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What are some of the best arguments for idealism?Virtual reality.
chaos_mora wrote: ↑May 25th, 2018, 4:32 pm What are some of the best arguments for idealism? By idealism, I am referring to the philosophical perspective that reality is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or immaterial. I'm very interested in idealism, and I'd like to compile as many good arguments for it as I can within ontology and epistemology.Idealism is properly primary. Your entire concept of the universe is formed inside your head, ultimately informed by your senses and constructed into a system of ideals.
Wiki wrote:Realism (in philosophy) about a given object is the view that this object exists in reality independently of our conceptual scheme. In philosophical terms, these objects are ontologically independent of someone's conceptual scheme, perceptions, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc.
Realism can be applied to many philosophically interesting objects and phenomena: other minds, the past or the future, universals, mathematical entities (such as natural numbers), moral categories, the physical world, and thought.
Realism can also be a view about the nature of reality in general, where it claims that the world exists independent of the mind, as opposed to anti-realist views (like some forms of skepticism and solipsism, which deny the existence of a mind-independent world). Philosophers who profess realism often claim that truth consists in a correspondence between cognitive representations and reality.[1]
ThomasHobbes wrote:Idealism is properly primary. Your entire concept of the universe is formed inside your head, ultimately informed by your senses and constructed into a system of ideals. Everything else, including epistemology, ontology, empiricism, realism - are secondary to that fact.Thomas -- but without the 'realism' of experiencing itself, there could be no experiencing of 'idealism', or of any other experienced object/concept (...including the "entire concept of the universe"). We can't experience objects/concepts if 'experiencing' is not real. We can't see trees, if 'seeing' does not exist.
RJG wrote: ↑July 20th, 2018, 11:39 amYou do not experience the real. That is only a construct of your ideas.ThomasHobbes wrote:Idealism is properly primary. Your entire concept of the universe is formed inside your head, ultimately informed by your senses and constructed into a system of ideals. Everything else, including epistemology, ontology, empiricism, realism - are secondary to that fact.Thomas -- but without the 'realism' of experiencing itself, there could be no experiencing of 'idealism', or of any other experienced object/concept (...including the "entire concept of the universe"). We can't experience objects/concepts if 'experiencing' is not real. We can't see trees, if 'seeing' does not exist.
The experiencing of-X is much more certain/real, and therefore 'primary', than is its object X itself.
ThomasHobbes wrote:You do not experience the real. That is only a construct of your ideas.Agreed. We do not directly experience 'real', we only experience the sensations responsible for constructing the concept of 'real'.
RJG wrote:It is the 'experiencing' itself of these sensations (regardless of its constructions) that is undeniable; hence its "realness".
ThomasHobbes wrote:That's an idea, of course.Yes, but isn't this idea (and all ideas) composed of sensations?
ThomasHobbes wrote: ↑July 20th, 2018, 2:02 pmI don't think that first sentence makes much sense, it would undermine your position, for example. If you are not experiencing the real, then how could you possibly draw conclusions (about what other people are experiencing, for example.). I am not even sure what it means to say one is not experiencing the real. One's perceptions are part of reality.RJG wrote: ↑July 20th, 2018, 11:39 amYou do not experience the real. That is only a construct of your ideas.
Thomas -- but without the 'realism' of experiencing itself, there could be no experiencing of 'idealism', or of any other experienced object/concept (...including the "entire concept of the universe"). We can't experience objects/concepts if 'experiencing' is not real. We can't see trees, if 'seeing' does not exist.
The experiencing of-X is much more certain/real, and therefore 'primary', than is its object X itself.
You fully depend of sensation for evidence of what you think might be real.
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