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[Consul]

Consul wrote:

Contrary to Bradley's one substance, Spinoza's one substance has attributes and modes, with its central attributes being extension and thought. Another difference from Spinoza's substance monism is that for Bradley (spatial or temporal) extension is "mere appearance" and hence not an attribute of the Absolute.

But Bradley's substance, experience, includes experiences of extension and of thought. If the one substance is experience(of both extension and thought) then experience and Nature/God are the same. The naming of Nature/God "experience" is a means to separate Nature/God from the array of natura naturata.

Experience is both natura naturata and natura naturans. Nature also is
both natura naturata and natura naturans. To be the uncaused cause it's necessary and sufficient to be the nomic connection(the law of connection) for natura naturata and natura naturans, i.e. experience.

(NB the Latin terms are Spinoza's and are a concise and precise way to pin down the initial split of Nature so that Nature is understood as everyday experience.)

For Bradley, nature with its apparent multitude of objects and subjects is just an "appearance" of the one absolute experience.

There undeniably is experience of spatial and temporal extension—e.g. my visual field seems spatially extended—, but he denies that absolute experience has spatial or temporal extension.

What makes this and Bradley's metaphysics in general so hard to understand is its annoying abstrusity and obscurity. I have the same comprehension problem with the metaphysical theories of other absolute or objective idealists (e.g. Hegel, Schelling). They all seem unable or unwilling to express themselves clearly rather than foggily. (The subjective idealist Berkeley isn't one of them! I fully understand his spiritualistic ontology.)

[Belindi]

Consul, the following copied from Sprigge confines Spinoza's and Bradley's "substance" to definitions i and ii because iii-vi apply to subjects or objects and not to subjectless objectless experience , or (Spinoza) God/Nature.

The constructed object world is the shared posit of a system of communicating finite centres achieved through synthetic judgements of sense which interpret any given perceptual fields as different fragments of a single spatia-temporal whole extending them in a manner homogeneous with them in character. Its existence consists simply in the pragmatic value of such positings. There may be many different object worlds constructed by different systems of communicating finite centres.

Both finite centres and the object world are simply appearances of the Absolute."

It's helpful to think of the two attributes (Spinoza) in terms of how, in Taoism, The Way splits into Yin and Yang and thence into the myriad creatures. In terms of LaoTsu, Spinoza, and Bradley the philosophical experience of the Absolute is itself primarily thought. It's rational not empirical.

I agree Berkeley has style. His idealism is the logical end point of scepticism. However Berkeley's idealism fails to make sense unless God occasionally intervenes in the temporal world.

[Consul]

Consul, the following copied from Sprigge confines Spinoza's and Bradley's "substance" to definitions i and ii because iii-vi apply to subjects or objects and not to subjectless objectless experience , or (Spinoza) God/Nature.

The constructed object world is the shared posit of a system of communicating finite centres achieved through synthetic judgements of sense which interpret any given perceptual fields as different fragments of a single spatia-temporal whole extending them in a manner homogeneous with them in character. Its existence consists simply in the pragmatic value of such positings. There may be many different object worlds constructed by different systems of communicating finite centres.

Both finite centres and the object world are simply appearances of the Absolute."

As for Bradley's "finite centres" of experience or feeling:

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"The ‘this’ and the ‘mine’ express the immediate character of feeling, and the appearance of this character in a finite centre.
…
Now whatever is thus directly experienced—so far as it is not taken otherwise—is ‘this’ and ‘mine’. And all such presentation without doubt has peculiar reality. One might even contend that logically to transcend it is impossible, and that there is no rational way to a plurality of ‘this-mines’."
(p. 198)

"A centre of experience, first, is not the same thing as either a soul or, again, a self. It need not contain the distinction of not-self from self; and, whether it contains that or not, in neither case is it, properly, a self. It will be either below, or else wider than and above, the distinction. And a soul, as we have seen, is always the creature of an intellectual construction. It cannot be the same thing with a mere centre of immediate experience."
(p. 468)

(Bradley, F. H. Appearance and Reality. 1897 [2nd ed.]. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930 [9th impr.].)
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"Another important point to note about immediate experience is that it manifests itself filtered through what he calls “finite centres” (Bradley 1915: 410). These numerous (Bradley 1897: 468) centres of experience, closely identified in his mind with the indexical perspective of the “this” and the “mine” (Bradley 1897: 198) and thus impervious to each other (Bradley 1915: 173), are not to be thought of as objects existing in time or capable of standing in relation to one another; they are rather the raw data from which such objects and relations are built up as ideal constructions (Bradley 1915:[177]411). They are, we might say, the pre-conceptual experiential base from which we construct our entire conception of the world. In particular, finite centres are to be distinguished from selves. This is so in two respects. First, selves are objects that endure through time, and second, they are distinguished from their states. A finite centre, by contrast, has no duration and contains no subject–object distinction. For Bradley the self is something made out of, or abstracted from, a finite centre, and thus he allows that in so far as I think of myself as something developed out of a given finite centre, I may describe that centre as “mine” (Bradley 1915: 418), but it must always be remembered that the self which is thus developed is but an ideal construction lacking any ultimate reality (Bradley 1915: 248)."

(Mander, W. J. "Bradley: The supra-relational Absolute." In The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics, edited by Robin Le Poidevin, Peter Simons, Andrew McGonigal, and Ross P. Cameron, 171-180. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. pp. 176-7)

———

"Bradley admits the existence of nothing that falls outside of experience – more precisely, he holds that there is nothing that can be said about anything that falls outside of any experience, whether this be the Experience that is the Absolute or the kind of experiences we ourselves have. Even though Reality, as a single Experience and the highest reality, is an indivisible unity, it incorporates subordinate aspects. Within the Absolute are what he calls, ‘finite centres of experience’, also sometimes termed ‘this-mines’. These, though less real than the Absolute, are still real to some degree. Their nature is most easily grasped in terms of our own experiences and in terms of experiences we suppose are had by others. A unified experiential state, which may include in its totality both the perceiving self and the world as perceived from that particular perspective, counts as a ‘finite centre’ – ‘an immediate experience of itself and of the Universe in one’. Not all finite centres are consciously aware – not all contain an aspect that is a ‘self’ – but all are unified experiential states that differ from the experiential states of others. Each finite centre of experience, as Sprigge explains, ‘is particularly associated with a certain position in the space and time of the object world, from which, so to speak, it looks out at that world’. [T. L. S. Sprigge, James and Bradley: American Truth and British Reality, 1993, p. 282] Of course, the finite centres of experience cannot be detached from the Absolute whole. Rather, all seemingly independent and inter-related things must, because of the contradictory nature of relations, be subsumed, resolved, transformed or ‘transmuted’ in the Absolute Experience. In the final analysis, even though finite centres are (incoherently) identifiable as specific points of view within an apparent temporal sequence, they are eternally aspects of the timeless Absolute. As subsidiary aspects of the Absolute Experience, each finite centre is ‘just one of the positions from which the Absolute looks out eternally at the world’. [Sprigge, 1993, p. 282]

Some finite centres have (or rather, ‘are’) experiences that are divided and relational. In the experiential content of some finite centres, it is possible to distinguish the self, on the one hand, and nature or the world, on the other. In others, no such distinction is present: their experience is a mere ‘feeling’, a pre-relational, ‘immediate experience’ in which the finite centre’s experience is not yet broken up into the perceiver and perceived. However, this differentiation of types of finite centres with its implicit suggestion of a plurality of finite centres in relation to each other is ultimately an illusion. In the supra-relational Absolute Experience, contradictions apparent in the relational experiences – including contradictions involved in conceiving a plurality of finite centres in relation to each other – are overcome, synthesised into a unified and undivided whole. Bradley’s Absolute unifies all the experiences had by the finite centres into one grand Absolute Experience."

(Phemister, Pauline. "Leibnizian Pluralism and Bradleian Monism: A Question of Relations." In Leibniz and the Aspects of Reality [Studia Leibnitiana 45], edited by Arnaud Pelletier, 61-79. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016. pp. 62-3)

———

"[O]ne has to consider Bradley’s treatment of the notion of the self. In his view, there cannot be a subject without an object. Since self and not-self, subject and object, are correlative and can’t therefore be divorced from one another, they form a relational structure that, as such, can only develop within the larger whole of feeling. The self is, as Bradley says, ‘one of the results gained by transcending the first . . . form of experience’ (AR 525). But whose experience, then, is immediate experience? Bradley answers this question in terms of the notion of a finite centre. This is to be viewed as the metaphysical point in which all of a person’s experiences unfold. However, such a centre is neither a self (as we have just seen) nor can it properly be called a ‘soul’ (AR 529), for according to Bradley a soul’s life must be capable of enduring for a significant amount of time, while the experiences unfolding within a finite centre might be as brief as a momentary occurrence, breaking into existence, as it were, like a light flashing in the dark. Bradley also thinks that finite centres are not themselves in time, although there obviously is a temporal quality to the experiences unfolding within them. Most importantly, and puzzling as it might seem on a first hearing, Bradley denies that a finite centre is in any deep metaphysical sense a reality distinct from its experiences. There is nothing more to the centre than the stream of its experiences—each is a quantum of flowing feeling."

(Basile, Pierfrancesco. "Bradley's Metaphysics." In The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century, edited by W. J. Mander, 189-208. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. p. 203)
<QUOTE

It's helpful to think of the two attributes (Spinoza) in terms of how, in Taoism, The Way splits into Yin and Yang and thence into the myriad creatures. In terms of LaoTsu, Spinoza, and Bradley the philosophical experience of the Absolute is itself primarily thought. It's rational not empirical.

Bradley emphatically rejects Hegel's rationalism—that being is thought, that the cosmos is logos.

QUOTE>
"The final truth about reality is, on Bradley’s view, quite literally and in principle inexpressible. Eventually, it is this mystical conclusion which explains his forceful rejection of Hegel’s panlogism; contrary to Hegel’s view in the Science of Logic, Reality is not a system of interrelated logical categories, but transcends thought altogether."

Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bradley/
<QUOTE

QUOTE>
"When in the reason's philosophy the rational appears dominant and sole possessor of the world, we can only wonder what place would be left to it, if the element excluded might break through the charm of the magic circle, and, without growing rational, could find expression. Such an idea may be senseless, and such a thought may contradict itself, but it serves to give voice to an obstinate instinct. Unless thought stands for something that falls beyond mere intelligence, if "thinking" is not used with some strange implication that never was part of the meaning of the word, a lingering scruple still forbids us to believe that reality can ever be purely rational. It may come from a failure in my metaphysics, or from a weakness of the flesh which continues to blind me, but the notion that existence could be the same as understanding strikes as cold and ghost-like as the dreariest materialism. That the glory of this world in the end is appearance leaves the world more glorious, if we feel it is a show of some fuller splendour; but the sensuous curtain is a deception and a cheat, if it hides some colourless movement of atoms, some spectral woof of impalpable abstractions, or unearthly ballet of bloodless categories. Though dragged to such conclusions, we can not embrace them. Our principles may be true, but they are not reality. They no more make that Whole which commands our devotion, than some shredded dissection of human tatters is that warm and breathing beauty of flesh which our hearts found delightful."

(Bradley, F. H. The Principles of Logic. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1883. p. 533)
<QUOTE

By the way, Arthur Schopenhauer writes that from Hegel's perspective the world is "a crystallized syllogism."

[Consul]

Bradley emphatically rejects Hegel's rationalism—that being is thought, that the cosmos is logos.

QUOTE>
"There is even a sense in which we could say that Bradley is more of an empiricist than the traditional British empiricists, for it could be argued that they have not gone far enough back in their search for the basic data. To find the ultimate foundation of knowledge, we need to look for an input that has all conceptualization removed. It is for this reason that Cresswell, quite correctly, characterizes Bradley as a hyper-empiricist. He searches out the purest data of experience and bases everything on this.

Feeling is important to Bradley, not only as the origin or ground of philosophy, but also as its terminus at goal. As we have already seen, any final satisfaction of thought must also be a satisfaction of feeling (will, sense, desire, etc.) as well as thought. The Absolute is therefore a state of feeling or experience, making immediate experience into a kind of anticipation of the life of the Absolute (AR [Appearance and Reality] 141). But, although something of the same fundamental kind as the Absolute, it is a flawed anticipation, for unlike the Absolute it is, as we saw above, finite and limited, and thus subject to contradictions.

It is, however, an accurate picture of the Absolute in so far as it is not simply a system of concepts or thoughts. This is the crucial difference between Bradley and Hegel that we hinted at above. Like Hegel, Bradley thinks that thought and reality are not separate things, but, unlike Hegel, he thinks that reality is more than just thought. That the real is simply the rational strikes him as a cold and lifeless idea (PL [Principles of Logic] 591). This was the basic Hegelian principle he could not accept, and why he was therefore reluctant to call himself a Hegelian (PL, p. x). He agrees that the real is the rational, but thinks it is also much more—it is feeling as well. This break from pure Hegelianism and move towards realism are crucial elements of Bradley‘s philosophy, the full significance of which has not been appreciated in many of the standard accounts of his thought.“

(Mander, W. J. An Introduction to Bradley's Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. p. 14)

———

"Feeling

Even if not a thesis that directly contradicts itself, Bradley’s passionate rejection of the ‘Hegelian’ notion that reality consists in nothing more than abstract thinking seems hard to square with his idealism. Collingwood’s claim that he had somehow left his more orthodox Hegelian colleagues to join the realist camp, expresses a concern which was at least partly felt by other idealists like Caird and Jones. To them Bradley’s innovation seemed like a ‘realist revolution within the camp of idealism’. These apparently conflicting elements can be brought together, however, and in the next two sections I want to show how. There are two positions to examine, Bradley’s doctrine of feeling or immediate experience and his doctrine of degrees of truth and reality.

We may begin with the doctrine of feeling. The metaphysical realism involved in holding that the realm of being extends further than the realm of concepts must in no way be taken to imply that Bradley is anything other than fully signed-up to the doctrine of philosophical idealism. That is to say, he is as committed as his other idealist colleagues to denying that experienced things may understood as in any way different from the experiencing of them. Neither identical with thought, nor ever quite expressible in thought, Reality is a harmonious whole that is nonetheless identical with experience. Bradley puts the idealist case this way:
—
Find any piece of existence, take up anything that anyone could possibly call a fact, or could in any sense assert to have being, and then judge if it does not consist in sentient experience. Try to discover any sense in which you can still continue to speak of it, when all perception and feeling have been removed; or point out any fragment of its matter, any aspect of its being, which is not derived from and is not still relative to this source. When the experiment is made strictly, I can myself conceive of nothing else than the experienced. Anything in no sense felt or perceived becomes to me quite unmeaning. And as I cannot think of it without realising either that I am not thinking at all, or that I am thinking of it against my will as being experienced, I am driven to the conclusion that for me experience is the same as reality.
[Appearance and Reality, p. 160]
—
Bradley’s formulation of idealism is unique and deliberate. All that properly exists (he tells us) is experience itself, and to ask nevertheless whether there is some further subject or ego which ‘has’ the experience, or whether there is some further external object to which it ‘corresponds’ is to persistently misunderstand the sense in which this state is a simultaneous unity of subject and object; the common ground from which both of those aspects are partial or one-sided abstractions.

But even more important to note for our purposes is that by ‘experience’ in this context Bradley means more specifically ‘feeling’ or ‘awareness’. The contrast here is between thought and feeling; or more fully between experience in so far as it is structured by our concepts and ideas—relational experience—and experience which operates either below or above the level of concepts. The former we may call subrelational experience (immediate experience)—this is the ‘felt immediacy’ from which ordinary thinking consciousness emerges. The latter we may term supra-relational experience (absolute experience)—this is the all-embracing unity-in-diversity in which ordinary thinking consciousness culminates. Bradley regards all three levels as in some sense manifested, for to employ a metaphor that although misleadingly temporal and slightly flippant is nonetheless useful, he treats relational experience somewhat like a stage in life—say, adolescence—which just has to be got through or over. All-consuming in its troubles, it points to an earlier more harmonious stage from which it emerged, at the same time as pointing to a stage in which it will exhaust itself and pass once more into a state of harmony. Care should be taken, however, with any such temporal language. For in another sense ‘feeling’ is always present and never left behind. It covers even the ordinary thinking consciousness itself, which is (we must remember) no creation ex nihilo but merely the result of our abstract concepts breaking up and distorting the material first given to them.

Reality passes beyond thought, even though it never passes beyond experience, because there is more to experience than thought. More fundamentally there is [/i]feeling. In this sense Bradley’s idealism is very profoundly mixed in with empiricism. “The real is that which is known in presentation or intuitive knowledge. It is what we encounter in feeling or perception”, he argues. “Nothing in the end is real but what is felt.” For all that he fiercely challenges classical and nineteenth-century empiricism, Bradley’s idealism owes much to this tradition and in its sophisticated articulation reaches out to it."

(Mander, W. J. The Unknowable: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. pp. 295-6)
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[Belindi]

Consul, thank you for all your research.

I appreciate particularly

"There is even a sense in which we could say that Bradley is more of an empiricist than the traditional British empiricists, for it could be argued that they have not gone far enough back in their search for the basic data. To find the ultimate foundation of knowledge, we need to look for an input that has all conceptualization removed. It is for this reason that Cresswell, quite correctly, characterizes Bradley as a hyper-empiricist. He searches out the purest data of experience and bases everything on this.

I have a little difficulty with Spinoza's Ethics with regard to how it's claimed Spinoza is a rationalist and hence emotionally flat.
However we know from Spinoza's life that he did did react emotionally on at least one recorded occasion.
Timothy Sprigge ,whose stance was a compound of Spinoza's and Bradley's metaphysics, personally informed me, with feeling and sympathy, against Descartes' claim that animals are automata; Sprigge himself was chair of Advocates for Animals a respected Scottish animal welfare charity.

Also elsewhere in your researched quotations

Some finite centres have (or rather, ‘are’) experiences that are divided and relational. In the experiential content of some finite centres, it is possible to distinguish the self, on the one hand, and nature or the world, on the other. In others, no such distinction is present: their experience is a mere ‘feeling’, a pre-relational, ‘immediate experience’ in which the finite centre’s experience is not yet broken up into the perceiver and perceived. However, this differentiation of types of finite centres with its implicit suggestion of a plurality of finite centres in relation to each other is ultimately an illusion. In the supra-relational Absolute Experience, contradictions apparent in the relational experiences – including contradictions involved in conceiving a plurality of finite centres in relation to each other – are overcome, synthesised into a unified and undivided whole. Bradley’s Absolute unifies all the experiences had by the finite centres into one grand Absolute Experience."

is the interesting allusion to finite centres of experience including not only we who feel we are selves, but also centres of experience that don't have the feeling they are selves. This is panpsychism.

[Consul]

I have a little difficulty with Spinoza's Ethics with regard to how it's claimed Spinoza is a rationalist and hence emotionally flat. However we know from Spinoza's life that he did did react emotionally on at least one recorded occasion.

Rationalism is either anti-irrationalism—with irrationalism defined as "a system of belief or action that disregards or contradicts rational principles" (Oxford Dictionary), "a system emphasizing intuition, instinct, feeling, or faith rather than reason or holding that the universe is governed by irrational forces" (Merriam-Webster)—or epistemic rationalism = apriorism, i.e. the doctrine that reason (rational intuition) is the only or at least the major source of knowledge. Neither being an anti-irrationalist nor being an epistemic rationalist entails being "emotionally flat" in the psychological sense, which is a matter of personal character.

"For Spinoza, as for Descartes, the metaphysical commitment to substance underwrote a rationalist epistemology that strongly privileges reason and intuition over sensation and imagination. The distinctive character of Spinoza’s epistemological rationalism is rooted in his principle that “the order and connection of ideas is the order and connection of things”."

Continental Rationalism > Spinoza: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cont ... lism/#Spin

Timothy Sprigge ,whose stance was a compound of Spinoza's and Bradley's metaphysics, personally informed me, with feeling and sympathy, against Descartes' claim that animals are automata; Sprigge himself was chair of Advocates for Animals a respected Scottish animal welfare charity.

Peter Carruthers writes that "it seems plain that sympathy can be independent of questions of consciousness." He distinguishes between empathy, which "requires first-personal identification with the feelings of the subject empathized with," and sympathy, which "in contrast, can be grounded in a third-personal understanding of the situation and emotional state of the other." And "if one thinks that it might be important to be sympathetic towards the situation of an animal, one should seek an accurate third-person understanding of its needs and affective states, not project one's own feelings onto it." (Human and Animal Minds, Oxford UP, 2019. pp. 174-6)

That is to say, even if animals are nonconscious "automata", such that they don't have any feelings with which we can empathize, we can still have sympathy for them and regard them as objects of moral concern.

Also elsewhere in your researched quotations

Some finite centres have (or rather, ‘are’) experiences that are divided and relational. In the experiential content of some finite centres, it is possible to distinguish the self, on the one hand, and nature or the world, on the other. In others, no such distinction is present: their experience is a mere ‘feeling’, a pre-relational, ‘immediate experience’ in which the finite centre’s experience is not yet broken up into the perceiver and perceived. However, this differentiation of types of finite centres with its implicit suggestion of a plurality of finite centres in relation to each other is ultimately an illusion. In the supra-relational Absolute Experience, contradictions apparent in the relational experiences – including contradictions involved in conceiving a plurality of finite centres in relation to each other – are overcome, synthesised into a unified and undivided whole. Bradley’s Absolute unifies all the experiences had by the finite centres into one grand Absolute Experience."

is the interesting allusion to finite centres of experience including not only we who feel we are selves, but also centres of experience that don't have the feeling they are selves.

According to Bradley, there are no substantial selves or subjects which are distinct from their experiences and function as their substrata. For him, selfhood and subjecthood belong to the realm of appearance, not being features of ultimate reality = absolute experience.

He writes that "[t]he ‘this’ and the ‘mine’ express the immediate character of feeling, and the appearance of this character in a finite centre."

The "feeling of mineness" or "sense of ownership" is an interesting topic in the philosophy of mind and psychology:

Self-consciousness > The Sense of Ownership: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self ... /#SensOwne

Bodily Awareness > The Sense of Body Ownership: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bodi ... nsBodyOwne

This is panpsychism.

"Panpsychism is the thesis that physical nature is composed of individuals each of which is to some degree sentient. It is somewhat akin to hylozoism, but in place of the thesis of the pervasiveness of life in nature substitutes the pervasiveness of sentience, experience or, in a broad sense, consciousness."

("Panpsychism," by T. L. S. Sprigge. In The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward Craig, 769. London: Routledge, 2005.)

It's one thing to say that everything has experience (except experiences themselves), and another to say that everything is experience. According to Bradley, ultimately, everything is experience; whereas according to Berkeley, this is not the case, because there are substantial, existentially irreducible selves or subjects (souls/spirits) in addition to mental "ideas".

"A second distinction concerns whether the fundamental mental states are had by a subject (subjective) or by some other sort of entity or no entity at all (objective). …To mark the second distinction, I will speak of subject-involving and non-subject-involving idealism."

(Chalmers, David. "Idealism and the Mind-Body Problem." In The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism, edited by Joshua Farris and Benedikt Paul Göcke, 591-613. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022. p. 593)

[Consul]

Excerpt from the 2020 PhilPapers Survey What Philosophers Believe:

External world:
Idealism: 117 / 6.6%
Skepticism: 96 / 5.4%
Non-skeptical realism: 1403 / 79.5%
Other: 172 / 9.8%

So the (ontological) idealists among living professional philosophers are a small minority.

[Belindi]

Excerpt from the 2020 PhilPapers Survey What Philosophers Believe:

External world:
Idealism: 117 / 6.6%
Skepticism: 96 / 5.4%
Non-skeptical realism: 1403 / 79.5%
Other: 172 / 9.8%

So the (ontological) idealists among living professional philosophers are a small minority.

Especially in America. The advances of science, and hence of ontological materialism, is a force to be reckoned with. Also, the love of wild nature is increasing and at the same time it's not widely understood how ontological idealism contains within it love of nature.

As an aside, it's difficult to discuss and compare theories of existence in English at least, without having to choose between prepositions that obviously mean what they denote when used literally in a material world. Metaphorical usage of prepositions verges on the poetic, which is fine for people who believe poetry can be more meaningful than prose.

[Belindi]

Excerpt from the 2020 PhilPapers Survey What Philosophers Believe:

External world:
Idealism: 117 / 6.6%
Skepticism: 96 / 5.4%
Non-skeptical realism: 1403 / 79.5%
Other: 172 / 9.8%

So the (ontological) idealists among living professional philosophers are a small minority.

Especially in America. The advances of science, and hence of ontological materialism, is a force to be reckoned with. Also, the love of wild nature is increasing and at the same time it's not widely understood how ontological idealism contains within it love of nature.

As an aside, it's difficult to discuss and compare theories of existence in English at least, without having to choose between prepositions that obviously mean what they denote when used literally in a material world. Metaphorical usage of prepositions verges on the poetic, which is fine for people who believe poetic language is meaningful. Unfortunately arts education is often a poor relation in schools and universities.

Sprigge wrote

It is books written with a fair amount of vividness or at least a fair amount of concrete detail which more readily evoke genuine belief expereinces in the reading of them.

(Facts, Words and Beliefs 1970 page 329. the chapter headed "Merits and Demerits of Imagism". I don't have a scanner printer, sorry!

Similarly Sozhenitzyn's Nobel lecture (1970)contains:

In vain does one repeat what the heart does not find sweet.

But a true work of art carries its verification within itself: Artificial and forced concepts do not survive their trial by images; both image and concept crumble and turn out feeble, pale, and unconvincing. However, works which have drawn on the truth and which have presented it to us in concentrated and vibrant form seize us, attract us to themselves powerfully, and no one ever—even centuries later—will step forth to deny them.

So perhaps the old trinity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty is not simply the decorous and antiquated formula it seemed to us at the time of our self-confident materialistic youth. If the tops of these three trees do converge, as thinkers used to claim, and if the all too obvious and the overly straight sprouts of Truth and Goodness have been crushed, cut down, or not permitted to grow, then perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable, and ever surprising shoots of Beauty will force their way through and soar up to that very spot, thereby fulfilling the task of all three.

And then no slip of the tongue but a prophecy would be contained in Dostoyevsky’s words: “Beauty will save the world.” For it was given to him to see many things; he had astonishing flashes of insight.

Could not then art and literature in a very real way offer succor to the modern world?

I wonder if I ought to have taken the above from its context, as the entire speech is so relevant to Russia today. https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/nobel-lecture

[Consul]

…
So the (ontological) idealists among living professional philosophers are a small minority.

Especially in America. The advances of science, and hence of ontological materialism, is a force to be reckoned with. Also, the love of wild nature is increasing and at the same time it's not widely understood how ontological idealism contains within it love of nature.

"In the USA and the UK idealism, especially of the absolute kind, was the dominating philosophy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, receiving its most forceful expression with F.H. Bradley. It declined, without dying, under the influence of G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, and later of the logical positivists. Not a few philosophers believe, however, that it has a future."

("Idealism," by T. L. S. Sprigge. In The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward Craig, 429-434. London: Routledge, 2005. p. 429)

Well, we all have our hopes; but his "not a few" is refuted by that empirical survey. However, motivated by wishful thinking, the small minority of contemporary idealists (in the academic community) doesn't give up:

"In our contemporary situation, we are seeing a shift of interest back to the older conceptions of the world. Idealism and immaterialism are, you might say, experiencing a revival of interest."

(Farris, Joshua, and Benedikt Paul Göcke "Introducing Idealism and Immaterialism." In The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism, edited by Joshua Farris and Benedikt Paul Göcke, 1-10. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022. p. 2)

Remarkably, this book contains a chapter written by the pop star among living philosophers, David Chalmers, whose conclusion about idealism is pretty friendly:

"I do not claim that idealism is plausible. No position on the mind-body problem is plausible. Materialism is implausible. Dualism is implausible. Idealism is implausible. Neutral monism is implausible. None-of-the-above is implausible. But the probabilities of all these views get a boost from the fact that one of them must be true. Idealism is not greatly less plausible than its main competitors. So even though idealism is implausible, there is a non-negligible probability that it is true."

(Chalmers, David. "Idealism and the Mind-Body Problem." In The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism, edited by Joshua Farris and Benedikt Paul Göcke, 591-613. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022. p. 609)

"In recent years, many books on materialism and dualism have been written, but hardly any on idealism. We regard this situation as unfortunate because we do not know of any serious reason for regarding idealism as less viable than dualism or materialism. While different versions of idealism may face certain specific problems or be counterintuitive in various ways, the same is true for both materialism and dualism. This volume aims to correct the unjustified neglect of idealism by presenting a variety of arguments for and against various versions of idealism."

(Goldschmidt, Tyron, and Kenneth L. Pearce. Introduction to Idealism: New Essays in Metaphysics, edited by Tyron Goldschmidt and Kenneth L. Pearce, ix-xii. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. p. ix)

Well, the general problem is that…

"Philosophical theories are never refuted conclusively. (Or hardly ever. Gödel and Gettier may have done it.) The theory survives its refutation—at a price. Argle has said what we accomplish in philosophical argument: we measure the price. Perhaps that is something we can settle more or less conclusively. But when all is said and done, and all the tricky arguments and distinctions and counterexamples have been discovered, presumably we will still face the question which prices are worth paying, which theories are on balance credible, which are the unacceptably counterintuitive consequences and which are the acceptably counterintuitive consequences. On this question we may still differ. And if all is indeed said and done, there will be no hope of discovering still further arguments to settle our differences."

(Lewis, David. Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. p. x)

[Consul]

Especially in America. The advances of science, and hence of ontological materialism, is a force to be reckoned with. Also, the love of wild nature is increasing and at the same time it's not widely understood how ontological idealism contains within it love of nature.

Where idealism meets romanticism, love of nature does play an important role, doesn't it?

For example, the American transcendentalists were nature lovers:

"Idealism was also a prominent mode of philosophy in the United States during the late nineteenth century, alongside pragmatism, but while pragmatism remained prominent throughout the twentieth century, whether under that name or not, the reputation of idealism was permanently damaged by a movement toward “realism” early in the century (which also attacked pragmatism, although without the same effect). Earlier in the nineteenth century, the popular essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, the most philosophical of the New England “Transcendentalists”, had struck many idealist themes, and after the Civil War a school of “St. Louis Hegelians” emerged, whose efforts were primarily exegetical."

Idealism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/

Transcendentalism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentalism/

[Consul]

Especially in America. The advances of science, and hence of ontological materialism, is a force to be reckoned with. Also, the love of wild nature is increasing and at the same time it's not widely understood how ontological idealism contains within it love of nature.

Where idealism meets romanticism, love of nature does play an important role, doesn't it?

However, from the perspective of ontological idealism in the form of eliminative mentalism, there is no physical nature; and from its perspective in the form of reductive mentalism, there is no irreducibly physical nature, i.e. no physical nature which isn't constituted by mental entities.

[Belindi]

Especially in America. The advances of science, and hence of ontological materialism, is a force to be reckoned with. Also, the love of wild nature is increasing and at the same time it's not widely understood how ontological idealism contains within it love of nature.

Where idealism meets romanticism, love of nature does play an important role, doesn't it?

However, from the perspective of ontological idealism in the form of eliminative mentalism, there is no physical nature; and from its perspective in the form of reductive mentalism, there is no irreducibly physical nature, i.e. no physical nature which isn't constituted by mental entities.

Are there any academically-received philosophers who are eliminative mentalists, or reductive mentalists? These are the attitudes towards idealism that students sometimes have to be disabused of.

Maybe students of philosophy don't always begin their studies with Descartes and the advent of modern scepticism. Berkeley is the sceptic par excellence except of course that he was a proper Christian bishop too. Berkeley's idealism shows how empiricism pursued with a sceptical attitude progresses to idealism. Ideas are historical wouldn't you agree? Or are there original geniuses?

[Belindi]

Especially in America. The advances of science, and hence of ontological materialism, is a force to be reckoned with. Also, the love of wild nature is increasing and at the same time it's not widely understood how ontological idealism contains within it love of nature.

Where idealism meets romanticism, love of nature does play an important role, doesn't it?

For example, the American transcendentalists were nature lovers:

"Idealism was also a prominent mode of philosophy in the United States during the late nineteenth century, alongside pragmatism, but while pragmatism remained prominent throughout the twentieth century, whether under that name or not, the reputation of idealism was permanently damaged by a movement toward “realism” early in the century (which also attacked pragmatism, although without the same effect). Earlier in the nineteenth century, the popular essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, the most philosophical of the New England “Transcendentalists”, had struck many idealist themes, and after the Civil War a school of “St. Louis Hegelians” emerged, whose efforts were primarily exegetical."

Idealism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/

Transcendentalism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentalism/

One gets a sort of perspective on popular philosophising from these forums. Cartesian dualism still hangs about and with it the notion that mind is nearer to God than extended matter. The consequence is extended matter in the form of wild nature is loved but is often accorded lower moral status than human minds. I deplore recreational hunting and thoughtless exploitation of other sentient creatures.

However my feelings are neither here not there. My point is that the finite being who is the fuller more complex experience is, besides a thinking experience is also a physical and feeling experience. In the case of experience quality is linked to quantity. Recent reports of brutality by Russian soldiery among Ukrainian women and children are a case in point of poverty of experience if unchecked leads to atrocities.

[Belindi]

Especially in America. The advances of science, and hence of ontological materialism, is a force to be reckoned with. Also, the love of wild nature is increasing and at the same time it's not widely understood how ontological idealism contains within it love of nature.

Where idealism meets romanticism, love of nature does play an important role, doesn't it?

For example, the American transcendentalists were nature lovers:

"Idealism was also a prominent mode of philosophy in the United States during the late nineteenth century, alongside pragmatism, but while pragmatism remained prominent throughout the twentieth century, whether under that name or not, the reputation of idealism was permanently damaged by a movement toward “realism” early in the century (which also attacked pragmatism, although without the same effect). Earlier in the nineteenth century, the popular essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, the most philosophical of the New England “Transcendentalists”, had struck many idealist themes, and after the Civil War a school of “St. Louis Hegelians” emerged, whose efforts were primarily exegetical."

Idealism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/

Transcendentalism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentalism/

Wordsworth's "something far more deeply interfused" chimes with absolute idealism in particular The Absolute though not necessarily with belief in God.

For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.
Although "the mind of man" is not relegated to a lower status, the poem as a whole is very graphic therefore very physical.