RE: Contra Metaphysical Idealism
April 7, 2014 at 10:04 pm
(This post was last modified: April 7, 2014 at 10:38 pm by MindForgedManacle.)
(April 4, 2014 at 9:44 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Why not? In a reality composed entirely of ideas, concepts, and experiences, why wouldn't they?
Because those things in the world move beyond merely things of which I am consciously aware of, which on the idealist view is all that exists. And it makes nonsensical the belief that anything happens that affects a person in a surprising way. Think about it: on an idealist view, why does touching a hot stove hurt, and consistently so, and only when the person in question has a properly functioning nervous system? Under an idealist worldview, there should be no such consistency since the only reason reality is as it is, is because of the way minds think of it.
Quote:Why qualify "experience" with "physical"? It sounds like you're trying to piggyback one philosophical context onto another one.
Because the "experience" has certain features that are effectively inexplicable under a non-physicalist metaphysics.
Quote:Let me clarify-- I'm not trying to replace physicalist objectivity and the concistency of our shared physical knowledge with a pseudo-solipsistic idealism. I'm saying that physicalism may be seen as a child node of idealism, but not vice versa: i.e. that it's possible to resolve all we can experience, including physics, down to concepts, but not vice versa. All the things we know about the universe, including brain function and its relationship to thought, can be ideas. However, the idea that consciousness, which is intrinsically subjective, is a child node to a physical monism, which is intrinsically objective, is absurd.
Well, there are several problems that come to light there. Firstly, then what you are really supporting is not metaphysical idealism per se, but something like an indirect metaphysical realism in which there is, unless I'm mistaken, an objective world apart from observation or minds, but which cannot actually be "seen" by minds as it is in itself, which is the position I hold.
Secondly, it's not even clear how that [subjectivity of consciousness] makes it absurd if viewed as nested within physicalism, unless you hold that the inverse is also absurd.
Quote:Ironicially, it is largely science which leads me to idealism. Science serves very much to undermine our normal view of what things ARE. For example, the idea that a table is 99.999999% empty space, and that even that .00000001% which is "stuff" is slippery, ambiguous, possibly-random stuff that can only be represented statistically, makes much more sense in a universe of ideas. This is because ideas can be both abstract and concrete, both well-defined and ill-defined. Physical "stuff" isn't supposed to be all those things, at least not in a definition where an objective reality is supposed to really have meaning.
I think that's actually a fallacy of reification and a subtle argument from ignorance. You basically said something to the effect of: "Science shows that aspects of the world we experience is weird and random; under idealism it would make sense if the world was weird and random. Therefore science supports idealism."
Further, you are actually attacking a straw man. Sure, 19th century materialism, which is not the same as physicalism, has been hammered by science. However, the basics still remain: reality at it's most fundamental and durable level is composed of matter/energy/fields and their interactions, and spacetime which is definitely not an idealist-friendly position.
Quote:Let me put it this way: where can something be both a wave and a particle? Where can a cat be both alive and dead at the same time until Schrodinger opens its box? I'd contend a mental reality would accomodate that kind of paradox and ambiguity much better than a physical one.
Strictly speaking, things AREN'T a wave and a particle. Particles are perturbations in quantum fields. All that Schrödinger's equation does is describe particles as a wave-function.
And I just have to say, anyone that takes Schrödinger's Cat, which was just a thought experiment, literally doesn't understand it.
This guy is helpful, given he's an actual physicist. Watch please:
"Regarding Quantum Mechanics and Materialism"
However, I'm going to pose a dilemma for you Benny by combining what Rasetsu said with what I said in the OP:
You either have to be a solipsist or a theist if you're an idealist. To reiterate, idealism says that only things which are thought of exist. This entails that under an idealist metaphysic, there exists "omni-cogniscience", that is, everything is thought of. Thoughts are a mental substance. Hence, idealism necessarily entails the existence of a mental substance that is omni-cognizant. This basically is God, which atheists clearly don't believe in and can provide good reasons to doubt the existence of. The only way to avoid this seems to be solipsism, and say that there is only a single mental substance that is not omni-cognizant.
Are you an idealistic-theist or a solipsist?
