Contra Metaphysical Idealism

[MindForgedManacle]

So basically metaphysical idealism is the claim that whatever exists is essentially mental, that is, that at the most basic, durable and fundamental level of things there exist only things with first-person phenomenal qualities such as those of conscious experience, or those that are in aboutness relations, such as those that beliefs and desires stand in to that which is believed or desired.

I will be arguing against idealism in general, as well as against theistic idealism.

So, a typical argument for idealism goes something like this (I decided to put the argument in the form of pseudo-logic rather than a formal presentation, because lazy... and easier to follow):

1) There is some X, such that X exists. [assumption]

2) For every X, if X exists, then X is thought of. [premise 1]

3) There is some X, such that X is thought of. [deduced from 1 & 2 via modus ponens]

4) For every X, if X is thought of, then X is essentially mental. [premise 2]

5) Therefore, for every X, if X exists, then X is essentially mental. [the conclusion of idealism, deduced from 1+3+4, via a conditional introduction rule in play in 2,4]

So, there is a problem here. The argument above rests on its two premises. However, there is a glaring problem. To honor it's universal quantifier ("For every X..."), 2) must assume that there is an omnicogniscient. To honor its universal quantifier, 4) must assume a mental substance. Hence, the 2 premises for the argument must assume that there is an "omni-cogniscient" mental substance. But of course, an omni-cogniscient mental substance is the very sort of things about which atheists are skeptical (and may indeed present arguments against), hence atheists are well within their epistemic rights to reject the two premises in question, and can then reject the conclusion. Of course, one wonders how, given the necessary assumption of, basically, God's existence beforehand how some here subscribe to idealism, and not theism (*coughBennyBoycough*) can do so without being inconsistent.



Now, a further argument against idealism could be launched by pointing out that when I push on "the world", the world pushes back. There is an element of friction underlying every action that I, as an emodied subject take. This haunts idealism and is usually hand-waived away as being, in some sense, a result of some "fallenness" of the world. But the problem is, I don't know what "I" am apart from my own materiality, my finitude in space and time, my limitations in all manner of things, and being of my own physicality. But if it is this fallenness that is responsible for such feeling of physicality, then it follows that without this fallenness, in all its transcience and contingency constructs the map by which I define myself in the world. I am at base a sensuous being: I eat, smell, touch observe, feel. I cannot merely deny my own physicality as being illusory. My physicality is the horizon against which any idealist notion of an "I" can appear in the first place. Heck, even Descartes' cogito could only reach his "I" by a frenzied denial of all physicality. The physical is what the idealist must start with, and then attempt to negate. The idealist must deny the any real essence to their own experiences, of any real transcedent heartbeat in the world. In a Nietzschean sense, this is nihilism.


QED.

[bennyboy]

Since I just made a thread about idealism, and since you are responding specifically to me, why didn't you just post all this in that thread?

Let's start not with the self, but with ideas about cosmogony, which you hint at by talking about omnicognizance. Christians often refer to infinite regression to establish a need for a paradox-solving myster quantity, which they call God: "Who made the universe?" And any five year old will immediately ask, "Fine, but who made God?" Some science-minded people have claimed the Big Bang was the source of the universe, and of course the same kid will ask, "But why was there a Big Bang? What made it so it could be there to Bang?" In the case of concepts and ideas, you get a similar question: "If everything is ideas, then whose ideas are they?"

In all three cases, adherents must resort to a philosophical cop-out: God is special-- he creates everything without having needed to be created. The Big Bang is special-- it started at a time when time didn't even exist, so talking about it being created is cheating. The ideas and concepts that underly our experiences are special-- they are the beginning of all ideas and the relationships between them, but are themselves not created by the thoughts of anybody.

As for your physical experiences, you talk about you pushing the world, and it pushing back. But this is not quite accurate-- the subjective truth of it is that you experience pushing the world, and you experience it pushing back.

But the problem is, I don't know what "I" am apart from my own materiality, my finitude in space and time, my limitations in all manner of things, and being of my own physicality.

Physicality of the gaps?

The physical is what the idealist must start with, and then attempt to negate. The idealist must deny the any real essence to their own experiences, of any real transcedent heartbeat in the world.

No. No matter how convincing and important your experiences are to you, they necessarily precede your interpretations of what they mean. It is the experiences which are themselves self-validating and fundamentally real, not your interpretations of where those experiences come from? Don't believe me? One word-- dreams.

[archangle]

So basically metaphysical idealism is the claim that whatever exists is essentially mental, that is, that at the most basic, durable and fundamental level of things there exist only things with first-person phenomenal qualities such as those of conscious experience, or those that are in aboutness relations, such as those that beliefs and desires stand in to that which is believed or desired.

I will be arguing against idealism in general, as well as against theistic idealism.

So, a typical argument for idealism goes something like this (I decided to put the argument in the form of pseudo-logic rather than a formal presentation, because lazy... and easier to follow):

1) There is some X, such that X exists. [assumption]

2) For every X, if X exists, then X is thought of. [premise 1]

3) There is some X, such that X is thought of. [deduced from 1 & 2 via modus ponens]

4) For every X, if X is thought of, then X is essentially mental. [premise 2]

5) Therefore, for every X, if X exists, then X is essentially mental. [the conclusion of idealism, deduced from 1+3+4, via a conditional introduction rule in play in 2,4]

So, there is a problem here. The argument above rests on its two premises. However, there is a glaring problem. To honor it's universal quantifier ("For every X..."), 2) must assume that there is an omnicogniscient. To honor its universal quantifier, 4) must assume a mental substance. Hence, the 2 premises for the argument must assume that there is an "omni-cogniscient" mental substance. But of course, an omni-cogniscient mental substance is the very sort of things about which atheists are skeptical (and may indeed present arguments against), hence atheists are well within their epistemic rights to reject the two premises in question, and can then reject the conclusion. Of course, one wonders how, given the necessary assumption of, basically, God's existence beforehand how some here subscribe to idealism, and not theism (*coughBennyBoycough*) can do so without being inconsistent.



Now, a further argument against idealism could be launched by pointing out that when I push on "the world", the world pushes back. There is an element of friction underlying every action that I, as an emodied subject take. This haunts idealism and is usually hand-waived away as being, in some sense, a result of some "fallenness" of the world. But the problem is, I don't know what "I" am apart from my own materiality, my finitude in space and time, my limitations in all manner of things, and being of my own physicality. But if it is this fallenness that is responsible for such feeling of physicality, then it follows that without this fallenness, in all its transcience and contingency constructs the map by which I define myself in the world. I am at base a sensuous being: I eat, smell, touch observe, feel. I cannot merely deny my own physicality as being illusory. My physicality is the horizon against which any idealist notion of an "I" can appear in the first place. Heck, even Descartes' cogito could only reach his "I" by a frenzied denial of all physicality. The physical is what the idealist must start with, and then attempt to negate. The idealist must deny the any real essence to their own experiences, of any real transcedent heartbeat in the world. In a Nietzschean sense, this is nihilism.


QED.

change the premise, change the conclusion of "true" or "false". Neither really valid.

Unless you are using it just as a mind game. Then its ok.
Or to pratice writing ... Witch I should do.

[Angrboda]

In all three cases, adherents must resort to a philosophical cop-out: God is special-- he creates everything without having needed to be created. The Big Bang is special-- it started at a time when time didn't even exist, so talking about it being created is cheating. The ideas and concepts that underly our experiences are special-- they are the beginning of all ideas and the relationships between them, but are themselves not created by the thoughts of anybody.

As special pleading, the argument is a non sequitur and thus its conclusion isn't known to be true on this basis. That's why it's considered weak in all three cases, but of the three, science doesn't settle with resting on a non sequitur.

[Neo-Scholastic]

IMHO, Idealistic Monism of the Bishop Berkley variety seems to suffer from the same failings as physical monism. Neither address the tension between Constancy and Change. I see 4) as the problem, since it ignores the tacit subject and object distinction found in 1) and 2). I see no justification for saying that the thought of something is the same as the something itself.

[archangle]

IMHO, Idealistic Monism of the Bishop Berkley variety seems to suffer from the same failings as physical monism. Neither address the tension between Constancy and Change. I see 4) as the problem, since it ignores the tacit subject and object distinction found in 1) and 2). I see no justification for saying that the thought of something is the same as the something itself.

Because there is none. Only in mind games.

The thought may be as close to the object as you can think. And if your good enough you can pretend to interact with it and even mentally experience to the point of thinking the inputs to your brain are from the actual event. But that's it.

evidence: imagining of the fields around you sitting on a chair. Then image the same fields around you while thinking about the experience of sitting on the chair.

It is more proper to insert Big George C's skit.

[bennyboy]

IMHO, Idealistic Monism of the Bishop Berkley variety seems to suffer from the same failings as physical monism. Neither address the tension between Constancy and Change. I see 4) as the problem, since it ignores the tacit subject and object distinction found in 1) and 2). I see no justification for saying that the thought of something is the same as the something itself.

If you don't have a monism, then you need a bridge between your two substances, in which case you have something which is BOTH substance A as well as substance B. But then you have a trinity-- mind/body/soul, with the soul being magically ambiguous anyway. And it seems to me that the point of insisting on a duality is not to allow a single substance which has an ambiguous-seeming nature. Therefore, it seems either a monism or a pluralism must be better than a dualism, which requires magical translation between unlike substances.

---

As special pleading, the argument is a non sequitur and thus its conclusion isn't known to be true on this basis. That's why it's considered weak in all three cases, but of the three, science doesn't settle with resting on a non sequitur.

What's the qualitative difference between a physical framework and its members originating at a "time when there was no time" and a mental one and its members doing so? In either case, you suffer infinite regression or paradox, and a lack of an ultimate explanation for the why of it all.

[MindForgedManacle]

Since I just made a thread about idealism, and since you are responding specifically to me, why didn't you just post all this in that thread?

Because I'm an attention man-whore. Gotta be in my own thread bro. But really, it was also a response to Chad, who I was under the impression subscribed to idealism (although now that I think about it he's a substance dualist isn't he? xD)

Let's start not with the self, but with ideas about cosmogony, which you hint at by talking about omnicognizance. Christians often refer to infinite regression to establish a need for a paradox-solving myster quantity, which they call God: "Who made the universe?" And any five year old will immediately ask, "Fine, but who made God?" Some science-minded people have claimed the Big Bang was the source of the universe, and of course the same kid will ask, "But why was there a Big Bang? What made it so it could be there to Bang?" In the case of concepts and ideas, you get a similar question: "If everything is ideas, then whose ideas are they?"

In all three cases, adherents must resort to a philosophical cop-out: God is special-- he creates everything without having needed to be created. The Big Bang is special-- it started at a time when time didn't even exist, so talking about it being created is cheating. The ideas and concepts that underly our experiences are special-- they are the beginning of all ideas and the relationships between them, but are themselves not created by the thoughts of anybody.

More or less agree. Pointing out my disagreements here would mostly be splitting hairs.... how unlike me not to follow through! xD

As for your physical experiences, you talk about you pushing the world, and it pushing back. But this is not quite accurate-- the subjective truth of it is that you experience pushing the world, and you experience it pushing back.

...That's what I said. And I didn't merely mean "pushing" in the sense of actual pushing, but interacting with and affecting me, even though on idealism one has no good reason to expect that one's experience of the world should in fact include the world affecting us even in ways we aren't consciously aware of (after all, under idealism only that which is a mental substance exists).

Physicality of the gaps?

No, it means by the "self" we mean a mental image of ourself that is entirely built up from our physical experience. So if you take that away I no longer have any idea what you're even talking about.

No. No matter how convincing and important your experiences are to you, they necessarily precede your interpretations of what they mean. It is the experiences which are themselves self-validating and fundamentally real, not your interpretations of where those experiences come from? Don't believe me? One word-- dreams.

It's not about importance, it's about what you start with, which is the physical.

[bennyboy]

...That's what I said. And I didn't merely mean "pushing" in the sense of actual pushing, but interacting with and affecting me, even though on idealism one has no good reason to expect that one's experience of the world should in fact include the world affecting us even in ways we aren't consciously aware of (after all, under idealism only that which is a mental substance exists).

Why not? In a reality composed entirely of ideas, concepts, and experiences, why wouldn't they?

Physicality of the gaps?

No, it means by the "self" we mean a mental image of ourself that is entirely built up from our physical experience. So if you take that away I no longer have any idea what you're even talking about.

Why qualify "experience" with "physical"? It sounds like you're trying to piggyback one philosophical context onto another one.


Let me clarify-- I'm not trying to replace physicalist objectivity and the concistency of our shared physical knowledge with a pseudo-solipsistic idealism. I'm saying that physicalism may be seen as a child node of idealism, but not vice versa: i.e. that it's possible to resolve all we can experience, including physics, down to concepts, but not vice versa. All the things we know about the universe, including brain function and its relationship to thought, can be ideas. However, the idea that consciousness, which is intrinsically subjective, is a child node to a physical monism, which is intrinsically objective, is absurd.

Ironicially, it is largely science which leads me to idealism. Science serves very much to undermine our normal view of what things ARE. For example, the idea that a table is 99.999999% empty space, and that even that .00000001% which is "stuff" is slippery, ambiguous, possibly-random stuff that can only be represented statistically, makes much more sense in a universe of ideas. This is because ideas can be both abstract and concrete, both well-defined and ill-defined. Physical "stuff" isn't supposed to be all those things, at least not in a definition where an objective reality is supposed to really have meaning.

Let me put it this way: where can something be both a wave and a particle? Where can a cat be both alive and dead at the same time until Schrodinger opens its box? I'd contend a mental reality would accomodate that kind of paradox and ambiguity much better than a physical one.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The third substance is an obsolete objection from the mechanistic notions of 19th century physics.