A Conscious Universe

[FallentoReason]

This is my version of Idealism, and there's a thread about it already. I won't link it, though, because it would be epic necro.

Ah, my bad. I haven't been around these areas for a while, or consistently enough, so I may have missed that thread!

As I see it, there's no way to "prove" that the material world exists. All you can really say is that the relationships among objects in our experience are consistently true, which makes the material model of experience very useful. Whether a bridge is data, or a collection of formulas which manifest as an experience, or an idea in the mind of God, or just a physical thing in an actually-existent space, it's going to stand up if made properly, and you are going to get hurt if you jump off of it.

I completely agree there.

I do not like the process of taking a philosophical position of convenience, i.e. that there's a real physical universe, and then using physical observations to prove that philosophical position. This seems to me to represent a nasty circle, akin to God and the Bible supporting each other.

Agreed. I think that's why Descartes was so revolutionary, because he began his project with a clean slate, and logically tried to formulate a theory. I don't agree that God is necessary in his conclusion though.

It seems to me that the relationships we have labeled the "physical universe" work just as well as ideas as they do as existent "things," but that the mental world does NOT work well when expressed in physicalist terms.

Precisely. And it's not just a matter of being ignorant of how consciousness works physically. It's that there are conceptual inconsistencies, things that physics inherently can't posses, that we know the mind does. Unless you want to take the road less traveled and say that consciousness itself is an illusion.