RE: Contra Metaphysical Idealism
April 2, 2014 at 1:49 am
(This post was last modified: April 2, 2014 at 1:51 am by 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.
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.
Quote: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?
Quote: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.
