The Doctrine of Idealism Explained

[Petros Agapetos]

Idealism in Bertrand Russell’s Problems of Philosophy

Idealism is the doctrine that asserts whatever exists must be mental in nature – minds and their ‘ideas’. Idealism holds that material substance does not exist, that is matter – the collection of physical objects - exists, but is mental in nature. The term ‘idea’ is meant to refer to anything with which a mind is immediately acquainted with, such as sense data, memories and imaginings [P*,39]. Idealism asserts that nothing can exist except what can be perceived either by (human and animal) minds or by an ultimate mind, God. Berkeley’s Idealism holds that physical objects are ideas in the mind of God, and these objects retain their existence as long as God is perceiving them.[P*, 39]

Berkeley’s Argument for the Truth of Idealism
1. ‘Ideas’ (e.g. sense data) are dependent on a mind in the sense that they require being sensed or apprehended in order to exist.
2. Anything dependent on the mind is itself mental in its nature. A mind is only immediately aware of ‘ideas’ (sense data).
3. A mind can only know the objects with which it is immediately acquainted with from the first person point of view, such as 'ideas' = sense data, memories, imaginings etc.
4. What exists doesn't ever go beyond what can be known, and what is inconceivable cannot exist [P*14]
Conclusion: All that exists is minds and their ideas. Nothing can ever be known to exist that is not mental in nature. Whatever can be known to exist must be either a mind or an idea in a mind. [P*,38]

A valid argument is one in which the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion. If it is not possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false then the argument is valid. In order to test for this, we assume the premises are true and assume the conclusion is false and see if a contradiction arises. If a contradiction does arise then the argument is valid. The validity of Berkeley’s argument for Idealism (reconstructed by Russell) is demonstrated by the fact that, in this argument, there is no possibility for the premises to be true but the conclusion false. If all the premises are true, then all that exists must be mental in nature, but if the conclusion is false then something can exist that is not in some mind or not mental in nature. A contradiction arises, therefore the argument is valid. Since the argument is valid, the only way to defeat it is to undermine at least one of its premises, thus showing that the argument is unsound. If the conclusion is in fact false then at least one of the premises must be false.

Berkeley’s argument for the truth of Idealism may be denied as unsound on the grounds that it equivocates different meanings of the terms ‘idea’ and ‘know’ and uses the expression ‘in the mind’ ambiguously, all of which produces fallacies of equivocation which result in the conclusion that whatever can be apprehended must be in the mind [P*,42]. Russell draws our attention to the distinction between ideas of things (such as sense data) which can be in our minds versus the things in and of themselves (physical objects). [P*40] Similarly, while our sensations of sense data are mental in nature, this alone gives no reason to suppose that the objects of sensation, the sense data, are mental themselves. [P*, 41] On Russel’s account both the thing apprehended and the apprehension of the thing can be considered ‘ideas’, While the idea of a thing apprehended is mental, this gives no reason to suppose that the thing itself is mental. Therefore Premise 2 may be denied since it is only true when ‘in the mind’ refers to being dependent on the mind, rather than being literally located in the mind. Russell gives two different meanings of the word ‘know’, one is knowledge by acquaintance or ‘knowledge of things’ (such as sense data, of which a mind is immediately aware), the other is knowledge by description or ‘knowledge of truths’ (for example, ‘matter is composed of atoms and molecules’). The mind is not directly acquainted with truths about nature, however this doesn’t limit the mind’s ability to know these truths by description, which is a different form of knowing. [P*,44] Therefore Premise 3 may also be denied, on the ground that it is only true when ‘know’ is meant to refer to knowledge by acquaintance. The argument for the truth of Idealism seems convincing only because it uses the terms ‘idea’, ‘know’, and ‘in the mind’ ambiguously.

The Idealist could start responding to my objection by making a distinction between phenomena occupying physical space (e.g. light of frequency ‘blue’, the eyes, and the brain) and those occupying mental space (e.g. blue colour). If two phenomena occupy distinct domains and have properties of different nature (i.e. physical vs. mental) then the phenomena are distinct. A mind can know ‘blueness’ by acquaintance, but the physical properties of blue light only by description. A mind perceives the appearance of reality rather than reality in itself. Therefore there is no non-question begging deductive argument that would guarantee the existence of blue light from the mere perception of blueness that one perceives when looking at the appearance of blue light, namely its colour. Since, for all we know, the blue light doesn’t exist, yet we receive sense data in such a way that makes it appear as though the data are coming from an external world. Since sense data don’t have the properties of physical objects and vice versa, they cannot be physical in nature, and since they are not physical and they are ‘in’ the mind, then they could be mental. If the world is to be subdivided into only the physical and the mental domains, then it would follow that sense data must be mental in nature. If the Idealist further contends that mental space is causally closed, i.e. that mental causes have mental effects and vice versa, then it would follow that sense data are mental effects caused by physical objects which must be mental causes, and therefore what we think of as the material world is actually mental in nature.

[P*, page#] – “Bertrand Russel The Problems of Philosophy With a New Introduction by John Perry” – Oxford University Press 1997

[Petros Agapetos]

The Matrix Argument for Idealism

There are certain questions to which philosophy cannot give conclusive answers. Among these questions are the question of the existence of the physical world and the problem of the justification of induction. As one looks at blue light, the blueness one perceives is in the mind, yet the physical object, the light of frequency ‘blue’, belongs to the domain of the physical world and has physical properties, such as having a certain frequency and being located in time and space as well as being determinate, public, and persistent in nature. While objects which are perceived by the mind, the blueness of the light, have the properties of sense data, they are indeterminate, private, and instantaneous, and belong to the domain of the mind. If two things have different properties and belong to domains of a different nature, they are distinct. Therefore sense data (blueness) and physical objects (light of frequency blue) are distinct. Any attempt to verify the existence of public and persistent objects by the testimony of other conscious agents who perceive the physical objects would be circular because it would presuppose that those conscious agents exist in the first place and aren’t merely the result of sense data alone. Therefore there can be no non question begging deductive argument for the existence of blue light by the mere sensation of blueness that one sees when looking at blue light. No contradiction arises from the supposition that sense data are as they are yet physical objects, like light of frequency blue, do not underlie them, and sense data are perceived in such a way as to create the illusion that they are coming from an external world while in reality they could merely be correlated with collections of sense data induced in the mind. The mind being a pattern seeking entity infers to the best possible explanation for the determinate, public and persistent apparent nature of physical objects, namely that they exist. The belief that the material world exists harmonizes our experience of sense data and is an instinctive belief that cannot be definitively demonstrated by any deductive argument. There is a genuine limitation in the ability of philosophy to give an answer to the question of the existence of the material world. It is naïve to suppose philosophy could give us a definitive answer.

[Heather Duval]

hm

[Iloko]

Quantum Physics has almost pretty much proven Idealism to be true

[Hexachordia]

Modern analytical philosophy should take a relativist stand. It means, most analytical methods(mostly pioneered by Mr Bertrand Russell) are only valid within specified fields of interest, which are today best represented in the form of professionalism or sociological(economic/political) ethics. I will retain my own eastern holistic/monist tendency, because analytical methods lead to no general answers that can be acceptable to the entirety of humanity, not even to the entireties of a distinct nation or a cultural group, BUT we definitely need it. Mr Bertrand Russell is definitely one of the best philosophers in world history even though I might not agree with him all the time. I am collecting his complete essays, highly recommended to people who are interested in fine modern thinkings, of course, these are not corrupted postmodernist garbage, and neo-esotericism shite.

[Odin]

[sean]

Idealism is the belief that all things exist as an idea in the mind - or more specifically, as an idea in someone's mind. "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?" The philosophical idealist would say "no".

George Berkeley, a famous idealist philosopher, found that his views were dismissed as idiotic by some of his peers. It's said that one of his opponents closed his eyes and kicked a stone, his point was that if the stone really existed only in the man's mind, he should not have been able to kick it with his eyes closed.

Berkeley’s refutation of this was a bit troublesome, especially in modern eyes. He stated that there existed an all-powerful and omnipresent God, who perceived everyone and everything simultaneously.

However, idealism isn't committed to the claim that only things that we experience are real. Take, for instance, the existence of other galaxies: before Hubble, we weren't aware that the universe contained other galaxies (and thereby, we didn't even have a good concept of a galaxy). But that would require an idealist to say that there were no galaxies until we observed/"experienced" them.

It would just mean that what galaxies are, and the ways in which they can be accurately described, are to be understood in terms of the concept of a galaxy. An idealist can perfectly well say that we learned that there are galaxies, not that galaxies popped into existence when we gained the concept.

Idealism doesn't necessarily deny noumena - Kant's transcendental idealism being a rather noteworthy example. Kant argues that objects are constituted in part by the categories of the understanding (the point of the Transcendental Deduction), but this is compatible with his claim that we can't have knowledge of things in themselves. The fact that we can't have knowledge of things in themselves means that we can't so much as claim that there are objects we lack knowledge of, since ascribing them the unity of an object is a basic knowledge-claim.