(February 10, 2015 at 1:48 pm)bennyboy Wrote:

(February 10, 2015 at 1:40 pm)Surgenator Wrote: As for which is more rational, it would make sense that a more accurate representation of reality will provide more accurate predictions. As far as I'm aware, idealism only predicts qualitative observations, nothing quantitative.

Why? Numbers are ideas. So, as we experience them, are gravity, objects, and their interactions. Every measurement we make involves a subjective experience: holding a ruler, looking at it, etc. Unless you are saying the ego interacts directly with a ruler, then even a physicalist view of objects as we experience them is that they are mental representations, i.e. ideas. The question, at its core, is whether ideas are just descriptions of underlying "stuff," or the "stuff" is the experiential expression of underlying ideas.

Quote: Physicism makes quantitative and qualitative predictions. Hence, physicism is more rational because it's predictive capability is higher.

Maybe. But there's a qualia-sized hole in the physical view of reality. This is not surprising: an explicitly objective model of reality is going to have a hard time explaining subjective reality.

The subjectivity of measurements is removed when different people and different methods measure and agree on what a value is. The subjectivity is further removed when predictions give accurate observations.

Idealism has its own holes (big gapping ones ) that have not been address. So pointing out a weakness in one doesn't make the other more rational.

(February 10, 2015 at 1:59 pm)Surgenator Wrote: The subjectivity of measurements is removed when different people and different methods measure and agree on what a value is.

Not really. It just means that different people have matching experiences. But I can get on an online game with a friend, and we'll agree on what's happening in the game. But that doesn't establish that a tree in the game is really what it seems to us, or to a million others.

Quote: The subjectivity is further removed when predictions give accurate observations.

Why? Nobody said ideas aren't subject to the laws of causality.

Quote:Idealism has its own holes (big gapping ones ) that have not been address. So pointing out a weakness in one doesn't make the other more rational.

That's true.

(February 10, 2015 at 2:12 pm)bennyboy Wrote:

(February 10, 2015 at 1:59 pm)Surgenator Wrote: The subjectivity of measurements is removed when different people and different methods measure and agree on what a value is.

Not really. It just means that different people have matching experiences. But I can get on an online game with a friend, and we'll agree on what's happening in the game. But that doesn't establish that a tree in the game is really what it seems to us, or to a million others.

Quote: The subjectivity is further removed when predictions give accurate observations.

Why? Nobody said ideas aren't subject to the laws of causality.

Quote:Idealism has its own holes (big gapping ones ) that have not been address. So pointing out a weakness in one doesn't make the other more rational.

That's true.

Lets take your game example. If all your experiences were from a game, would it be rational to think the game is real? Would it be pratical?

(February 10, 2015 at 12:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I don't take the position Nietzsche is talking about, if I indeed understand it. It is not my position that reality is an expression of the HUMAN mind / minds, which to me would be a kind of collective solipsism (if I may abuse the roots of that word here). It is my position that everything is an expression of the interaction of underlying ideas: i.e. that everything reduces down to something expressible only as idea-- not because of human limitations in observation, but due to ambiguities intrinsic to the marriage of observed reality and any model which includes a geographic 3D space as a component.

I might define your version as 'soft idealism,' and though I don't find it particularly disagreeable, I do think it makes very little difference if we talk about physical realities that can only be conceived in abstract terms due to human limitations or 'ideas' (principles of nature?) that serve as the underlying context by and through which 'physical' phenomena occur. I might simply caution that we distinguish between the reality we begin cutting and the nothingness we find when its been exhaustively divided, and maintain a clear line between theoretical construct and observation.

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(February 10, 2015 at 1:15 pm)bennyboy Wrote: How do you feel this would establish that the universe resolves down to physical reality, about which ideas are merely a description, rather than ideas, of which matter is merely an expression?

Because the ideas are confined to --- and totally depend on --- the health of the brain in which they occur?

(February 10, 2015 at 12:18 pm)Nestor Wrote: I will admit that I admire benny's attempt to justify idealism along the lines of what Nietzsche called an "unconquerable distrust of the possibility of self-knowledge," writing that, at least on epistemological grounds, "we should agree with these skeptical anti-realists and knowledge microscopists of today"---I mean his posts are leagues above the so-called idealists who merely attempt to smuggle in their notion of god by conflating consciousness with everything.

I do respect Benny for that.

(February 10, 2015 at 12:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote: It's funny to see Nietzsche talking this way about idealism, because I feel much the same way about physicalist thought. We "know" that reality is objectively physical, and that mind is therefore nothing more than a physical process, because. . . our experiences lead us to form ideas along these lines. I'm not sure if I'd say that way of reasoning is circular, or paradoxical.

First I think you're confusing epistemological idealism with metaphysical idealism. "Epistemological idealism is the view that reality can only be known through ideas, that only psychological experience can be apprehended by the mind."
"Metaphysical idealism is an ontological doctrine that holds that reality itself is incorporeal or experiential at its core. Beyond this, idealists disagree on which aspects of the mental are more basic. Platonic idealism affirms that abstractions are more basic to reality than the things we perceive, while subjective idealists and phenomenalists tend to privilege sensory experience over abstract reasoning."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism#Definitions

An epistemological idealists can be a physicalist since that's where her ideas take her.

Physicalism is normally formulated as form of metaphysical realism (the view that external reality is independent of minds) but it doesn't need to be. The logical positivists were a type of physicalist and naturalist yet they were non-cognitivists about metaphysics. There has been a history of philosophers who would fit under a physicalist and naturalist umbrella but who if not anti-realist were hostile or indifferent to metaphysical realism in some ways. There are non-physicalists, anti-physicalists, non-naturalists, and supernaturalists who are all metaphysical realists and object to solipsistic idealism.
I just want to point that out. I'm OCD about this topic at times.

Quote:Okay, then your previous comment about hot air did in fact represent your feelings about taking either position. This makes more sense, now.

It is my position (obviously) that the default position would be to assume reality is as you experience it, i.e. solipsism. However, since I don't plan to test this position by spending my life masturbating on buses or jumping off buildings, then what's the next-simplest explanation? To me, since I experience reality in terms of ideas, then reality AS a collection of ideas requires the fewest additional constructs.

I don't think Occam's razor works in cases like this when the probabilities you are going to get are very low. Really all a metaphysical realist would do is just claim external reality is just simple because it doesn't have parts much like theists claims about divine simplicity. If you then counter by saying ideas are without parts that wouldn't work. How can a thing without parts be more simple than another thing without parts? It would just cancel out the only one simplest explanation claim since there would be two explanations that are equally simple.
I just don't think it's good enough to have an explanation that maybe can't be proven and can't be given strong support from a strong inductive argument. I don't want a metaphysical just-so story I want more, which is why I'm skeptical of metaphysical realism too. I doubt parsimony would increase the probability of either solipsism, or metaphysical realism by much. Not something I'm going have passionate commitment about. To be honest I'm more willing to go along with metaphysical realism with no strong inclination like a Pyrrhonian skeptic.

(February 10, 2015 at 2:29 pm)Surgenator Wrote: Lets take your game example. If all your experiences were from a game, would it be rational to think the game is real? Would it be pratical?

Yes. The only real question, in terms of science, would be whether there was enough consistency in that virtual world to make observations, form hypotheses, and do experiments. And, in MMORPGs, some players very much do do this, sometimes discovering aspects of the virtual world which the designers didn't intend.

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(February 10, 2015 at 3:51 pm)Nestor Wrote:

(February 10, 2015 at 1:15 pm)bennyboy Wrote: How do you feel this would establish that the universe resolves down to physical reality, about which ideas are merely a description, rather than ideas, of which matter is merely an expression?

Because the ideas are confined to --- and totally depend on --- the health of the brain in which they occur?

I think you are talking about the ideas a brain forms and has, rather then the kind of elemental or universal ideas which could be "under the hood," and which are the ones I refer in my flavor of idealism. I don't think the human world is an expression of human ideas. In fact, I see a kind of trinity (eek scary word!): there's an underlying idealistic reality, matter as we see it is an expression of that reality, and then THROUGH the matter (rather than about it) we infer that underyling idealistic reality.

I'm not sure if this makes sense? I could say more but I don't want to get tl;dr.

@Pizz-atheist: I'm not ignoring you, but will have to answer your post a little later.

(February 10, 2015 at 7:21 pm)bennyboy Wrote: In fact, I see a kind of trinity (eek scary word!): there's an underlying idealistic reality,

Father?

(February 10, 2015 at 7:21 pm)bennyboy Wrote: matter as we see it is an expression of that reality,

Son?

(February 10, 2015 at 7:21 pm)bennyboy Wrote: and then THROUGH the matter (rather than about it)

Holy Ghost?
:-P

(February 10, 2015 at 7:21 pm)bennyboy Wrote: we infer that underyling idealistic reality.

I'm not sure if this makes sense? I could say more but I don't want to get tl;dr.

Yeah that makes sense. I define the "Father" in the analogy as unknown, the "Son" as physical representation, the two directly related, though, as one in a singularity, and the experience or "Spirit" as the latter evolving in an understanding of the former.

I don't know enough about the history of Catholicism to guess what the trinity "really" means. However, I think it's quite possible that it's an attempt to reconcile philosophical ideas like the ones we are talking about with the religious tradition, or even to use the X-tian institution to blatantly promulgate new ideas. But let's kill this aside, as it's going to draw the flies pretty fast if they notice it.

(February 10, 2015 at 8:33 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I don't know enough about the history of Catholicism to guess what the trinity "really" means. However, I think it's quite possible that it's an attempt to reconcile philosophical ideas like the ones we are talking about with the religious tradition, or even to use the X-tian institution to blatantly promulgate new ideas. But let's kill this aside, as it's going to draw the flies pretty fast if they notice it.

Well, you can trace that idea back to the Greeks so unless they're trying to convert us to the philosophies of pagans...

(February 10, 2015 at 4:56 pm)Pizz-atheist Wrote: First I think you're confusing epistemological idealism with metaphysical idealism. "Epistemological idealism is the view that reality can only be known through ideas, that only psychological experience can be apprehended by the mind."
"Metaphysical idealism is an ontological doctrine that holds that reality itself is incorporeal or experiential at its core. Beyond this, idealists disagree on which aspects of the mental are more basic. Platonic idealism affirms that abstractions are more basic to reality than the things we perceive, while subjective idealists and phenomenalists tend to privilege sensory experience over abstract reasoning."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism#Definitions

I'd say that epistemological idealism implies metaphysical idealism as the default position. The question given the philosophical fact (and I think it is a fact) of espistemological idealism, or at least of solipsism as the only truly gnostic position, then it is not knowable whether any limitations intrinsic to the human experience are veiling, or even distorting, our understanding of whatever reality underlies our experiences.

Quote:An epistemological idealists can be a physicalist since that's where her ideas take her.

As we've discuess, physics as a subject seen in this way is just studying reality, whatever it is, given the caveats that: 1) there's enough consistency to merit study, and 2) the one studying has the power to interact with that reality in order to verify its truth. But that physicalism is, at least to me, different than what most people mean when they view idealism and physicalism as diametrically opposite positions.

Quote:Physicalism is normally formulated as form of metaphysical realism (the view that external reality is independent of minds) but it doesn't need to be. The logical positivists were a type of physicalist and naturalist yet they were non-cognitivists about metaphysics. There has been a history of philosophers who would fit under a physicalist and naturalist umbrella but who if not anti-realist were hostile or indifferent to metaphysical realism in some ways. There are non-physicalists, anti-physicalists, non-naturalists, and supernaturalists who are all metaphysical realists and object to solipsistic idealism.
I just want to point that out. I'm OCD about this topic at times.

We can renegotiate semantics at any time, and I think we are in fact doing that right now. However, given the OP, this view of physicalism isn't really at odds with the flavor of idealism that I gravitate to, since it can comfortably reduce all of existence down to ideas without invalidating itself. Maybe that's what you're trying to say, after all?

My point in this thread is that I believe important aspects of reality cannot be expressed in terms of the interaction of real objects in a geometric 3D space framework: either because they are things with no volume or no mass, or because they are things which cannot reasonably be inferred from the observation of any physical system without begging the question: specifically, the nature of photons and the nature of mind. Given this, it seems that there are things which are not actually objects, and that these things are coherent ONLY as ideas.