The Meaninglessness of Meaning

[Mudhammam]

You know my feelings on this: what is apparently physical works just fine as a collection of ideas (about experienced properties and the things which seemingly underly them).  However, it seems to me that consciousness fits much more poorly into a physicalist perspective.

The only thing holding us back from an idealist word view is that physicalism just feels so darned convincing-- until we remember that feeling, itself, is nothing more than an idea.  So if there ever was a blue pill, you've already taken it, long ago.

Ironically, meaning is accepted for the same reason that most of us (at least implicitly) accept physicalism-- that the sense of certainty about it seems to validate it with no further inquiry required.

The basic ideas of Kantian idealism, which, like all of them, I tend to view as resulting in skepticism and agnosticism, seem to me to make it a much, much better candidate than its Platonic or Berkeleian siblings. I still can't get past what I believe are major problems, namely, that while I don't want to wholly lose myself, I also don't think it deserves the elevated position idealists give the self - I'm with them epistemologically but metaphysically I can't justify giving my consciousness such prominence in the totality of things. What says you?

I wonder if existentialism aligns more comfortably with idealism?