not a direct reference to a spiritual realm, but to 'not accessible through direct perception'.

The idea that the soul/psyche/intellect 'becomes one' or is united with the object of knowledge has ancient provenance.) — Wayfarer

This is an aspect of idealism that we don't hear much about but I am assuming this is consistent with notions of enlightenment.

I don't see Kant as an indirect realist, because (unlike Locke) he doesn't posit ideas as representations. But his transcendental idealism is very elusive, hardly anyone seems to grasp it - the usual response is nearly always that he (and all idealists) are saying that the world is 'merely' or 'only' 'in the mind'. — Wayfarer

Interesting and thanks. I seem to recall a quote pulled from Critique wherein Kant seems to say that the noumenal was a physical, but I may be mistaken.

And I think that sense of the unknown, and the corollary of the inherently limited nature of what we know, is fundamental to understanding Kant. It's not exactly scepticism, but it's also not unqualified realism. — Wayfarer

That makes sense. Challenging stuff, especially for a layperson.

Quick question about Kant. His Transcendental Idealism seems to be based on epistemological grounds, right? In other words, he says there is a reality out there (noumena) but we do not know it, or have access to it and we perceive a world constructed by mentation, that is generated through noumena, but not necessarily like it at all (clumsy wording, I know)

Does this make Kant an indirect realist? And does this mean that Kant is not an ontological or metaphysical idealist, but an epistemological idealist? Setting aside the history of idealism elsewhere, seems to me Kant opened the door to epistemological doubts about reality and then others - Schopenhauer, for instance, completed the job.

Or, another way to put it, the only defense of any version of idealism is predicated on an intrinsic duality of human nature. — Mww

Sorry I don't know what you mean by duality of human 'nature' or the connection of a 'dualism' to a monist ontology.

Yep, this is how I generally organise my beliefs too. Nevertheless I am still keen to dip into idealism to better understand the model/s since this is an area I have shunned for many years.

This may well be true, but it doesn't go to whether idealism is right or wrong.

Note how every instantiation of idealism is also a tool of power. It creates, in each instance, a class of people who can 'see' and those who cannot. — Isaac

I've wondered about this in the past. It certainly provides opportunity for some folk to claim that their appreciation of art or ethics is informed by access to a transcendent and foundational guarantor (a Platonic realm) and therefore they are intrinsically more aware or sensitive to truths.

I certainly see this in the observations of philosophers like Roger Scruton who identifies what is beauty and what is not beauty - generally via a conservative aesthetic lens. But having said all this, just because there are powerplays doesn't make it ipso facto wrong.

Yep - that's what I'm talking about. I'll mull over it. Thanks.

I guess what I am wanting is someone to defend or steelman a version of idealism for me so that I can better understand its potential use in the quotidian world. If idealism is true, why should it matter to us? This is what @Wayfarer keeps pointing towards. My guess is that the idealist will argue (and I'm looking for details) that all good judgement is a reflection of transcendence (what's the word I am looking for here?) and the idea of morality (for instance) is to understand truth and goodness in something approaching pure form. On a slight tangent, I am assuming that in theory a mystic is someone who has some access to this, shall we say, realm of ideas (apologies to Plato).

For now, I'm not interested in critiques of this or debunking of idealism - I'm hoping for a more enhanced presentation of the ideas in practice. But just a few clues not a thesis....

Unless, that is, you wanted to be a philosopher. — Wayfarer

So much could be contained in this one statement.

Sure. I specifically am asking for an idealist account of this so I can better understand the thinking.

No idea - none of this language resonates with me, so I apologise. I am trying to understand how such 'judgements' might work from an idealist model. Idealism is a type of objectivism, isn't it? So presumably an idealist, who makes judgements about beauty is identifying how an instantiation of something (a sculpture or painting, say) reflects an ideal form. Ditto ethics.

Platonism, as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, “has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science.” The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he’ll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all?

Yep, I can see how arriving at this conclusion might be problematic. We might end up back in a world similar to scholasticism and its transcendentals of truth, goodness, beauty. Is idealism popular with conservatives? I remember reading Roger Scruton, who argued that an awareness of the transcendentals wasn't necessary in life, unless you wanted a full understanding of reality and of each other. :chin:

I am not sure I understand how one is supposed to access or understand 'pure ideas' such as truth or beauty in order to appreciate them in our reality.

I understand the basic overview, I'm just not sure I can accept the presuppositions at this point. What seems to be missing is a viable (albeit tentative) model of idealism. If all is mind - we need to explain why reality appears consistent over time. Why can't our minds change reality at will? How is it that all people appear to be seperate or discrete entities of consciousness?

If matter is just what consciousness looks like when viewed from a particular perspective, then I guess we might need to presuppose the existence of a 'great mind' which holds all together - not a god - but something perhaps more like Schopenhauer's Will - instinctive and not metacognitive. Hypothetically it would take me a lot of work to get to this point but the ideas do interest me.

Assuming there is no God should we feel grateful for life or this world we have come to know? And assuming there is a God do they require our gratitude if everything this all knowing being does they do with exacting purpose? — TiredThinker

I feel grateful for aspects of life but not life in general. Grateful for access to medicine, resources, electricity, health, not living in a war zone, etc.

I would not accept that gratefulness is an appropriate word to describe how one should feel towards a creator god. From my perspective this must be a messed up deity with entitlement issues.

It’s fair, I think, to judge Christianity on its common beliefs, not the beliefs of a relatively small group of scholars — Art48

There are many different folk versions of Christianity - conservatives and radicals; literalists and allegorists. There isn't really a folk Christianity. There are outlooks in common - often sectarian or geographic in origin - but believer's views area all over the place. Some Christians embrace diversity and the rainbow flags; others think the Bible tells them to 'hate fags'; some think the Bible is a collection of myths - allegories; others think it is all true. Some think Jesus did miracles; some think the teachings are important but the miracle stories are legends.

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).

Silly speculative question, perhaps, but what do you think Nietzsche would have made of postmodernism and Derrida's reading of him?

So what? What is it to you if other people believe falsehoods? — baker

They vote for President Trump because he is King Cyrus...

Or maybe there is name to describe people who refuse to see things as non binary? — Skalidris

Generally I hear this called the problem of dualistic thinking.

:up:

So all I'm saying is that the materialist model of mental activity is of the former category of theory. It's a perfectly reasonable theory, it just can't ever be shown to be the case because we must rely on that very mental activity to process any evidence we might produce. We can't escape that particular recursion, so we can't 'look in the box'. But the fact that we can't provide proofs doesn't preclude its reasonableness as a model. Nor, most importantly, does it raise any alternative model to a more reasonable status. — Isaac

That's a nice piece of writing and reasoning. 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.

Today (for some time), Christianity (like Islam) primarily maintain numbers by enculturation and indoctrination.
(Why else would anyone believe that a Jewish carpenter supernaturally fed 5000 then 4000 with a handful of food?) — jorndoe

Worth remembering too that there are many Christians who see the Bible as a book of allegories, not to be taken literally. This was the Christian tradition I grew up in (amongst the Baptists and Anglicans). A most famous example of this form of progressive theology is Episcopalian Bishop, John Shelby Spong, who spent his professional life as a cleric working to rescue the Bible from fundamentalism.

:up:

:up: Never look a gift messiah in the mouth, BC. I shall check out the Jesus Project.

The seeds of what became Christianity were first scattered among the Jews by a Jew -- Jesus Christ. We are told that Jesus preached, healed, and performed miracles. Apparently his brief active ministry (just 3 years) was quite compelling. Jesus died at the hands of the Romans by crucifixion. We are told that he was resurrected from the dead. — Bitter Crank

Of course, there is no real consensus that much of this actually happened. While I am not a mythicist, it seems fairly clear there may have been some itinerant preachers who could have been repackaged as the putative Messiah over the years. We have no independent sources or real knowledge of events here and the gospels (some consider to be a kind of fan fiction) were written decades after the 'events' by anonymous writers.

We could ask why any religious tradition takes off - Islam, Zoroastrianism, Scientology, Falun Gong... It seems the case that humans are hard wired to worship and adore. Generally it's a mix of an attractive story and levels of state endorsement or persecution that drives the process.

It looks like intellectual yoga - bending over backwards in an attempt to achieve enlightenment. — Banno

Or being so elastic you can suck yourself off.

Utilitarianism and Kant and Aristotle all have their background assumptions/presuppositions that need to be accepted for discussion to proceed or for the strongest version of the philosophy to come to light. No point in knocking down straw men. — Moses

This is all true, but could it not also be said that some presuppositions have a better warrant for certain purposes than others?

*

because without a biblical lens there's no making sense of this book. even with a biblical lens when you grant assumption its is an immense challenge. you need to grant certain assumptions just like we'd grant assumptions to virtually any ethical theory or metaphysical belief.

This is philosophy; we grant assumptions. Doesn't mean the assumptions are true. A lot of it is a thought experiment. If we're talking about my own personal faith in God I've already noted earlier in this thread that I don't believe rationality gets one 100% of the way there and that I'm content to rely partially on faith. I have other reasons but these reasons are more personal and intuitive. I think it's perfectly valid to have a discussion within the context of "let's say we grant assumption A, B, and C..." — Moses

I'm with you to some extent. But I thought philosophy was about testing assumptions and presuppositions. You say there is no way to make sense of the Bible without a biblical lens. I am not sure this can be demonstrated either and we have already explored the fraught nature of a 'biblical lens'. But I respect your work towards a combination of rationality and faith. Do you include the NT in your thinking?