Eugene wrote:No, I was talking about the existence in a different sense - in the "actual"/"existential" sense. Materialists claim that matter not only exists as images in the sense-world, but it actually fully exists as reality apart from consciousness. And they actually hold this idea in their individual minds that " matter actually exists as reality apart from consciousness". Now, they indeed hold this idea and consciously experience it from their 1-st person perspective. Yet this fact that they hold this idea does not mean that matter actually exists as reality apart from consciousness.
This question requires us to stop thinking in the modern way of both materialists and idealists. Let me put it this way - under my formulation of idealism, what we perceive in the world is meaning. That is actual, existing meaning. Consciousness and Meaning are identical, in my view (which I know is not the only idealist view or even the dominant one, since Kant-Schopenhauer view would reject that). Also, I think we can all agree that, under any metaphysical formulation, what can be experienced-known is limited to our 1st-person perspective, in principle. So, from our 1st-person perspective, can we say there are aspects of the world we experience which are actually devoid of meaning, thereby validating the materialist assertion that "matter" devoid of consciousness (meaning) actually exists? No and, potentially, yes.
No, because even the most deadened 'thing' I perceive in the world, like a rock or a dust particle under a microscope, will carry some elementary meaning when I perceive it. Potentially yes, because I can imagine a future state in which the Spirit (meaning) is so withdrawn from the sense-world that I am basically catatonic, not perceiving anything including meaning. That could naturally follow from the progression that has been occurring for a few thousand years now. Again, this formulation will make no sense if we assume a 3rd-person perspective by which we can observe the Cosmos and say, since Consciousness-Spirit-Meaning is fundamental, it must be everywhere even when I am completely unable to perceive it. To say that is to skip over the entire point of distinguishing Spirit from matter in the first place, which is to express a relation between the two from my 1st-person perspective.