Contra Metaphysical Idealism
April 1, 2014 at 8:45 pm
(This post was last modified: April 1, 2014 at 8:46 pm by 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):
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.
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):
Quote: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.
