Contra Metaphysical Idealism

[Chas]

We cannot see electrons, but we can detect them. You asked what they looked like. Please show me your angel detector.

As I have already said, idealism doesn't undermine the concepts about relationships of properties. The transfer of energy via photons, etc., and the existence of electrons, are perfectly acceptable. The issue is whether those things are all existent objects, of which our ideas are representative, or whether they are reducible ONLY to ideas.

For example, is a particle represented BY a wave function, or is it actually a wave function brought into relation with other wave functions in a space-time framework? Answer this if you're feeling confident-- all matter is made up of elemental particles. And for something to be said to exist physically, it must take up volume and be located in space. So what's the volume of an elemental particle?

(quickly Googled): http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/27337...ical-size/

No, it is not represented completely in the realm of ideas - its existence is verifiable independently by anyone and everyone.

Not quite right-- there are some experiences which seem to be shareable with others, and because they are common to all, they are considered to have some underlying objective truth. However, that underlying truth may be purely idealistic (for example, a collection of mathematical relationships), with no loss.

Take, for example, any of the surfaces that you can see around your computer. Do they exist as more than ideas? No. Even in science, there is nothing but particles, with 99.999999% space between them. So what is that solid book you're looking at right now? It's an idea-- that contiguous surface is no more solid than the Milky Way. Now take a dream book. You can dream objects in HD, as though you were really seeing them. Is your mind recreating a gazillion particles? No. You are imagining the idea of book-ness-- the qualia describing what a book IS LIKE.

That's our reality.

If reality were reducible to thought, then we dreamed up 13.78 billion years of the universe that existed before we did.

For your contention to be true, ancient Homo sapiens would have to have dreamt up a universe that acts like the universe modern man has dreamed up.

Your concepts are self contradicting, essentially incoherent.