My case for an Idealistic Monism

[bennyboy]

(Derived from the recent post on God as the only explanation of consciousness, but not arguing for theism/desim)

First, a definition:

In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial.

Let's start by looking at the main problem that a physical monism has: the problem of mind. Why does it exist? How does any amount or pattern of a physical structure like the brain result in something that goes beyond processing data and outputting behaviors, to actually experiencing what things ARE LIKE, including the self? Idealism has no such problem. If everything is mental, then the existence of ideas and experiences works fine as a brute fact.

What about science? Obviously, it represents a massive body of consistent observations and inferences that actually work, allowing us to do neat stuff like internet debates. HOWEVER, since all these inferences are made through the interface of experience, no underlying physical "reality" is actually necessary for science to work-- only an underlying reality which can produce experiences that are consistent. Whether you are looking at a real microscope or a dreamed microscope is irrelevant to the scientific process, so long as you are assured perfect consistency of observations. Science can therefore be accepted as a subset of an idealistic monism: some experiences are completely subjective and unshareable, and some are objective and shareable. The former can be called "spiritual," "personal" or just "subjective," and the latter can be called "physical" or "objective." But they need not be mutually exclusive, and we need not explain some bridge between the two, as they are not fundamentally different.

However, in a physical monism, we can't do this. We can't sensibly categorize the subjective ability to appreciate what things are LIKE as physical. You can't touch, feel, or measure what it's like for me to enjoy a chocolate bar. Yes, you could in theory monitor my entire brain state (maybe, some day, we hope and assume), but not only can you not get what it's like to be me enjoying the chocolate, you cannot even be sure that I AM enjoying it, rather than just seeming to. You cannot have access to my "what eating chocolate is like."

How about the relationship between brain and experience? This is a tricky one. Given a shotgun and the instruction to use it on himself "to show that the brain is just an idea," an idealist is proven to be a closet physicalist (or at least a dualist). Or is he? I don't think so-- we are all familiar with the idea that a shotgun to the brain will alter or cease mental activity, and most of us fear this effect. Our experiences in reading, in watching movies, and in hearing wars, build up ideas that cause us to experience negative emotions. An idealistic reality doesn't mean there are no consequences for actions. If a person takes LSD, he/she will still get high. The LSD will still affect the person's brain, and their thinking. The only difference is that the LSD, the brain, and all the QM particles of which they are composed, have no existence independent of the mental fabric of reality.

If you don't believe me, then consider modern physics. What is the "stuff" of which the universe is made? 99.9999999999999% space just to get down to a particle. So that table, that brain, that neuron, are really empty space. What is with all the solidity and bright colors that we experience then? The answer is that we interface with the IDEAS of table, of brown, of flatness, of hardness, of smoothness. Therefore, what we are experiencing CANNOT, even when filtered throught the idea of a physical monism, be an accurate representation of an underlying, objective reality. And this fundamental truth closes the loop: whatever reality may underly our experiences, we as sentient beings exist in a monist idealism.

[archangle]

(Derived from the recent post on God as the only explanation of consciousness, but not arguing for theism/desim)

First, a definition:

In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial.

Let's start by looking at the main problem that a physical monism has: the problem of mind. Why does it exist? How does any amount or pattern of a physical structure like the brain result in something that goes beyond processing data and outputting behaviors, to actually experiencing what things ARE LIKE, including the self? Idealism has no such problem. If everything is mental, then the existence of ideas and experiences works fine as a brute fact.

What about science? Obviously, it represents a massive body of consistent observations and inferences that actually work, allowing us to do neat stuff like internet debates. HOWEVER, since all these inferences are made through the interface of experience, no underlying physical "reality" is actually necessary for science to work-- only an underlying reality which can produce experiences that are consistent. Whether you are looking at a real microscope or a dreamed microscope is irrelevant to the scientific process, so long as you are assured perfect consistency of observations. Science can therefore be accepted as a subset of an idealistic monism: some experiences are completely subjective and unshareable, and some are objective and shareable. The former can be called "spiritual," "personal" or just "subjective," and the latter can be called "physical" or "objective." But they need not be mutually exclusive, and we need not explain some bridge between the two, as they are not fundamentally different.

However, in a physical monism, we can't do this. We can't sensibly categorize the subjective ability to appreciate what things are LIKE as physical. You can't touch, feel, or measure what it's like for me to enjoy a chocolate bar. Yes, you could in theory monitor my entire brain state (maybe, some day, we hope and assume), but not only can you not get what it's like to be me enjoying the chocolate, you cannot even be sure that I AM enjoying it, rather than just seeming to. You cannot have access to my "what eating chocolate is like."

How about the relationship between brain and experience? This is a tricky one. Given a shotgun and the instruction to use it on himself "to show that the brain is just an idea," an idealist is proven to be a closet physicalist (or at least a dualist). Or is he? I don't think so-- we are all familiar with the idea that a shotgun to the brain will alter or cease mental activity, and most of us fear this effect. Our experiences in reading, in watching movies, and in hearing wars, build up ideas that cause us to experience negative emotions. An idealistic reality doesn't mean there are no consequences for actions. If a person takes LSD, he/she will still get high. The LSD will still affect the person's brain, and their thinking. The only difference is that the LSD, the brain, and all the QM particles of which they are composed, have no existence independent of the mental fabric of reality.

If you don't believe me, then consider modern physics. What is the "stuff" of which the universe is made? 99.9999999999999% space just to get down to a particle. So that table, that brain, that neuron, are really empty space. What is with all the solidity and bright colors that we experience then? The answer is that we interface with the IDEAS of table, of brown, of flatness, of hardness, of smoothness. Therefore, what we are experiencing CANNOT, even when filtered throught the idea of a physical monism, be an accurate representation of an underlying, objective reality. And this fundamental truth closes the loop: whatever reality may underly our experiences, we as sentient beings exist in a monist idealism.

yeah, we are all in the same universe. Now what?

[Faith No More]

Are you arguing that reality itself is, in fact, mental, or are you saying that any knowledge we gain from reality must be considered mental? I can't tell.

And I think you have to define "accurate representation of an underlying, objective reality." Would that mean being able to perceive all possible information, rendering anything short of omniscience inaccurate?

[Whateverist]

And this fundamental truth closes the loop: whatever reality may underly our experiences, we as sentient beings exist in a monist idealism.

If you think you've closed the loop haven't you undermined your own position? Or can private revelation rise to the level of objective truth?

[Angrboda]

I would agree that the reality in our heads is a purely mental construct, never touching on the real. However, if you're actually arguing idealism in the classical sense, then the cause of these mental constructs is itself also mental. It's true that we have difficulty imagining how physical processes give rise to mental constructs like the thing we are, but that doesn't justify a cannot, only the observation that at present we do not have an explanation. That puzzle has a corresponding paradox in the real world. Quantum mechanics does not flow from our classical conceptions, and is thoroughly counter-intuitive in its implications. This counter-intuitiveness has given rise to dozens of interpretations of what is ontic in quantum mechanics, and what is epistemological. If world is nothing more than mind stuff, and we ourselves are mind stuff, how come we don't have an intuitive grasp of the way this world stuff works? You might postulate that the mind stuff that makes up the "shared world" is a different mind stuff than the mind stuff of our consciousness, but then you've broken the world at a cleanly articulated joint and no longer have a monism. One might suggest a similar "cannot" in that you can't derive the strangeness of quantum mechanics out of an understanding of simple mind stuff. We don't yet have such an understanding of the ontological and epistemological nature of quantum stuff either. So you have an argument for monism, supported by the inexplicability of consciousness on one hand, and an argument for dualism based on the inexplicability of quantum reality. I'd call that a draw.

[MindForgedManacle]

Let's start by looking at the main problem that a physical monism has: the problem of mind. Why does it exist? How does any amount or pattern of a physical structure like the brain result in something that goes beyond processing data and outputting behaviors, to actually experiencing what things ARE LIKE, including the self?

Why does it exist on physicalism? An accumulation via evolution given its survival-enhancing capability.
Does consciousness go beyond data processing and behavioral output? After all, there are physicalist accounts of mind and consciousness, such as put forward by Daniel Dennett, that argue that consciousness is actually an illusion.
Further, it's not that hard to argue against the existence of a 'self'. I could start with Hume's argument that even when during introspection (whatever that really is), I don't come across some singular, definite thing, but always some varying feeling or sensation.

Idealism has no such problem. If everything is mental, then the existence of ideas and experiences works fine as a brute fact.

Not sure that's true at all. On an idealist account of the mind, the idea that there are non-conscious mental processes because basically inexplicable, unlike under physicalism. After all, if all is mental and experience, then why should the creators of that mental experience have any proccesses they aren't aware of which direct their actions? While under physicalism, it's perfectly reasonable to expect unconscious processes to guide an agent's behaivors, given that we aren't consciously aware of those processes but we have discovered through science what parts of our brain are involved in regulating the proccesses.

Idealism has no way to account for this without being entirely ad hoc and just having more and more brute facts. The concept of the "unconscious" is just incompatible with idealism, because to not be conscious effectively means it does not exist. Yet I doubt you think you stop existing when you sleep.

What about science? Obviously, it represents a massive body of consistent observations and inferences that actually work, allowing us to do neat stuff like internet debates. HOWEVER, since all these inferences are made through the interface of experience, no underlying physical "reality" is actually necessary for science to work-- only an underlying reality which can produce experiences that are consistent. Whether you are looking at a real microscope or a dreamed microscope is irrelevant to the scientific process, so long as you are assured perfect consistency of observations. Science can therefore be accepted as a subset of an idealistic monism: some experiences are completely subjective and unshareable, and some are objective and shareable. The former can be called "spiritual," "personal" or just "subjective," and the latter can be called "physical" or "objective." But they need not be mutually exclusive, and we need not explain some bridge between the two, as they are not fundamentally different.

To even say there is an underlying reality involved in the success of science is to concede the very pount you're trying to dispute.

However, in a physical monism, we can't do this. We can't sensibly categorize the subjective ability to appreciate what things are LIKE as physical. You can't touch, feel, or measure what it's like for me to enjoy a chocolate bar. Yes, you could in theory monitor my entire brain state (maybe, some day, we hope and assume), but not only can you not get what it's like to be me enjoying the chocolate, you cannot even be sure that I AM enjoying it, rather than just seeming to. You cannot have access to my "what eating chocolate is like."

Same as my first response.

[bennyboy]

Hidden answers to reduce text-wall clutter

@Faith No More

---

Are you arguing that reality itself is, in fact, mental, or are you saying that any knowledge we gain from reality must be considered mental? I can't tell.

I'm arguing that as a candidate for reality, idealism is better because it doesn't require additional assertions or assumptions. Experience is a brute fact. Everything else is inferred or derived.

And I think you have to define "accurate representation of an underlying, objective reality." Would that mean being able to perceive all possible information, rendering anything short of omniscience inaccurate?

It would mean perceiving and interacting with the objects that are actually supposed to exist-- right now, QM particles, and in the future who knows? What do we actually interact with? Even in a physicalist model, we interact with the emergent properties of particles, rather than with the particles themselves.

---

@rasetsu

---

I would agree that the reality in our heads is a purely mental construct, never touching on the real. However, if you're actually arguing idealism in the classical sense, then the cause of these mental constructs is itself also mental. It's true that we have difficulty imagining how physical processes give rise to mental constructs like the thing we are, but that doesn't justify a cannot, only the observation that at present we do not have an explanation. That puzzle has a corresponding paradox in the real world. Quantum mechanics does not flow from our classical conceptions, and is thoroughly counter-intuitive in its implications. This counter-intuitiveness has given rise to dozens of interpretations of what is ontic in quantum mechanics, and what is epistemological. If world is nothing more than mind stuff, and we ourselves are mind stuff, how come we don't have an intuitive grasp of the way this world stuff works?

Not only physical objects are mysterious. The mind still has most of the ontological problems of the physical view. The main advantage I see in idealism is that it places experience, which is intrinsically real, above ideas which are derived FROM experience, like the existence of an objective, monist physical universe.

Note that this is not a replacement for science or even the IDEA of physical monism. Science still works-- we get to have the experience of organizing matter into cool things like computers, of playing computer games, and of finding a deeper understanding of how to manipulate our environment. None of that has to be taken away.

You might postulate that the mind stuff that makes up the "shared world" is a different mind stuff than the mind stuff of our consciousness, but then you've broken the world at a cleanly articulated joint and no longer have a monism.

I was thinking about that, and this is one of the pluses for physicalism: we do not know all minds to interact on any level, while we believe that all physical objects DO interact. This provides some level of unity that is very attractive.

However, in a physical monist view, we have that problem anyway, so for the reasons already given, I still think idealism is the simpler view of the two.

One might suggest a similar "cannot" in that you can't derive the strangeness of quantum mechanics out of an understanding of simple mind stuff.

Mind "stuff," as a replacement for physical stuff, definitely has that problem. However, I'd argue that the apparent duality of light works better as an idea than as a physical "thing." There has never been a problem with having some ideas which are abstract, slippery, or elusive-- all our fleeting ideas and dreams are kind of like that. One of the defining concepts of "thing-ness," however, is that things are not supposed to be ambiguous in nature.

Science has simply shrugged and moved on with QM. "Okay, stuff is no longer deterministically predictable, and no longer singular in nature. Now, it's a composite of wave functions and statistics." Well, I'd argue that EVEN IN the physical view of the universe, things as we experience them cannot be said to exist. And since this is the case anyway, there's little harm in abandoning the idea of thing-ness, and seeing the universe in terms of underlying ideas-- which include a reality based on mathematical ones.

We don't yet have such an understanding of the ontological and epistemological nature of quantum stuff either. So you have an argument for monism, supported by the inexplicability of consciousness on one hand, and an argument for dualism based on the inexplicability of quantum reality. I'd call that a draw.

This is an interesting idea that I'll have to think more about. I've always thought of QM, and the way in which it starts to squirm under a watchful eye, as support for an idealist view.

---

@MindForgedManacle

---

Let's start by looking at the main problem that a physical monism has: the problem of mind. Why does it exist? How does any amount or pattern of a physical structure like the brain result in something that goes beyond processing data and outputting behaviors, to actually experiencing what things ARE LIKE, including the self?

Why does it exist on physicalism? An accumulation via evolution given its survival-enhancing capability.

The idea of the brain, the mind, and the evolutionary connection between them, is quite convincing, but it is itself only an idea. But what can we actually observe? Brain states (to a degree), and behaviors. If you could fully map the movements of neurotransmitters in the brain, electrical transmission through the nerves, etc. would you yet have philosophical proof that something even IS conscious, rather than seeming to be?

Does consciousness go beyond data processing and behavioral output? After all, there are physicalist accounts of mind and consciousness, such as put forward by Daniel Dennett, that argue that consciousness is actually an illusion.

Consciousness is the only means by which we collect information and draw inferences about it. If this is all founded in illusion, then I see that as increased support for idealism.

Further, it's not that hard to argue against the existence of a 'self'. I could start with Hume's argument that even when during introspection (whatever that really is), I don't come across some singular, definite thing, but always some varying feeling or sensation.

If the self itself is only an idea derived from experience, then I'd see that as good support for an idealistic world view.

Idealism has no such problem. If everything is mental, then the existence of ideas and experiences works fine as a brute fact.

Not sure that's true at all. On an idealist account of the mind, the idea that there are non-conscious mental processes because basically inexplicable, unlike under physicalism. After all, if all is mental and experience, then why should the creators of that mental experience have any proccesses they aren't aware of which direct their actions? While under physicalism, it's perfectly reasonable to expect unconscious processes to guide an agent's behaivors, given that we aren't consciously aware of those processes but we have discovered through science what parts of our brain are involved in regulating the proccesses.

Idealism has no way to account for this without being entirely ad hoc and just having more and more brute facts. The concept of the "unconscious" is just incompatible with idealism, because to not be conscious effectively means it does not exist. Yet I doubt you think you stop existing when you sleep.

Solipsist idealism, in which there is no subject-object relationship, suffers this problem for sure. However, there's no rule that in a universe defined by ideas, we have to have direct access to all of them, or to understand them, or even to be right about them.

To even say there is an underlying reality involved in the success of science is to concede the very pount you're trying to dispute.

Why is that? I'm arguing that the entire physical universe can be seen as a collection of ideas. QM particles don't work well as traditional descriptions of things, as things must have non-ambiguous properties; a wave that is also a particle works much better as an idea than as a physical thing. Statistical models of decay work fine as a mathematical idea, and poorly as a property of a thing, as we normally conceive of things. The speed limit of light, the transmutation between energy and matter, quantum tunneling, and action at a distance, work better as ideas than as properties or behaviors of things.

---

[archangle]

You are your brain ... period. Unless new observations come up.

What defines your brain? That is a work in progress.

How many sects of this monist and idealism are there?

[ManMachine]

---

(Derived from the recent post on God as the only explanation of consciousness, but not arguing for theism/desim)

First, a definition:

In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial.

Let's start by looking at the main problem that a physical monism has: the problem of mind. Why does it exist? How does any amount or pattern of a physical structure like the brain result in something that goes beyond processing data and outputting behaviors, to actually experiencing what things ARE LIKE, including the self? Idealism has no such problem. If everything is mental, then the existence of ideas and experiences works fine as a brute fact.

What about science? Obviously, it represents a massive body of consistent observations and inferences that actually work, allowing us to do neat stuff like internet debates. HOWEVER, since all these inferences are made through the interface of experience, no underlying physical "reality" is actually necessary for science to work-- only an underlying reality which can produce experiences that are consistent. Whether you are looking at a real microscope or a dreamed microscope is irrelevant to the scientific process, so long as you are assured perfect consistency of observations. Science can therefore be accepted as a subset of an idealistic monism: some experiences are completely subjective and unshareable, and some are objective and shareable. The former can be called "spiritual," "personal" or just "subjective," and the latter can be called "physical" or "objective." But they need not be mutually exclusive, and we need not explain some bridge between the two, as they are not fundamentally different.

However, in a physical monism, we can't do this. We can't sensibly categorize the subjective ability to appreciate what things are LIKE as physical. You can't touch, feel, or measure what it's like for me to enjoy a chocolate bar. Yes, you could in theory monitor my entire brain state (maybe, some day, we hope and assume), but not only can you not get what it's like to be me enjoying the chocolate, you cannot even be sure that I AM enjoying it, rather than just seeming to. You cannot have access to my "what eating chocolate is like."

How about the relationship between brain and experience? This is a tricky one. Given a shotgun and the instruction to use it on himself "to show that the brain is just an idea," an idealist is proven to be a closet physicalist (or at least a dualist). Or is he? I don't think so-- we are all familiar with the idea that a shotgun to the brain will alter or cease mental activity, and most of us fear this effect. Our experiences in reading, in watching movies, and in hearing wars, build up ideas that cause us to experience negative emotions. An idealistic reality doesn't mean there are no consequences for actions. If a person takes LSD, he/she will still get high. The LSD will still affect the person's brain, and their thinking. The only difference is that the LSD, the brain, and all the QM particles of which they are composed, have no existence independent of the mental fabric of reality.

If you don't believe me, then consider modern physics. What is the "stuff" of which the universe is made? 99.9999999999999% space just to get down to a particle. So that table, that brain, that neuron, are really empty space. What is with all the solidity and bright colors that we experience then? The answer is that we interface with the IDEAS of table, of brown, of flatness, of hardness, of smoothness. Therefore, what we are experiencing CANNOT, even when filtered throught the idea of a physical monism, be an accurate representation of an underlying, objective reality. And this fundamental truth closes the loop: whatever reality may underly our experiences, we as sentient beings exist in a monist idealism.

---

I think you have put the proverbial cart before the horse.

Idealism fails in its anthropocentricity, it attempts to approximate the disinterested pursuit of a determinate fixed truth, that what we perceive is constructed by the mind. But this is to ignore that mind itself is a product of what it is attempting to construct.

To break this recursion we need to recognise that mind is determined by problems rather than solving them, that reason is shaped by the irrational, formed by particular relationships among irrational factors. Our minds are not born of the rules and laws we attribute to the physical and metaphysical universe, but are carved out of the delirium and drift that lies beneath.

Scientific discipline compounds this issue by citing observation as a tool to generate quantitative theories based on fixed points of reference. What scientific endeavour discreetly papers over is that every observed event is distinct and unique, that ultimately everything is 'subjective and unshareable' and by gathering events that display a lack of difference and presenting them as generalised theories it gives us a false sense of objectivity, an objectivity that can never be established, again because it is fundamentally recursive in nature.

I cannot and never will be able to share your experience of a chocolate bar but I can carve an approximation of your experience out of the lack of difference with my own experiences.

Indeed, if we examine modern physics we can dispense with any notion that there is anything but nothing, there is no objective reality, just random patterns in the void.

There are no properties of mind that exist independently of this chaos, just our very human need to seek order that will ultimately delude us into believing we can understand the universe by applying thought to the chaos from which it emerges.

MM

[Angrboda]

Your answer to every difficulty seems to be to postulate that whatever problematic stuff you're faced with is, "just another kind of idea." Beyond the fact that this ends up as an explanation that doesn't really explain why each of these ideas is the way it is — resulting in an explanation that doesn't actually explain anything — you end up with the world being carved up in much the same way that it was carved up before you postulated that it's all "ideas," only replacing the "stuff" it's made up of being postulated to be made up of "mind" rather than made up of "reality." It seems the only benefit is to save the original internal mind stuff from needing to be explained, while creating greater mysteries which you can't resolve with appeal to anything but making everything a "brute idea," similar to making everything a "brute fact." I don't see what, besides consciousness, is rescued by this approach.