My case for an Idealistic Monism

[bennyboy]

When I experience a knock on the head, I start inferring ideas about hammers or rocks-- that when a hammer hits my head, it will hurt, or that a rock when held up and let go will always fall to the ground. Whatever the actual reality of hammers and rocks (or of myself) is, I can still make those inferences based on direct experience.

Whenever a brick falls on my foot, I feel the "whatness" of pain, but not the "whatness" of the physical brick. On monistic idealism, this becomes a mystery, that we have to infer the whatness of the brick, and don't experience it directly. On physicalism, it makes sense because the brick isn't an idea, but a cause, affecting nerves that "instruct" the brain / mind to feel pain. On physicalism there is no need to explain away why a brick falling on the foot doesn't impart its whatness to our perception directly.

Interesting point, and I still haven't delved fully into what you were saying about QM!

There's no problem with having mental processes that appear objective to an individual. I accept that nerves, brains, and electrical reactions are part of my body of ideas learned through experience-- in some cases, direct experience, in some cases, not. For idealism to be real, it has to incorporate ALL our experiences, and these include the existence and arrangement of objects in space, and physical inquiries made in science. A brick can still hit a foot, sending a signal to a brain, the brain chemistry still happens and the experience of pain occurs.

The difference is that the underlying nature of those things and processes is reducible not to objects and their properties, but to concepts.