My case for an Idealistic Monism

[ManMachine]

Your answer to every difficulty seems to be to postulate that whatever problematic stuff you're faced with is, "just another kind of idea." Beyond the fact that this ends up as an explanation that doesn't really explain why each of these ideas is the way it is — resulting in an explanation that doesn't actually explain anything — you end up with the world being carved up in much the same way that it was carved up before you postulated that it's all "ideas," only replacing the "stuff" it's made up of being postulated to be made up of "mind" rather than made up of "reality." It seems the only benefit is to save the original internal mind stuff from needing to be explained, while creating greater mysteries which you can't resolve with appeal to anything but making everything a "brute idea."

Was that a reply to me?

[archangle]

any thought you have is because of the state of the brain at that time.

aint to complicated.

[Neo-Scholastic]

any thought you have is because of the state of the brain at that time.

aint to complicated.

Neither are you.

[bennyboy]

Your answer to every difficulty seems to be to postulate that whatever problematic stuff you're faced with is, "just another kind of idea." Beyond the fact that this ends up as an explanation that doesn't really explain why each of these ideas is the way it is — resulting in an explanation that doesn't actually explain anything — you end up with the world being carved up in much the same way that it was carved up before you postulated that it's all "ideas," only replacing the "stuff" it's made up of being postulated to be made up of "mind" rather than made up of "reality." It seems the only benefit is to save the original internal mind stuff from needing to be explained, while creating greater mysteries which you can't resolve with appeal to anything but making everything a "brute idea," similar to making everything a "brute fact." I don't see what, besides consciousness, is rescued by this approach.

I think most of what you're saying is right. An idealistic universe still doesn't explain why there is mind rather than an absence of it. There are still mysteries about how interfaces work-- how individual subjective minds interface through a mental universe, for example. So as a Theory of Everything, idealism doesn't put us much further ahead. My point about idealism is that all the physical "stuff" can be looked at as an idea quite readily-- we dream about stuff all the time, and can experience touching it, feeling it, or seeing it. looking at mind and ideas as members of a physical universe, however, makes much less sense. I can't see your "what it's like to eat chocolate," or touch it, or measure it in any meaningful way.

With regard to idealistic and physicalistic processes of inference, I think the direction is important. When I experience a knock on the head, I start inferring ideas about hammers or rocks-- that when a hammer hits my head, it will hurt, or that a rock when held up and let go will always fall to the ground. Whatever the actual reality of hammers and rocks (or of myself) is, I can still make those inferences based on direct experience. Whether it's a dream hammer, a Matrix hammer, a BIJ hammer, a physical monist hammer, a Mind of God hammer-- none of it matters, because my reality is determined by experiences and the ideas I infer from them, and is not really dependent on source attributions.

Looking at things through a physical monist view, however, is messier. I have to accept that the "real" world which my experiences seem to indicate really is what I think it is. An idealistic monism, with all the problems and mysteries it still carries, therefore requires at least one less assumption-- and that assumption is a real doozy.

---

any thought you have is because of the state of the brain at that time.

aint to complicated.

Neeither iz speling.

[ManMachine]

I think most of what you're saying is right. An idealistic universe still doesn't explain why there is mind rather than an absence of it. There are still mysteries about how interfaces work-- how individual subjective minds interface through a mental universe, for example. So as a Theory of Everything, idealism doesn't put us much further ahead. My point about idealism is that all the physical "stuff" can be looked at as an idea quite readily-- we dream about stuff all the time, and can experience touching it, feeling it, or seeing it. looking at mind and ideas as members of a physical universe, however, makes much less sense. I can't see your "what it's like to eat chocolate," or touch it, or measure it in any meaningful way.

With regard to idealistic and physicalistic processes of inference, I think the direction is important. When I experience a knock on the head, I start inferring ideas about hammers or rocks-- that when a hammer hits my head, it will hurt, or that a rock when held up and let go will always fall to the ground. Whatever the actual reality of hammers and rocks (or of myself) is, I can still make those inferences based on direct experience. Whether it's a dream hammer, a Matrix hammer, a BIJ hammer, a physical monist hammer, a Mind of God hammer-- none of it matters, because my reality is determined by experiences and the ideas I infer from them, and is not really dependent on source attributions.

Looking at things through a physical monist view, however, is messier. I have to accept that the "real" world which my experiences seem to indicate really is what I think it is. An idealistic monism, with all the problems and mysteries it still carries, therefore requires at least one less assumption-- and that assumption is a real doozy.

Consider that mind, thought and idea are not abstractions of experience but are formed and framed by differential relationships. This 'framing' does not rely on any internal identity, unlike Plato's forms or Kant's pure reason they do not transcend possible experience; instead they are the conditions of actual experience.

Deleuze calls this transcendental empiricism, in contrast to Kantian transcendental idealism.

On monism, Deleuze inverts Spinoza, who maintained that everything that exists is a modification of the one substance. For Deleuze, there is no one substance, only an always-differentiating process, an origami cosmos, always folding, unfolding, refolding. Deleuze summarizes this ontology in the paradoxical formula "pluralism = monism." (Giles Deleuze, The Fold).


MM

[Angrboda]

When I experience a knock on the head, I start inferring ideas about hammers or rocks-- that when a hammer hits my head, it will hurt, or that a rock when held up and let go will always fall to the ground. Whatever the actual reality of hammers and rocks (or of myself) is, I can still make those inferences based on direct experience.

Whenever a brick falls on my foot, I feel the "whatness" of pain, but not the "whatness" of the physical brick. On monistic idealism, this becomes a mystery, that we have to infer the whatness of the brick, and don't experience it directly. On physicalism, it makes sense because the brick isn't an idea, but a cause, affecting nerves that "instruct" the brain / mind to feel pain. On physicalism there is no need to explain away why a brick falling on the foot doesn't impart its whatness to our perception directly.

[bennyboy]

When I experience a knock on the head, I start inferring ideas about hammers or rocks-- that when a hammer hits my head, it will hurt, or that a rock when held up and let go will always fall to the ground. Whatever the actual reality of hammers and rocks (or of myself) is, I can still make those inferences based on direct experience.

Whenever a brick falls on my foot, I feel the "whatness" of pain, but not the "whatness" of the physical brick. On monistic idealism, this becomes a mystery, that we have to infer the whatness of the brick, and don't experience it directly. On physicalism, it makes sense because the brick isn't an idea, but a cause, affecting nerves that "instruct" the brain / mind to feel pain. On physicalism there is no need to explain away why a brick falling on the foot doesn't impart its whatness to our perception directly.

Interesting point, and I still haven't delved fully into what you were saying about QM!

There's no problem with having mental processes that appear objective to an individual. I accept that nerves, brains, and electrical reactions are part of my body of ideas learned through experience-- in some cases, direct experience, in some cases, not. For idealism to be real, it has to incorporate ALL our experiences, and these include the existence and arrangement of objects in space, and physical inquiries made in science. A brick can still hit a foot, sending a signal to a brain, the brain chemistry still happens and the experience of pain occurs.

The difference is that the underlying nature of those things and processes is reducible not to objects and their properties, but to concepts.

[Whateverist]

any thought you have is because of the state of the brain at that time.

aint to complicated.

Neither are you.

Point to ChadWooters. Play on.