(April 2, 2014 at 1:49 am)bennyboy Wrote: 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)Quote: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
Quote: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).
Quote: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.
Quote: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.
