Debunking idealism old and new

[Jim Cross]

Well, if you've been paying attention at all, BK has gone to great lengths in books, papers, blog posts, and interviews to make a comprehensive case for why he has delineated his take from Berkelely's take, explicating why and how he significantly diverges from it. Not sure BK is even aware of Lanza's version, but I suspect he would also argue that it's lacking. Nor can BK's version be easily lumped in with Vedanta or Buddhist versions, whatever tangential comparables there may be. And while there is some common ground to be found with Hoffman, there are also some hard to reconcile differences—i.e. Hoffman doesn't limit conscious agency to metabolizing lifeforms. So given that Tam Hunt makes no mention of BK's work, and may well not have delved into it at all, which no doubt BK would argue is distinct from the versions that TH is critiquing, if he were to thoroughly investigate it, and they were to actually have a nuanced discussion about it, for all we know he might be more amenable to it. Now, of course, we will await the case to be made that TH should just bypass BK's version, and all of those other versions he refers to, and go directly to Steiner's version, if he wants to understand what idealism truly is.

Agree that Tam should have addressed BK's version.

However, you say BK is different from Berkeley, I don't see how it is significantly different since it still requires a mind-at-large which, although different from God, is still something for which there is no evidence nor any certain sure way to obtain evidence.

This topic was created somewhat as a response to Czinczar's post but I didn't want to take that topic off-topic so I created this.

Idealists make a good point, which Tam and I agree with, that all we know of the world is in our consciousness. The problem becomes in trying to extend that observation to any broader understanding of the world. A critique of materialism does not by itself become an argument for idealism. The core problem, which Tam identifies, is explaining "intersubjective" agreement.

Do you see the blatant dualism being employed in the very first sentence? Tam writes, "First, I want to establish where I agree with these thinkers: I agree that the world we know, each of us in our heads here and now, is entirely created in our minds, presumably by our brains and the various senses that feed into our brains." So she is not only importing dualism into her argument but into the arguments of "these [idealist] thinkers" as well.

Perhaps you agree with subject-object dualism. But the point is, do you see why assuming a metaphysical position at the very outset of a philosophical or scientific inquiry makes the rest of the reasoning worthless? And, if you or anyone else did not spot this dualism until after I pointed it out here, they should really ask themselves how often they fail to spot metaphysical assumptions when evaluating philosophical or scientific arguments.

I don't see the first sentence as any sort of metaphysical argument at all. It is simply a statement of what he believes.

The topic is debunking idealism and the core argument relates to intersubjective agreement or what BK calls shared world.

Why do we agree on how the world works if there is not something common different from our own personal subjective experience?

Do you have anything to offer on that question?

[AshvinP]

Agree that Tam should have addressed BK's version.

However, you say BK is different from Berkeley, I don't see how it is significantly different since it still requires a mind-at-large which, although different from God, is still something for which there is no evidence nor any certain sure way to obtain evidence.

This topic was created somewhat as a response to Czinczar's post but I didn't want to take that topic off-topic so I created this.

Idealists make a good point, which Tam and I agree with, that all we know of the world is in our consciousness. The problem becomes in trying to extend that observation to any broader understanding of the world. A critique of materialism does not by itself become an argument for idealism. The core problem, which Tam identifies, is explaining "intersubjective" agreement.

Do you see the blatant dualism being employed in the very first sentence? Tam writes, "First, I want to establish where I agree with these thinkers: I agree that the world we know, each of us in our heads here and now, is entirely created in our minds, presumably by our brains and the various senses that feed into our brains." So she is not only importing dualism into her argument but into the arguments of "these [idealist] thinkers" as well.

Perhaps you agree with subject-object dualism. But the point is, do you see why assuming a metaphysical position at the very outset of a philosophical or scientific inquiry makes the rest of the reasoning worthless? And, if you or anyone else did not spot this dualism until after I pointed it out here, they should really ask themselves how often they fail to spot metaphysical assumptions when evaluating philosophical or scientific arguments.

I don't see the first sentence as any sort of metaphysical argument at all. It is simply a statement of what he believes.

OK that's all I wanted to clear up here. That, even after I point it out to you, you still don't perceive it. I learn a lot from these brief exchanges we have, Jim

The topic is debunking idealism and the core argument relates to intersubjective agreement or what BK calls shared world.

Why do we agree on how the world works if there is not something common different from our own personal subjective experience?

Do you have anything to offer on that question?

Because we do, in fact, live in a shared reality with no essential 'personal' boundaries. There are no atomized subjects separated from each other, despite our naive perception of them. What is common to our experience is our essential nature as ever-evolving ideational Being.

[Jim Cross]

Because we do, in fact, live in a shared reality with no essential 'personal' boundaries.

That's a ridiculous statement. I'm different from the tree in my backyard. I assume you are too.

At least BK acknowledges there are boundaries.

[AshvinP]

Because we do, in fact, live in a shared reality with no essential 'personal' boundaries.

That's a ridiculous statement. I'm different from the tree in my backyard. I assume you are too.

At least BK acknowledges there are boundaries.

No educated scientists claim there are hard 'personal boundaries' anymore, not even in biology. These are very outdated naive realist views. That is why I often point out how BK's idealism and physicalism, of the sort you lobby for here, for are two sides of the same coin. You guys are only arguing over who can call the other's naive realism "wrong" or "right" by labeling the Ground as 'mind', 'matter', or 'emptiness'.

But consider the following thought experiment. Imagine an extraterrestrial humanoid life form whose mode of visual recognition was based on the enumeration of the material components that make up particular [manifestations] of general types, rather than on the identification of the general types that are instantiated by particular [manifestations]. Imagine, further, that this alien lands on Earth at a particular location and encounters two dogs: a living dog and a robotic dog. The alien scans the two dogs, catalogues their material constitution for future identification, and returns home. A few years later, the alien returns to Earth to the same location and faces the two dogs it encountered in its first trip. Despite being in the presence of the same two dogs, the alien’s cognitive apparatus is such that he is only able to identify the robotic dog and not the living one. From the alien’s perspective, the living dog of the first trip has faded out of existence, and an entirely different living dog has taken its place. What this admittedly fanciful thought experiment is meant to illustrate is that, if one focuses on matter rather than on form and allows for a sufficiently extended period of time, the stream-like nature of macroscopic organisms becomes perfectly evident. The fact that this does not happen to be easily perceptible to us does not make it any less true or important.

- Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Science (2018)

[Jim Cross]

No educated scientists claim there are hard 'personal boundaries' anymore, not even in biology.

Now you've changed the statement and added the qualifier "hard". So you are acknowledging boundaries. You are different from a tree.

Good to know.

But that is irrelevant to the argument. You need to explain why there is a shared reality and why the shared reality is clearly different in quality from our consciousness of it.

[AshvinP]

No educated scientists claim there are hard 'personal boundaries' anymore, not even in biology.

Now you've changed the statement and added the qualifier "hard". So you are acknowledging boundaries. You are different from a tree.

Good to know.

But that is irrelevant to the argument. You need to explain why there is a shared reality and why the shared reality is clearly different in quality from our consciousness of it.

Jim,

You are piling on assumptions after assumptions, or what you called previously "beliefs", and then asking people to explain to you how we can make sense of Reality with your dualistic assumptions and blindly held beliefs. This cannot be done because your assumptions don't reflect Reality whatsoever. You have the made the explanation of 'shared reality' you are seeking impossible and don't realize it, so then you blame everyone else for not being able to explain it to you. This is metaphysical hyper-abstraction mode and is completely unncessary. Shared reality is immanent to our experience every moment we think through reality, which is every moment we are awake.

I am not acknowledging any ontic boundaries. The fact that we are communicating right now and able to understand what is being communicated (despite the increasing divergence because of abstract metaphysics) by itself makes your dualistic assumption unwarranted. Everything about our knowing inquiries into the world content makes your assumption unwarranted. Modern science positively disproves your assumption, but you entirely avoided responding to the quote I provided.

I have pointed out all that needs to be pointed out for anyone else, so I will stop now.

[Jim Cross]

What dualistic assumption is that?

I'm making no dualistic assumption. I'm just saying reality is not solely mental. That's it.

The rationale is that shared reality differs in quality from private consciousness so it cannot be solely mental. It does not have the characteristics of consciousness.

What it is I didn't say.

[AshvinP]

What dualistic assumption is that?

I'm making no dualistic assumption. I'm just saying reality is not solely mental. That's it.

The rationale is that shared reality differs in quality from private consciousness so it cannot be solely mental. It does not have the characteristics of consciousness.

What it is I didn't say.

You are positing a "shared reality" in opposition to a "private consciousness" from the outset. That is dualistic assumption.

[Jim Cross]

What dualistic assumption is that?

I'm making no dualistic assumption. I'm just saying reality is not solely mental. That's it.

The rationale is that shared reality differs in quality from private consciousness so it cannot be solely mental. It does not have the characteristics of consciousness.

What it is I didn't say.

You are positing a "shared reality" in opposition to a "private consciousness" from the outset. That is dualistic assumption.

I'm not ruling that there might be n underlying unity between "shared reality" and "private consciousness. I'm saying it can't be solely mental. You could draw the conclusion it is something other than mental. Not-mental doesn't necessarily mean matter. It could be something we haven't thought of yet.

[Soul_of_Shu]

What dualistic assumption is that?

I'm making no dualistic assumption. I'm just saying reality is not solely mental. That's it.

So I guess you're open to a 'panpsychism' premise that whatever physicalist 'matter' is reducible to, i.e. vacuum state fluctuations, such a state is not solely non-mental. Because if it is, you're back to matter/mind dualism ... no?